GV4G7 - week 2
« Back to GV4G7These are my notes from January 16 for GV4G7 at the London School of Economics for the 2017-2018 school year. I took this module as part of the one-year Inequalities and Social Science MSc program.
The usual disclaimer: all notes are my personal impressions and do not necessarily reflect the view of the lecturer.
Economics and Exploitation
Readings
Why Read Marx Today? by Jonathan Wolff (chapter 2)
Notes in Bookmarker.
Karl Marx: selected writings, edited by David McLellan
Sections:
- Capital vol 1 (Bookmarker)
- Results of the Immediate Process of Production (Bookmarker)
Lecture
I missed this one, sadly. The seminar was great though.
Seminar
- on why the wage is set by the minimum amount of socially necessary labour time
- me: it’s a minimum in an evolutionary sense cus otherwise the worker just wouldn’t survive lol
- and it’s a maximum (at least thereotically) cus otherwise they’ll be undercut by competition
- it’s really just a specific application of the principle of the LTV
- recall that marx doesnt really give empirical proof, it’s very analytic reasoning only
- doesnt really apply anymore cus workers can control more than just labour power, like personal networks
- it holds more under the conditions when marx was writing (industrial capitalism) but not as generally with rise of cogitive capitalism
- only really works if the worker has nothing to sell other than their labour power
- lucia says it doesnt work anyway cus commodities cannot be calculated in terms of socially necessary labour time
- on the statement that the worker “is compelled to sell himself of his own free will” (from Capital v1)
- me: kind of ironic, links to what Marx says about double freedom: contrast with feudalism where worker is not free to sell their own labour, but they’re also free from means of production
- formal freedom (legal regime of being able to sell own labour-power) and substantive one of being free of the means of production
- also adorno & other critical theorists build on this point: workers are willing slaves etc
- we can read this sentence as if the apparent paradox is a literary device meant to point out the contradiction/paradox in society itself: it’s a false and illusory freedom
- also, individual freedom but not collective freedom, collectively proletariat all have to sell their labour in general, even if some individuals may have more leeway
- me: kind of ironic, links to what Marx says about double freedom: contrast with feudalism where worker is not free to sell their own labour, but they’re also free from means of production
- on exploitation and force:
- me: enclosure of the commons, between equal rights force prevails, social and psychological force as well (forcing working class people to work)
- also the bourgeoisie is forced to keep investing in production as well, structural explanation, it’s not just force on the proletariat but also a structural force ensuring that bourgoisie are trapped in this cycle of competition as well
- reserve army of labour also forces people to accept low ages (structural limit)
- John Roemer’s view of exploitation: it’s a matter of unequal change of labour for goods (distributional inequality)
- could be useful cus it makes it easier to measure quantitatively prevent ppl from moving the goalpost
- but otoh it takes away the moral judgment, makes it less obvious that exploitation is a bad thing, like inequality is a natural and inevitable and acceptable outcome
- me: if you remove the moral judgement and reduce it to a matter distributive of justice, to inequality, it feels more defensible, because it’s easy to reify inequality it and see it as natural (think Mankiw) SO I DISAGREE. the distributive approach takes exploitation to be a neutral, descriptive, scientific term, so the moral burden shifts
- another view: that the crux of exploitation is the lack of freedom, that’s the objectionable part; Roemer ignores that aspect
- another thing to keep in mind: marx is responding to smithian thought experiments of the lonely fisherman etc, which are completely removed from historical economic structures; that’s kinda what roemer is going back on
- someone mentioned that workers start living for their vacations as opposed for the work itself (not an exact quote I assume, seems more associated with the Situationists than Marx himself)
- also Marx idealised the ability to be free from structural forces that would shove you into a labour category (this quote
- basically marx himself is ambiguous on the issue of exploitation
- it can seen as a directly moral issue or as a distributive issue
- so the literature splits into two camps mostly
- you need a structuralist view to have a moral aspect
- whereas if you take the moral elements away you end up with an individualist view, focused on individual one-to-one relations