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Re: What now?
Alan Ginsberg
Today's New York Times has a very lengthy opinion piece on the issue raised by Gary and commented on by others. It includes comments from a number of historians of various political views, including two leftists, Eric Foner and Greg Gandin. I think it's worth looking at for the variety of perspectives and opinions.
I think Grandin's opinion is worthy of consideration: Over the short term. Greg Grandin, a professor of history at Yale, sees the Trump challenge petering out, but he argues that the challenge represents a long-term threat to American governance:
A few decades from now, Grandin wrote in his email, “Trump will be seen as significant, but really just a minor blip compared to the crisis that lay ahead.”
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Re: France: racist offensive ramps up against Muslims (John Mullen)
RKOB
Congratulations, comrades of the GLW! This is a very good
article, contrary to the Islamophobic nonsense which has been
spread by some others "left-wing" groups!
Am 10.11.2020 um 22:38 schrieb Chris
Slee:
-- Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG (Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net) www.rkob.net aktiv@... Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314
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Futurism podcast
jenorem
Iva GlisicMay 21, 2020 The Futurist FilesAvant-Garde, Politics, and Ideology in Russia, 1905–1930Northern Illinois University Press 2018 Futurism was Russia's first avant-garde movement.
Gatecrashing the Russian public sphere in the early twentieth century,
the movement called for the destruction of everything old, so that the
past could not hinder the creation of a new, modern society. Over the
next two decades, the protagonists of Russian Futurism pursued their
goal of modernizing human experience through radical art. The success of
this mission has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Critics
have often characterized Russian Futurism as an expression of utopian
daydreaming by young artists who were unrealistic in their visions of
Soviet society and naïve in their comprehension of the Bolshevik
political agenda.
In The Futurist Files: Avant-Garde, Politics, and Ideology in Russia, 1905–1930 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Iva Glisic challenges this view, demonstrating that Futurism took a calculated and
systematic approach to its contemporary socio-political reality. This
approach ultimately allowed Russia's Futurists to devise a unique
artistic practice that would later become an integral element of the
distinctly Soviet cultural paradigm. Drawing upon a unique combination
of archival materials and employing a theoretical framework inspired by
the works of philosophers such as Lewis Mumford, Karl Mannheim, Ernst
Bloch, Fred Polak, and Slavoj Žižek, The Futurist Files presents
Futurists not as blinded idealists, but rather as active and judicious
participants in the larger project of building a modern Soviet
consciousness. This fascinating study ultimately stands as a reminder
that while radical ideas are often dismissed as utopian, and impossible,
they did―and can―have a critical role in driving social change. It will
be of interest to art historians, cultural historians, and scholars and
students of Russian history. Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
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Re: How Europe Under-developed Africa - Walter Rodney's classic
I agree about how great this book is.It was our book of the month a while back in the PSL.
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Re: What now?
https://rall.com/2020/11/09/both-parties-lost-the-election-now-the-real-trouble-begins
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Re: Green vote?
Mark Lause
I don't think anyone should draw general conclusions about the potential for third party politics in the U.S. based on the Green Party, which regrettably allowed state and local autonomy to decide not to build a party. the point here, though, is not an electoral presence so much as the need for a genuine movement party.
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Re: Green vote?
There are no liberal Democrats any more--only smug closet Karens and Reaganites in sheep's clothing. AOC is a liberal; Bernie Sanders is a liberal. They are being forced out of the party. The rest of the Democratic Party are nonhuman filth. Decent people engage with this shite by scraping it off their bootsoles. The number of liberals has been shrinking in the Democratic Party long before Bernie's run in 2016. It likely goes back to Clinton-Gore,and their New Democrat reset of the party. Most of us here can recall what happened to Dennis Kucinich ,another more liberal candidate ,in 2004 and 2008. The question we ought to be asking ourselves, is how do we break the cycle of fear among voters ,that leads to lesser evil voting ,that only works to shift American politics further to the right? Breaking this cycle is the first step in getting large numbers of voters to leave the Democratic Party. Without that, nothing can happen. We are in desperate need of a complete restructuring, and modernization, of the electoral system in this country. The whole thing needs to be pulled up, root and all. I suppose we could keep either one of the two existing parties ,if we were to keep a major party of the right ,and keep capitalism in place. European countries show us we can keep capitalism in place ,and have a more equitable system, as much as we would all like to see capitalism go the way of the Roman Empire, which I don't see happening any time soon. I don't know what the solution is. It might be to form some sort of coalition of left-leaning smaller parties ,both new and existing ones, spanning the spectrum of left liberal/social democrat ,to full blown Marxist-Leninist ,and have all of us get behind single candidates all over the country. I think that might be one of the solutions Lenin might suggest ,were he around today. I know this would be a big accomplishment in and of itself, considering all the sectarian differences that exist. It might not be able to be done.
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on Trump and U.S. capitalist politics
Dayne Goodwin
Donald Trump Was a Monster Forged by the American Free Market by Jedediah Britton-Purdy, Jacobin, Nov. 8 https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/donald-trump-us-free-market-democracy . . . But Trump was also, and in a somewhat more direct sense, the first (late) capitalist president — not the first to celebrate that system, of course, but the first whose claim to the office was based on a story about his power to make money from money, not on any record of political, military, or other public service. Although he was not the first entertainer-president — Ronald Reagan preceded him, and the last century has generally favored presidential candidates who mastered the latest medium — he is the first to have thrived in a new era of fragmented media and splintered publics, in which success comes from a passionate niche, often defined more by an imagined common enemy. Trump is the president of the Twitter–Fox–MSNBC era, when resentment is the political emotion par excellence and everyone feels they are in a potential endangered minority. He was, relatedly, the first nihilist president. His campaign and presidency made sense only on the basis of a collapse of the difference between politics and marketing — and marketing of the cheapest, most short-term kind, never more than one step ahead of the tax police (if only we had those!) or the repo man. This line had been badly blurred and crossed over forever, but with Trump, governing dissolved into a mere vehicle for the latest pitch. It was the point where a long process of erosion tipped over into a more lycanthropy-like transformation. ‘Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,’ wrote the poet of democracy, and that remains the idea. This was the manner of Trump’s business practice before it was a political practice. The sense in which he was the first capitalist president was simply the other side of the same coin as his political nihilism. An unerring instinct for credulous marks and pots of money available for organized looting led him eventually from branded steaks and shady real estate investors to the Republican primaries and the United States Treasury, along with the many incidental business opportunities of the presidency, particularly for a man with a large and enterprising family. The Marketplace and the Ballot Box These observations add up to a basic point about the life of a capitalist democracy like the United States. For any stability and legitimacy, that regime relies on a division of spheres. On the one hand, there is the marketplace, where people count according to their ability to generate returns on investment, and where more or less any legally tolerated way of generating returns is fair game — cutting labor costs, tanking pension obligations, offshoring, breaking an inconvenient union, or deluding people that your product has all sorts of magical benefits. It is a realm of sanctioned selfishness, where wealth amounts to authority and where the most basic and far-reaching inequalities are taken for granted. On the other hand, there is the sphere of citizenship, where we decide together about the “direction of the country” and where the law is supposed to establish a basic equality of treatment and expectation. “Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” wrote the poet of democracy, and that remains the idea. But the spheres cannot stay separated. The charisma of wealth doesn’t recede in politics. The habits of inequality, dependence, and deference don’t go away when we cross the line from an unequal economy to a notional civic equality. And, above all, the relentless striving to find a new angle for profit doesn’t stop at the limits of the law and the state. . . .
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Re: Green vote?
A few brief comments in regards to what Jim Brash says here. I have seen some numbers that suggest that if the votes the Libertarian Party had gotten were added to the totals Trump received ,it would have pushed Trump over the line to victory. I have not see this discussed much. If this is the case, you could well see some Republican Party actions against the LP in 2024.
Jim is making the same point I had made ,that no Green has ever been elected to a governorship ,or to a seat in Congress ,the traditional stepping stones to the presidency. I would say this would be a good measure of success for any third party. I was part of the national GP Disability Caucus for several years. We never accomplished much. I would agree 2000 was definitely the high water mark for the GP. Nader was probably the best candidate we ever had. It was the year I joined the party. I don't beleve the GP ever really recovered from what happened in the wake of Bush v Gore. I was a Green until 2017 ,and in that time, I don't recall ever meeting a single union member. In my one PSL branch ,about 60-75 people, we have two union teachers ,a union nurse, and the head of a carpenters' local. I am not surprised Biden won ,any Democrat running against Trump would have won ,but 2020 saw perhaps the most uninspiring group of candidates offered to voters in modern history.ever. The fact the margin of victory was so slim sort of speaks to this.
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Re: The Next Donald Trump (per Sunkara)
Dayne Goodwin
America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent Trump was ineffective and easily beaten. A future strongman won’t be. Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic, Nov. 6 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trump-proved-authoritarians-can-get-elected-america/617023/ . . . "I suspect that the Republican leadership is sanguine, if not happy,
about Trump’s loss. It’s striking how quickly Fox News called Arizona
for Biden, and how many Republican leaders have condemned
the president’s rage-tweeting and attempts to stop the count. They know
that Trump is done, and they seem fine with it. For them, what’s not to
like? The Supreme Court is solidly in their corner; they will likely
retain control of the Senate; House Republicans won more seats than they
were projected to; and they are looking at significant gains in state Houses
as well, giving them control over redistricting for the next decade.
Even better for their long-term project, they have diversified their own
coalition, gaining more women candidates and more support from nonwhite
voters." . . . "The situation is a perfect setup, in other words, for a talented politician to run on Trumpism in 2024..." . . . "Make no mistake: The attempt to harness Trumpism—without Trump, but with
calculated, refined, and smarter political talent—is coming. And it
won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president. He will
not be so clumsy or vulnerable. He will get into office less by luck
than by skill. Perhaps it will be Senator Josh Hawley, who is writing a book
against Big Tech because he knows that will be the next chapter in the
culture wars, with social-media companies joining “fake news” as the
enemy. Perhaps it will be Senator Tom Cotton, running as a law-and-order
leader with a populist bent. Maybe it will be another media figure:
Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan, both men with talent and followings.
Perhaps it will be another Sarah Palin—she was a prototype—with the
charisma and appeal but without the baggage and the need for a
presidential candidate to pluck her out of the blue. Perhaps someone
like the QAnon-supporting Representative-elect Lauren Boebert of
Colorado, who first beat the traditional Republican representative in the primary and then ran her race with guns blazing, mask off,
and won against the Democratic candidate, a retired professor who
avoided campaigning in person. Indeed, a self-made charismatic person
coming out of nowhere probably has a better chance than many
establishment figures in the party." . . . [i've been sharing this article elsewhere, thought i'd picked it up on marxmail, but quick check indicates it had not yet been here, Dayne] On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 10:26 AM <fkalosar101@...> wrote: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/10/biden-establishment-democrat-next-donald-trump/ On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 1:47 PM Ken Hiebert <knhiebert@...> wrote:
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Re: Green vote?
Michael Meeropol
In response to ROger --- fascism is too horrible to use to "accelerate" the move towards revolution --- the German Communist Party with their slogan "After Hitler, Us!" didn't get what they hoped ....instead they got wiped out in concentration camps ....
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Re: Trump can issue pardons
Michael Meeropol
Issuing pardons to Trump will be a guarantee of a complete implosion of the Democratic coalition --- Trump pardoning all members of his family and some "friends" is likely --- MAYBE he'll resign and have Pence pardon him BUT Pence could of course double-cross him --- Cuomo and Biden --- I seriously doubt it ....Biden wants to govern with a mandate ---
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Postal worker admits fabricating allegations of ballot tampering, officials say
Louis Proyect
Washington Post, Nov. 10, 2020 A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have
been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of
widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service
investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to
three people briefed on the investigation and a statement from a
House congressional committee.
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H-Net Review [H-Africa]: Bondarenko on Peša, 'Roads through Mwinilunga: A History of Social Change in Northwest Zambia'
Andrew Stewart
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...> Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 5:14 PM Subject: H-Net Review [H-Africa]: Bondarenko on Peša, 'Roads through Mwinilunga: A History of Social Change in Northwest Zambia' To: <h-review@...> Cc: H-Net Staff <revhelp@...> Iva Peša. Roads through Mwinilunga: A History of Social Change in Northwest Zambia. Afrika-Studiecentrum Series. Leiden Brill, 2019. Illustrations. 444 pp. $59.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-90-04-40896-8; $59.00 (paper), ISBN 978-90-04-40790-9. Reviewed by Dmitri M. Bondarenko (Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) Published on H-Africa (November, 2020) Commissioned by David D. Hurlbut Iva Peša's project is ambitious, as she tries to trace the history of social change, or more accurately oscillations between continuity and change, in Mwinilunga District in northwest Zambia between the 1750s and 1970s. This demands a study of local societies in three consequent historical periods: precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. At the same time, Peša does not intend to study equally changes in every subsystem of the local societies. For her analysis, she has selected sociocultural subsystems and phenomena ("spheres of social change," as she calls them [p. 38]), transformations she considers to be the most important for describing and discussing general directions and trends of social change in northwest Zambia throughout time. Peša claims to study four spheres of social change: production, mobility, consumption, and social relationship. However, it appears that she is actually studying the historical dynamics of two complex and multifaceted factors of social change in Mwinilunga in the most detail. The first is political economy--the economic subsystem from production to distribution and exchange to consumption (discussed mainly in chapters 2 and 4). The second is patterns of immobility (village life) and mobility (cross-border trade and labor migration) addressed in chapters 3 and 5, respectively. Other subsystems are involved in Peša's analysis to the degree they are inseparable from these two factors. In particular, Peša studies the role of authentic and colonial and postcolonial political institutions in social change at both the village and regional levels (in chapters 2 and 5). Peša's research serves as convincing proof of the nonlinear, nondirectional, and evolutionary (continuous) rather than revolutionary (intermittent) nature of the historical process, even under such seemingly punctuated developments as transitions from precolonialism to colonialism and from colonialism to postcolonialism. It is an extremely valuable conclusion that is very well grounded by Peša both in theory and in her analysis of the evidence. Her monograph confirms the argument that "the interplay of evolving institutions explains the non-linear, alternative-pathways character of social evolution"--an idea that has become powerful in both history and anthropology.[1] Proving the continuous nature of social change in Mwinilunga, Peša masterfully shows that authentic social relationships were flexible and susceptible enough in northwest Zambia to accommodate serious innovations in different spheres without the destruction of the typical African sociocultural community. The indestructibility of a community based on kinship affiliation and village as a settlement pattern was the result of the evolutionary course of processes of social change, and Peša is completely right articulating and defending this position. The community's indestructibility is also what allows cultures in Mwinilunga and elsewhere across the continent to keep their distinctive African identities under external sociocultural pressures during the precolonial and especially colonial and postcolonial periods. The principle of communality as the foundation of Africa's sociocultural tradition is not reducible to the temporal and spatial universality of the institution of community (in this or that form) in sub-Saharan Africa. As communal sociopolitical norms and relations, consciousness, and behavioral patterns spread beyond community as social institution, the principle of communality plays a crucial role at all levels of societal complexity and in a great variety of institutions, including, though in modified or sometimes even corrupted form, sociologically supra- and non-communal formations, such as modern African cities and African diaspora networks.[2] Peša's book promises to become a much welcome contribution not only to Zambian studies but also to fields beyond. The evidence of social change in northwest Zambia between the mid-eighteenth and late twentieth centuries--from the precolonial to colonial to postcolonial period--exemplifies how the interaction between and intricate interlacing of local and Western and pre-industrial and industrial institutions could give dynamism to a colonial and then postcolonial societal system.[3] An exceptionally detailed and nuanced description of social change in concrete cultures in changing historical situations, _Roads through Mwinilunga _is a significant text for theorists in the social sciences who study general trends of institutional transformations.[4] In short, Peša's book will no doubt find many grateful readers. Notes [1]. Stephen A. Kowalewski and Jennifer Birch, "How Do People Get Big Things Done?," in _The Evolution of Social Institutions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives_, ed. Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Stephen A. Kowalewski, and David B. Small (Cham: Springer, 2020), 30. See also, for example, Christopher S. Beekman and William W. Baden, eds., _Nonlinear Models for Archaeology and Anthropology_ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); and Dmitri M. Bondarenko and Ken Baskin, "Big History, Complexity Theory, and Life in a Non-Linear World," in _From Big Bang to Galactic Civilizations: A Big History Anthology_, ed. Barry Rodrigue, Leonid Grinin, and Andrey Korotayev, vol. 3, _The Ways That Big History Works: Cosmos, Life, Society and Our Future_ (Delhi: Primus Books, 2017), 183-96. [2]. Dmitri M. Bondarenko, "Toward a Philosophy of African History: Communality as a Foundation of Africa's Socio-Cultural Tradition," in _Knight from Komárov: To Petr Skalník for His 70th Birthday_, ed. Adam Bedřich and Tomáš Retka (Prague: AntropoWeb, 2015), 61-80. [3]. See, for example, Georges Balandier, _Sens et puissance: Les dynamiques sociales_ (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004); Ato Kwamena Onoma, _The Politics of Property Rights Institutions in Africa_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jürgen Osterhammel, _Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview_ (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2010); Crawford Young, _The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960-2010_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012); Chrisitan K. Højbjerg, Jacqueline Knörr, and Anita Schroven, _The Interaction of Global and Local Models of Governance: New Configurations of Power in Upper Guinea Coast Societies_ (Halle/Saale: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 2013); Ørnulf Gulbrandsen, _The State and the Social: State Formation in Botswana and Its Precolonial and Colonial Genealogies_ (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014); Mahmood Mamdani, _Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); and Amy Niang, _The Postcolonial African State in Transition: Stateness and Modes of Sovereignty_ (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). [4]. See, for example, John Bryan Davis and Asimina Christoforou, eds., _The Economics of Social Institutions _(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013); Anita Konzelmann Ziv and Hans Bernhard Schmid, eds., _Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology_ (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014); and Bondarenko, Kowalewski, and Small, eds., _Evolution of Social Institutions_. Citation: Dmitri M. Bondarenko. Review of Peša, Iva, _Roads through Mwinilunga: A History of Social Change in Northwest Zambia_. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. November, 2020. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55890 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. -- Best regards, Andrew Stewart
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The Next Donald Trump (per Sunkara)
Ken Hiebert
Ryan, this appeared eleven messages before mine.
ken h https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/10/biden-establishment-democrat-next-donald-trump
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Re: Trump can issue pardons
Jim Farmelant
Trump will actually need two pardons. He will need a pardon from President-Elect Biden to protect him from criminal charges at the Federal level, like charges of tax fraud. But he will also need a pardon from Governor Cuomo too because in New York there have been multiple criminal investigations going on concerning Trump's business activities. I fully expect to see Trump cutting some sort of a deal with Biden and Cuomo so he gets those two pardons.
Right now, Trump can make life miserable for Biden to at least January. He has already ordered White House staff and officials to refuse cooperation with Bideb's transition team. Trump can continue to issue all kinds of crazy executive orders. He can pardon all of his crooked friends. He can stir up his militia supporters like the Proud Boys into engaging acts of violence. And I am sure that he has a few other cards to play as well. Biden and Cumo might well decide to grant Trump pardons to ensure a smooth transfer of power. Jim Farmelant http://www.linkedin.com/in/jim http://independent.academia.ed http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
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Re: The Next Donald Trump (per Sunkara)
Ken, is this from your Facebook? Was there a link to the Sunkara article you’re commenting on?
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
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Re: Green vote?
I agree, Richard Modiano ,I am ignoring every one of my liberal friends on social media,the question is,for how long ? Some have woken up to how bad Obama was, but some maybe never will.
Some argue the situation is different than it was in 2008-2009 , because of COVID-19 ,and all it has caused. I don't know if we on the left should have been playing the accelerationist game, and have been supporting Trump and the Republicans all along. It's something I have a real dilemma about.
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France: racist offensive ramps up against Muslims (John Mullen)
Chris Slee
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Re: On working-class versus ‘middle-class’-Part 1
John A Imani
On working-class versus ‘middle-class’ Part 2: What constitutes a class?
“The first question to be answered is this: What constitutes a class?...
“At first glance — the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property...[Here the manuscript breaks off.]” i (1) “Here the manuscript breaks off…” with the last words of Marx in his greatest achievement.
In capitalism, there are four major classes, three working classes and two capitalist classes (sic).ii (2) Below is a discussion so as to bring to the fore an expansive proposition, a general theory, that the socioeconomic categories of class are to be defined and differentiated by the elements of value of the product that each class of people produces and/or brings to market.
Definition of Value-In capitalism the value of a commodity u, i.e. what the commodity is worth, is here designated as being equal to the total labors l*iii (3) that are ‘socially necessary’iv (4) for its production. In capitalism such labors are of three distinct natures, all of which are measurable with the same vector which is the amount # of Abstract Human Labor-time (AHL-t)v (5), which makes these labors commensurable, i.e. u = l*vi (6) = #AHL-t
Value then will be held to be a composite of three very different forms of labor L*. There are two, which are purchased by the capitalist with her money capital, M = Mc + Mv, as inputs to her planned production. First, there is Mc, ‘dead labor’, also called means of production or constant capitalvii (7) and will be denoted as c that were produced in a previous cycle(s) of production.viii(8)
The second portion, MV, of the capitalist’s money capital is her disbursement of the wage v tendered for the purchase of labor-power or ‘living labor’ or variable capital v. Its contribution to product value is the total wages of the labor-powers v ix (9) ‘socially necessary’, as labor, to finish the product in the last cycle of work performed upon the constant capital inputs before the product is ready for market.
The third kind of labor is not purchased by the capitalist but the value added by this labor flows to him gratis. This is surplus-labor or surplus-product or surplus-value s which accrues to the capitalist by virtue of the provisions of the ‘wage-bargain’ that consists of this: the capitalist owns the means of production, the laborer does not. In order for the latter to be allowed to use such means so as to add the value of her wage she must work past the amount of time that it takes to recreate the value of that wage v through the expenditure of her labor-power in action as labor l. Such labor, in capitalism is thus divided into the wage and the surplus-value, i.e. l = v + s. Conversely, v = (l - s)
There are other possible elements of product value: rent r and interest i. These will be shown to be but derivatives of the industrial (and agri-, mineral- and marine-industrial) capitalist’s surplus-value.
The Elements of Value in the Products of the Several Classes
1. Class Schematics: The Working Classes
(JAI: Because of difficulties in formatting this document in a manner which would survive posting on Marxmail I have to present the below descriptions of the several classes in a manner most inelegant. A better formatted pdf is available upon request.)
Class a. Independent Worker b. Wage-worker c. Petit-bourgeois
Example a. Gardener (with no hired help) b. Wage-worker gardener c. Gardener (with hired help)
Elements of Product Value a. c + l b. v = (l - s) c. c + l + v +s
The Independent Worker owns her own means of production c and therefore does not have to share the value added by her labor l. The value of her product equals c + l.x (10)
Contrariwise, the Wage-worker does not own her means of production c and in order to obtain these—so as to produce the value of her wage v—has to accede to the owning capitalist a portion s of such value-added by her labor l, i.e. v = l – s.xi (11)
The Petit-bourgeois owns enough means of production c to but also means sufficient to hire a waged-worker v. The value of her product is therefore c + l + v + s as her product’s value consists of the used-up means of production c; plus the value added by her own labor l (which because of her ownership of the means of production she does not have to share this with anyone); plus the value of her worker(s) wage v; plus the surplus-value added s by the her worker(s)’ labor l lasting longer than what is necessary to reproduce the value of their wages. The important thing here is that the owner labors l (adds value) alongside her workers who add the value of their labor l but only net their wage v = l – s.xii (12)
2. Class Schematics: The Capitalist Classes
Class a. Petit-bourgeois b. Bourgeois Capitalist 1 c. Bourgeois Capitalist 2 d. Bourgeois Capitalist 3
Example a. Gardener (with hired help) b. Industrial ‘Entrepreneur’ c. Landowner d. Usurer
Elements of Product Value a. c + l + v +s b. c + v + s c. r d. i
The Petit-bourgeois both as worker and as capitalist is described above. The value of her product is c + l + v +s.
The Bourgeois Capitalist 1 is implicitly delineated by the above description of the wage worker. Her product’s value is c + v + s.
The products of Bourgeois Capitalists 2 and 3 may or may not enter into BC1’s product’s value as the BC1 may own the land and/or buildings she operates on and/or in; and may be in personal possession of the funds necessary to undertake production and thus this BC1’s has no element of rent nor interest.xiii (13)
If not, then the product of the Bourgeois Capitalist 2 is property (land and/or buildings), the ownership of which entitles her to ground-rent r. All rents are paid by the capitalists out of the surplus-value extorted from her workforce.
The Bourgeois Capitalist 3 is similarly paid out of surplus-value save that, in this case, her product is money-capital lent at interest i.
These complete the several classes of workers and capitalists in capitalist production.
(Note: There are many citations from Marx and others to substantiate these descriptions of classes as presented here. (Available upon request.) For brevity, save one, only one was used in the endnotes. Where there are page numbers given these refer to the 1967 International Publishers’ paperbacks.)
i(1) “Capital Volume 3.” Chapter LII. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch52.htm ii (2) Obviously, one class must be both a working class as well as a capitalist class. iii(3) l* designates the total labors of the three forms of labor: ‘dead’ labor which is the consumed constant capital k, the ‘living’ labor v and the surplus labor s (see just below in text.). iv(4) ‘Socially necessary labor’ means the average hours of labors required to make a specific product with the average skilled laborer working with the average intensity of such work and using means of production and technology that are of average quality. v(5) Abstract Human Labor-time (AHL-t) here is defined as the value-adding ability of the average worker per unit of time under average conditions of production including the levels of skill, technology and intensity of labor. vi (6) As u = l* is but tautology, u, the value of a product is as equal to the total labors l* used up to produce the commodity. vii(7) Called ‘constant’ because the value that its usage, as a factor of production, adds to the commodity being produced, is equal to, on average, the value of itself, i.e. it can not add anything more than its own worth to the worth of the commodity as, obviously, if it could then it would have commanded a higher price at market. viii(8). “Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from the labour-process, yet other use values, products of previous labour, enter into it as a means of production. The same use-value is both the product of a previous process, and a means of production in a later process…” Marx. “Capital. Vol 1.” Chap VII. ix(9) Labor-power is the worker’s ability to work. The difference between labor-power and labor is the same as that between a sewing machine and using it to sew. You pay for the machine (its ability to do work, i.e. like labor-power) but you pay nothing more to use it (like the workers’ labor). There is much folderol and ado about the difference between labor-power and labor but the great Edward G Robinson said it best: “The sitting around on the set is awful. But I always figure that's what they pay me for. The acting I do for free.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_G._Robinson x(10) “In that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.” Adam Smith. “Wealth of Nations.” https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch08.htm xi(11) “...the labourer, on quitting the process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but devoid of all means of making that wealth his own.” Vol 1.” Chapter XXIII. (p570.) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm
“We shall assume that he is a mere wage-labourer, even one of the better paid, for all the difference it makes. Whatever his pay, as a wage-labourer he works part of his time for nothing.” “Vol 2.” Chap 6. p132. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch06.htm xii(12) “Of course he (the capitalist) can, like his labourer, take to work himself, participate directly in the process of production, but he is then only a hybrid between capitalist and labourer, a ‘small master’.” Marx. Capital (Vol 1) p308. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch11.htm xiii(13) “If we consider the total social capital C, and use p1 for the industrial profit that remains after deducting interest and ground-rent, i for interest, and r for ground-rent, then s/C = p/C = p1 + i + r/C = p1/C + i/C+r/.” “Capital. Vol 3.” Chap 15. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm. (This here also serves as citation for interest.)
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