Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital by William Clare Roberts

Author:William Clare Roberts [Roberts, William Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781400883707
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-12-20T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Malebolge: The Capitalist Mode

of Production as Fraud

At length, casting away his guise of terror, this much cursed power revealed itself in its true form and looks to men. What graciousness was in its aspect, what benevolence, what music flowed from its lips: science was heard and the savage hearts of men were melted; . . . and as science spoke, the multitude knelt in love and obedience.

—Douglas Jerrold, “The Factory Child” (1840)

Machines promised us an increase in wealth; they kept their word, but gave us at the same time an increase of poverty. They promised us liberty; I will prove that they have brought us slavery.

—Proudhon, Système des Contradictions Économiques, I.IV.ii (1846)

One must say that because man is a social animal, by nature each man owes to the other that without which human society cannot be preserved. For men cannot associate with each other unless they believe they are telling each other the truth.

—Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2ae, q. 109, a. 3

As we have seen, Marx turned the socialist diagnosis of “the empire of force and fraud” on its head. Because he took commerce to realize the exchange of equivalent values, he could not, as his precursors had, understand capitalists’ massive accumulations of wealth to be explained by past acts of conquest, acts that gave capitalists an unfair bargaining power by which they could continually get the better of their poor fellows in exchange (thereby preserving and augmenting their advantage, ad infinitum).1 Instead, Marx locates the rule of force within capitalist production itself, after exchange. Having purchased at a fair price the workers’ only salable commodity, their labor power, the capitalists set them to work in the production of new commodities. Because the aim of capital is the realization of surplus value, this production process forces labor power to be active beyond the point at which it has produced the means of its own reproduction. That is, capital bends labor power to an alien goal and forces it to produce more than it otherwise would. This is the specifically capitalist form of exploitation, and it constitutes a forceful seizure of labor power, a use of labor contrary to its nature.

What, then, of fraud, the twin of force in Thompson’s slogan? The premise that labor power is purchased at its value might seem to rule fraud simply inadmissible in Marx’s critical theory. It befits Proudhon to claim that “from the right of cunning arose the profits of industry, commerce, and banking; of mercantile frauds and pretenses which are honored with the beautiful names of ‘talent’ and ‘genius,’ which ought to be regarded as the highest degree of falsity and deception; and, finally, of all kinds of social inequalities.”2 Marx’s argument, very much to the contrary, is that even “the valorization of the merchant’s capital is not to be explained by mere frauds.”3 However, the question of fraud is not so easily dismissed. Given that Marx has transformed the moral categories of incontinence and force into de-personalized critical concepts, applicable

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.