33 Lessons on Capital by Harry Cleaver;

Author:Harry Cleaver;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

Main Points

In four points Marx sketches what he considers vital aspects of the emergence of capitalism.

First, capital develops within production (or takes it over) until it acquires direct command over labor. Thus, the merchant capitalist becomes an industrial capitalist as first the putting-out system and then the factory provide mechanisms to control and exploit others’ labor. Capital is power over others, power to command their lives and limit them to incarnations of labor-power.

Second, this command is coercive. Capital forces people to be workers, to be part of the working class; it forces them to work more than they otherwise would, e.g., longer than they would. This was the point of the discussion in Chapter 10 of the capitalist success at forcing out the length of the working day, at introducing night work and so on. Here he repeats what he emphasized in Section 2 of Chapter 10, that capitalism is more fanatical in the imposition of work than all earlier systems of directly compulsory labor. Unlike such earlier systems, where labor was imposed to achieve some finite purpose, the capitalist imposition of work knows no limits; it is unbounded; there is an endless “thirst” for surplus labor and its monetary equivalent. Where the imposition of work is the substance of the social order, the backbone of civilization, then the eternal maintenance of that order requires that such imposition be endless.

Third, command over labor, over life as labor, is prior to any question of technology. The capitalists at first take command, impose work, using the technologies available, whatever they are. The imposition of work is the main thing; how it is imposed is secondary. This priority is obvious in the putting-out system and in early factories where traditional methods of production dominate.

However, fourth, the method of production, as embodied in the means of production themselves, soon becomes the vehicle for capitalist command. The means of production are no longer tools in the hands of workers, but become tools of the capitalist for the control of workers. Instead of being the means workers use to produce useful things, the means of production become, under the control of the capitalists, the means of exploiting the labor-power of others, the means for putting people to work. Instead of the workers consuming their tools in the accomplishment of their own ends, the workers are consumed by the means of production in the accomplishment of the capitalists’ ends, which may involve either the fetishistic chase after money or a more sophisticated understanding of the need for jobs to maintain order. Quite independently of the consciousness of the capitalist, investment always involves the imposition of work. Note: there are many times and places where capitalists understand quite explicitly their role in maintaining social order. One common example is in periods of high unemployment when policymakers worry about the lack of jobs leaving too many people too free—people whose free time threatens to be used in ways inimical to capitalist plans. Another example occurs during strikes by schoolteachers

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