Capital, Volume 1
Parts
Seven and Eight
Go
back and look at the structure of all of volume 1.
Exchange
·Part 1:
Commodities and Money. The nature of
the commodity and the nature of value that are revealed in the processes of
exchange.
·Part 2: The
Transformation of Money into Capital.
The definition of capital and self-valorizing value and the focus on
labor-power as the central commodity in this process (still from the
perspective of exchange).
Production
·Part 3: The
Production of Absolute Surplus-Value.
Descent from exchange to production.
Unpaid labor-time and the struggles over the length of the working day.
·Part 4: The
Production of Relative Surplus-Value.
Production of surplus-value by increases in productivity in manufacture
(division of labor) and large-scale industry (mechanization).
·Part 5: The
Production of Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. Bringing together Parts 3 and 4.
·Part 6:
Wages. The costs of reproduction (the
other side of production). This would
be the place to consider the needs and desires of the working class, but not
really developed.
Accumulation
·Part 7: The
Process of Accumulation of Capital. Now
we come out of the immediate processes of production and consider the regime of
accumulation in which production takes place.
·Part 8:
So-Called Primitive Accumulation. What
made capitalist production and accumulation possible in the first place? The whole book has been considering capital
in the abstract, as an ideal system.
This last part looks back on the whole process considering the English
historical development as exemplary.
Part 7: The Process of
Accumulation of Capital
To
begin considering accumulation we have to take a larger view than we have been
taking with respect to production, or specifically we have to extend our vision
temporally from one process of production to the next. Here we are primarily concerned with
reproduction: reproduction of the worker, reproduction of the means of
production, reproduction of the capitalist -- but most important, reproduction
of the capital-relation itself.
Marx
divides this into simple reproduction and expanding reproduction. Simple reproduction occurs when we just have
a repetition of the process of production again and again always on the same
scale. For this to happen the
capitalist must consume all of the surplus value produced in each productive
process and not reinvest any of it. The
capitalist merely reproduces the worker (via the wage), reproduces the means of
production (raw materials and instruments), and eats up the rest.
p.
718: “The maintanance and reproduction … reproduction of capital.”
Productive
consumption, individual consumption (worker reproduction – no less necessary),
and unproductive consumption (excess worker consumption), pp. 717-718.
Working
class is inside capital:
p.
716: “capitalist produces the worker”
p.
719: “working class is an appendage of capital”
The
really important point here is the emphasis on the reproduction of the total
process: "The capitalist process of production, therefore, seen as a
total, connected process, i.e. a process of reproduction, produces not only
commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the
capital-relation itself; on the one hand the capitalist, on the other the
wage-labourer" (724).
Accumulation
proper only really begins with reproduction on an expanding scale. (I didn't put this part on the minimal
reading list but should have, pp. 738-746.)
The accumulation of capital is the reconversion of surplus value into
capital. The key to this expansion is
that the capitalist does not really consume all the surplus value. "In the former case [simple
reproduction] the capitalist squanders the whole of the surplus-value in
dissipation, in the latter [reproduction on an extended scale, accumulation] he
demonstrates his bourgeois virtue by consuming only a portion of it and
converting the rest into money" (Engels, 732). That money then is not hoarded but reinvested into production. As accumulation expands, then, so must
production. There must in each new
productive cycle be more raw materials, more instruments of production, more
labor, and then of course new markets to sell the additional commodities, and
so forth. This expansion opens a whole
set of interesting questions -- that we'll see primarily in volume 2. (Already, though, this necessary expansion
of capitalist production is the key to the classic readings of the necessary
connection between imperialism and capitalism.)
Marx
makes two points with regard to accumulation.
The first is the change it effectively introduces into the capitalist
notion of property: "the inversion which converts the property laws of
commodity production into laws of capitalist accumulation." The rights of property in commodity exchange
(and the buying and selling of labor power) seem to be based on each's own
labor. Each owns what he or she has
made (including one's own labor-power).
The exchanges are made on the basis of these property rights. "Now, however, property turns out to be
the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of
others or its product, and the impossibility, on the part of the worker, of
appropriating his own product. The
separation of property from labour thus becomes the necessary consequence of a
law that apparently originated in their identity" (730). Hence the inversion. The right that seemed to be based on the
identity between property and labor is really based on their separation.
The
second point is more of a cultural argument about the bourgeoisie as a class, a
more or less Weberian point.
Capitalists are ascetic and political economy preaches abstinence to
them. Rational miser: “Only as a
personification … respectable” (p. 739).
Surplus-value is divided between the capitalist's own consumption and
reinvestment to increase the scale of production (ie, accumulation). Capital demands that the capitalist renounce
pleasures and abstain as much as possible from "wasting" the surplus
value on his own consumption -- this opposed to the "dashing feudal lord's
prodigality" (741). Conflict
between accumulation and enjoyment.
"Accumulate, accumulate!
That is Moses and the prophets!" (742).
Chapter
25: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. What are the tendencies that push forward accumulation and are
driven by it.
·On the side of
capital: concentration and centralization.
Concentration here refers the increasing concentration of the social
means of production in the hands of individual capitalists as production
expands. Centralization refers rather
to the distribution of means of production among the various individual
capitalists. Read: "And this is
what distinguishes centralization from concentration ... parts social
capital" (779). Centralization is
really the tendency for big capital to win over small capital, and thus for
there to be increasing large units of capital -- joint-stock companies, trusts,
etc. The laws of competition lead to
centralization and hence lack of competition.
·(This is what
Lenin focuses on most in his book on Imperialism. And one point that he makes is that this centralization does
carry with it an enormous social potential.
Read: "Everywhere the increased ... processes of production"
(780). Lenin: "Competition becomes
transformed into monopoly. The result
is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical
invention and improvement becomes socialized." "Capitalism in its imperialist stage arrives at the
threshold of the most complete socialization of production. In spite of themselves, the capitalists are
dragged, as it were, into a new social order, a transitional social order from
complete free competition to complete socialization" (25).)
·On the side of
labor accumulation brings contrasting tendencies. First of all there must be a growth of labor to answer the growth
of production. On the other hand,
however, with increased productivity and relative surplus value generally,
there is a decline of the portion of labor needed with respect to machines, raw
material, etc. Marx calls this the
(accelerated) relative diminution of variable capital. Marx characterizes this change as a change
in the "composition of capital" -- that is the portion that is needed
for variable and constant capital. So
in one respect increase, in another decrease.
·The other
change for labor has to do with the cycles of expansion of capital. Read: "With accumulation ... additional
means of production" (784-85).
Read: "there must be the ... supplies these masses" (785).
Part
8: Primitive Accumulation
Original
Sin: two races of people. "Long,
long ago there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent and
above all frugal élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and
more, in riotous living" (873).
The theological tale of original sin tells us how all humans are
condemned to this life, but the original sin of political economy divides
humanity into two races.
Real
creation of classes was of course quite different and anything but
idyllic. What were created above all
were "two very different kinds of commodity owners" (874).
·"free
workers", "vogelfrei" (896) = divorced from the means of
production (874)
1) freed from serfdom and guilds (875)
2) free of the means of production
·for primitive accumulation,
epoch-making revolutions are made "when great masses of men are suddenly
and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled onto the
labour-market as free, unprotected and rightless proletarians" (876).
Inclosures
and clearing of the estates
In
15th century England free peasant proprietors (1) worked the land to which they
had title and (2) had access to common lands for grazing, firewood, etc. "The prelude to the revolution that
laid that foundation of the capitalist mode of production was played out in the
last third of the fifteenth century and the first few decades of the
sixteenth" (878). This is a
revolution in the relations of production.
·First step:
evictions, inclosures.
"Transformation of arable land into sheep-walks was therefore the
slogan" (879). Arable land
required many people to work it while pastures could be worked by a small
number of herdsmen.
- Reformation adds to process: "The
dissolution of the monasteries, etc., hurled their inmates into the proletariat"
(881). Also State lands (884).
- yeomanry, the class of independent
peasants, lasted longest (883).
- transformation of feudal property to modern
private property and "convert the land into a merely commercial
commodity" (885). The Bill of
Inclosures and debates throughout 18th century. (Compare to debates over family farm in US.)
·Final
culminating step: clearing of the estates.
- Scottish highlands: Highland celts were
organized in clans and the representative of the clan, the chief, was titular
owner. "The Highland Celts were
organized in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was
settled. The representative of the
clan, its chief or 'great man', was only the titular owner of this property,
just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national
soil" 890). In the legal
transformation from feudal to modern property, the chief became owner in the
full sense. "On their own
authority, they transformed their nominal right to the land into a right of
private property" (890). Example:
Duchess of Sutherland turns county into a sheep walk. Each sheep farm was given to a single family. The rest of the peasants became fishermen.
- Finally sheep farms were made into dear
forests.
·read summary
(895)
Bloody
legislation
The
proletariat (or really pre-proletariat) created by clearing the estates was
vogelfrei (896). New legislation
against vagabondage.
·Series of laws
in England. "Thus were the
agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their
homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded and tortured by
grotesquely terroristic laws into accepting the discipline necessary for the
system of wage-labour" (899).
·It's not enough
to have capitalists and proletarians, the prols must work not by compulsion but
as if by a natural law (899). This is a
disciplinary society: "The advance of capitalist production develops a
working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements
of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws" (899).
·But for now the
State is needed to force the system to work (read 899- 900).
So
the complete process of creating a proletariat is
1)
free the workers from the land (the old means of production)
2)
compel them to work in the new wage-labor system (through legislation)
3)
train them to view the system as natural and to enforce it themselves.
Why
does this happen? One could easily give
a conspiracy theory explanation: that the future capitalists are orchestrating
this articulated and complex process.
What really is driving it?
·Was it
legal? That's not really the right
question. What is the rule of law and
legality in carrying it out?
Conquest
and colonization
1. Violence,
political domination – State and colonial system.
2. Necessary
role of slavery and colonialism.
Userer’s
capital and merchant’s capital, p. 914.
·conquest as
chief moments of primitive accumulation (read 915). Acceleration of process, hothouse, also p. 918.
·concentration
of capital (read 918). Who profited
from colonialism? The colonial system
is the same kind of legal system as the bloody legislation. It is extraeconomic support that is needed
until economic power can take over.
European capital needed colonialism for a certain period but then became
autonomous.
Slavery,
pp. 924-925.
p.
929 – dialectic: centralization -> world market -> workers’ power ->
comunism.
pp.
935-936: open spaces of settler colonies; p. 934: common land.