Copy of PPC NOTES UPDATED

Culture

  • Shared tradition, norms, mores, and dynamics.
  • A way of life that shapes communal identity.
  • Provides a framework for understanding the world.
  • The culture of others should not be disregarded.
  • Examples include fiestas and food, which symbolize identity and differences.
  • Shared beliefs within a community.
    • Material aspects: artifacts.
    • Social Norms: behaviors
  • Transmitted through historical processes via stories, rituals, education, and interactions.
  • A dialectical process in the interaction of cultures.
  • Most cultural practices are not inherited genetically.
  • Inheritance includes culture and privileged positions but inherited culture is also manufactured.
  • Culture is privileged in certain contexts by those who manufacture it.
  • Though cultural universals exist, the focus is on difference and repetition.
  • Social media and technology induce culture to change.
  • Connotative culture involves differences in the perception of meaning and signs.

Marcuse: Critical Theorist

  • Culture stems from the Latin word "colere," meaning "to care”.
  • Linked to peasant work, reflecting care for nature and the relationship between humans and nature.
    • Human to nature: establishes a biological link with the earth, oriented to humans.
    • Classical interpretation: care for nature so nature cares for us.
    • Nature is intrinsically human as it allows society to survive by providing resources.
  • Critical Theory:
    • Study of Culture
      1. Marxism
      2. Psychoanalysis

Distinctions of Culture

German Word "Kultur"

  • Geisteskultur (intellectual culture) - Spirit/mind.
  • Understanding of nature through the theoretical mind.

American Word "Culture"

  • Usefulness of culture/exploitation of nature.
  • Nature is viewed as something concrete and practical.

Concepts of Culture

  • Two concepts of culture (from Marcuse's "Art and Liberation"):
    • Ideational Production (spiritual realm - theoretical).
      • National Culture - the body has less value than the mind which leads to alienation of mind from body. It's the dichotomy of spiritual to the material.
      • Examples: beliefs, ideologies, intellectual work, art, science.
    • Material production (Civilization):
      • Examples: necessary/useful necessities - food/shelter/safety.
      • Allows elevation because necessities are already provided.
      • Necessities must be met first before higher pursuits; priorities.
      • Requires production of spiritual idealism which transcends the immaterial.
      • Ideal in the sense of separation of body from the mind.
      • Ideal because it exists in the mind
      • Way of life ungrounded from material forces.
    • In a civilization, necessities e.g. food/shelter/safety are met through material production, and then ideation can be crafted.
    • Material production is needed for ideal production.
      \frac{Ideational/Spiritual}{Material/Civilization}
    • Dichotomies require/lead to hierarchies of values.
      • Ideational/spiritual - favors the intellectual over the material.
      • Material/civilization - considered below the mind.
      • Aristotle: the form is found in the material; the thing in itself exists.
        • The form refers to the essence of things found in the material.
        • The true, good, and beautiful (Platonic concept) are found/understood in the spiritual.
      • This distinction leads to separation and lack of unity between the spiritual and material.
      • Hence when one thinks of culture, they think of art/aesthetics.

Further Understanding between Spiritual and Material Production

Plato's Idealism

\frac{World \space of \space Forms - Reason - Man}{Phenomena / Body / Appetite / Woman}

  • Spiritual is above material.
  • Plato: those with an appetitive soul must work peasant jobs; maintains status quo.
  • Marx: knowledge with social context (material conditions) for the masses, not just abstract dialectics.
  • World of Forms/Reason/Man (male, not collective).
    • For Plato, a noble spirit makes man above women, who are more inclined to reason.
  • Phenomena/Body/Appetite/Woman (female).
    • Distinction between world of forms and phenomena.
    • Without the body, we wouldn't exist.
  • Beautiful is the soul; higher soul; reason.
  • Necessary/useful is the body; lower soul (appetitive); drives acquisition/greed.
  • Material is lesser than the spiritual.
  • What you make (material) is below reason.
  • Humans crave for better things.
  • A beautiful soul has no appetite for better things.
  • The body is discontent only if driven by sensuality/appetite/hunger.
  • Spiritual and Material Production are intertwined.
    • Material needs satisfied to have reason; prerequisite to spiritual production.
    • The body is not an enemy, but something to be surpassed.
    • The soul presides over the body, helping it surpass.
    • True reason is found through the body (reason is elevated).
      \frac{Bourgeois}{Proletariat}

Bourgeoisie's Illusion of Freedom

  • Bourgeoisie - Illusion of Freedom:
    • We think we are liberated; everyone has freedom under the law.
    • Therefore, we must maintain the status quo.
    • Why change the material, when one is already free?
    • The Bourgeoisie leads, and we think we are liberated under the constitution.
    • Freedom is not given, but taken away.
    • We must maintain the status quo because we no longer have a reason to revolt due to the "illusion of freedom."
  • Life condition determined by choices, reducing consequences to the individual.
    • No longer part of the community, no longer the general liberation of individuals.
    • Life conditions reduced to individual choices, ignoring unequal access (rich vs. poor).
    • Freedom is a spiritual production.
  • One identifies with the self (spiritual) rather than work (material).
    • It becomes a conversation about individual choices.
  • Confined potentiality of action becomes unrealized; acceptance of life conditions.
  • Becoming a lumpenproletariat.
    • Lumpenproletariat: "rabble proletariat" (Karl Marx).
    • Lowest stratum of the industrial working class, including undesirables.
    • Disinclined to revolutionary activities; "bribed tools of reactionary intrigue."

Popular Culture

Psychoanalysts

Hegel

  • Referred to in the dialectics of history.
  • Knowledge of human history's development without considering material forces.
  • Kojeve: thesis - antithesis - synthesis.
  • Marx considered a material dialectics.
  • Master/Slave dialectics.
    • Master suppresses the slave, and the slave seeks to surpass the master.
    • Surpassing the master makes the slave the new master, and the master the new slave.
    • This is how monarchy is toppled.

Freud

  • Took Hegel's master/slave dialectics and applied it to psychoanalysis (Oedipal complex).

Lacan

  • More significant than Freud; returned Freud to linguistic roots.
  • The unconscious is structured like a language. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God”.

\frac{Signifier}{Signified}

  • The signifier is signifying the signified.
  • Examples:
    • Dreams are filled with signifiers with their own meanings.
    • Language - Symbols/metaphors/metonymy.
    • Everything is a signifier; dreams are no exception (Oneiric Rebus - dream puzzles).
    • Every signifier has meaning; every meaning adheres to something in your unconscious.
  • Signification comes from Subjectivity:
    • How one becomes a subject:
      • Signifying Chain: letter - word - sentence - books.
      • Understanding signifiers through other signifiers; everything in a signifying chain.
      • Understand language to understand the unconscious and become a subject.
      • Must fall from the signifying chain to understand language.
      • Babies are objects of love; becoming a subject requires crafting and understanding meaning.
      • One must fall from the signifying chain.
  • Drives are not desires; toddlers are objects with drives, not desires.
    • Must know The Name-of-the-Father - Authority - No-of-the-Father.
    • The Big Other (e.g., language, symbols, law).
  • The perfect state of happiness is jouissance, from which we deviate.
    1. Oedipal Complex:
    • Attachment to the opposite-sex parent, envy/aggression toward the same-sex parent.
    • Feelings repressed due to fear of displeasure/punishment.
      • Prohibition of incest is ur-grounding of society.
      • Mirroring oneself with the same-sex parent because one looks like them.
      • The child wants to do what they do.
      • Specifically, wanting to have intercourse with opposite-sex parent.
    1. Prohibition -> Castration:
    • The No-of-the-Father
    1. Void/Lack:
    • First time the child is not allowed something.
    • Child feels void or lacking.
    1. Desire:
    • Void causes the desire to go back to jouissance.
  • Borromean Knot:
    • Psychoanalytic orders intertwined; removing one leads to schizophrenia.
    • Intermediating with imaginary and symbolic is meaning.
    • The real: inability to understand things; leaves traces in the unconscious.
    • Beyond comprehension; what you hide inside; traumatic experience.
    • The truth erupts.
  • Oscar Wilde: two tragedies: not getting what you want, and getting what you want.
    • Not having intercourse with a parent >> find qualities of your parent from your partner.
    • Desire intensifies if unattainable or sublimates to fulfill the original desire.
  • For Lacan, dreams are signifiers.
    • Resonates with truth; the unconscious without defense/fantasies.
    • Dreams allows the unconscious to unfold.
    • Fantasies defend against reality; dreams lack defense >> confrontation with truth.

Culture Industry as Pleasure Industry: Business Ideology

Mass Culture -> Mass Media/Pleasure/Entertainment -> Popular Culture

  • Mass Culture leads to Mass Media/Pleasure/Entertainment which leads to popular culture.
  • Reproduction for the masses.
  • Conformity bringing homogenization.

Adorno

  • Everything had to be standardized so that things may sell.
  • Consumerism creates a one-dimensional man, a regulated fascist.
  • Without culture, only pop culture, burdened by bourgeoisie, beholden to producer.
  • Mass media is a factory that takes a hold of your time and attention.
  • Mass media are fascists so the population/consumer becomes fascists too.
  • The truth of the bourgeoisie becomes the truth of the consumer.
  • Offers information with an agenda, regulating consumerism and thinking.
  • Critical thinking is confined by mass media; adherence to bourgeoisie.

Barbarism of Enlightenment

  • Kant: Latin “sapere aude” - The Dare to know
    • Using reason to know, especially nature.
    • “Have the courage to use your own reason!”, is the battle cry of the Enlightenment.
  • Nature ceases to be unknown; manufacturing, commanding forces, creating.
    • Conformity and homogenization through manufacturing.
    • Knowing nature does not enlighten individuals; it becomes barbaric.
    • No longer possess the myth of nature; knowledge to manufacture from nature.
  • Cease understanding things as ends. See efficiency and cold logic.
  • The capacity to know brings enlightenment, but the enlightenment in itself is barbaric because the ability to know your enlightened reason is your ability to console nature, surpassing human weakness.
  • Understanding nature as something to be harnessed for efficiency and utilitarianism is barbaric as the only important thing is to make something good out of it.
  • See ourselves and people as tools.
  • Reason is immature; not emancipatory.
  • Critical theorists: be free from immature reason; dare to know is to use capacity to know nature.

Media and Popular Culture

Media and Popular Culture

  • Mass media instrumental in expanding and deepening popular culture.
  • Popular culture cannot be popular without mass media characteristics.
  • Mass media's role is highlighted in understanding how popular culture functions in society.
  • Mass media assume a position of objectivity.
  • Media is projected as egalitarian with a primary objective of public service.
  • Engaged in delivering news and programs without taking sides.
  • No self-reflexivity in the media since they do not focus attention on themselves.
  • Media's end goal, like business, is profit.
  • Earn in the guise of serving the people, explaining periodic public service endeavors.
  • Urged to help those devastated by typhoons and landslides, but no encouragement to prosecute criminals, especially corrupt government officials.
  • Choice reduced to individuals, removing them from the community.
  • A “collectivist country” but rooted in individualism implied by actions which reduces us to choice.
  • Media establishments pursue commercial interests.
  • The Bourgeoisie understands how to direct our desires to commercial ends, removing us from the community.
  • It ignores the society’s infrastructure to personal actions.
  • Mass media - popular culture. Autofinal model between man and media.
  • Man lives in the ideological structure created by the media, confined by mass media.
  • Walking away from mass media is to live outside of society >> no choice, capitalism makes it impossible to separate yourself from it.
  • Potentiality of ideology exists. That ideology is actualized when the beast becomes a man.
  • Body precedes ideology.
  • The potentiality of ideology can only be realized through a capable body.
  • The media establishments’ commercial interests are masked by pretending to be on missions like “in the service of the Filipino people.”
  • Give us the information necessary to decide on matters for the betterment of society, presented in a manner that is not related to the primary interest of profit-making.
  • Our present consumption reduces reality - television programs, news has become “infotainment”, complete with music soundtrack.
  • Work is reduced into commercial interests and exploitation.
  • Pacified by removing your gaze, seeing them as public service, becoming personalities not of truth but of entertainment.
  • Everything is a performance, behind it is nothing.
  • Reporters are imaged as showbiz personalities and used as endorsers, encouraging audiences to patronize certain products.
  • News becomes showbiz and vice versa. People become more concerned with celebrity scandals instead of social justice issues.
  • Corporations responsible for the popularity of personalities on television, film, publications, music and radio are also their hottest news items.
  • Those who control mass media guard doors from aspirants in star searches, training groups, drama series, noontime shows, game shows, recording studios, promotion in fiestas, malls and bar tours, adoration by the masses.
  • Philippine media is owned by corporations.
  • They are responsible for the popularity of personalities due to the examination of feedback.
  • Poor talents’ Cinderella story ends with the corporation unilaterally ending their commercial lives, relegated to sidelines with others who tried.
  • Interactive participation of fans, personalities, and corporations ensures that fans are not just simply fanatics but also consumers.
  • Personalities are the saints of commerce, while the corporation is the altar of needs, faith, and hope.
  • Every text message, contestant’s joining, news anchor's direct address encourages viewers to buy products >> enabling media establishments to fulfill public service >> choose information, take sides, and defend; and die for.
  • Media are part of the services sector that creates financial wealth but not actual products.
  • Among those in the services sector: entertainment, hotel/tourism, fast food/retail, education, and health are being opened up to competition by giant industry players due to globalization.
  • Result: The construction of a middle-class consumerist identity.
  • Citizenship is subsumed by the identity of consumer.
  • A good citizen is first of all a good consumer.
  • Media give people choices of products to patronize and create awareness for future buys.
  • Media creates an illusion of need among consumers even if they cannot afford products.
  • Media creates dreams and makes them seem realizable.
  • As consumers, our identity is overdetermined by the media apparatus in concert with other ideological and repressive state apparatuses.
  • Confidence in middle-class consumerism and postmodern identity is heightened via media and activities like malling.
  • We seem to exercise rights to information and purchase, but all of these are for business interests.
  • Joys from mass media consumption cannot be denied because consumerism and liberalism are enticing.
  • Showbiz gives access to other traditional capital: land, financial wealth, and education.
  • Good body, flawless skin, youth, and determination enable one to engage in acting, modeling, beauty contests, and dancing.
  • Media advocacy requires participation in the media industry itself.
  • Media education isn't focused on laying new foundations but on identifying opportunities within the existing infrastructure for alternative analyses and critical mindsets.
  • Media and education spheres can be proactive in social transformation, but change happens nevertheless.
  • Production of information within these spheres ensures the hegemony of the ruling class.
  • There is tacit acceptance that the intellectual sphere is basically capital that can be bought and sold by those who have it.
  • In the process, media education should be able to struggle with its own reflection and representation: that the text-product of media can only be challenged outside of the media sphere.

Capital and Popular Culture

Das Kapital

  • Karl Marx

Volume I

  • The richness of societies in which the capitalist mode of production rules is presented as an “enormous body of goods”.
Use Value and Abstract Human Labor
  • Value of a good to satisfy a need. It is impossible to compare these values between themselves.
  • The absolute value of the benefit to the buyer; the utility in consuming a good.
    • “Your tomatoes are great. You’ve worked on them! Don’t worry, you can pay me another day”.
  • Quantity of Labor (in terms of time or difficulty) that is needed to produce a good.
  • The perception of labor based on how much "importance" given to or "work” spent on a good.
    • “Robin, do you know what money is made from? From work. Money is made from the work and time of the people….”
  • There is no distinction between things with equal exchange value. “…. It’s the time and effort that lady dedicates to her tomatoes and the effort it takes us to make cheese and that time and money are embodied in paper and metal… that’s money.”
Metamorphosis of a Commodity / Metamorphosis of the Goods
  • “Your cheese are going to be a brand. And with your great cattle, we’ll obtain quality wool and meat. Your knowledge will create money”.
  • Metamorphosis of the Goods - Transformation of the good into money and its reconversion into a good. This exchange process is one of capitalism’s mechanics.
  • Surplus - value the worker creates over the cost of his labor power
  • Exploitation - actions that the capitalist performs to obtain the surplus, at the worker’s cost
  • Fetishism of Money - phenomenon that makes money stop being a good, and instead uses it to determine the value of human beings (and some other things)
    • The first has a subjective and incomparable value which comes determined by personal circumstances. It is the “use value”.
    • This objective and comparable value is called “exchange value”
    • A “good”, in a nutshell, has a “use value” which depends on the importance it is given and the personal circumstances of a person and an “exchange value” which is determined by the quantity of labor used in producing it.
  • Meanwhile, the labor power, time invested in work, and the number of workers are collectively denominated “abstract human labor”. The higher “abstract human labor” is, the higher the exchange value will be.
  • As every commodity, on becoming money, disappears as a commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money itself, how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been changed into it. This is distant from barter exchange. Production
    • “First, I’m going to show you the three bases of the production industry: Quality, costs, and delivery date. The quality goods your technical skill has generated will be produced cheaper and without unnecessary costs for mass distribution”
    • “Keeping balance between these three elements requires a new way of thinking and performing tasks.
Surplus and Exploitation
  • “We purchase labor from the workers a good in the form of labor power. This good is special because its value depends on how it is used. Even though they sell it cheap to be able to survive, its value is not clear. That’s how we acquire a good that is valued in two coins with a contract that of one gold coin. In other words, the workers do for one gold coin what really is valued in two….”
  • “… This way, we create one gold coin without moving our little finger. Robin, what you do is not charity. If you want to be rich, you must exploit them”x
  • “Labor power is the only income source for workers. The bad thing is that, for us, the ones who purchase their labor power, they are only a good. We take value from them, and we use it.”

Volume II

  • The richness of the societies in which the capitalist mode of production dominates are represented as an “enormous pile of goods”.
  • Goods, money, and surplus value.
  • The capitalist society is a myriad of products. It is as a pile of goods.
  • Goods, which in the beginning were merely “objects” to satisfy human ambition have multiplied and expanded in an unstoppable manner.
  • If we can generalize, we can say a good has two values.
    • There are two children lost in the snow for seven days, they are hungry. A man offers them a bread and a diamond, and asks them which they want from the two. They both chose the bread.
    • When one is hungry, one wants bread, not a diamond.
    • Personal circumstances: When hungry, one will choose bread. If there’s a party, one will choose the diamond.
    • Meanwhile, there is a good value which can be compared.
      • “One diamond = 100,000 pieces of bread”.
      • So why do diamonds have an exchange value higher than bread? This is because diamonds have to be extracted from mines and polished. That requires labor. The number of workers and time used to produce one is much higher than that of bread. That explains why it has such a high “exchange value”. The Era of Barter
  • Situation: A man offers a girl one piece of cotton cloth in exchange for four fishes. The girl declines, and states that she’ll consider the trade if the man will give four pieces of cotton cloth instead of just one.
  • Let’s assume that putting a piece of cotton together carries the same labor as fishing fur fishes and that is its exchange value (4 fishes = 1 piece of cotton cloth)
  • If one of the parties does not agree with the exchange value, the exchange of goods with equal value or “equal exchange” will not be able to be realized.
  • However, it is realized that wheat is heavy and hard to carry, so an alternative is made: gold. It is something which is easy to transport and which can be used as a “general equivalent”.
  • As a general equivalent of the commodities were exchanged, gold stopped being a commodity and turned into “money”.
  • While money, which had been nothing more than a commodity, was being transformed into a “general equivalent” of products.
  • It acquired an almost divine quality which decided the value of human beings and commodities. This is called “money fetishism”
  • Capital - is something which is useful to generate a benefit.
  • Situation (continuation):
    • The man asks the girl what else he can give in exchange for four fish. The girl answers: a sack of wheat, or a liter of oil, or 200 grams of tea leaves.
    • The man goes over to the village chief as he produces wheat to ask what he can give in exchange for a sack of wheat.
    • 1 sack of wheat = the product which expresses the value of all others and in respect to which they are exchanged is named “general equivalent”
  • The proportion of exchange of the products which were traded with started to be known.
  • From the value of wheat, a “common use value” was created.
  • Gold is very valuable even in little quantities.
  • It’ll be easier to trade with this, so gold is used (which is weighed, so 1 gram).
  • Then, it became inconvenient to always weigh gold, so it was turned into a pattern.
  • A certain quantity of gold was inscribed with a number. (A gold coin inscribed with its value, for example “1”)
  • Weighing gold is no longer required. Money as Currency
  • That’s how commodity barter started disappearing from the people’s conscience and was replaced by the perception of buying products paid for with money.
  • Trade was even more streamlined and money continued circulating.
  • After a decline in the supply of gold, the solution made was to mix the gold with lead. There is no need for it to be made from gold anymore.
  • When trading, people are no longer guided by the value of gold, but that of money. The material money is made from does not matter, the “trust” in it is what matters.
  • So when the metal was forged again, all gold was replaced by lead.
  • And later, vouchers and paper money appeared - even more handy.
  • People started to consider it as something which represented the value of things and which had infinite power to get them. Capitalism
  • Its function is to create scarcity and necessity: consume and produce.
  • Money is labor for the capitalist.
  • The body becomes good.
  • There is an unequal distribution of capital. The endpoint of capitalism is monopoly.
    • To monopolize products so that they are the only entities to sell a certain product.
    • One of those products is culture.
    • Culture becomes popular through mass media because it becomes a product of consumption.
  • Capitalism holds both ideational and material production. It has both of your time in production and consumption.
    • After working (production), you consume products (consumption).
    • For example, after working on your 9-5 job (production), you enter a restaurant and buy food to eat (consumption).
  • Capitalism is about radical consumption and production. It doesn't recognize age.
  • The proletariats are unable to move vertically.
    • They are defined by a lack of dynamism.
    • For the proletariat, there is no mobility. For the lumpenproletariat, there is no dynamism at all.
    • If they are not dynamic, they are no longer capable of movement.
    • There is movement but there is no mobility, “hindi sila umaangat sa buhay”.
    • It is something that is needed to become rich.
    • It is something with which a factory is financed, with which machinery and raw materials are bought and with which labor power is paid.
  • Capitalist society is only about benefit by all means. In this society, an insatiable monster is hidden.
  • Depreciation - method through which the decline of the economic value of machinery and other assets because of their use and time passed is objectively quantified.
    • If he produces one commodity a day, the value of the “needed labor” to produce this commodity is 1 G.
  • Variable Capital - part of capital which is invested in labor power. Its value changes in the process of production and it generates surplus.
  • Becoming rich means generating a higher value than the capital which has been invested.
  • It is not an exchange system like barter anymore.
  • “Selling their labor powers is their only way to get an income. We buy it and they can live.”
  • “We, the capitalists, buy their labor power and they obtain the income necessary for their daily survival and to be able to live as persons.”
  • “We pay them less than the value they produce so that we can get the benefit from the surplus.”
Process of Hiring Labor Power and Producing Commodities
  • First of all, let’s assume a worker earns 1 G everyday.
  • The machinery to produce this commodity is acquired for 20 G.
  • Let’s also assume that the cost of materials is 4 G
  • A man is hired to work for 8 hours a day in exchange for 1 G. However, at the beginning he was only asked to work for 4 hours.
  • In 4 hours, a commodity can be produced.
  • As the cost of producing a commodity is 10 G and the exchange value of this commodity is, logically, 10 G. So, when selling it, there is no benefit.
  • The man is then asked to work for 8 hours a day, still for 1 G.
  • If the exchange value of a commodity is 10 G, when producing two it should be 20 G, but…..
  • When making a worker produce two commodities in a day, the exchange value is not 20 G anymore. It is 19 G and 1 G is left. That 1 G is called “surplus”.
  • Going back, when the man worked for four hours in exchange for 1 G and produced one commodity, the expenses are as follows:
  • Constant Capital - part of capital which is invested in means of production, i.e. raw materials, machinery, infrastructure, etc. Its value does not change in the process of production and it also does not generate a surplus.
  • The “value of labor power” is determined by the expense necessary to maintain and develop the labor power of the worker and allow him to survive.
  • Expanded or Enlarged Reproduction - when the capitalist invests all or a part of the surplus increasing production.
  • Absolute Surplus - surplus that is forcibly obtained by making the workday longer.
  • Relative Surplus - surplus that is obtained by increasing productivity and reducing the required labor time.
    • 1 G for the labor for four hours
    • 4 G for the materials; and
    • 5 G for the machinery
  • The surplus exists because when the time of labor was doubled to eight hours, the cost for materials and machinery were doubled, however the cost of the man(worker)’s labor stayed the same.
    • Still 1 G for double the time (1 G for both working for 4 hours and 8 hours).
    • 8 G (4 G ✖ 2) for the materials; and
    • 10 G (5 G ✖ 2) for the machinery.
  • This way, the capitalist accomplishes the principle of equivalent exchange of salary and labor power
  • While he obtains a surplus of the capital which turns into benefit.
  • “Equivalent exchange? Liar! You’re stealing of me the value which I generate!”
  • “I’d like to say he’s right, but it is also true that the exchange is maintained because the capitalist pays him a salary according to the value of his labor power.”
  • The value that this labor power can generate depends on the skill of the capitalist.
  • The fruits of “labor” and the value of “labor power” are different.
  • Even giving the cattle the same amount of food everyday, the value they generate is different depending on the way of working and the capacity of each animal.
  • The daily quantity of food (exchange value) is the same; however, the quantity that they transport (use value) changes.
  • Machines do not generate this value because they only work with fuel.
  • Even if the whole production process is automated they are not going to generate surplus.
  • The important thing is that the only thing which increases surplus that translates into benefit for the capitalist is the labor power source.
  • In other words, the capitalist earns when the worker’s efficiency improves, meaning they produce more commodities in the same amount of working time but their pay is also the same >> It does not increase along with their increased production.
  • What is supposed to be their additional earning for their increased production goes into the pockets of the capitalist (surplus).
  • “We also must live obtaining benefits which we invest on building bigger factories so we can create more jobs and contribute to society. We do not have to stay in the present, our vision has to be larger.”
  • Karl Marx wanted labor to mean a use value, that the value of a product comes from the value you put in it, but capitalists don’t see it that way.
  • “Larger vision? Improving the machinery technology and developing new products.”
  • “New products? Rather than wasting time on that, wouldn’t it produce more benefits exploiting the workers more than they are now?”
  • “The most important thing is to replace all current infrastructure for more modern technology. If the machines’ performance increases, the labor power costs decrease.”
  • Extraordinary Surplus - surplus which comes from technology innovation and reduction of labor time.
  • Cooperative labor - consists of associating with another business and increasing the scale of capital.
  • Division of labor - making small proportions of what have been made big and calculating its efficiency. - Two elements have to be efficiently managed: production time and selling time. A production time to produce the commodity and a “circulation time” to put it on sale. The money obtained after both is used in a new production cycle.
  • The sequence of this repetition is named rotation of capital.
  • To optimize production, in the case of equal “production time” and “circulation time”, the capital invested in the “production time” has to be reduced as much as possible to match the circulation expenses.
  • Commercial capital - They purchase what industrial capital has produced and distribute and sell it. Thanks to them, rotation is faster.
  • “Reducing only necessary labor time, while not changing the total labor time, surplus would relatively increase.”
  • “But if our competition introduces the same machinery, a war price would be produced which would lower benefits!”
  • “We won’t allow them! The new machines will be developed by us!”
  • “The general value of commodities would be maintained but our business would be the only that would produce at a low cost, with an increase in benefits.”
  • “I see, so your goal is to obtain an extraordinary surplus.”
  • “I am decided to monopolize the market! We will develop new articles that the competition does not have and we will massively produce them with a technology nobody has. We will use that benefit to enlarge our infrastructure so we will be able to create more jobs.
  • “But over time, that will make the value of labor power decrease even more. Very well, to put that forward, two things are necessary. Cooperative labor and division of labor.”
  • “Once the scale has been enlarged, we will assign functions to each
  • “As the tasks are subdivided, labor is simplified and is easier to learn. So we will be able to hire more manpower without considering their age or experience and cut the cost of production of each commodity. The design of machinery is simplified and that makes technological advancement easier.