more ways of killing the cat

The point Marx says of this all is that the worker is killed twice. That is their sprit is broken in very different ways by capitalism.

The first stage is he world of manufactoring. Manufactoring industry break up an entire task into a series of mindless occupation. the occupation, may or may not be skilled. and are carried out be separate individuals. Humanity becomes then a part , a cog in a living machine, with nothing beyond that mechanic life. humanity is the cripples into place. That is, their education, and the life squeezes them into that cogs they are now going to be. They become useful in being a cripple, in being fit only for a single simple task.

what is more the logic of any captalisms system is that it genuinely squeezes he folk within it into place. they must be trained and paid for it. The system therefore is one of rigid heirarchy and protection. Each role is specially designed and protected. little deaths of little humanity pockmark the system therefore.

This is the the dystopia we all know so well, in the the Moon of First men in the Moon or the world of Ghormenghast: The world of the mechanic human. A World capitalism revists all the time: that is any time when there exists production processes where not any one could do it. The minute this happens little bubbles of pride and skill enter into a certain element of the system. Those 'skilled' workers become protective and proud of the limited disposition or skill. they start to protect their position, they start to despize others, then start to give themselves airs. Marx's point is that these airs and graces are distinctly defined and bound. They individual only have a pride in being a part of a system; that pride might be great, but the cost of crippling a mind so that it is only defined within a single series of tasks is greater yet. The richness of life is lost in the self importance of an occupation.

Be this as it may, this position of skilled worker within a system, trained p to a single task and protective of it (and only valued from it, though the job) clearly remains a deep element within capitalism.

Marx sees his great discovery as the alternative pole in capitalism. A machine utterly de skills. Anyone can do anything. This is the great maxim of the machine We are all theater directors now...The old worlds of skill are swept aside then in technological know how. The effect then on a humanity used to the protection and bonding on skill is then unmeasurable, Marx suggests.

In the immediate circumstance that effect is horrific. individual lives do not matter, and capitalism becomes then utterly blind to them. The world of capitalism plugs its workers into a machines, burns up their lives and then takes up another worker and does the same. If their is not need to train a work force, and no need to organize it beyond what a whip or starvation can and will do, then running the system is easy, and profits and lives are cheap.

And yet beyond this tyranny is that elusive of men, those who live in the communist sate. After all the old order of minds that were locked into certain jobs is now gone, but not utterly destroyed Humanity will still value itself in occupations, and yet that occupation is the factory could be doing anything or being anything. Pulling levers, pressing buttons, gives a flexible power. Moreover the rules that separate one from ones fellows are clearly broken down. One is no longer an occupier of a certain profession. , on is merely one pari of hands and eyes in a long and complex process: Ones action here and now echo across the that entire process, mingle with others, become one with others. To be a single human then is eroded in the machanic process. one eddies across others and through differing apparatus of the world.

One perhaps becomes communists.

well maybe.

What is clear is where Max is correct in his prediction, and where there is a hitch.

The first two of these two arguments are predictive. Humanity is oddly skilled and oddly values in a system of skilled workers in the workshop. Humanity is likewise utterly devalued in a mass production process. The trouble comes that the way government fight the latter is to impose the former (that is to create workers rights and treat all jobs as if they were skilled). No socalist government has then really been able to wrap their heads around what the final stage, what the path to communisms might look like. We simply do not know what kinds of minds are being born for there. They might well be everywhere, and yet us brutal socalists of the now might suppress them. Who knows?

The problem is then what does the socialisms consciousness within the machine, the sharing of that social labour look like to us? A problem that not so easy to solve (and one that Marxists have singluar cocked up for the last 150 years or so)

Marx's eyes

Your money but whose time?

I suppose it took nearly 100 years to happen - which cannot be bad - but why it happened can be learned from reading Das Capital.

Marx defines exchange value in terms of the hours one spends in the production of good. A thing cost more (or ought to cost more) if it takes longer to produce. Capitalism is then in a very real sense for Marx the system in which individuals exchange, one with the other, the hours of their lives. What makes it powerful is then that by my putting some of the hours of my life at your disposal, you get to be, and do more things. You can have shoes without being a cobbler, or law without being a lawyer, or travel without too much hassle. Capitalism is therefore in Marx’s argument so powerful because it exists as a way of pooling human action. Our lives become in the exchange of commodities caught up with and able to use one another.

Marx has two natural limits’ of this pooling

The first of these limits is the assumption that their will always be a medium, a tangible reality, which forms the gold standard of exchange. There needs then he suggests to be a product whose production is difficult and availability is relatively scarce. This product forming the standard against which all others are valued. Gold and silver therefore form a single yardstick, or monetary clock against which the value of an action was measured.

Secondly Max suggests there must be somewhere in the system some group of people who are working for mere subsidence. Sweat shops form then the basic unit of production in the system. Their role is therefore to literally ‘price’ the value of profit. This is because that while the amount they are paid is fixed (by their biological) need, what that labour is used for And how productive is might be) is open, and can change. Technological advance is therefore able to make the same group of workers achieve more, for the same basic pay. A capitalists profits lie then in getting more form their workers for the same or less pay.

Over the century and three quarters since Marx’s time this last limit has been slowly mitigated or perhaps watered down. The number of workers paid subsistence has been reduce (although somewhere in the system there will always be those workers). A capitalist found that they make profit by merely ‘underpaying’ their work force. That is, by agreeing with the work force that it is a part of their role to increase what they can do for the same basic pay (that is to make productivity increase the condition of employment)..

Likewise for around a century we have lacked the gold standard, and it has all appeared to work.

And yet, for Marx at least the lack of these limit or the removal of one and watering down of the other ought to have been critical, for without these limit who can say what value to put on the hour of a life? Are they not actually ‘valueless’? Or is not their use value beyond any price? How can they be judged if not against either one particularly dangerous and difficult job (gold production?). or the ‘cost; of subsidence?

The temptation grows up either to over pay workers (the city was rater prone to this),; or pay them in kind (expenses); or to encourage them to double their money through credit.

That is, it is the role of credit to express this ambivalence. This is because, when it is no longer clear what could compensate one frittering ones a life away at job, credit became an appropriate ‘additional’ pay. Credit in effect doubles or trebles the (exchange) value of ones pay. It opens one up to greater possibilities in the present, at the cost of miring one further and further within the (purely relative) system. One stopped working for the here and how, and rather got caught up in a system where one pay now pays for past debt; and/or ones pay now allows one to make purchases based on future work. All the draconian and spartan Rhyme and reason Marx was so aware of, was therefore excluded from the system (as was of course the revolution) .

A system without any real ground was created. A system waiting to crash. A fact that surely spawned three further mysteries: Why did it take so long? How can we find a way to pool our labor now ? And finally can we ever actually produce a system that moves beyond that problem of sweat shops? Or will subsidence wages, that produce profit by squeezing the poorest people in the system, to produce ‘real’ profits, become once again our only possible redemption? They suffer so we can thrive...