Worker Bees

I thought this might be of interest to some, given Marx's bee-ing fun.

It was originally posted by N Pepperell 29/01/2009 on
http://www.roughtheory.org/content/worker-bees/

"I have to admit, I’ve never particularly thought about the industrial organisation of crop pollination, until I read this column from the New York Times discussing possible responses to Colony Collapse Disorder - the mysterious plague that causes adult bees to desert their hives, leaving honey and larvae behind. I found this image particularly striking":

…it is important to add that, here in the United States, the majority of our crops are pollinated not by wild bees, or even by honeybees like mine, which live in one location throughout the year, but by a vast mobile fleet of honeybees-for-rent.

From the almond trees of California to the blueberry bushes of Maine, hundreds of thousands of domestic honeybee hives travel the interstate highways on tractor-trailers. The trucks pull into a field or orchard just in time for the bloom; the hives are unloaded; and the bees are released. Then, when the work of pollination is done, the bees are loaded up, and the trucks pull out, heading for the next crop due to bloom.

Massive pub fights on primitive accumulation

Hi Tom,

first of all thank you for answering. I don't know, maybe it is just me, but looking through the Grundisse I had the impression that for Marx what comes first is the free play of human creativity, living labor. His discussion of the "civilizing power of external trade" seems to point out that it is only through trade of surplus product that human products become quantitatively comparable on the base of their exchange-value - as opposed to being only qualitatively comparable as use-values. Independently from exchange the object created by our own labor is only valuable because it is useful, not as embodiment of an abstract "socially-necessary-labour-time". We can compare our home-made trinkets only qualitatively, not quantitatively. So first is human creativity, then is trade and the commodity. And what's next? Then, while all of the product of social labour comes slowly to be commodified ("not even the bones of saints can resist this alchemy"), we have primitive accumulation.

My problem with primitive accumulation in Capital is that it is something that Marx leaves at the margin of the argument, as if it was an appendix. We have to "assume the existence of a primitive accumulation". One can not understand why primitive accumulation happened in that specific moment in time and in that fashion reading Capital. It is a story of the original sin, it is not explained either theoretically or historically. Why did primitive accumulation starts? In the Grundisse you have an explanation, more or less explicit, which says it has something to do with the effect of growing English foreign trade with Holland. One could also think of a technological reason, and I guess there must be also that in Marx somewhere.

But I don't think that saying this, saying that also primitive accumulation must be dialectically explained, is to state that there is an identity between the historical content of the book and the exposition of its contents. Indeed I think Capital can hardly been thought as an historian's book, although clearly there is lots of history in it. The exposition clearly does not want to be historical. So, I am not sure, but I think I really agree with your comments on "On the Method of Political Economy".

About the mode of exposition: Marx is trying to explain "the whole movement of capital" which "seems to turn around in a never ending circle". The explanation of that circular movement takes the first 25 chapters (all of the book but 70 pages). The last part, on primitive accumulation, poses two theoretical arrows at the opposite sides of the circle of capital. One very real, violent and historical - that is the moment of primitive accumulation - the other still to come, a possibility which Marx wants to indicate. I think the purpose of the last part of Capital is to draw these two theoretical arrows. That's why Marx doesn't go on explaining the origins of primitive accumulation itself. In my understanding the origins of primitive accumulation seem to lay in commerce, "external exchange" and the rise of commodification. I don't know if you would agree with that or if you see it as problematic.

Maybe on wednesday we will end up having a massive group fight on the correct understanding of primitive accumulation!

Nick: cheers for the link to the essay. It look's interesting, and I'll have a proper read of it tomorrow.

Amadeo: I'm not disagreeing with your comments, but just one question (in lieu of a further conversation in person, perhaps on Wednesday): does this notion of the commodity coming first mean that we end up with an identity between the historical content of the book and the exposition of its contents? In other words, does it mean that the developing arrangement of concepts and categories becomes akin to their 'real' historical development? I don't think that's what you're saying, but it does seem to imply it - and it's problematic, as the concepts are slowly moving from the abstract to the concrete, and we can't say that one epoch is any less concrete than another. It might be worth bearing in mind that Hegel himself avoids any kind of identity between a logical and historical sequence. He states this explicitly at the beginning of the Philosophy of Right (whilst explaining why private property is discussed prior to the family), and in the Phenomenology talks about the French revolution before Greek religion. One of the most useful texts that I've looked at whilst trying to figure out what Marx is up to in this wierd mode of presentation is the short piece entitled On the Method of Political Economy, also in the Grundrisse (in the introduction). In that one he talks about the need to use the commodity as the concept from which you can unfold all the others that explain society. ...but again, and as we discussed on Thursday, the emphasis that I'm placing on 'concepts' here is perhapsd problematic.

Hey,

I stumbled across this rather good article on 'capital’s attempt to measure immaterial labour and thus (re)impose value and the law the value' which uses the UK university as an example. Might be useful for people writing the self-reflection essay, and for anyone thinking of doing a Phd. Doesn't exactly bode well for the future of Cultural Studies Departments.....

Nick

Commodity exchange and primitive accumulation

Oi guys,

here there is a great piece of the Grundisse which I found trying to make sense of what we were discussing earlier - how is the process of primitive accumulation related with the establishment of commodity production. Which one comes first?

Here, although the wording "original accumulation or primitive accumulation" would make us think otherwise, I think Marx is saying that the origin of the capitalist mode of production rests in the sphere of exchange. It is through the "“civilizing influence of external trade" (sigh!) that the process of transition to the capitalist mode of production start to realize itself. This, I think, for two main reasons.
First of all, through external commerce the product of labour is more and more – first only the surplus product, then the all of social production – is stamped with exchange value. The product is made into a commodity which value is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time embodied in it (dead labour).
Second, capital appears in its original form of merchant capital. It is the particular power-position of the mediator – ie the possibility of “outbargaining” and “cheating” (commercial profit not only appears as out-bargaining and cheating, but also largely originates from them - Volume III) – which allows the creation of capital before it becomes able to control the two poles of production which in the first phase is only able to mediate.

Here you have the first part of the fragment titled "Transition from Circulation to Capitalist Production" in the Grundisse (you can find it in Marxists.org). Quite usefully I think it goes back to the example used by Marx in the chapter on Primitive Accumulation - ie the expropriation of the commons in England. Here, though, Marx goes one step further back in his analysis and says that the reason behind the movement of primitive expropriation was the growing commerce with Holland and the creation of new needs and new possibilities of realizing surplus production.

So, I would say, the commodity comes first. After all - if capital is dead labor which valorizes itself sucking living labor - it means that the product of human labour has first of all to take the form of dead labor - ie it must take the form of exchange-value as opposed to simple use-value - and only then can, given the right social relations are established (through violence), rise up and sucks the living.

That's also why, i guess, the chapter on commodities and commodity fetishism comes first.


Is this making any sense? Please let me know because i am trying to think this through.

Transition from circulation to capitalist production.

This movement appears in different forms, not only historically, as leading towards value-producing labour, but also within the system of bourgeois production itself, i.e. production for exchange value. With semi-barbarian or completely barbarian peoples, there is at first interposition by trading peoples, or else tribes whose production is different by nature enter into contact and exchange their superfluous products. The former case is a more classical form. Let us therefore dwell on it. The exchange of the overflow is a traffic which posits exchange and exchange value. But it extends only to the overflow and plays an accessory role to production itself. But if the trading peoples who solicit exchange appear repeatedly (the Lombards, Normans etc. play this role towards nearly all European peoples), and if an ongoing commerce develops, although the producing people still engages only in so-called passive trade, since the impulse for the activity of positing exchange values comes from the outside and not from the inner structure of its production, then the surplus of production must no longer be something accidental, occasionally present, but must be constantly repeated; and in this way domestic production itself takes on a tendency towards circulation, towards the positing of exchange values. At first the effect is of a more physical kind. The sphere of needs is expanded; the aim is the satisfaction of the new needs, and hence greater regularity and an increase of production. The organization of domestic production itself is already modified by circulation and exchange value; but it has not yet been completely invaded by them, either over the surface or in depth. This is what is called the civilizing influence of external trade. The degree to which the movement towards the establishment of exchange value then attacks the whole of production depends partly on the intensity of this external influence, and partly on the degree of development attained by the elements of domestic production -- division of labour etc. In England, for example, the import of Netherlands commodities in the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth century gave to the surplus of wool which England had to provide in exchange, an essential, decisive role. In order then to produce more wool, cultivated land was transformed into sheep-walks, the system of small tenant-farmers was broken up etc., clearing of estates took place etc. Agriculture thus lost the character of labour for use value, and the exchange of its overflow lost the character of relative indifference in respect to the inner construction of production. At certain points, agriculture itself became purely determined by circulation, transformed into production for exchange value. Not only was the mode of production altered thereby, but also all the old relations of population and of production, the economic relations which corresponded to it, were dissolved. Thus, here was a circulation which presupposed a production in which only the overflow was created as exchange value; but it turned into a production which took place only in connection with circulation, a production which posited exchange values as its exclusive content.

They Live

I don't remember who mentioned John Carpenter's film They Live, but if you haven't seen it do watch it. It's a work of sheer, unadulterated genius. Slavoj Zizek used it's hillarious ten minute fight scene in his lecture at the Historical Materialism conference last year, but if you don't feel the need for such official intellectual endorsement you might be persuaded by the following, golden line: 'I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of bubblegum.' See Randy (yes, 'Randy') Roddy Piper do his thing at the following links, but do watch the film (ideally after a few drinks)

First, Randy Roddy gets hold of some special sunglasses. Not only do they make him look dead cool; in addition, they allow him to see that all rich people, policemen, celebrities and politicians are aliens. He also notices that billboards and magazines display notices that read 'stay asleep', 'no thought', 'marry and reproduce', etc. : http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S0GxyZCVc5M

He then gets very upset when his friend won't put the magic sunglasses on. They have a very big fight (it's not so funny when you can see the progress bar, but anyway...). http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EsZpdUUdd3I

Notes on Wagner

Further to a conversation in the pub earlier this evening:

Towards the end of his life - in fact, I think this may have been one of the last things that he wrote - Marx made a collection of notes (for his own use) on a German political economist named Adolf Wagner. Wagner had had the temerity to summarise and explain Marx's theory of value, and predictably enough incurred Karl's wrath. A lesson to us all.

Anyway, the text is interesting, as in dismissing Wagner Marx also offers some useful comments about the account of value that he presented in Capital.

I also rather like this line:

"According to Mr. Wagner, Marx's theory of value is the cornerstone of his socialist system” (p. 45). Since I have never established a “socialist system,” this is a fantasy..."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm

I'm not going to be able to post a link to the essay on the transformation problem that we spoke about. If anyone wants a copy and didn't receive it via e-mail a few weeks back please send me a mail (cup01tb@gold.ac.uk)

Tom

Here is something worth 6 minutes of your valuable time - a little film by an Australian comrade called Zanny

Called:

Treat (or trick)

See it here.

Treat (or trick)
Film by Zanny Begg
DVD 7min PAL
Sound Kate Carr
Camera Osama Yusif
For a full version email: zanny.b[at]gmail.com
www.zannybegg.com

Value, Price and Profit

Hi,

I mentioned this text to Kasim last week, but thought it might be useful for some of the other people who are doing the essay questions based around enquiry and analysis into your own economic situation. It's entitled Value, Price and Profit (sometimes entitled Wages, Price and Profit), and it's the text of a speech that Marx presented to the International Working Men's Association in 1865. It's worth looking at, as he's trying to outline the essentials of his ideas in an accessible manner, and in a way that would be of use to people concerned with understanding their own circumstances.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/


Perhaps I'm being completely stupid, but I couldn't find much Gramsci at all on the internet; the Marxists.org archive just seems to have the contents of his works and little else. If anyone else can find something online please do post it here.

Cheers

Tom

Heidegger

Just a very quick suggestion: scroll down and have a look at the post that Jeff added on Heidegger and Marx last year.

Nick: sorry to hear that the HM conference was turgid in places, but it sounds like some interesting ideas were raised; we should pick up on some of the issues that you mention in the seminar. I was only able to attend the conference on Friday, and my own experience of it was pretty much positive. Pretty much everything I saw was on Adorno; none of it was bad, but one paper (delivered by a guy named Werner Bonefeld) was excellent. Maybe worth checking out

Historical Materialism report

Since I spent my weekend up to my neck in Marxist theory, I thought I would try and write up what little I understood of the Historical Materialism conference (which took place last weekend at SOAS, and featured a paper by our very own Tom, which I didn't see), since quite a lot of it was salient for this course, and for the upcoming essays.

The first thing I went to was an extremely turgid panel on Ecosocialism. Not really a good start, although it was useful in that I now know that the best way to approach the question of nature and the environment in Marx is through his discussion of 'ground rent' and ownership of the land, in the '1844 Manuscripts' and (apparently) in 'Capital vol. 3'. Having now read the manuscripts, the basic thrust of it seems to be that ownership of the earth is the root of all private property, and as such the origin of the process whereby capital turns living labour into dead money; the original neck form which the vampire sucked, so to speak.

Continuing this theme, there was a fantastic panel on Theories of Life Value, which tried to reformulate the theory of value for cognitive capitalism. How do you know what is living and what is dead labour when you're always on the end of a phone etc.... All stuff which has no doubt been covered in Mute Magazine or something like that (Amadeo was also at this talk and can possibly explain it better than me?).

The second talk in this panel was on bio-communism (related to this essay here- http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/hm/2004/00000012/00000004/art00001 ) , and it tried to reintroduce Marx's concept of species-being (as discussed below by Tom) in the context of bio-power and particularly the environmental crisis. The paper argued that alienation from species-being (which was formulated as a kind of vitality or life-force which is the source of labour and class struggle) has only really now begun, as a result of capital turing the earth into a 'factory planet/planet factory...subsuming life's genetic and biological production'. This paper really did a lot to help explain Marx's rather problematic attitude to nature (I know he couldn't have known, but does anyone else wince when he implies that natural resources are not commodities because they are free and unlimited?)

Other than that there were some discussions about film-noir as the anti-capitalist cinema (oooh, nice and cultural-studiesy), and about urban-space in the global south as the new ground for global struggle, although by this stage my notes are too scrappy to write up.
There was also yet another debate on marxist interptretations of the financial crisis, which was great at first but then devolved into a theological debate about the rate of profit.

Anyways, it was all good fun, and was nice to see a few people from the course over the weekend. Apologies for the rather vacuous nature of this post however, if you've just read down to here and are wondering why you bothered.....

Nick

Fear of a red planet

A bit random perhaps, but maybe worth a mention:
Just finished listening to Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of The war of the Worlds. Fantastic, and well worth a listen. I'm sure you can hear it on Youtube or something similar, but if not you can get the script here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/mars/wow.htm
The first part is set up like a live radio news broadcast (and allegedly led many listeners to believe the invasion was really happening; the wikipedia entry on the broadcast claims this is mainly an urban legend), and the second part consists of a monologue by Welles. It includes the following conversation between himself (Pierson) and a survivor whom he's just met:

STRANGER: Life. . . that's what! I want to live. Yeah, and so do you. We're not going to be exterminated. And I don't mean to be caught, either, and tamed, and fattened, and bred, like an ox.
PIERSON: What are you going to do?
STRANGER: I'm going on. . . right under their feet. I got a plan. We men as men are finished. We don't know enough. We gotta learn plenty before we've got a chance. And we've got to live and keep free while we learn, see? I've thought it all out, see.
PIERSON: Tell me the rest.
STRANGER: Well, it isn't all of us that were made for wild beasts, and that's what it's got to be. That's why I watched YOU. All these little office workers that used to live in these houses -- they'd be no good. They haven't any stuff to 'em. They just used to run off to work. I've seen hundreds of 'em, running wild to catch their commuter train in the morning for fear they'd get canned if they didn't; running back at night afraid they won't be in time for dinner. Lives insured and a little invested in case of accidents. And on Sundays, worried about the hereafter. The Martians will be a godsend for those guys. Nice roomy cages, good food, careful breeding, no worries. After a week or so chasing about the fields on empty stomachs they'll come and be glad to be caught.
PIERSON: You've thought it all out, haven't you?
STRANGER: You bet I have! And that isn't all. These Martians will make pets of some of 'em, train 'em to do tricks. Who knows? Get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. . . And some, maybe, they'll train to hunt us.
PIERSON: No, that's impossible. No human being. . .
STRANGER: Yes they will. There's men who'll do it gladly. If one of them ever comes after me, why. . .
PIERSON: In the meantime, you and I and others like us. . . where are we to live when the Martians own the earth?
STRANGER: I've got it all figured out. We'll live underground. I've been thinking about the sewers. Under New York are miles and miles of 'em. The main ones are big enough for anybody. Then there's cellars, vaults, underground storerooms, railway tunnels, subways. You begin to see, eh? And we'll get a bunch of strong men together. No weak ones; that rubbish -- out.
PIERSON: And you meant me to go?
STRANGER: Well, I gave you a chance, didn't I?
PIERSON: We won't quarrel about that. Go on.
STRANGER: And we've got to make safe places for us to stay in, see, and get all the books we can -- science books. That's where men like you come in, see? We'll raid the museums, we'll even spy on the Martians. It may not be so much we have to learn before -- just imagine this: four or five of their own fighting machines suddenly start off -- heat rays right and left and not a Martian in 'em. Not a Martian in 'em! But MEN -- men who have learned the way how. It may even be in our time. Gee! Imagine having one of them lovely things with its heat ray wide and free! We'd turn it on Martians, we'd turn it on men. We'd bring everybody down to their knees.
PIERSON: That's your plan?
STRANGER: You, and me, and a few more of us we'd own the world.
PIERSON: I see. . .
STRANGER: (FADING OUT) Say, what's the matter? . . . Where are you going?
PIERSON: Not to your world. . . Goodbye, stranger. . .

A busy weekend

As every year the 5th of November breaks up the spatio-temporal continuous and bring us back to 1605. Dress up accordingly and show up in front of the Parliament. Blow it up. The day after will be dedicated in toto to the activity of cleaning up the area, because we are also eco-friendly.

Friday, the Historical Materialism Central Committee - the eternally vigilant prophet - is meeting at SOAS. In its ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat, it will investigate the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process. Revisionists, Utopianists and false prophets not invited. The name of the three days Confererence "Many Marxisms" is clearly just another clumsy trap for naive Trotskyists.

What: Historical Materialism annual Conference "Many Marxisms"
Where: SOAS
When: Friday, Saturday, Sunday all day
How: Orthodoxly
Why: it is not causal, it is dialectical
Who: John Johnson

http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/

Radical perspectives on the crisis

I've not yet had a proper look at this website, but it sounds promising:

"The world is falling apart and we want to know why and what to do about it. Some of us have been studying some of this stuff for a while and others are trying to brush up quick. On this site we will post all the useful information we can find on understanding and grappling with whatever capitalism will throw at us during this exceptional period, as well as seeking exit strategies in the struggles which develop."

http://sites.google.com/site/radicalperspectivesonthecrisis/

Marx's social survey of 1880

This is a social survey that Marx wrote in 1880, and which was published in La Revue Socialiste; I thought it might be interesting to look at in relation to the Kalinko Call Centre Communism thing. Love the way he writes of "the blackguardly features of capitalist exploitation" in the same sentence as "an impartial and systematic investigation".

http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1880/04/20.htm

A Workers' Inquiry

---

First published:in La Revue socialiste, April 20, 1880;
Transcribed: by Curtis Price, 1997.

---

Not a single government, whether monarchy or bourgeois republic, has yet ventured to undertake a serious inquiry into the position of the French working class. But what a number of investigations have been undertaken into crises — agricultural, financial, industrial, commercial, political!

The blackguardly features of capitalist exploitation which were exposed by the official investigation organized by the English government and the legislation which was necessitated there as a result of these revelations (legal limitation of the working day to 10 hours, the law concerning female and child labor, etc.), have forced the French bourgeoisie to tremble even more before the dangers which an impartial and systematic investigation might represent. In the hope that maybe we shall induce a republican government to follow the example of the monarchical government of England by likewise organizing a far reaching investigation into facts and crimes of capitalist exploitation, we shall attempt to initiate an inquiry of this kind with those poor resources which are at our disposal. We hope to meet in this work with the support of all workers in town and country who understand that they alone can describe with full knowledge the misfortunes form which they suffer and that only they, and not saviors sent by providence, can energetically apply the healing remedies for the social ills which they are prey. We also rely upon socialists of all schools who, being wishful for social reform, must wish for an exact and positive knowledge of the conditions in which the working class — the class to whom the future belongs -works and moves.

These statements of labor's grievances are the first act which socialist democracy must perform in order to prepare the way for social regeneration.

The following hundred questions are the most important. In replies the number of the corresponding question should be given. It is not essential to reply to every question, but our recommendation is that replies should be as detailed and comprehensive as possible. The name of the working man or woman who is replying will not be published without special permission but the name and address should be given so that if necessary we can send communication.

Replies should be sent to the Secretary of the Revue Socialiste, M.Lecluse, 28, rue royale, saint cloud, nr. Paris.

The replies will be classified and will serve as material for special studies, which will be published in the Revue and will later be reprinted as a separate volume.

1. What is your trade?
2. Does the shop in which you work belong to a capitalist or to a limited company/ State the names of the capitalist owners or directors of the company.
3. State the number of persons employed.
4. State their age and sex.
5. What is the youngest age at which children are taken off (boys or girls)?
6. State the number of overseers and other employees who are not rank and file hired workers.
7. Are their apprentices? How many?
8. Apart from the usual and regularly employed workers, are there others who come in at definite seasons?
9. Does your employer' undertaking work exclusively or chiefly for local orders, or for the home market generally, or for export abroad?
10. Is the shop in a village, or in a town? State the locality.
11. If your shop is in the country, is there sufficient work in the factory for your existence or are you obliged to combine it with agricultural labor/
12. Do you work with your hands or with the help of machinery?
13. State details as to the division of labor in your factory.
14. Is stream used as motive power?
15. State the number of rooms in which the various branches of production are carried on. Describe the specialty in which you are engaged. Describe not only the technical side, but the muscular and nervous strain required, and its general effect on the health of the workers.
16. Describe the hygienic conditions in the workshops; the size of the rooms, space allotted to every worker, ventilation, temperature, plastering, lavatories, general cleanliness, noise of machinery, metallic dust, dampness, etc.
17. Is there any municipal or government supervision of hygienic conditions in the workshops?
18. Are there in your industry particular effluvia which are harmful for the health and produce specific diseases among the workers?
19. Is the shop overcrowded with machinery?
20. Are safety measures to prevent accidents applied to the engine, transmission and machinery?
21. Mention the accidents which have taken place in your personal knowledge.
22. If you work in a mine, state the safety measures adopted by your employer to ensure ventilation and prevent explosions and other accidents.
23. If you work in a chemical factory, at an iron works, at a factory producing metal goods, or in any other industry involving specific dangers to health, describe the safety measures adopted by your employer.
24. What is your workshop lit up by (gas, oil, etc.)?
25. Are there sufficient safety appliances against fire?
26. Is the employer legally bound to compensate the worker or his family in case of accident?
27. If not, has he ever compensated those who suffered accidents while working for his enrichment?
28. Is first-aid organized in your workshop?
29. If you work at home, describe the conditions of your work room. Do you use only working tools or small machines? Do you have recourse to the help of your children or other persons (adult or children, male or female)? Do you work for private clients, or for an employer? Do you deal with him direct or trough an agent?
30. State the number of hours you work daily, and the number of working days during the week.
31. State the number of holidays in the course of a year.
32. What breaks are there during the working day?
33. Do you take meals at definite intervals, or irregularly? Do you eat in the workshop or outside?
34. Does work go on during meal times?
35. If steam is used, when is it started and when stopped?
36. Does work go on at night?
37. State the number of hours of work of children and young people under 16.
38. Are there shifts if children and young people replacing each other alternately during working hours?
39. Has the government or municipality applied the laws regulating child labor? Do the employers submit to these laws?
40. Do schools exist for children and young people employed in your trade? If they exist, in what hours do the lessons take place? Who manages the schools? What is taught in them?
41. If work takes place both night and day, what is the order of the shifts?
42. What is the usual lengthening of the working day in times of good trade?
43. Are the machines cleaned by workers specially hired for that purpose, or do the workers employed on these machines clean them free, during their working day?
44. What rules and fines exist for latecomers? When does the working day begin, when it is resumed after the dinner hour break?
45. How much time do you lose in coming to the workshop and returning home?
46. What agreements have you with your employer? Are you engaged by the day, week, month, etc.?
47. What conditions are laid down regarding dismissals or leaving employment?
48. In the event of a breach of agreement, what penalty can be inflicted on the employer, if he is the cause of the breach?
49. What penalty can be inflicted on the worker if he is the cause of the breach?
50. If there are apprentices, what are their conditions of contract?
51. Is your work permanent or casual?
52. Does work in your trade take place only at particular seasons, or is the work usually distributed more or less equally throughout the year? If you work only at definite seasons, how do you live in the intervals?
53. Are you paid time or piece rate?
54. If you are paid time rate, is it by the hour or by the day?
55. Do you receive additions to your wages for overtime? How much?
56. If you receive piece rates, how are they fixed? Of you are employed in industries in which the work done is measured by quantity or weight, as in the mines, don't your employers or their clerks resort to trickery, in order to swindle you out of part of your wages/
57. If you are paid piece rate, isn't the quality of the goods used as a pretext for wrongful deductions form your wages?
58. Whatever wages you get, whether piece or time rate, when is it paid to you; in other words, how long is the credit you give your employer before receiving payment for the work you have already carried out? Are you paid a week later, month, etc.?
59. Have you noticed that delay in the payment of your wages forces you often to resort to the pawnshops, paying rates of high interest there, and depriving yourself of things you need: or incurring debts with the shopkeepers, and becoming their victim because you are their debtor? Do you know of cases where workers have lost their wages owing to the ruin or bankruptcy of their employers?
60. Are wages paid direct by the employer, or by his agents ((contractors, etc.).)?
61. If wages are paid by contractors or other intermediaries, what are the conditions of your contract?
62. What is the amount of your money wages by the day week?
63. What are the wages of the women and children employed together with you in the same shop?
64. What was the highest daily wage last month in your shop?
65. What was the highest piece wage last month?
66. What were your own wages during the same time, and if you have a family, what were the wages of your wife and children?
67. Are wages paid entirely in money, or in some other form?
68. If you rent a lodging from your employer, on what conditions ? Does he not deduct the rent from your wages?
69. What are the prices of necessary commodities, for example:
    (a) Rent of your lodging, conditions of lease, number of rooms, persons living in them, repair, insurance, buying and repairing furniture, heating, lighting, water, etc.
    (b) Food — bread, meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc, dairy produce, eggs, fish, butter, vegetable, oil, lard, sugar, salt, groceries, coffee, chicory, beer, wine, etc., tobacco.
    (c) Clothing for parents and children, laundry, keeping clean, bath, soap, etc.
    (d) Various expenses, such as correspondence, loans, payments to pawnbroker, children's schooling and teaching a trade, newspapers, books, etc., contributions to friendly societies, strikes, unions, resistance associations, etc.
    (e) Expenses, if any necessitated by your duties.
    (f) Taxes.
70. Try and draw up a weekly and yearly budget of your income and expenditure for self and family.
71. Have you noticed, in your personal experience, a bigger rise in the price of immediate necessities, e.g., rent, food, etc., than in wages?
72. State the changes in wages which you know of.
73. Describe wage increases during so-called prosperity periods.
74. Describe any interruptions in employment caused by changes in fashions and partial and general crises. Describe your own involuntary rest periods.
75. Compare the price of the commodities you manufacture or the services you render with the price of your labor.
76. Quote any cases known to you of workers being driven out as a result of introduction of machinery or other improvements.
77. In connection with the development of machinery and the growth of the productiveness of labor, has its intensity and duration increased or decreased?
78. Do you know of any cases of increases in wages as a result of improvements in production?
79. Have you ever known any rank and file workers who could retire from employment at the age of 50 and live on the money earned by them as wage workers.
80. How many years can a worker of average health be employed in your trade?
81. Do any resistance associations exist in your trade and how are they led? Send us their rules and regulations.
82. How many strikes have taken place in your trade that you are aware of?
83. How long did these strikes last?
84. Were they general or partial strikes?
85. Were they for the object of increasing wages, or were they organized to resist a reduction of wages, or connected with the length of the working day, or prompted by other motives?
86. What were their results?
87. Tell us of the activity of the courts of arbitration.
88. Were strikes in your trade ever supported by strikes of workers belonging to other trades?
89. Describe the rules and fines laid down by your employer for the management of his hired workers.
90. Have there ever existed associations among the employers with the object of imposing a reduction of wages, a longer working day, of hindering strikes and generally imposing their own wishes?
91. Do you know of cases when the government made unfair use of the armed forces, to place them at the disposal of the employers against their wage workers?
92. Are you aware of any cases when the government intervened to protect the workers from the extortions of the employers and their illegal associations?
93. Does the government strive to secure the observance of the existing factory laws against the interests of the employers? Do its inspectors do their duty?
94. Are there in your workshop or trade any friendly societies to provide for accidents, sickness, death, temporary incapacity, old age, etc.? Send us their rules and regulations.
95. Is membership of these societies voluntary or compulsory? Are their funds exclusively controlled by the workers?
96. If the contributions are compulsory, and are under the employers' control, are they deducted from wages? Do the employers pay interest for this deduction? Do they return the amounts deducted to the worker when he leaves employment or is dismissed? Do you know of any cases when the workers have benefitted from the so-called pensions schemes, which are controlled by the employers, but the initial capital of which is deducted beforehand from the workers' wages?
97. Are there cooperative guilds in your trade? How are they controlled? Do they hire workers for wages in the same ways as the capitalists? Send us their rules and regulations.
98. Are there any workshops in your trade in which payment is made to the workers partly in the form of wages and partly in the form of so-called profit sharing? Compare the sums received by these workers and the sums received by other workers who don't take place in so-called profit sharing. State the obligations of the workers living under this system. may they go on strike, etc. or are they only permitted to be devoted servants of their employers?
99. What are the general physical, intellectual and moral conditions of life of the working men and women employed in your trade?
100. General remarks.

Faust

I can't remember who I was talking to, but I'm pretty sure someone said that they wanted to look at Capital in relation to literature or theatre...? If so, there's a reference to Goethe's Faust in the section that we've just read which I thought might be of interest.

On page 302, Marx describes capital as "an animated monster which begins to 'work', 'as if its body were by love possessed'." The quotation comes from a song sung in a a drinking den, and has been translated into English in a variety of different ways; the German is 'als hatt es Lieb in Leibe' which in addition to 'as if its body were by love possessed' has been rendered as 'as if it had love in its body', 'as if his frame love wasted', and, in my own copy - which sounds a bit rude - as 'love consumed his vitals'. Marx in fact liked this so much that he quoted it again in Volume 3 (p.517 of the Penguin edition, chapter 24) when describing interest: "The money's body is now by love possessed".

Faust is great, and you can find it for free on the internet. I found this version of the song here:
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/faust06.html


Brander [pounding on the table].
Give heed Give heed! Lend me your ear!
You, sirs, confess that I know what is what.
Some lovesick folk are sitting here,
And so in honour due their present lot
I must contribute to their night's good cheer.
Give heed! A brand-new song 'twill be!
And sing the chorus lustily!

[He sings.]

There once in a cellar lived a rat,
Had a paunch could scarce be smoother,
For it lived on butter and on fat,
A mate for Doctor Luther.
But soon the cook did poison strew
And then the rat, so cramped it grew
As if it had love in its body.
Chorus [shouting].
As if it had love in its body.
Brander.
It flew around, and out it flew,
From every puddle swilling,
It gnawed and scratched the whole house through,
But its rage was past all stilling.
It jumped full of in anguish mad,
But soon, poor beast, enough it had,
As if it had love in its body.
Chorus.
As if it had love in its body.
Brander.
By anguish driven in open day
It rushed into the kitchen,
Fell on the hearth and panting lay,
Most pitiably twitchin'.
Then laughed the poisoner: "Hee! hee! hee!
It's at its last gasp now," said she,
"As if it had love in its body."
Chorus.
"As if it had love in its body."

As is no doubt evident by now, Capital is full of literary references and it can be quite fun to chase them up. Francis Wheen's short biography of Capital (he's also done a biography of Marx himself, but I'm told it's not that great) stresses these literary references and describes the book as a 'Gothic novel':

"By the time he wrote Das Kapital, he was pushing out beyond conventional prose into radical literary collage - juxtaposing voices and quotations from mythology and literature, from factory inspectors' reports and fairy tales, in the manner of Ezra Pound's Cantos or Eliot's The Waste Land."

My own copy of this book is cicrulating in the second seminar group at the moment, but if anyone else wants to read it do say so. You can find a version of its first chapter here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/08/politics

back in fashion again - but when was it not.

From BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7679758.stm

Karl Marx is back in fashion, says one German publisher, who attributes his
new popularity to the economic crisis.

Publisher Karl-Dietz said it sold 1,500 copies of Das Kapital this year - up from
the 200 it usually sells annually.

Written in 1867, sales of the tome rarely hit double digits but have been on
the rise since 2005.

Marxist economic philosophy - and in particular its Russian Leninist version -
fell out of favour with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

"It's definitely in vogue right now," said the publisher's director Joern
Schuetrumpf.

"The financial crisis brought us a huge bump."

He suggested that it was younger Germans who were buying the book
unhappy with the direction their elders had led the country.

"There's a younger generation of academics tackling hard questions and
looking to Marx for answers," Mr Schuetrumpf said.

But he doubted their perseverance: "I doubt they will read it all the way to
the end, because it's really arduous."

Other publishers also print Das Kapital, and German media have reported that
bookstores nationwide have seen a 300% increase in sales of the book in
recent months.

And suddenly too, some of the all-but-forgotten Marxist philosophers are
having their say again, such as the historian Eric Hobsbawm.

"Globalisation, which is implicit in capitalism, not only destroys the heritage
and tradition but it is incredibly unstable, it operates through a series of
crises, and I think this has been recognised to be the end of this particular
era," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Differences in the level of economic development

I'm posting the letter below as a follow up to the points made by Kassim as regards the issues of a historical development from capitalism to communism and their relation to the different levels of economic development reached by different countries. There's also a lot of debate and controversy surrounding Marx's references to 'the Asiatic mode of production' (I think Spivak says something about this somewhere...? Maybe in the Critique of Postcolonial Reason?)

This letter was written in 1877, just five years before Marx's death, and corresponds to his growing interest in Russia. He'd started to think that Russia might in fact prove a fertile ground for revolution - this despite its lack of an industrial proletariat, backwards economy and great mass of peasants - had taught himself Russian, and had started to amass piles of sociological data about the Russian economy (after his death Engels apparently found a room in his house full of Russia agricultural statistics). The letter is interesting, as in it Marx describes the account given in Capital as to the evolution of capitalism in Europe as a 'sketch' specific to Europe, and as something that could not be abstractly imposed elsewhere. He thus stresses that it is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm

Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otyecestvenniye Zapisky
[Notes on the Fatherland]

---

Written: in French at the end of November 1877;
Source: Marx and Engels Correspondence;
Publisher: International Publishers (1968);
First Published: Gestamtausgabe;
Translated: Donna Torr;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan in 1999;
HTML Markup: Sally Ryan.

---

The author of the article Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of M. Shukovsky is evidently a clever man and if, in my account of primitive accumulation, he had found a single passage to support his conclusions he would have quoted it. In the absence of any such passage he finds himself obliged to seize upon an hors d'oeuvre, a sort of polemic against a Russian “literary man,” published in the postscript of the first German edition of Capital. What is my complaint against this writer there? That he discovered the Russian commune not in Russia but in the book written by Haxthausen, Prussian Counsellor of State, and that in his hands the Russian commune only serves as an argument to prove that rotten old Europe will be regenerated by the victory of pan-Slavism. My estimate of this writer may be right or it may be wrong, but it cannot in any case furnish a clue to my views regarding the efforts “of Russians to find a path of development for their country which will be different from that which Western Europe pursued and still pursues,” etc.

In the postcript to the second German edition of Capital – which the author of the article on M. Shukovsky knows, because he quotes it – I speak of “a great Russian critic and man of learning” with the high consideration he deserves. In his remarkable articles this writer has dealt with the question whether, as her liberal economists maintain, Russia must begin by destroying la commune rurale (the village commune) in order to pass to the capitalist regime, or whether, on the contrary, she can without experiencing the tortures of this regime appropriate all its fruits by developing ses propres donnees historiques [the particular historic conditions already given her]. He pronounces in favour of this latter solution. And my honourable critic would have had at least as much reason for inferring from my consideration for this “great Russian critic and man of learning” that I shared his views on the question, as for concluding from my polemic against the “literary man” and Pan-Slavist that I rejected them.

To conclude, as I am not fond of leaving “something to be guessed,” I will come straight to the point. In order that I might be qualified to estimate the economic development in Russia to-day, I learnt Russian and then for many years studied the official publications and others bearing on this subject. I have arrived at this conclusion: If Russia, continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.

II

The chapter on primitive accumulation does not pretend to do more than trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist order of economy emerged from the womb of the feudal order of economy. It therefore describes the historic movement which by divorcing the producers from their means of production converts them into wage earners (proletarians in the modern sense of the word) while it converts into capitalists those who hold the means of production in possession. In that history, “all revolutions are epoch-making which serve as levers for the advancement of the capitalist class in course of formation; above all those which, after stripping great masses of men of their traditional means of production and subsistence, suddenly fling them on to the labour market. But the basis of this whole development is the expropriation of the cultivators.

“This has not yet been radically accomplished except in England....but all the countries of Western Europe are going through the same movement,” etc. (Capital, French Edition, 1879, p. 315). At the end of the chapter the historic tendency of production is summed up thus: That it itself begets its own negation with the inexorability which governs the metamorphoses of nature; that it has itself created the elements of a new economic order, by giving the greatest impulse at once to the productive forces of social labour and to the integral development of every individual producer; that capitalist property, resting as it actually does already on a form of collective production, cannot do other than transform itself into social property. At this point I have not furnished any proof, for the good reason that this statement is itself nothing else than the short summary of long developments previously given in the chapters on capitalist production.

Now what application to Russia can my critic make of this historical sketch? Only this: If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction – she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not enough for my critic. He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.) Let us take an example.

In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labour power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labour, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession. What happened? The Roman proletarians became, not wage labourers but a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former “poor whites” in the southern country of the United States, and alongside of them there developed a mode of production which was not capitalist but dependent upon slavery. Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical.

'Species-being', labour and nature

The text below was sent as an e-mail on Saturday morning, as some people are still having trouble accepting the blog invitations. I thought I'd post it here anyway:

Rita raised an excellent question on Thursday, as to what
'nature,' 'natural' and 'human nature' might mean for Marx. We spoke a
little about the sense in which he holds human nature to be historically
contextual, and John pointed out that this can be seen in his account of
'species-being'.

As we said, 'species-being' is a term borrowed from Feuerbach's The
Essence of Christianity
(http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/index.htm),
and can be seen very clearly in one of Marx's early 1844 Manuscripts
entitled Estranged Labour
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm).
I thought it might be good to read that text alongside this week's
sections of Capital (assuming you want to do even more reading), as it
describes the sale of labour power whilst stressing the concept of
alienation.  The text also opposes alienated labour undertaken for the
capitalist to a more 'natural' conception of human activity.

(N.B. The text is entitled 'estranged' labour rather than 'alienated'
labour as Marx employs two German words for alienation: 'Entäusserung' and
'Entfremdung'. Entausserung means externalisation, objectification, i.e.
selling property, my labour power, making my intentions manifest in real
activity. Entfremdung is more to do with subjective experience, i.e. two
people feeling alienated from one another ('estranged' in this
translation). Just googled this explanation by Chris Arthur, which looks
pretty good: http://chrisarthur.net/dialectics-of-labour/appendix.html)

Anyway, back to 'species-being': as I understand it, the term can be
explained fairly quickly as follows. For Hegel, particular human
individuals were to recognise their unity with others through
comprehending the reason that underpins the universe; a little like
recognising God to be the truth and meaning of everything.

According to Feuerbach, this was too much like Christianity: for him,
partiular human beings were not to recognise their unity in some abstract,
fantastical, ideal universal posited above their real existence, but
rather in human beings themselves.  Universality would be found in the
species of humanity, and philosophy would thus allow humanity to arrive at
a self-conscious awareness of its own 'species-being'.

Marx really likes this, but thinks it has drawbacks (see the famous Theses
on Feuerbach:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm).  These
drawbacks basically boil down to the claim that although Feuerbach had
succeeded in bringing philosophy down from the clouds, he still concieved
material reality in static, immobile terms (i.e. the human species as an
absolute rather than a historically contingent category).  Reality is
subject to historical change, and - crucially - human beings are capable
of serving as the agents of change. The real nature of human beings is the
capacity to shape and consciously experience history, and it is in this
respect that Marx ends up with a notion of 'species-being' based around
formative activity. This can be seen fairly clearly in the essay on
Estranged Labour.

Anway, all of this can be summed up in the famous exhortation from the end
of the Theses on Feuerbach (also the inscription on Marx's grave in
Highgate Cemetary): "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in
various ways; the point is to change it." Philosophy thus becomes
political economy: rather than interpreting the world as it appears to us,
the task that Marx sets himnself is to figure out how our social relations
compose our world, and to thereby wrest control of human history from the
economy.

Sorry, still have to figure out how this works ;-)

Slavoj Zizek - 'From The Critique of Religion to the
Critique of Political Economy'

Registration essential – Standard £10            
Birkbeck Staff and all Students £5

Credit card booking will be available soon. If, in the
meantime you would like to send a cheque and book a place
please click here for a booking form.

Saturday 6th December, 2.30pm, Room B01, Clore Management Centre,
Birkbeck College