Class, Surplus, and the Division of Labour: A Post-Marxian Exploration

260 Pages·2013·1.973 MB·English

by  Michal Polák (auth.)

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
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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