Marx and the Powers of Capital

15 Marx and the Powers of Capital For Marx what is distinctive about capitalism is the fact that commodities are produced not for the purpose of consumption but for the purpose of reconverting them into money. The bourgeois entrepreneur, in other words, produces commodities as things destined for sale on the open market which will realize more capital than was originally invested in their manufacture. Marx refers to this transformation of money into money through the realization of surplus value as the Money-CommodityMoney, or M-C-M, relation. This relation arises out of a more primitive organization of productive activity in which the use-value of commodities functioned as the exclusive condition of exchange. Once money has emerged as a universal equivalent capable of purchasing any of the means of subsistence however, the 'simple circulation of commodities' based on the satisfaction of social need is displaced by the distributive powers of capital. The principal difference between the M-C-M relation and the barter economy therefore is that the latter begins with the need of the individual producer to secure enough of the means of subsistence to fulfil his/her needs, while the latter begins with the dispersal of commodities in order to allow the reflux of money to the capitalist (Marx, 1990: 249). According to this analYSiS, once the old system of exchange, or the commodity-money-commodity (C-M-C) relation, has established money as the universal expression of value, the M-C-M relation is able to emerge as the dominant mode of production and distribution (Marx, 1990: 256). Thus the movement of capital becomes self-valorizing; for it simultaneously engenders its monetary expansion through the production of commodities and the expansion of its productive capacity through the reinvestment of surplus value in the form of profit. Implicit in this relation is the demand constantly to decrease the time taken to 169 R. Abbinnett, Marxism After Modernity © Ross Abbinnett 2006 170 Marxism after Modernity transform raw materials into commodities which can be offered for sale. Every capitalist, in other words, labours under the same necessity to make his enterprise as efficient as possible; for if the production of his commodities is slower than the average rate, there will be insufficient surplus value produced for his enterprise to remain competitive. It is this hard necessity which Marx identifies as the driving force behind the introduction of machine technology into the productive process: for if capitalist B does not follow capitalist A in employing machines in his enterprise, he will be unable to maintain his share of an ever expanding market. Before turning to the effects of such technologies on the process of production however, I want briefly to consider Marx's account of the ways in which the M-C-M relation has functioned to destabilize the established boundaries of communal life. The regime of landed property, or feudalism, appears in Marx's analysis as the precursor to capitalism: it is the regime under which the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the aristocracy leads to the establishment of monetary tokens as a universal equivalent which is exchangeable for all commodities. Initially the use of such tokens is limited and takes place within the old system of barter; however, as the productivity of the estates slowly increases, so the use of money is established as the medium through which surplus produce is exchanged. This simple circulation of commodities is extremely durable, and supports a regime of social and political obligations in which the labour of the serf is closely tied to the absolute authority of the feudal lord. As such the productive activity which takes place under feudalism is largely undifferentiated: it is part of a subsistence economy whose technological basis is limited to the use of metal implements in agriculture, and whose product is embedded in system of ties and obligations which, for all practical intents, precludes the possibility of major economic or technological innovation. For Marx, the importance of the C-M-C relation as it is determined under feudalism is that it opens the possibility of a new type of capital accumulation; for the emergence of money as a universal equivalent prefigures the appearance of the mercantile form of capital which reproduces itself through the purchase and resale of commodities and raw materials. This type of capital, as we have seen, becomes increasingly powerful as better ships and more reliable forms of navigation intensify international trade: more and more commodities are offered for sale to the landed aristocracy, who, in purchasing those commodities, deplete their own capital and add to the stock acquired by the merchant class. It is this growing accumulation of money acquired through trade which, according to Marx, leads to the antagonism Marx and the Powers o(Capitai 171 between town and country: as the cities become established as centres of mercantile activity, so the economic power and political authority of the landed aristocracy is compromised. Ultimately the decay of the feudal estates into regimes of violent extortion leads to a mass exodus of surfs into the towns; for the increasing prosperity of the mercantile economy provides a constantly expanding demand for day-labourers which is supplied by the influx of cheap labour from the country (Marx, 1977b: 70). It is the accumulation of mercantile capital and the expansion in the range and diversity of the work which services that capital which, for Marx, is the precondition of the growth of manufacturing. Initially the manufacture of commodities is of less importance to the accumulation of capital than the trade in raw materials; merchants, in other words, make the majority of their profits from the importation and distribution of goods which are used in cottage industries. Thus the fragility of 'manufacture', conceived as the centralization of labour, tools and raw materials in one place which is governed by a strict regime of diSCipline and timekeeping, arises from the intense competition among merchants from different nations: for immediately a particular branch of production begins to emerge in a particular nation, its survival is dependent upon the continued existence of foreign markets which could, at any moment, be ruined by fluctuations in labour and commodity prices (Marx, 1977b: 76). This means that without the patronage of the mercantile class, who were able to lobby for state protection of indigenous manufacturing, industrial capitalism could not have emerged; for while it is true that such patronage was born out of self-interest (more industrial manufacture means more need for more raw materials), the outcome of this relationship furnishes the conditions of a fundamental shift towards the domination of industrial capital. What is important here is that the historical tendency which Marx identifies, that is, the establishment of a world market that has come under the sway of a small group of nations in which trade and manufacture are most developed, has a radical impact upon the social fabric of every nation state. The spread of international competition and free trade, in other words, results in: The destruction as far as possible of ideology, religion, morality, etc. and where it could not do this, made them into a palpable lie. It produced a world history for the first time, in so far as it made all civilized nations and every individual member of them dependent for the satisfaction of their wants on the whole world, thus destroying the former natural exclusiveness of separate nations. (Ibid.: 78) 172 Marxism after Modernity The development of manufacturing as the dominant type of accumulation therefore is destructive of the separate forms of social obligation, religious worship, traditional authority and public morality which make up the substance of the nation state. For as the industrial basis of capitalism begins to establish itself in the most prosperous economies, so the pressure of the international market begins to transform fundamentally the social and political structures of all 'civilized nations'. This then is the point at which civil society, as the realm of selfseeking individualism, realizes its concept (Marx, 1977b: 57). We have seen that for Marx the fundamental problem with Hegel's Philosophy of Right is the fact that he attributes a spiritual significance to the division of humanity into the disparate, egoistical subjects which are ranged against each other in civil society. His argument is that while Hegel successfully identified the dislocating impact of trade and entrepreneurialism upon the structures of feudal authority, he failed to recognize that this unregulated individualism is without transcendental limits and that it is constantly exacerbated by the drive for profit which accompanies the development of the free market. Thus the bourgeois citizen and the independent wage labourer become abstract figures whose mutual dependence is conceived as the expression of the implicit and evolving unity of ethical life (Marx, 1977c: 27). For Marx however the Philosophy of Right's recourse to the old guild corporations as bulwarks against the 'penuriOUS rabble' of day labourers cannot possibly suffice as a solution to the contradictions of atomistic individualism. The essence of civil society as it develops under the influence of the M-C-M relation is the subsumption of every ethical tie ('ethical' in the sense of an obligation which is not entirely determined by the demands of competition) under the regime of capital: for the rights, duties and obligations which arise within the sphere of public legality are determined by the increasing power of capital to destroy the established forms of social obligation. This, of course, is not to say that Marx regarded the ancien regime with any sense of nostalgia; his perspective on the feudal order was clearly one of a thoroughgoing modernist who had no time for the 'stupefied seclusion' of the rural economy (Ibid.: 318). However, the establishment of civil society as the realm of bourgeois rights and freedoms marks the point at which capital begins to determine itself as an independent power which constantly transforms the social, economic and political conditions of its reproduction (Marx, 1977b: 58). Thus the communal ties which bind human beings together are constantly ruptured by the fetishistic pursuit of surplus value and the compulsion to secure a living wage in a fluctuating labour market. Marx and the Powers of Capital 173 For Marx the constitution of civil society as the realm of legal rights and freedoms is the counterpart of a phenomenological transformation of the commodity form. The simple circulation of commodities which precedes the M-C-M relation is embedded in the old feudal economy, and so the circulation of money functions primarily to secure those commodities which are necessary to a certain level of communal subsistence. With the emergence of bourgeois civil society however the relationship between material objects and their producers is inverted; for as the M-C-M relation becomes dominant, the exchange of commodities takes on the appearance of a social relationship which gathers together all of the disparate forms of productive activity. The logic of exchange which has come to dominate social relations, in other words, becomes fetishized; commodities take on a life of their own in which they 'appear as autonomous figures which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race' (Marx, 1990: 165-6). Thus, as soon as the products of organic labour become commodified, the spatial, temporal and institutional dimensions of society are radically transformed: the old feudal association of church and state is displaced by an expansive power of production (capital) whose appearance in the form of the commodity gives it a fetishistic power over every institution of ethical life. This is not to say that established traditions and institutions simply collapse under the pressure of capital accumulation, or that the abstract freedoms of bourgeois society are incapable of determining any sense of community or social cohesion. Rather the point is that Marx's account of the fetishism of commodities discloses a virtualizing relationship between the commodity form and the 'substance' of social relations; for he argues that even before the introduction of industrial technologies into the productive process, the emergence of the M-C-M relation as the dominant form of exchange, marks a fundamental alteration in the dynamics of representation, desire and authority. There is a sense in which the M-C-M relation has always been technological; for as we saw in chapter six the possibility of the commodity form presupposes the establishment of a certain level of technical development prior to the emergence of trade and manufacture as the dominant forms of capital accumulation. The feudal economy, in other words, stands upon metallurgical processes of manufacture (tools, agricultural implements, utensils, etc.) which have intensified the productive power of humanity and transformed its relationship to itself and to nature. Marx however maintains that it is not until the emergence of bourgeois civil society that the technological transformation of the labour process, and of the social and political institutions which support 174 Marxism after Modernity it, can really gather pace. As we have seen, the historical appearance of manufacture presupposes the establishment of trade and the mercantile economy, for it is not until the cities have established their independence from the feudal estates that it is possible for the manufacture of commodities to emerge as a viable form of capital accumulation. Initially the distinctive characteristic of manufacture is its reorganization of the division of labour: the means of subsistence are no longer produced by individual workers who perform all of the tasks necessary to complete a particular commodity; rather the workshop emerges as the place where labour is gathered together in a system of 'organic cooperation', and where each individual undertakes one or two repetitive operations in the production of a single type of commodity. It is this cooperative regime which provides the basis for the introduction of machine technology; for as the tasks performed by wage labourers become ever more simplified, so the way is opened for the introduction of machines which replicate their actions (Marx, 1990: 495). These machines make their first appearance as part of the cottage industries which precede the emergence of workshop manufacture, but it is not until mathematical and scientific principles are applied to this productive regime that they can emerge as a real productive force. The motive power for this kind of production is supplied initially by a variety of different sources: wind, water, draft animals, or the worker himself. Yet these sources belong to a smaller scale and slower temporality of production than the one which is implicit in the technological basis of manufacture. And so it is through the combined force of economic and technological necessity that they are replaced by the thermodynamic technology of the steam engine (Ibid.: 497). So, how is this technological transformation of the labour process related to the disembedding of social and political relationships which is already implicit in the M-C-M relation? In The Grundrisse Marx introduces a distinction between what he calls the 'formal' and the 'real' subsumption of labour (Marx, 1993: 690-5). The formal subsumption of labour, according to Marx, designates a system of organic cooperation in which the worker retains a certain level of autonomy; for while it is true that he or she is employed in minute and repetitive tasks, it is also the case that instruments of production are not yet sophisticated enough to appropriate all the traditional skills and knowledge from the labour process. Once industrial technologies are applied to the workshop however, the temporality of production is transformed. Marx argues that machines are the very embodiment of the fixed capital through which every enterprise must seek to speed up its production of commodities, and Marx and the Powers of Capital 175 that as such, the regime of industrial production is one which functions to absorb the knowledge, virtuosity and skill of the worker under the self-activating operations of the machine (Ibid.: 694). The real subsumption of labour therefore has an essential link with the mounting speed at which commodities are produced and exchanged; for it is the evacuation of all but the most basic knowledge and skill from the labour process which determines the exponential rise in productivity that is characteristic of industrial capitalism. For Marx, a number of important consequences follow from the increasing power of capital to absorb the differentiations of organic labour, consequences which draw together the earlier and later strands of his thought. First, the labour of the workforce is reduced to pure repetition; for as machines become increasingly sophisticated, so fewer workers are required to perform less demanding tasks in the automated production of commodities. Second, the social and political life of human beings, both bourgeois and proletarian, is reduced to the exercise of abstract rights which are the ideological counterpart of commodity production. Participation in the public sphere (civil society), in other words, is limited to transactions between the abstract categories (wage labour, capital, exchange value, profit) which have come to determine the social being of humanity. Third, capitalist enterprise becomes increasingly concerned with technological innovations which push up the rate at which surplus value is produced. This leads to a situation in which the 'moral' obsolescence of machinery, that is, the point at which its productivity falls below the general level established by competition among individual capitalists, occurs before it has produced enough commodities to pay for itself (Marx, 1992: 237-61). Finally, the over-representation of fixed capital (in the form of machinery) in the productive process leads to the migration of money into the 'fictitious' forms of shares, bonds, and equities; for as the difficulty of realizing a profit is compounded by the over-production and underconsumption of commodities, so the non-material forms of accumulation offered by the banks and the stock exchange become increasingly important to the turnover of capital (Marx, 1991: 525-42). According to Marx's analysis, this process of technological abstraction takes place within certain absolute limits which are determined by the labour theory of value. If we follow his account of the historical tendency of the capitalist mode of production, there is a sense in which the idea of community which is present in his work from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts onwards draws its force from the cooperative labour which first differentiates human beings from their pre-hominid 176 Marxism after Modernity ancestors. This labour, whose social expression Marx calls 'primitive communism', is what first makes human beings human; for it simultaneously provides for the basic needs of the community and establishes the possibility of forms of cooperation which develop the higher faculties of the species (language, reasoning, imagination, etc.) (Marx, 1977a: 72-4). What is important here is that, for Marx, the concept of socialized production is embedded in the origin of human society; and so the force it acquires in his account of the 'abstract' nature of capitalist relations derives from its status as a concretely integrated community of production, consumption and desire. The increasing level of alienation which takes place through the dominance of the M-C-M relation and the deployment of machinery into the labour process therefore is an effect which belongs specifically to the abstract relations of capital: for it is only in so far as the last vestiges of living labour have been subsumed under the operational powers of private accumulation, that the (revolutionary) demand for socialized production returns to the inverted world of the commodity form (Marx, 1990: 618). This however raises two fundamental questions. First, do all of the abstract forms through which capital expands (knowledge, credit, prosthetics, informatics) contribute to the alienation of productive humanity? And second, is it true that the intrinsic value which Marx attributes to human labour has remained immanent in the global-techno-scientific evolution of capitalism? It is these two questions which will occupy us in the following chapter.