Marx, Capital Ch. 6 The Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power

Questions 

1. Necessary requirements to satisfy the worker depends on the degree of civilization. Can we explain this (especially in relation to the picture in EPM)? (p. 275)

2. Relations of equality in the market and law (p. 271) and the critique of liberal equality (p. 280). Is equality the necessary condition of labor-capitalist relation or an ideological expression of the means of production?

3. What are the historical and especially the moral elements in the valuation of the worker as a commodity? (p. 275)

4. Is the mode of production a synonym for an economic formation of society? Are there different modes of production in succession or is there a co-existence of modes of production? (p. 273)

5. Why does natural history play no role in historical development of capitalist mode of production? (p. 273)

6. In relation to the "second essential condition," how is the compulsion to sell one's labour-power an essential condition for the existence of the market? (p. 272)

Discussion 

• Difference between "equality" as a legitimate condition or as obfuscation (Q2)
• It is first presented as a necessary condition to the capitalist mode of production: 
• "He and the owner of money meet in the market, and enter into relations with each other on a footing of equality as owners of commodities, with the sole difference that one is a buyer, the other a seller ; both are therefore equal in the eyes of the law." (p. 271)
• But the reference to equality later appears sarcastically: 
• "It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equaiity, Property and Bentham. Freedom, be cause both buyer and seller of a commodity, let us say of labour power, are determined only by their own free will. They contract as free persons, who are equal before the law. Their contract is the final result in which their joint will finds a common legal expression. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to his own advantage." (p. 280)
• Is the original formulation an assumption? Is there actually a condition of legal equality in Marx? 
• Some might criticize him for dispensing with legal/moral equality
• Operative illusion; it is actually producing something 
• But then legal equality is not a necessary condition? 
• BUT worker is not a slave; so they do freely sell their labor power 
• The worker has a right to take an employer to court for failure to provide wages
• The worker is seen as a partner in an exchange and can freely sell labour for the highest price/wage (Freedom)
• "He must constantly treat his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and he can do this only by placing it at the disposal of the buyer, i .e . handing it over to the buyer for him to consume, for a definite period of time, temporarily." (p. 271)
• Is it actually inequality or is it demonstrating a limitation to the legitimate concept of equality?
• Separate sphere of circulation from sphere of production (p. 271)
• Marx separates circulation (the market) from production such that he is not being ironic
• So, there actually is legal equality in the sphere of circulation but that excludes the underlying inequality in production

• Is the compulsion to sell labour-power an essential condition for the market? (Q6)
• Assumption that if you are a worker, you only have your labour-power to sell 
• Are the categories too neat? 
• Is there really a sharp distinction between those who sell their own labour-power and those who do not? 
• What about lumpenproletariat? 
• Marx agrees with the notion that markets exist before capitalism
• The wage form as a distinct component of the market
• The rise of the middle-class complicates this need to sell labour-power. Does the worker need to sell their labour-power? Or is it the fact of selling? 
• Why do this middle-class people still sell their labour-power? 
• More like "middle-income proletariat" 
• BUT what about the changing necessary requirements for the worker (p. 275/Q1)

• Moral element in the valuation of the worker (Q3) + Changing necessary requirement (Q1)
• So, middle-class works because there is this additional moral element at play 
• Social coercion 
• But is this what the moral element is on p. 275
• Only labour-power as a commodity has a historical and moral element; not the existence of other commodities
• If value is the social average necessary labour-time; labour-power demands more than just mere subsistence 
• Moral element is tied to habits/custom - drinking, eating, leisure, etc. 
• Description of the ethical (leniency in habit/custom)
• Historical (time) and moral (space/culture) differences in valuation 
• Ex. Air conditioning in Florida homes; not in Alaska

• But it can't just be subsistence for the criticism to work (?) 
• It can't just be about coercion; it's about extraction 
• The fundamental logic is not about coercion 
• Is labour part of our species-being? - if so, that explains why the middle-class continues to work
• Greater freedom in ability to sell labour; more contingency than the critic thinks
• Is "alienation" the same concept as in the EPM of 1844?

• What about the lack of the role of natural history in historical development? (Q5)
• "One thing, however, is cl ear : nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history, It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whol e series of older formations of social production" (p. 273)
• More Darwinian and less Hegelian (?) 
• Not an unfolding of biological necessity, but more anthropological 
• Maybe history goes all the way down 
• But maybe the Darwinian framework is better than dialectics
• More in-line with English political economy than German idealism
• Place of naturalism in Marx's philosophy

• Commodity production before capitalist mode of production (Q4)
• "The production and circulation of commodities can still take place even though the great mass of the objects produced are intended for the immediate requirements of their producers, and are not turned into commodities, so that the process of social production is as yet by no means dominated in its length and breadth by exchange-value." (p. 273)
• So is there overlap between modes of production? 
• Some commodities within an otherwise non-capitalist society; capitalism overtakes other kinds of relations - feudal/serf relations remade into capitalist relations
• Ex. Sharecroppers or chattel slavery's relation to capitalism
• Ex. Prison labour
• World-systems critique: Capitalist systems require non-capitalist periphery
• "The appearance of products as commodities requires a level of development of the division of labour within society such that the separation of use-value from exchange;. value, a separation which first begins with barter, has already been completed. But such a degree of development is common to many economic formations of society with the most diverse historical characteristics." (p. 273)