EconoSpeak: The Unknown Unknown Marx

Towards the tip of his 1968 essay, “The Unknown Marx,” Martin Nicolaus quoted Marx’s enumeration of 4 boundaries to manufacturing underneath capital that “expose the premise of overproduction, the basic contradiction of developed capital.” Nicolaus certified what Marx meant by overproduction to be “[not] merely ‘extra stock’; slightly, he means extra productive energy extra usually.”

‘These inherent limits essentially coincide with the character of capital, with its important determinants. These essential limits are:

‘1. essential labour as restrict to the exchange-value of residing labour-power, of the wages of the economic inhabitants;

‘2. surplus worth as restrict to surplus labour-time; and, in relation to relative surplus labour-time, as restrict to the event of the productive forces;

‘3. what’s the similar factor, the transformation into cash, into exchangevalue, as such, as a restrict to manufacturing; or: change based mostly on worth, or worth based mostly on change, as restrict to manufacturing. That is once more

‘4. the identical factor as restriction of the manufacturing of use-values by exchange-value; or: the truth that actual wealth should tackle a particular kind distinct from itself, completely not equivalent with it, with a view to change into an object of manufacturing in any respect.’

It “would require a e book,” Nicolaus then noticed, to current “a correct evaluation of the implications of those slightly cryptic theses.” In lieu of that evaluation, he supplied a synopsis that “these 4 ‘limits’ signify not more than completely different facets of the contradiction between ‘forces of manufacturing’ and ‘social relations of manufacturing’.”

Neither Nicolaus nor anybody else has written that e book. Nor did Nicolaus once more refer to those inherent limits within the Foreword to his translation of the Grundrisse. As an alternative, he invoked Marx’s dialogue of “the contradiction between the forces of manufacturing and the relations of manufacturing” within the 1859 Preface to his Contribution to a Critique of Political Economic system. “The Grundrisse is one lengthy prolonged commentary upon it; inversely, the 1859 formulation is a abstract, in a phrase, of the Grundrisse.” “One may go on and on,” Nicolaus added within the subsequent paragraph.

One may go on and on… it might require a e book. Though Grundrisse could also be seen as “one lengthy prolonged commentary” on the contradiction between the forces and relations of manufacturing, there are shorter passages which might be notably germaine to the evaluation of the “slightly cryptic theses” on the core of that contradiction. The condensed model — consisting of pages 397-423, 608-610, and 704-711 — is lower than 5% of the full variety of pages. It’s bracketed by ‘quotations’ from The Supply and Treatment of the Nationwide Difficulties, on web page 397:

‘Wealth is disposable time and nothing extra. … If the entire labour of a rustic had been enough solely to lift the help of the entire inhabitants, there can be no surplus labour, consequently nothing that may be allowed to build up as capital . . . Really rich a nation, if there’s no curiosity or if the working day is 6 hours slightly than 12 . . . No matter could also be due to the capitalist, he can solely obtain the surplus labour of the labourer; for the labourer should stay.’ (The Supply and Treatment of the Nationwide Difficulties.

 And on web page 709:

‘If your complete labour of a rustic had been enough solely to lift the help of the entire inhabitants, there can be no surplus labour, consequently nothing that could possibly be allowed to build up as capital. If in a single yr the folks raises sufficient for the help of two years, one yr’s consumption should perish, or for one yr males should stop from productive labour. However the possessors of [the] surplus produce or capital . . . make use of folks upon one thing circuitously and instantly productive, e.g. within the erection of equipment. So it goes on.’ (The Supply and Treatment ofthe Nationwide Difficulties, p. 4.)

The primary citation comprises a montage of paraphrases from pages 6, 4, again to six, and on to 22 of The Supply and Treatment. The citation on web page 709 sticks with web page 4 as Marx had already quoted from web page 6 three pages earlier. 

The bracketing quotations come earlier than and after a pair of outstanding paragraphs by Marx. The preliminary one asserts that “[t]he complete growth of wealth rests on the creation of disposable time” and goes on to clarify that “[i]n manufacturing resting on capital, the existence of essential labour time is conditional on the creation of superfluous labour time.” The paragraph bracketed by the ultimate quote presents an intense evaluation of disposable time through which the English time period, ‘disposable time’, seems seven instances in Marx’s German manuscript, together with three cases of ‘surplus labour’ in English and two phrases, ‘instrumental in creating the technique of social disposable time’ and ‘to transform it into surplus labour.’ 

Seine Tendenz aber immer, einerseits disposable time zu schaffen, andrerseits to transform it into surplus labour.

As soon as the mass of staff have appropriated their very own surplus labour, Marx argued in a passage echoing his earlier assertion that growth of wealth rested “on the creation of disposable time”: 

…the event of the facility of social manufacturing will develop so quickly that, regardless that manufacturing is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will develop for all. For actual wealth is the developed productive energy of all people. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any means, labour time, however slightly disposable time.

Actual wealth, then, is “the developed productive energy of all people,” which “rests on the creation of disposable time.” Disposable time thus is integral to the event of the productive forces and the contradiction with the productive relations rests with capital’s tendency to not solely create disposable time however to transform as a lot of it as it might it into surplus labour.

Forces of manufacturing and social relations – two completely different sides of the event of the social particular person – seem to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to supply on its restricted basis. In reality, nevertheless, they’re the fabric circumstances to blow this basis sky-high.

What comes after “the fabric circumstances to blow this basis sky-high”? 4 out of 5 authors who quote that incendiary passage don’t point out disposable time. But that was Marx’s follow-up in one more paraphrase from The Supply and Treatment: “‘Wealth is just not command over surplus labour time’ (actual wealth), ‘however slightly, disposable time exterior that wanted in direct manufacturing, for each particular person and the entire society.’”

Marx was fairly express and repetitive in regards to the relationship between disposable time and the productive forces. Moishe Postone nearly bought it when he described disposable time as, for Marx, a attribute of “a attainable submit capitalist society.” It’s certainly that however rather more. Disposable time can be the medium by which the productive forces are developed in capital. 

The notorious ‘fetters’ on the event of the productive forces — these 4 “essential limits” to the event of the productive forces quoted originally of this essay — come up from the compulsion of capital to transform disposable time into surplus labour time. The 4 limits are, in actual fact a single, unfolding contradiction that culminates within the non-identity of actual wealth and worth, use-value and exchange-value: “the truth that actual wealth should tackle a particular kind distinct from itself, completely not equivalent with it, with a view to change into an object of manufacturing in any respect.”