>Tom Kruse writes: > I've just reviewed Marx on "formal" vs. "real" >subsumption of labor to capital, the former understood as "...capital >[making] use of noncapitalist modes of production while leaving the means >of production in the hands of the producers and leaving internal processes >such as self-explotation and exploitation of unremunerated family labor in >place." (Wilson 1998:7) < jim replied: >I don't think that's it. I would call that semi-proletarianization, a >partial insertion of capitalism into other modes of exploitation. this may well explain certain instances in terms of uneven development, the incompleteness of capitalism in the periphery, and it may even be what tom had in mind when asking about this. but what about occassions where there is a kind of reversion to the kinds of labour processes marx referred to as formal subsumption: personalised command, a lengthening of the working day, sweated labour, bonded labour, even a 'reversion' to labour processes that are labour intensive in small-scale or home work? maybe i am confused as well, but it does seem to me that in marx there is a sense in which the shift from absolute to relative surplus value occurs as a kind of chronological shift, assuming we are talking of say britain or australia. as i said, i don't think there is any need to commit to these concepts as being mutually exclusive. but tom's remarks point to a relation, which i think might be pertinent, between the conditions of structural adjustment and the re-introduction of forms of the labour process which are more akin to the character of formal than real subsumption that marx described. angela
