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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Capitalist production
Message-ID: <687@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Mar-85 10:04:12 EST
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.687
Posted: Fri Mar 15 10:04:12 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 04:23:48 EST
References: <370@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 87

> From JoSH:
> > Case:  My neighbor makes gears by hand, one every two days.  He
> > makes enough for a decent living and some of the amenities (beer,
> > tv?).  I do the same but only 3 days a week--I barely make enough
> > to survive.  The other days I spend on the gear-making machine I'm
> > building.  It's purely my choice--I could live as well as my neighbor
> > if I liked.  Finally the machine is finished.  With it, I, or my
> > neighbor, alone, can make ten times the gears that both of us could
> > make before.  I make a deal with him:  He can use the machine, and
> > not working as hard as before, take half the money (making more than
> > before); I, on my part, will do absolutely nothing, and collect the
> > other half as profit.  Now: is this exploitation?
> 
> The deal you describe is not capitalist production.  In capitalist
> production, the deal is:  "Hey you.  If you'll work in my factory and
> do as I tell you, at the end of the week I'll pay you X dollars per
> hour in wages."  The capitalist appropriates the resulting product
> and sells it, generally for a profit.  The worker accepts the deal
> because he has no other way to make a living than to sell his
> capacity for labor to one or another owner of the means of
> production.  The crucial point is that one section of the population
> controls the means of production and another section does not.  

     First of all, your last sentence mystifies me.  Is a factory which
is owned by many shareholders, many of them also workers not an example
of capitalism?  You seem to imply that capitalists and workers must be
disjoint sets.  Secondly, you say that the worker accepts the deal because
he has not other way to make a living than to sell his labor to a capitalist.
Why can't he use his savings to buy the means to produce something and
become a capitalist?  
    You claim that the deal described above is not capitalist production.
Well, accepting *your* rather narrow definition above, what if we change
the gear-making deal to meet your definition?  I will pay my neighbor
X dollars/hour for making gears, while I go relax in the sun.  I'll make
X dollars/hour profit, as long as I keep my gear-making machine in good
repair, and we'll both be making several times as much as we were making
gears by hand.  O.K.?  Now, you may come along and tell me that I'm not
entitled to X dollars/hour for mere ownership of the gear making machine,
but I'll remember the work I put into making it, and the lowered standard
of living I suffered while working on it, and just tell you to piss off.
    Just in case you point out that in this example, I *made* the gear
making machine, while a true capitalist only buys it, I'll offer an
alternative scenario:  I work extra hours, making gears, don't spend
more of my income than I need to survive, saving the rest until one day
I've saved enough to place my order at the local Acme gear-making machine
company.
> capitalist doesn't *provide* the machines and factories, he just
> *controls* them.  
   Huh?  Unless you're playing fast and loose with definitions, you must
mean that paying someone to produce the machines isn't the same as providing
them.  Why not?  Do you think that in the scenario above, where I saved up
to buy a gear-making machine, I haven't actually *provided* a gear-making
machine?  Or do you mean that I'm not a capitalist if I actually *worked*
to get the money to pay for the machine?
    Maybe that *is* what he means.  Look at this:
> (The capitalist qua
> capitalist is one who *owns* the means of production -- insofar as he
> works (invents, builds, whatever) he's not a capitalist.)  
    I'm really not sure I understand this definition.  Do you mean that
I wasn't a capitalist while I was saving up for my gear-making machine,
and became one when I got it?  I guess I'll just have to remain puzzled
until I see Richard's response to this.  *I* haven't even managed to
figure out his definition of capitalism yet.
> capital productive is to attribute a human quality to something that
> is dead, an animate quality to something inanimate (Marx termed it
> "fetishism").  It is PEOPLE who do things:  who build machines, who
> invent machines, who discover scientific knowledge, who, in short,
> create new wealth, and who are therefore productive.  Capitalism,
> however, cannot tolerate this truth, since it undermines the
> rationale for profit-making.  
> 
> To clarify one point:  "Capital" for Marx does not mean the machines,
> etc., per se; they are no more intrinsically capital than gold and
> silver are intrinsically money.  Capital for Marx is a social
> relation in which the means of production are monopolized by one
> class and counterposed to another class which must sell its labor
> power to the other class to live.  So capital is, for Marx, the
> relationship of ownership of the means of production which gives
> title to a profit.  
> 
> Richard Carnes

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-- 
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
    "I am what I am, and that's all that I am."-Popeye the sailor man.