ISF questions

1. Chapter 24. How is the original accumulation different from the accumulation Marx analyzes in Chapter 23? In particular, pay attention to the different forms of violence in chapter 24. The Philip Hoffmann reading puts additional emphasis on the role of war in this time period. 

Chapter 23: capitalist accumulation in chapter 23 Marx looks at capitalist production and capitalist accumulation here assuming capitalism already exist to understnad how it works

1. Accumulation occurs via exploaiting wage labor, reinvesting surplus value leading to rising productivity and competign among capitalism

2. Cohercion of working occurs via economic forces. people must ssell labor force to ultimatley survive and the existence of unemployed disciplines.

3. Violence in chapter 23 ultimatley is indirected and governed by econ rather than force.

The original accumulation in chapter 24 asls then how this position came to be in the first place. Marx examines how workers became free laborers owning just labor power. This freedom comes from direct violence over markets not makrets Peasants were seperated from land by enclosurs, colonies, slavery and war suffered capital, and the state imposed harsh laws forcing people to wage labor

This is not a moral story about capitalisms bad orgins, instead it solves a theoritical problem understanding that wage labor requires workers who are legally free and mateirally dispossesed. this condition cannot arise via peaceful excahgne and Hoffman supports that by focusing on war and showing that warfare expands state power, taxation, debt, and cohercion making it central to teh reation of captialist social realtions.

Let's work out in class today what Marx means by the general law of accumulation, see p 589 and 593

Marx;s general law of capitalist accumulation states that as capital accumulates, it prudces a relative surplus population or reserve army of labor .WIth increase in productivity, less labor is needed to operate a given amount of capital even when employment increases. workers become redundent relative to capitals growth…creating ongoing unemployment and insecurity.

This law is relational, not absolute. Marx is not saying workers must become poorer in the terms of the goods they consume. Real wages can rise. What changes is worker’ postition relative to capital: they become more dependent, more replaceable, and more disciplined by existence of the reserve army which is a neccesary condition for accumulation rather than a failure of capitalism. it allwos capital to expadn quicky and keep wages under control

Proudces wealth at one pole and insecurity at the other, this is a strucutral feature not a temporary imbalance of capitalism.

What are the different forms of relative surplus population? See the Pietro Basso reading for guidance.

Marx argues capitalist accumulation necessarily produces a surplus population, a surplus that takes forms beyond just open unemployment.

The floating surplus popualtion consists of workers who move in and out of employment as industries expand and contract. These workers are periodically hired and fired in response to business cucles and insecurity disciplines the employed labor force.

The latent surplus population is mainly found in agriculture and semi-proletarian sectors. these workers are not yet fully absorbed into captialist industry but can be drawn into when needed. This is imporatn historically in colonial or agrarian contexs.

The stagnant surplus population consists of workers who are employed irregularly, underemployed, or stuck in very low-paid and inseucre work. They are technically emplyed but live in chronic precarity. often Marx also discusses pauperism, includes those permanently excluded from prouductive lbaor (disabled elderly por, chronically unemployed) deepest layer of reserve army.

Analystical not sociological labels, the key point is cpaitlaism actively prduces and manges insuecuity in differnet ways…Surplus populaiton isnt a failure of the system but one of its conditions of possibility

What does Marx call the "Moses and Prophets" of the capitalists and why?

By moses and the prophets Marx is referring to classical poliitacal economists such as Adam smith and Ricardo, using the phrase ironically to show that political economy functions lik ea secular theory for capitalism

These thinkers present capitalist relations—-private property, wage labor, profit—-as if they are natural timeless laws rather than historically specific social relations. Like relgious authorities, they explain suffering and inequality as necessary and unavpidable.

Not just mockery, marx is showing how political economy legitimates dominatino by making exploitation appera rational, moral, and inevitable. This connects directly to commodity fetishism: social relations between people appear as objective relations between things.

What does Marx mean by simple reproduction, and how does he see the relationship between the worker and capitalist changing in the course of simple reproduction? 

Simple reproduciton is a situation in which all surplus value is consumed as revenue rather thanr einvested. Captial is reproduced at teh same scale each cycle.

Marx’s key insight is that even in simple reproduciton, the capitalist class relation is reproduced and deepened. Workers repeatedly sell their labor-power, produce surplus value, and recieve wages that allow them to survive — but not escape dependence on capital.

over time, teh worker increasingly confronts capital as an independent power, even though capital itself is proudced by labor. What apperas as fair exchange (wages for work) continously reproduces donimation.

Reproduciton is never neutral, even without growthm, capitalism reproduces workers adn workers and captialists as capitalists. Accumulation intensifies this relation but already present in simple reproduction.

In Marx's framework, is a rise in the rate of exploitation compatible with an increase in the real wage (that is, the quantity of use values a worker consumes)? Why or why not? 

Yes, and this is a central point for Marx. The rate of exploitation depends on the division of the working day between necessary labor and surplus labor. If productivity rises, the value of wage goods can fall, reducing necessary labor time. This allows surplus labor to increase even if workers consume more use-values

Rising real wages do not refute marx, workers can be materially better off while becoming more exploited in value terms. This explains why capitalism can improve living standards while deepending dependence and inequality. This distinction between use-values and value relations is crucial.

Does Marx's theory provide insight into what powerful incentives capitalists would have to innovate? If so, explain what those incentives would be? 

Yes. Marx argues that captialsits are structurally compelled to innovate

competiton forces each captialist to reduce the socailly necessary labor time required to produce commodities. Those who innovate first gain surplus profits; those who fail fall behind or go bankrupt. Innovation is therefore not driven by creativity or social benefit, but by survival within competition.

This explains captialisms immense productive power without celebrating it. Innovation raises productivity but also intensifies exploitation and displacement.

How does a dynamic industrial society begin to change workers' understanding of their own (variable) nature? 

IN dynamic industrail society, workers come to experience themselves as variable labor-power rather than as fixed craft producers

as machinery, division of labor, and technological change accelerate, workers are repeatedly displaced, retrained, adn reorganized. This breaks stable occupational identities and teachers workers that what they sell is not a specific skill but their capacity to work in general.

This flexibility is not freedom it is experienced as insecurity. This subject transformation correesponds to the rise of abstract labor as the dominant social reality.

How does Marx explain why a machine becomes a means for extending the working day, though it is the most powerful means for reducing the labor time to make a commodity? 

Although machinery reduces the labor time needed to produce a commodity, Marx argues that under capitalism it becomes a means of extending and intensyfying labor.

machines are dead labor that only create value by absorbing living labor. Capital therefore seeks to run them as ling as possible to extract surplus value and spread fixed costs.

this is a social contradiction not a technical one. Technology could reduce work, but under capitalist relations it is used to increase exploitation.

does Marx argue (and Rosenberg suggests convincingly) that capital only really subsumes the labor process when it builds machines to build machines? 

Marx distinguishes between formal subsumption where capital takes control of existing labor processes and real subsumption where capital reorganizes production itself.

Capital fully subsumes labor only when it builds machines to build machines, making production internally capitalist rather than dependent on pre-capitalist skills or knowledge.

This marks the point where labor is subordinated entierly to valorization, not usefulness. Production becomes self-expanding capital rather than human directed work.

What are the two ways of making relative surplus value? Which one is inherently transient? 

Relative surplus value can be produced by:

1. Reorganizing labor (cooperation and division of labor) which raises productivity without new technoliogy

2. introducing machinery which reduces the value of wage goods

The first method is inherently transient because competitors can copy it which is why capitalistm is driven towards contious technolgcal change this emphasizes captialisms restless dynamisism.

Drawing from the quotes from Sartre and Wolff in my notes, what do you think Marx makes of the freedom workers enjoy in a market society?

Marx argues that workers are formally free but materially constrained. they are legally free to sell their labor-power, but they must do so to survive.

Choice under necessity is not meaningful freedom, market freedom masks domination by presenting compulsions as choice.

What does Marx mean by the equivalent form, and what are its 3 peculiarities?

The equivalent form is the commodity that expresses the value of others

its three peculiariteis are

1. Use value becomes the expression of value

2. concrete labor appears as abstract labor

3. private labor appears as social labor

These are real social inversions, not illustions and explain money’s power nad fetishism.

What inference does Marx make from the equivalence of two commodities, and is it valid? 

Marx infers that if two commodities are equivalent they must share a common substance — abstract labor.

Marx knows this is an abstraction not an empirical claim about all things that are bought and sold. it is valid within the model Marx constructs to analyze capitalist commodity production.