Karl Marx on Wage Labor: From Natural Abstraction to Formal Subsumption (original) (raw)
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EXPLOITATION VIA LABOUR POWER IN MARX
"Marx’s account of capitalist exploitation is undermined by inter-related confusions surrounding the notion of “labour power.” These confusions relate to [i] what labour power is, [ii] what happens to labour power in the labour market, and [iii] what the epistemic status of labour power is (the issue of “appearance and reality”). The central theses of the paper are [a] that property ownership is the wrong model for understanding the exploitation of labour, and [b] that the concept of exploitation is linked more fruitfully to a conception of distributive injustice than to Marx’s theory of surplus value."
2. Abstract Labour as a Historical Reality
Labour and Value, 2019
Labour as a Historical Reality The present chapter presents the pars construens of my interpretation of the theory of abstract labour. It begins with an elucidation of the Hegelian notion of the employment contract as an agreement for the exchange of a commodity. Hegel's view, according to which this kind of contract must be likened to the Roman institution locatio operis, is wrong. Marx, however, develops an alternative vision that evokes the locatio operarum, an agreement whereby workers take on an obligation to obey their employers. These issues are dealt with in section 1 of the present chapter. In section 2, I argue that Marx's alternative vision is based on the notions of "subordination" and "subsumption", which are used in Capital but are better investigated in Results of the Direct Production Process and in the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63. With the employment contract, a worker renounces his decision-making freedom in the labour process by entering into a relationship of subordination to the capitalist. This enables capital to subsume workers' capacities and use them to secure surplus value. Then, in section 3, I define abstract labour on the grounds of the notions of subordination and subsumption. Here, abstract labour is no longer a natural object. Rather, it emerges from a historically determined social relationship. By virtue of this characteristic, it turns out to coincide with the time spent by the wageworker in the production process.
Karl Marx's Theory of Capitalism Exposition, Critique, and Appraisal
This book gives a clear synthesis of Marx’s theory of Capitalism and its relation with economic theory as it evolved over the course of the last 300 years. It places Marx’s though in perspective, comparing it with the main aspects of the economic theories that preceded it, including not only the Classical Adam Smith and David Ricardo but also economists like Cantillon, Turgot, and Ramsay that Marx chose to ignore with respect to the crucial issue of entrepreneurship because it was incompatible with his Theory of Surplus Value. But the book also contrasts Marx’s theory with Walras’, the Neoclassical economist whose influence on contemporary mainstream economic theory was most lasting. The analytical aspects of Marx’s theory are rigorously expressed by means of the technique of Input-Output Analysis, which is explained from the most elementary level in order to make the book self-contained. Each of the multiple topics of Marx’s complex and refined theory is explained in detail, including his theory of money, the heterogeneity in kinds of labor and in productive techniques, the turnover of capital, Simple and Extended Reproduction, his theory of the economic cycle, his theory of ground rent, his theory of productive and unproductive labor, and his view of the main tendencies of capitalist society. The book is structured in accordance with the development process of Marx’s thought. Hence, it begins with the life project he generated in his youth and drove him from the study of history and philosophy to that of Political Economy, on the one hand, and political praxis, on the other. Hence, Parts I, II, and IV of the book respectively address A) the philosophical-methodological foundations of his scientific endeavor (his Historical Materialism); B) his scientific theory of capitalist society as expressed in Capital; and C) his political thought and praxis, which had enormous effects over the course of the 20th century. Part III of the book addresses our critique of Marx’s theory of Capitalism. Beyond our criticisms, however, the book shows that Marx made important contributions to the comprehension of the functioning of Capitalism in the more conventional part of his theory, which we denominate ‘exoteric’ in order to contrast it with his ‘esoteric’ Theory of Surplus Value which was the foundation of his view of the exploitation of wage labor in Capitalism.
These four alienations present the pervading notion of labor as oppressive and degrading and the ideal notion of Labor as a way of self-realization and fulfillment. Thus, the notion of labor as a human process deals with his distinction from animals (an affirmation of the consciousness) and his sociability (a demonstration of his species-life). According to Marx, this ideal labor is only fulfilled at the communistic revolution.
Labouring Marx: Alienation and Wage Labour
Labouring Marx: Alienation and Wage Labour
Alienation is wage-labour, as wage-labour is alienation. The raison d’être of the capitalist mode of production is to consume every last drop of blood, to drink every last tear, and to collect every last drop of sweat from the wage-labourers. According to Allen Wood, the terms Entfremdung (‘alienation’ or ‘estrangement’) and Entäusserung (‘externalization’ or ‘alienation’) that Karl Marx utilizes in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 evoke “images: they suggest the separation of things which naturally belong together, or the establishment of some relation of indifference or hostility between things which are properly in harmony.” Wage-labour itself necessarily entails the continual degradation and dehumanization of humanity, as it constitutes the loss of life of the worker. In the historical development of humankind, labouring activity has always formed part of the lives of human beings; however, this labouring activity has become a perversion due to capitalism, in that it conquers and enslaves the human being to a wretched and miserable existence. This perverted labouring activity, wage-labour, is undeniably unnatural as the object or the external world imposes itself as the reality of the worker (human being), which leads to his/her limited and unbearable existence. Through the coerced sale of his/her labour power, the worker belongs to a mystical, obscure being, the capitalist, and not to himself/herself. As a result, the life of the worker ceases to be in his/her hands, and remains in the hands of his/her executioner. Therefore, the worker’s being, essence and conscious life activity is debased and distorted to comprise solely the means of his/her physical existence, rather than being an end in and of itself. As such, wage-labour alienates the worker to live his/her life wholly individually. In other words, the worker’s ties with his/her fellow human beings are lacerated, and thus, the worker loses his/her natural character as a species-being, and is immersed into a world of nightmares as his/her soul and spirit is engulfed by the capitalist voracious egocentric id. No longer is the worker able to create the world through himself/herself, and thus create himself/herself through the world, as through wage-labour, the worker is forced to sell his/her soul and spirit so that they become the playthings of the capitalist. No longer does the individual encapsulate the species, as the species encapsulate the individual, but rather, in the process of production, the worker (the human being) is consciously cut off from his fellow human beings, and is thus oblivious to not only their existence, but to his/her own existence as well. The capitalist is the root of all evil in bourgeois society, as his/her arms – private property, wage-labour, the division of labour, and capital – seek to exterminate the entire human race. Due to the process of production of capital, the capitalist places himself/herself as the godhead of the entire production process, and subsequently, he/she coercively becomes the god of other human beings, of his/her wage-slaves. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to restore dignity and integrity back to the human being by means of the unification of the human being with his/her being and essence through free, associated labour/life activity. As inspired methodologically by Bertell Ollman in that “Marx’s subject matter comprises an organic whole; the various factors he treats are facets of this whole; internal relations exist between all such factors; reciprocal effect predominates and has logical priority over causality; laws are concerned with patterns of reciprocal effect; the concepts Marx uses to refer to factors convey their internal relations; this makes it possible to speak of each factor as an ‘expression’ of the whole (or some large part of it) or as a ‘form’ of some other factor,” this paper on wage-labour and alienation is divided into the following four sections: Alienation as a result of and inherent within Wage-Labour, Capital and its Process of Production thereof; The Commodification of Alienation; The Machination of Alienation; and The Essence of Alienation: Wage-Labour, Private Property, and Capital.
Marx and the critique of capitalism
In this article excerpted from the International relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, edited by Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith. It examines Marx’s arguments against capitalism. For a summary of ideology opposed to capitalism. Criticism of Capitalism ranges from expressing disagreement with the principles of capitalism in its entirety, to expressing disagreement with particular outcome of capitalism. In discussions of world politics, it is not uncommon for Marxism to be dismissed out of hand as being preoccupied with economics rather than politics, and concerning itself with domestic rather than international social relations. In this article I will suggest to the contrary that Marxist theory aims at a critical understanding of capitalism as an historically particular way of organizing social life, and that this form of social organization entails political, cultural, and economic aspects which need to be understood as a dynamic ensemble of social relations not necessarily contained within the territorial boundaries of nation states. Viewed in this way, Marxism can yield insights into the complex social relationships—on scales from the workplace and the household to the global—through which human beings produce and reproduce their social relations, the natural world, and themselves. Marx was one of the most incisive critics of a peculiarly modern form of social life capitalism. For Marx, capitalism was not to be confused with markets or exchange, which long predated capitalism. Rather, capitalism represented a form of social life in which commodification had proceeded to such a degree that human labour itself was bought and sold on the market. One of Marx’s central insights was that this situation presupposed the development of historically specific class-based relations and powers: the concomitant development of capital—socially necessary means of production reconstituted as the exclusive private property of a few—and wage labour as the compulsory activity of the many. Under the class relations of capitalism, direct producers are not personally tied to their exploiter, as were slaves in bondage to their master or feudal serfs bound to the lord’s estate.
Chains and Invisible Threads: Liberty and Domination in Marx's Account of Wage-Slavery
Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge University Press), 2022
Marx’s account of wage-labour is permeated with neo-Roman republican vocabulary. But Marx, in contrast to some interpretations of the tradition, also stressed the structural dimensions of domination and its relationship to exploitation. In this chapter, I focus on Marx’s account of the periods before, during and after the agreement of the labour contract. Marx held that workers were structurally dominated by the capitalist class because their ownership of the means of production meant that propertyless workers had no choice but to work for a capitalist master. Marx argued that this enabled the capitalist and capitalist class’s exploitation of the workers in the bargaining and setting of the labour contract. Finally, Marx detailed how once the labour contract had been agreed workers were subjected to the interpersonal domination of the individual capitalist inside the factory workplace. Together, these three moments of domination undermined the worker’s liberty and, according to Marx, made them a slave of the individual capitalist and the capitalist class. Marx thus maintained that the putatively free wage-labour contract amounted to wage-slavery.