>
> ^^^^
> CB: Yes, I'm familiar with that distinction. The idea is the
> bourgeoisie are sort of slick compared with the feudal ruling classes
> and the slave owning ruling classes.
[Note: I fell way behind in reading posts, & given the limited stress I'm willing to put on my eyes, I'm not even going to try very hard to read all of that backlog, or almost any of it very closely. This will probably lead to (has led to) blunders, but I imagine they will come out in the laundry.]
No. It has nothing whatever to do with the bourgeoisie being more slick. (And incidentally, I no logner regard the "slavd-owning" classes as classes but merely as statuses; ditto feudal lords, serfs, etc. The first and last class society is capitalism. Don't take the rhetoric of the Manifesto as developed theory. Capitalism developed behind the backs of the proto-capitalists, and no one knew it was capitalism until after it had blossomed into full-blown capitalism a couple centuries later. And unlike feudalism (which is a term that should be applied only to some sectors of medieval Europe and perhaps Japan) or other tributary social orders, the laws of capitalism continue to operate behind the backs of both capitalists and workers. Property is NOT theft, and the capitalists are NOT robbing the workers. Let's keep such ahistorical value judgments out of this.
^^^^^^^^ CB: Some of the textual evidence in Marx that Marx does consider the bourgeoisie slick is his characterization of his main theory in _Capital_ as revealing the _secret_ of surplus value; and his theory of the Fetishism of Commodities. Marx is phrase is that capitalist relations of production developed behind the backs of the _producers_, not behind the backs of the proto-capitalists. It is implausible that the capitalist unconsciously stumbled upon this very efficient new method of exploitation.
I didn't say "theft" . I said "exploitation", Marx's well-known transhistorical , scientific, not moral , judgment.
One of the best locations of textual evidence that Marx retained _Capital_ his transhistorical conception of exploitation, class and human labor power that he held in the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ is in his discussion of Aristotle's partial discovery of the concept of value. Here it is:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3
The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the form of value. I mean Aristotle.
In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value - i.e., of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at random; for he says:
5 beds = 1 house - (clinai pente anti oiciaς)
is not to be distinguished from
5 beds = so much money. - (clinai pente anti ... oson ai pente clinai)
He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to this expression makes it necessary that the house should qualitatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such an equalisation, these two clearly different things could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities. "Exchange," he says, "cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability". (out isothς mh oushς snmmetriaς). Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value. "It is, however, in reality, impossible (th men oun alhqeia adunaton), that such unlike things can be commensurable" - i.e., qualitatively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their real nature, consequently only "a makeshift for practical purposes."
Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is - human labour.
There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.
^^^^^^ CB: Here Marx designates human labour in general as a transhistorical category valid in both ancient Greek slave society and capitalism. Not only that. He applies the concept of value transhistorically to the production of commodities in ancient Greek society.
The bourgeoisie themselves were champions of the concept of equality in their struggle against the feudal aristocracy. So, unlike Aristotle, they were not prevented from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality, roughly speaking, although not as precisely as Marx. It was thereby in the bourgeois era that the notion of human equality acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. The bourgeoisie understood this enough to know that the secret of the source of their potential profits was squeezing more labor producing goods out of wage laborers than they were paid in wages; they knew that their ownership of capital or their supervisory labor was not more productive of value than the labor of common workers. Otherwise, the first capitalists wouldn't have known how long to keep the workers working per time, and how much to pay them in wages per time in order to make a profit.
They use the doubly "free" labor
> trick.
No they don't "use" it; free labor is not a wrench or a tractor or a mixing bowl. It is a social relation. Capitalism is _constituted_ by free labor, and it is totallyu confusing to see this as a capitalist "trick."
^^^^ CB: They do use it, and like a wrench in social engineering. It is a clever trick, a secret of surplus value extraction. The notion that the bourgeois unconsciously stumbled into this very effective system of exploitation is a mystification of the historical process. Marx is all about demystification.