Ask A Red: The IVth International

[Traitorfish]

"Petty bourgeois" is one of these awkward terms you'll find in Marx, where he was attempting to describe pretty radical ideas in the language that he had to hand. Strictly, it refers to small, independent producers and traders, but in Marx's usage, it has a more technical definition, referring to certain groups within capitalist society which do not embody a distinct social relation, and so don't possess any independent historical trajectory.

Incapable of asserting autonomy from capital, they are forced to inhabit the spaces it permits them, around the margins of capitalist production or co-opted into its own systems, and so become dependent on and dependants of capital. At the same, they remain apart from capital proper, and often come into conflict with it, either with a particular section of capital, or with capital in its socialised mode, the state. This gives the petty bourgeois a unique political character, capable of struggling against capital, yet incapable of elevating this struggle from a sectional level to a general (i.e. revolutionary) level.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we have an instinctive habit of of trying to take a category defined essentially negatively, by what it is not, and attempting to give it positive sociological and cultural characteristics. The same problem occurs with the working class, who are defined not in terms of dispossession but in terms of culture, of flat caps and meat pies. It even occurs to a lesser extent with the bourgeoisie itself, who become defined not in terms of possession, but in terms of formal ownership, as Cheezy discusses above.

Part of the problem, I think, is trying to take a category defined essentially negatively, by what it is not, and attempting to give it positive sociological and cultural characteristics. The same problem occurs with the working class, who are defined not in terms of dispossession but in terms of culture, of flat caps and meat pies. It even occurs to a lesser extent with the bourgeoisie itself, who become defined not in terms of possession, but in terms of formal ownership, as Cheezy discusses above.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Thank you, TF! Welcome bsvk.to the AAR thread!

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Are there any good websites dealing with The Capital you guys want to share? I mean dissections of its contend, overviews and that kind of stuff.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Are there any good websites dealing with The Capital you guys want to share? I mean dissections of its contend, overviews and that kind of stuff.

Oh biy, SiLL, have I got one for you:

Loouis Althusser's Reading Capital

Althusser, with Etienne Balabar, uses the Roy translation of Capital which is the one Marx himself edited. It us excellent.

Other than that, I don't know.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

In addition to Althusser's excellent, albeit dense book (which mainly deals with the philosophical aspects of Capital), I recommend the middle third of To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson. The first third of the book deals with the pre-Marxist socialists like Proudhoun, Cabet, and Fourier, and the last third of the book deals with the post-Marxist socialists like Trotsky, Lenin, and Bakunin. But the middle third deals with Marx and Engels, with a good portion of that dedicated purely to Capital. Wilson is an extremely enjoyable author to read, since he is a literary critic and not a philosopher, and this also make him much easier to read, since he bears no bones about saying exactly what he thinks, instead of obfuscating it in complicated language.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I have a question about Marxist theory as laid out by Marx himself. More precise, about surplus and how it was only to be created by the worker.
Marx says, that this surplus value is the difference between exchange value (which is the work necessary to produce something) and utility value (which is the work a produced product can produce itself).
Marx also is very specific about how the work given by a worker is to be viewed as a mere commodity. I buy the commodity of work from a worker like I buy the commodity of a machine from another capitalist.
What I don't understand: It is entirely feasible that a machine creates more work than it requires to be produced. This becomes apparent when we stop to see workers as humans and view them as just a very specific kind of machine, a biological machine. Hence, I should be able to create more value with the machine than its exchange value and hence the means of production are in principle just as able to create surplus value as a worker is.
However, Marx says only the worker was able to shield surplus value to the capitalist (the owner of the means of production).
Frankly: Hugh? I feel like I might be missing something very essential here - or that the supposed uniqueness of work as stipulated by Marx is total bull by his own definition of what surplus value is. But it would be bull in such an apparent manner, that I am hesitant to trust this conclusion of mine.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Another thought: If we accept that also machines can and do create spurplus value, the rise of the middle class can be explained by the surplus value of labor being overshadowed by the surplus value of machines --> the worker can retain more of the value he created.
However! That goes for the industrial sector. In the service sector, manual labor stays the primary factor of the creation of surplus value. As a consequence, the rise of the service sector leads to a steady decline of the middle class, to the stagnation of wages in spite of productivity increases we had to witness the last decades.

Thoughts?

edit: Actually, not only receives the worker more of the value he created, he gets more, by getting a share of the surplus value of the machine. So nope, no exploitation in the sense Marx defined exploitation. (Though not everywhere, things look different in say Bangladesh of course)

 

[Traitorfish]

I have a question about Marxist theory as laid out by Marx himself. More precise, about surplus and how it was only to be created by the worker.
Marx says, that this surplus value is the difference between exchange value (which is the work necessary to produce something) and utility value (which is the work a produced product can produce itself).
Marx also is very specific about how the work given by a worker is to be viewed as a mere commodity. I buy the commodity of work from a worker like I buy the commodity of a machine from another capitalist.
What I don't understand: It is entirely feasible that a machine creates more work than it requires to be produced. This becomes apparent when we stop to see workers as humans and view them as just a very specific kind of machine, a biological machine. Hence, I should be able to create more value with the machine than its exchange value and hence the means of production are in principle just as able to create surplus value as a worker is.
However, Marx says only the worker was able to shield surplus value to the capitalist (the owner of the means of production).
Frankly: Hugh? I feel like I might be missing something very essential here - or that the supposed uniqueness of work as stipulated by Marx is total bull by his own definition of what surplus value is. But it would be bull in such an apparent manner, that I am hesitant to trust this conclusion of mine.

The problem is in the bolded. Marx doesn't say that surplus value is the difference between exchange value and use-value, but between exchange value and the cost of reproduction, i.e. wages and overheads. All he's really saying is that profit is the difference between what it costs to bring to market and what it costs to buy, which isn't in itself contentious. The contention emerges in how he thinks those costs are determined, namely, by labour organised as labour-time.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

All he's really saying is that profit is the difference between what it costs to bring to market and what it costs to buy

If prices actually mirrored the actual value of stuff (labor necessary for reproduction) but Marx is under no illusion that this was the case, is he? He merely argues that the sum of prices reflected the sum of labor, while on the level of the single product you get great divergences above or beneath the actual value of the product. So I really don't see how that summarization holds true. Likewise, the individual profit of a company does not mirror its surplus value. Only the sum of all profits are supposed to mirror the sum of all surplus value.

Marx doesn't say that surplus value is the difference between exchange value and use-value, but between exchange value and the cost of reproduction, i.e. wages and overheads.

What are overheads? And I am afraid I am not quit following, that totally clashes with what I have read.
The costs of reproduction contain constant costs (the costs of the means of production) and variable costs (wages). Marx makes it very clear that the constant costs are not involved in the creation of surplus value.
Yes wages are the exchange value of the worker, but not of his work. The exchange value of his work is split into surplus value and wage. The surplus value is hence a result of the worker laboring more than the labor he will be able to get elsewhere with his wage. The wage in turn is supposed to stand for the "reproduction costs" of the worker.
Hence surplus value is the result of workers having lower reproduction costs than use value, no?

edit: Scrap "but not of his work. The exchange value of his work is split into surplus value and wage." I am meaning the value of his work which I believe is the same as its use value in this case, as the use for the capitalist is to create value.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

If prices actually mirrored the actual value of stuff (labor necessary for reproduction) but Marx is under no illusion that this was the case, is he? He merely argues that the sum of prices reflected the sum of labor, while on the level of the single product you get great divergences above or beneath the actual value of the product. So I really don't see how that summarization holds true. Likewise, the individual profit of a company does not mirror its surplus value. Only the sum of all profits are supposed to mirror the sum of all surplus value.

....

You are way over-thinking this. Surplus value is the value labour adds to the capital commodity to make it a salable commodity. Without labour, the capital commodity is merely raw materials. The worker goes to the "Labour Market" with his labour, he gets paid cash, by the employer and produces the salable commodity, and in turn, the labourer purchases things with the money he/she gets for their work.

Labour is only a "commodity" to the capitalist. To the labourer, they are pinning their hopes and dreams on what they can get for the work that they do. That is what Marx called Labour Power, which is what the labourer is really selling to the capitalist.

Now, in regards to machines and machine labor, it was a non-communist, Walter Reuther, who turned the GM Chairman on his head when Reuther was being toured around an automated car plant, and the Chairman said "So, Mister Reuther, what do you think? None of these robots will carry union cards." Reuther replied "I hadn't got that far, I was thinking that none of these robots would be driving a car to work."

Workers are also consumers and one of the inherent contradictions of capitalism is that in order for the bourgeoisie to remain solvent, they have to cut wages to increase profits to stay competitive -- it;s the nature of capitalism -- in doing so, the base of consumers dwindles as the buying power of labour is drying up.

Again, the working class and the ruling class share no common ground, their interests are diametrically opposite.

I hope this helps.

 

[Borachio]

To what extent is the idea of violent revolution an intrinsic part of Communist thought?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

To what extent is the idea of violent revolution an intrinsic part of Communist thought?

It's not an intrinsic part of Communist thought. I am not armed and do not intend to be. The organizations I work wuth do not use violence in their tactics. The goal is to overthrow the class in power and replace it with the proletariat. It is not "violence" or "non-violence." As Lenin wrote in his 1900 piece "The urgent tasks of our movement" (forgive me for paraphrasing, on my mobile right now): communists should reject no tactic on principle -- the goal is the primary concern: get in power to establish socialism.

Now, how we get there is and has been a subject of debate since 1844.

Another non-communist, Mark Twain, said; though, of the 1793 Reign of Terror (again, sorry for the paraphrase): Which would you prefer, the quick death if a few, or the slow, painful death of millions caused by the actions of those few?

Being poor in the US under capitalism is inherently violent: people freeze, starve, kill each other. A workers' organization is a welcome sight to them.

 

[Azale]

To what extent is the idea of violent revolution an intrinsic part of Communist thought?

Depends on who you ask. Lenin and the third worlders/Maoists would say violence is an absolute necessity. Marx & Engels heavily intimated it was. Capitalists will not willingly absolve themselves of their place at the top of the totem pole. The fate of the Paris Commune seemed to harden these views on violence into place in Europe, and incidents like the 1927 Shanghai Massacre did the same in other parts of the world.

Groups like the Fabian Society would probably disagree.

American socialism/communism, as familiar as it was with the methods of brutal repression even in an ostensibly "democratic" capitalist society, still did not have much of a violent streak imo. Maybe because of pie-in-the-sky dreams about gaining electoral power. Maybe for fear of giving the government all the excuse they needed to extinguish them once and for all.

There is my bad answer

 

[ReindeerThistle]

@Azale: Speaking as an American Communist, the fact that we are more effective on the streets than in prison and serve the movement better above ground than in the grave has kept violence off the agenda.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think i see now where the key problem is in my question. What differentiates the "labor" of a machine form the labor of a worker is that people won't pay for the labor of a machine. So my mistake was to take the term value to literal, instead of reminding myself that value in the end only means what people will pay for a product (and which is supposed to be the work of people). Which makes sense, because why would you have to pay a machine?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

@Azale: Speaking as an American Communist, the fact that we are more effective on the streets than in prison and serve the movement better above ground than in the grave has kept violence off the agenda.

That, and those who have been violent, the US government hasn't thought twice about doing away with entirely. The Imperial Russian government they are not; we are dealing with Iron Heel levels of shrewd repressive tactics. If you don't believe me, ask Fred Hampton and Martin Luther King Jr.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I implied that in my post. Remember, I've had police guns in my face and I've been to jail.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

My post was intended to compliment yours, not challenge it.

 

[Takhisis]

To or in jail, Mr. Thistle?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

My post was intended to compliment yours, not challenge it.

Exactly. Thank you.

@Takhisis: I was IN jail.