[lbo-talk] Slaves and their instruments - was/ poor underpaid CEOs

bitch bitch at pulpculture.org
Fri Dec 15 07:32:13 PST 2006


The common sense view (it's even been said in this conversation) is that the cost for labor under slavery is "free" and that it is somehow "not free" and "remunerated" under capitalism. but in either case, the owners of the means of production reproduce labor: in one system the slave owner provides what it takes to reproduce labor: food, clothing, shelter; in the other the capitalist dispenses a wage. the mistake is to think that one is an advance over the other by focusing on claims about how one system, the slave is taken advantage of (labor not compensated) and in the other, everything is fair because labor is supposedly compensated.

But that isn't where to look, says Marx, if you want to understand what's going on. It's not because in one system labor isn't paid and in the other labor is. It is in the ensemble of social relations where we have to look to see how remarkably different they are because in that ensemble of social relations "human nature" is forged -- and forged quite differently under each system. It is not a question of one system being an advance over another because labor is supposedly compensated more fairly or even because labor is "free" (to move). it is the myriad ways in which a worker -- and thus 'human nature' -- is shaped in each system. The smallest, seemingly inconsequential activities, the most pithy throw away lines, the banalities of a Helen Steiner Rice, the 'deep' ruminations of Ken Wilbur all converge in a way to create and sustain a lie. We are the instrument-effects of that lie: liars lying to ourselves and one another more often than we ever grasp the truth, even here on the so-called marxist end of the political spectrum. We fancy that we know the truth but we lie just as much as everyone else. This is why a homeless shelter is seen as a horror. But that is a lie we tell ourselves, reproducing an ideological system we claim to oppose.

I have just noticed Ted's post and he's after the same thing, so my pre-coffee ramble is not off the mark.

"You know how it is, come for the animal porn, stay for the cultural analysis." -- Michael Berube

Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list