Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: What is socialism? (on exploitation) Message-ID: <351@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 15:05:45 EST Article-I.D.: gargoyle.351 Posted: Fri Mar 1 15:05:45 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 04:45:34 EST Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science Lines: 112 Laura Creighton asks for a clear and useful definition of exploitation. But let me first address a remark she made in passing. > Listen up, Richard Carnes, 'cause not >every libertarian you will meet is interested in amassing property. I know. In fact I recently wrote an article ("Libertarianism as ideology") to make the point that libertarians in general are NOT motivated by the desire to amass property. Now as to the meaning of "exploitation," I submit the following: "the control by one section of the population of a surplus produced by another section of the population." Let me exploit the publishers of *A Dictionary of Marxist Thought* by reproducing excerpts from Susan Himmelweit's article on exploitation. Economist types like Mc Kiernan who are disinformed about Marxist theory are requested to please pay attention. I think this article is quite helpful in explaining some basic ideas of Marxism. _________________ EXPLOITATION. Used by Marx in two senses, the first being the more general one of making use of an object for its potential benefits.... It has another more precise meaning which makes it a central concept of historical materialism. In any society in which the forces of production have developed beyond the minimum needed for the survival of the population, and which therefore has the potential to grow, to change and to survive the vicissitudes of nature, the production of a surplus makes possible exploitation, the foundation of class society. Exploitation occurs when one section of the population produces a surplus whose use is controlled by another section. Classes in Marxist theory exist only in relation to each other and that relation turns upon the form of exploitation occurring in a given mode of production. It is exploitation which gives rise to class conflict. Thus different types of society, the classes within them, and the class conflict which provides the dynamic of any society can all be characterized by the specific way in which exploitation occurs. Under capitalism, exploitation takes the form of the extraction of surplus value by the class of industrial capitalists from the working class, but other exploiting classes or class fractions share in the distribution of surplus value. Under capitalism, access to the surplus depends upon the ownership of property, and thus the exploited class of capitalism, the proletariat, sell their labor power to live; though they too are divided into fractions by the specific character of the labor power which they own and sell. Capitalism differs from non-capitalist modes of production in that exploitation normally takes place without the direct intervention of force or non-economic processes. The surplus in the capitalist mode arises from the specific character of its production process and, especially, the manner in which it is linked to the process of exchange. Capitalist production generates a surplus because capitalists buy workers' labor-power at a wage equal to its value but, being in control of production, extract labor greater than the equivalent of that wage. [Note: This is a model, i.e., a deliberate simplification of the real world. -- RC] Marx differed from the classical political economists, who saw exploitation as arising from the unequal exchange of labor for the wage. For Marx, the distinction between labor and labor power allowed the latter to be sold at its value while the former created the surplus. Thus exploitation occurs in the capitalist mode of production behind the backs of the participants, hidden by the facade of free and equal exchange. The sphere of circulation or commodity exchange, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labor-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, let us say of labor-power, are determined only by their own free will....Equality, because each enters into relation with the other as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to his own advantage. [But if we] ... in company with the owner of money and the owner of labor-power, leave this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in full view of everyone, and follow them into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there hangs the notice "No admittance except on business," here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is itself produced. The secret of profit-making must at last be laid bare! (*Capital* I, ch. 6). But "profit-making" is just capitalist exploitation. Its secret gave rise to the study of political economy; and since Marx disclosed it orthodox economics has been devoted to covering it up again. No previous mode of production required such intellectual labor to unearth, display, and re-bury its method of exploitation, for in previous societies the forms of exploitation were transparent: so many days of labor given, or so much corn claimed by representatives of the ruling class. Capitalism is unique in hiding its method of exploitation behind the process of exchange, thus making the study of the economic process of society a requirement for its transcendence. Exploitation is obscured too by the way of measuring the surplus used in and appropriate to the capitalist mode of production. For the rate of profit [s/(c+v)] measures surplus value as a ratio of the total capital advanced, constant and variable [variable capital refers to that paid out in the form of wages, constant capital is all other -- RC], the measure of interest to individual capitals, for it is according to the quantity of total capital advanced that shares of surplus value are appropriated. But as capital expands the rate of profit may fall, concealing a simultaneous rise in the rate of exploitation defined as the ratio of surplus to necessary labor, the rate of surplus value, s/v. [Necessary labor is that required for the reproduction of labor, surplus labor is the additional labor performed. -- RC] --Susan Himmelweit __________________ Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes