[lbo-talk] Reification and the fetishism of production....

[Mike Ballard]

In capital — profit, or still better capital — interest, land — rent, labour —
wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the
component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the
complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of
social relations into things, the direct coalescence of the material production
relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted,
perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre
do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as
mere things. It is the great merit of classical economy to have destroyed this
false appearance and illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the
various social elements of wealth, this personification of things and
conversion of production relations into entities, this religion of everyday
life. It did so by reducing interest to a portion of profit, and rent to the
surplus above average profit, so that both of them converge in surplus-value;
and by representing the process of circulation as a mere metamorphosis of
forms, and finally reducing value and surplus-value of commodities to labour in
the direct production process. Nevertheless even the best spokesmen of
classical economy remain more or less in the grip of the world of illusion
which their criticism had dissolved, as cannot be otherwise from a bourgeois
standpoint, and thus they all fall more or less into inconsistencies,
half-truths and unsolved contradictions. On the other hand, it is just as
natural for the actual agents of production to feel completely at home in these
estranged and irrational forms of capital — interest, land — rent, labour —
wages, since these are precisely the forms of illusion in which they move about
and find their daily occupation. It is therefore just as natural that vulgar
economy, which is no more than a didactic, more or less dogmatic, translation
of everyday conceptions of the actual agents of production, and which arranges
them in a certain rational order, should see precisely in this trinity, which
is devoid of all inner connection, the natural and indubitable lofty basis for
its shallow pompousness. This formula simultaneously corresponds to the
interests of the ruling classes by proclaiming the physical necessity and
eternal justification of their sources of revenue and elevating them to a
dogma.

In our description of how production relations are converted into entities and
rendered independent in relation to the agents of production, we leave aside
the manner in which the interrelations, due to the world-market, its
conjunctures, movements of market-prices, periods of credit, industrial and
commercial cycles, alternations of prosperity and crisis, appear to them as
overwhelming natural laws that irresistibly enforce their will over them, and
confront them as blind necessity. We leave this aside because the actual
movement of competition belongs beyond our scope, and we need present only the
inner organisation of the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average,
as it were.

In preceding forms of society this economic mystification arose principally
with respect to money and interest-bearing capital. In the nature of things it
is excluded, in the first place, where production for the use-value, for
immediate personal requirements, predominates; and, secondly, where slavery or
serfdom form the broad foundation of social production, as in antiquity and
during the Middle Ages. Here, the domination of the producers by the conditions
of production is concealed by the relations of dominion and servitude, which
appear and are evident as the direct motive power of the process of production.
In early communal societies in which primitive communism prevailed, and even in
the ancient communal towns, it was this communal society itself with its
conditions which appeared as the basis of production, and its reproduction
appeared as its ultimate purpose. Even in the medieval guild system neither
capital nor labour appear untrammelled, but their relations are rather defined
by the corporate rules, and by the same associated relations, and corresponding
conceptions of professional duty, craftsmanship, etc. Only when the capitalist
mode of production — [The manuscript breaks off here — Ed.]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm

http://happystiletto.blogspot.com/

 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Want to start your own business?
Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index