Class, Surplus, and the Division of Labour: A Post-Marxian Exploration PDF
Preview Class, Surplus, and the Division of Labour: A Post-Marxian Exploration
Class, Surplus, and the Division of Labour Class, Surplus, and the Division of Labour A Post-Marxian Exploration Michal Polák Advisor,MinistryofFinanceoftheSlovakRepublic ©MichalPolák2013 Foreword©StuartHolland2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-28772-4 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noportionofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, SaffronHouse,6–10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorhasassertedhisrighttobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork inaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2013by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofStMartin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnitedStates, theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-44983-5 ISBN 978-1-137-28773-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137287731 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources.Logging,pulpingandmanufacturing processesareexpectedtoconformtotheenvironmentalregulationsofthe countryoforigin. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 To my parents, Gabriela and Emil Contents Foreword viii Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction:TheLegacyandtheCrisis 1 Part I AlternativeSolutions 2 It’sNotWhatYouHave,It’sWhatYouDo:TheReturnof theDivision-of-LabourViewofClass 13 3 ExploitationIsNotaGame:ACritiqueofJohnRoemer 60 Part II ReconstructingtheFundamentalConcepts 4 BacktoBasics:Reproduction,Subsistence,Exploitation, Class 87 Part III ADualTheoryofExploitationandPrice 5 IfProfitIstheAnswer,WhatShouldBetheQuestion? IncomefromCapitalandtheLabourTheoryofValue 113 6 WhatPriceValue?BeyondtheTransformationProblem andtheSraffianCritique 140 Part IV IntegratingtheTwoConceptsofClass 7 ABeastofManyFaces:ComplexExploitation,theSphere ofNecessityandtheSphereofFreedom 185 Notes 227 Bibliography 234 Index 242 vii Foreword Whenthefinancialcrisisbrokein2008,twofiguresgainedamomentary resurrection–KeynesandMarx.RobertSkidelsky,biographerofKeynes, wrote of The Return of the Master. TIME Magazine featured Marx on a frontcoverwitharemarkableeditorialadmittingthat,inmanyrespects, hemayhavebeenright.Buttheresurrectionwasmomentary.Lipservice to Keynes did not yield a Keynesian response to the crisis. When the ratingagencieswhichhadrankedtoxicdebtinbanksandhedgefunds as safe as US Treasury bonds then turned their sights on the debt of westernEuropeangovernmentswhichhadsoaredtosalvagethem,the ‘balancedbudget’responseofEuropeangovernmentswasinspiredmore byMiltonFriedmanthanbyKeynes. Yet when bankers paid themselves bonuses from public funds which were entirely unrelated to performance, class hit the headlines. The groundswellhadbeenthatwithliberalisationoffinancesincethe1980s one per cent of US population was commanding near to half of the nation’swealth,andprotestmovementsintheUSAandtheUKgained resonance by claiming to be in the name of 99 per cent of society. For about as long, a new term has been gaining currency – the underclass whoeitherhadnojobs,ortemporarylow-paidjobs,whichwasaconfir- mation,ifrarelyreferenced,toMarx’sanalysisof‘floating’and‘pauper’ labourinvolumeIofCapital. Meanwhile,Marx’scasethatthereservearmyoflabourwasthelever of capital accumulation was gaining global force by China drawing on itsnearunlimitedlabourreserves,withstatecontroloffinance,foreign directinvestmentandnationalchampions,toachievehyper-growthfor a third of a century of a kind which was challenging the hegemony of the USA and Europe. This also challenged the myth, stemming from Ricardo, that comparative advantage would maximise global welfare. Smith’s absolute advantage was back. While hundreds of millions of Chinese – and Indians – were gaining at least lower middle-class stan- dards of living, many of these were from outsourcing of jobs from Europe and the USA by combining advanced technology with lower labourcosts. viii Foreword ix ThereisthereforearemarkablecurrentcorroborationofMarxonthe dynamics of accumulation and the role within this of class. Yet there is also a problem. Class is instantly recognisable, at a bus stop, or at an unemployment benefit office, or at an opera, yet at the same time difficult to define. We know class when we see it. But we cannot eas- ilysayhowandwhy.Thereisananalogyinthisregardwiththeclaim of Michael Polanyi, brother of the economist Karl, who was a mathe- matician and physicist andwhose claims for tacit knowledge,which is difficulttoexpress,werethatthiswasmoreimportant,evenforthehard sciences,thanexplicitdefinition. Polanyi’s examples, which have been extensively referenced in man- agement theory rather than in economics, included swimming and riding a bike. We may know how to do either or both, but defining howwedoso,orputtingitintowords,doesnotenablesomeoneelseto understandhowtoswimorrideabikeanymorethantellingsomeone howtoscaletheEigerenablesthemtodoit. There is an analogy here with one of the icons of economics, Adam Smith, when he argued for concepts that Milton Friedman entirely ignored, such as a natural disposition to sympathy for others. Smith wrote of them in a manner reminiscent of the later Wittgenstein’s claim (Philosophical Investigations, 1953) that meaning depends on understanding its use in context, and that such meanings vary. Thus Smith recognised that the variations of the use of sympathy in dif- ferent contexts ‘are endless, and language wants names to mark them by...Butstillthegeneralsentimentoffriendshipandfamiliarattach- ment which is common to them all may be ascertained with a suffi- cient degree of accuracy’ (Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, pp.483,484). Michal Polák’s book is important for such reasons, not least because whileMarxmayhaveanalysedtheroleofclassheonlyrarelydealtwith theconceptexplicitly.Thecaseofdifferentstrataofmigrantlabourand their role in levering accumulation in volume I of Capital is an excep- tion.ThethirdvolumeofCapitalendswithwhatwassupposedtobea chapter on ‘Classes’, just over a page in length, in which Marx denies thatclassesarebasedonwhatnowwouldbecalledsocialstratification– but then, when it appears that he was about to define them himself, ends enigmatically with text in brackets simply stating that ‘here the manuscriptbreaksoff’.ThisisnottosuggestthatMichalPolákhascom- pletedMarx’sownproject.Buthehasverymuchfulfilledhisownaim to provide an explication of how the Marxian idea of exploitation can illuminate even a much more complex class structure than the simple x Foreword two-classpolarisationwhichitinitiallysuggests.Hisbookshouldbeof realinterestnotonlytoeconomistsandsociologists,butalsotoanyone whoknowsthatclassplaysacentralroleinwhatnowismajorcrisisof westerncapitalismyetwantsaguidetounderstandingit. StuartHolland UniversityofCoimbra Portugal Acknowledgements FirstofallIwouldliketothankmyfriendDanielSoukup,whosatatmy kitchen table all those years ago, sipping tea and listening to me hold forth on the brilliance of Marxian class accounts of the Middle Ages, and then asked innocently, ‘Well yes, but what good is that theory for today’ssociety?’ IoweanenormousdealofgratitudetothesupervisorofmyPhDthe- sis,onwhichthisbookisbased,RichardBradley.Notonlyforthemany engaging discussions on this topic (as well as many other topics!) and forthecommentswithwhichheannotatedmywrittendrafts,butalso forhisunderstandingandwillingnesstograntmemuchmorefreedom than I had any right to expect. I am sure the book is now much the betterforit. Many thanks are due to Stuart Holland, not just for his insightful commentsonthemanuscript,butfortheamountoftimeandenergyhe putintohelpingfindapublisherforit,andforthepenetratingForeword hewrotetothebook. Equally,IwouldliketothankGeoffHarcourtforhisencouragement, for commenting on some earlier work related to the topics of my the- sis, and for the fascinating time I was privileged to spend with him in Cambridge. I am very grateful to Erik Olin Wright for his generous and friendly responsetomyrequestthathemighthavealookatoneofthechapters of my thesis. His reading was very thorough and provided me with a largenumberofenormouslyvaluablecomments. AnotherpersontowhomIamgratefulismyfriendJoeGrimFeinberg, who took time away from his own research in anthropology to read earlier versions of some of the chapters very thoroughly and provided manypenetratingcomments. Many thanks are due to Pat Devine, not just for reading and com- menting on a chapter, but also for the amount of time he was willing to spend discussing difficult economic topics with me – and to forgive mewhentheexchangesgotmuchmoreheatedthanIhadanyrightto engagein–aswellasforanoutlookonlifewhichIfindeverinspiring. Finally,IneedtothankMichaelAlbert,despiteonlyhavingmethim onceinmylife.Hiswritingssustainedmyenthusiasmforradicalchange xi
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