Questions:
Given that Marx helps himself to interviews, reports, etc., (i.e. seems to use an archival/historical method) how can we understand what he means by “abstraction?”
(p377): M seems to conceptualize slave labor as capital, so is there a way to conceptualize slave labor as both labor and capital?
(p381): What is the referent of society here such that there can be a distinction between society and capital?
Why is this put in terms of the number of working hours instead of wage? Empirical question: were wages not paid hourly at the time, such that this would not have been thought about by Marx? Is this better read as an actual account or a historical exemplar of how surplus value is extracted; does analysis still hold for surplus extraction today?
(375, 390): What does Marx mean by “moral” and “morality” in these chapters?
On the self-valorization of capital/ attempt to extend the working day, yet attempt to keep the day as normal as possible to replenish the worker. Is Marx claiming, with this tension, that there is an irrationality to capitalism?
Why is Marx going into this history of labor law? What does it add to his account?
Discussion:
[Q7] Also a question about Marx’s method. Could be moving, as Marx suggests elsewhere, a movement from the abstract to the concrete.
So, what do we make of the transition between the two, then?
The passing of laws surrounding working days perhaps points to the way in which struggle is necessary for the overcoming of capital.
If this is supposed to be an account of conflict internal to capitalism, then, how do we move from this internal conflict to a disruption of the entire system?
A difference in how we can read Marx: either as overcoming capitalism is inevitable, or reading him as not holding this as an inevitability (contingent on working class organization).
Still, Marx never seems to transcend this legal conflict in his analysis.
Similar to how increased wages may improve something to an extent, but the logic remains intact.
C.p. reformist projects
And actually, increasing a wage can benefit capital through the increased replenishment of the working class. (p. 375 “foolishness!”)
[Q6] On page 377, “It would seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in the direction of a normal working day.”
Marx points out that an excess population in reserve as slave labor, then there is less impetus to improve the life of a laborer.
Question emerges about the purpose of this section. Is Marx making a claim about class antagonism.
Perhaps you cannot conceptualize surplus value without thinking the working day, and vice versa.
Is Marx, then, trying to highlight the inevitability of class antagonism under capitalism, or exploitation from which antagonism develops?
By turning to the laws, it’s clear that legal protections aren’t generated out of the benevolence of legality, but are produced through class antagonisms.
Still unclear about what Marx is trying to establish…
[Q4]: Moves us to the question about why the unit of measurement is the working day as opposed to the wage or salary?
Can’t it be both? That Marx is equating these measures, or translating them such that the working day as measured in hours, labor power of the work, are all commensurate in the struggle between the wage earner and the capitalist, which stabilizes.
Given that the technique of Marx’s analysis has changed, and the working day looks fundamentally different today, is Marx trying to ground his analysis of exploitation in the empirical and historical technique? Or is he trying to suggest that exploitation persists regardless of the technique?
As GEs, we’re not exactly coal miners. So what about Marx’s account could contemporary examples of labor fit into? Is it the account of class antagonism? What are the qualities of the “stuff” that is immutable? Technology is different, so are finances, so what allows us to see what the theoretical “core” is that discloses contemporary exploitation?
Immutable laws that Marx seems to be trying to explain are “class antagonism” and “extraction of surplus value”
Is this capitalism or is this something worse? By what criterion would we suggest that this is still capitalism?
But what about situations where class antagonism persists, but there isn’t extraction of surplus value?
Clearly, a lot of these conditions (blood of children) have been ameliorated, so on what does the critique rely on today?
Okay, so if we still want to say that capitalism persists in its amoral mode, then there must be something that makes the present a capitalist one even if we don’t have the same empirical atrocities.
