Each few days I verify my dormant eX-twitter account to see if there have been any replies to previous posts. An awesome collection of questions confirmed up a few days in the past.
Neon Nova asks:
Sandwichmann, would you take into account your self a follower of Dilke? What does Marx supply that Dilke does not? I do know Marx revisits a few of Dilke’s concepts on leisure time, however do you assume there are flaws in Marx’s method? Does Dilke finally surpass Marx in your view?
I’ve observed you’ve got traced Dilke’s views on leisure time again to Godwin, and Godwin’s concepts to Calvinism. But when Marx’s “nice concepts” are merely a rehash of Dilke or Godwin’s ideas, what makes Marx’s contributions distinctive or nice?
Sure, I’d take into account myself a follower of Dilke and of Godwin, in that they initiated a discourse that had larger theoretical penalties than they may have ever foreseen. What Marx provided that Dilke did not is a concept of capital and of disaster that’s way more substantial and consequential than Dilke’s. There are certainly “flaws” in Marx’s method, most importantly associated to how he resolved — or did not resolve — the problem of presenting his conclusions. Whether or not these conclusions are finally “proper” or “fallacious” is one other matter, which I’m not certified to guage.
No, Dilke doesn’t finally surpass Marx however there’s a sense wherein readers of Capital arrive at an understanding that could be nearer to Dilke’s than to Marx’s. This can be a bit exhausting to clarify however Dilke’s presentation was extra “frequent sense.” Individuals studying a non-intuitive, theoretical presentation are inclined to mentally translate it into frequent sense phrases. That is true, for instance, of “socially obligatory labour time,” which contains inside itself the inversion of the obligatory and the superfluous, in order that “socially obligatory” is without delay each “obligatory” and “superfluous.” That’s to say it expresses the important contradiction of the idea.
What makes Marx’s contributions distinctive or nice?
Marx revealed the darkish secret of classical political economic system: that the writers in that custom assumed the ubiquity of a particular financial sphere that was, in reality, distinctive to and attribute of capital. To them capitalism was everlasting and earlier types of society have been merely incomplete of their striving towards absolutely the. By breaking with that custom, Marx was capable of extra fully grasp the dynamic of capital accumulation and disaster.
Marx had a concept of disaster and of the dynamics of capital accumulation already within the late 1840s however his mature concept hinges on the excellence between labour and labour energy or capability that he did not develop till the subsequent decade. When his “Wage Labour and Capital” was republished by Friedrich Engels in 1891, Engels “up to date” it by altering Marx’s references to the sale of labour to adapt together with his later distinction of labour energy. However Marx’s 1847 critique was not the identical as his mature critique of political economic system, which solely materialized in his Grundrisse notebooks.
This is the place Sandwichman’s concentrate on The Supply and Treatment comes into play. My rivalry is that Marx’s 1857 understanding of labour capability and surplus worth owes an excellent deal to Dilke’s dialogue from 1821, with one essential distinction that Marx outlined in his 1862-63 notebooks, revealed posthumously as Theories of Surplus Worth:
Our pamphleteer [Dilke] overlooks two issues:
Because of the introduction of equipment, a mass of staff is continually being thrown out of employment, a bit of the inhabitants is thus made redundant; the excess product subsequently finds recent labour for which it may be exchanged with none enhance in inhabitants and with none want to increase absolutely the working-time.
Two issues: 1. equipment creates a redundant inhabitants of staff; 2. this surplus inhabitants provides the labour energy for brand new investments of capital. Equipment thus creates “new” labour energy by throwing folks out of labor. Voila!
Within the Grundrisse, Marx offered this similar argument in additional element on pages 398-99 (Penguin version) after having prefaced it with a composite quote from The Supply and Treatment on web page 397.
Simply as capital on one aspect creates surplus labour, surplus labour is on the similar time equally the presupposition of the existence of capital. The entire improvement of wealth rests on the creation of disposable time. The relation of obligatory labour time to the superfluous (such it’s, initially, from the standpoint of obligatory labour) modifications with the completely different levels within the improvement of the productive forces. Within the much less productive levels of change, folks change nothing greater than their superfluous labour time; that is the measure of their change, which subsequently extends solely to superfluous merchandise. In manufacturing resting on capital, the existence of obligatory labour time is conditional on the creation of superfluous labour time. …
…
It’s a legislation of capital, as we noticed, to create surplus labour, disposable time; it may do that solely by setting obligatory labour in movement – i.e. getting into into change with the employee. It’s its tendency, subsequently, to create as a lot labour as potential; simply as it’s equally its tendency to cut back obligatory labour to a minimal. It’s subsequently equally a bent of capital to extend the labouring inhabitants, in addition to consistently to posit part of it as surplus inhabitants – inhabitants which is ineffective till such time as capital can put it to use. (Therefore the correctness of the speculation of surplus inhabitants and surplus capital.) It’s equally a bent of capital to make human labour (comparatively) superfluous, in order to drive it, as human labour, in direction of infinity. Worth is nothing however objectified labour, and surplus worth (realization of capital) is barely the surplus above that a part of objectified labour which is important for the copy of labouring capability. However labour as such is and stays the presupposition, and surplus labour exists solely in relation with the mandatory, therefore solely in as far as the latter exists. Capital should subsequently consistently posit obligatory labour to be able to posit surplus labour; it has to multiply it (particularly the simultaneous working days) to be able to multiply the excess; however on the similar time it should droop them as obligatory, to be able to posit them as surplus labour.
In Capital, Marx described the connection between surplus inhabitants and disaster succinctly, reiterating these “two issues” our pamphleteer ignored:
The trail characteristically described by trendy business, which takes the type of a decennial cycle (interrupted by smaller oscillations) of durations of common exercise, manufacturing at excessive stress, disaster, and stagnation, will depend on the fixed formation, the larger or much less absorption, and the re-formation of the economic reserve military or surplus inhabitants. Of their flip, the various phases of the economic cycle recruit the excess inhabitants, and grow to be some of the energetic companies for its copy.
A humorous factor occurred to “disposable time” between Grundrisse and Capital — it turned, sarcastically, the rightful property of the capitalist:
If the employee consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.
Therefore it’s self-evident that the employee is nothing apart from labour-power all through his complete life, and that subsequently all his disposable time is by nature and by proper labour-time, to be dedicated to the self-valorization of capital.
…simply as a surplus inhabitants additionally “belongs to capital” within the type of a disposable industrial reserve:
However a surplus inhabitants of staff is a obligatory product of accumulation or of the event of wealth on a capitalist foundation, this surplus inhabitants additionally turns into, conversely, the lever of capitalist accumulation, certainly it turns into a situation for the existence of the capitalist mode of manufacturing. It kinds a disposable industrial reserve military, which belongs to capital simply as completely as if the latter had bred it at its personal value.
And guess what. That is just about what Kōzō Uno argued was Marx’s concept in The Idea of Disaster! Ken Kawashima, who translated the e book, provides an introduction to Uno’s concept within the following video: or nice?