>Upon re-reading, I also see clearly the two forms (formal/real) can
>coexist. However, I see nothing in this text on *reversion back* to
formal
>subsumption (as may be the case with structural adjustment, etc.).
and this I think was my problem. a question I can easily ignore when I'm doing stuff on australian history between the 1890s and 1950s, since I can both implicitly use the categories in terms of an historical shift (a shift from one stage to another) and simply assure myself that they are not mutually exclusive.
moreover, as tom, makes clear in this point in his notes, marx did indeed see them in terms of stages:
>3. This is a watershed of sorts, a clear dividing line: "... the two
forms
>of surplus value ... correspond to two separate forms of subsumption
of
>labor to capital, or two separate forms of capitalist production, in
which
>the former is always precursor to the latter, though the more
developed,
>the latter, can constitute at the same time the base for the
introduction
>of the former in new branches [ramas] for production." (60)
this also makes clear that marx is not speaking of any 'partial insertion of capitalism' into another mode of production which remains dominant; but rather a shift within the capitalist mode of production itself. ie., changes not in the degree of insertion of the capitalist mode of production into a society, but changes in the relation of certain 'branches' to the immediate processes of production. what was once not productive becomes productive and so on...
this is what I find most useful about marx's work on this, and what I would like to use without having to rely on these notions as successive stages. I'm not sure that marx was that clear with his warning - I'll have to go back and read it again; but I have no doubt that he did not generally think in terms of linearity.
tom wrote:
>Under formal subsumption, subordination (in the work place) is due to
>peculiarities of selling labor, not other forms of bondage. Only in
>condition as possessor of conditions of work can a labor power buyer
make a
>labor power seller economically dependent: "...there exists no
political
>relation, socially identified, of hegemony and subordination." (61)
>
>Here we get in to the political level, but a doubt arises: is Marx
>differentiating between past and present (free vs. bonded labor), or
>present and future, when presumably law, politics, state
institutions,
>etc., will make labor ever "freer" to sell itself or starve (real
>capitalist "hegemony and subordination").
what is interesting to pursue - well, it's interested me for some time - is the extent to which we have kinds of labour which are unfree (prison labour, workfare, etc) but where the forms of command are bureaucratic, impersonal - as in real subsumption. I would think also that imf structural adjustment packages are similarly the imposition of this kind of impersonal command producing and enforcing bonded labour.
moreover, I think we need to recall the central place accorded by marx to credit in likewise compelling employers to move from absolute to relative surplus value - ie, to put aside their greed as individual capitalists for the greater good of capital. and, here too, the imf would seem to fit the bill, but for generating the 'reversion'.
what I'm still perplexed about is why this is happening now. does it have something/everything to do with the political limits to the working day being subdued, by the collapse of the USSR, the end of of the cold war, etc.... or, what is the crisis (not the apocalyptic one, but the intrinsic one) that makes this 'reversion' possible?
angela