Doug Henwood wrote,
>Tom, do you have in mind something like what the Italian autonomist
>theorists called the social factory, the transformation of all of social
>life into an all-encompassing workhouse administered by capital? With
>culture administered by Disney, sport by Nike, education by Chris Whittle,
>and libido by Calvin Klein? So that what might is "unproductive" labor in
>the immediate-process-of-production sense is productive in the
>reproduction-of-capitalist-society sense?
Yes, I think so, with the emphasis on "something like" because I haven't
spent time reading Italian autonomist theorists to be able to say precisely.
I am aware that Tony Negri refers to Marx's distinction (in "The Results of
the Immediate Process of Production") between the formal and the real
subsumption of labour under capital. I believe Negri goes on to address the
"subsumption of culture under capital" (as you've outlined above).
I would go a bit further to say that the distinction Marx makes between the
formal-and-real-subsumption-of-labour-in-the-process-of-production can be
used as a model for analyzing *another* labour process, which in effect
rationalizes the function of the capitalist. First, however, I would
stipulate that Marx's dichotomy of formal and real subsumption is incomplete.
Going back to Chapters 14 and 15 of Capital (where Marx puts historical meat
on those theoretical bones), it isn't implausible to say that Marx is
_really_ talking about three, not just two, distinctive moments in the
development of the capitalist mode of production: 1. manufacture, 2.
machinery AND 3. large-scale production. If manufacture describes formal
subsumption and machine production describes real subsumption, then
large-scale production might describe the third theoretical moment. This
third moment I would call the social subsumption of labour under capital.
There are other ways of rendering this, say, "social reproduction of the
relations of production", but the aspect I want to emphasize is its
organization as a labour process (the production of machines by machines, etc.).
Schematically, then (entirely too schematically!!), I derive six potential
"forms of subsumption":
formal (production)
real (production)
social (production)
formal (circulation)
real (circulation)
social (circulation)
Marx described the first three forms of subsumption empirically. The fourth
and fifth have also been historically realized in capitalism. I don't
believe they've ever been described with anything like the coherence with
which Marx described the first three. The sixth is a paradox -- remember
we're here talking about the function of the capitalist becoming fully
rationalized as a social labour process. The image that occurs to me is of
Oroboros, the mythological snake devouring its own tail.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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