Can we say that one chooses to work or to starve?
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 6:09:17 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Agency and Capitalism
Joanna: Perhaps I'm being thick, but couldn't the above statement be true of any economic system?
The worker under capitalism works because she chooses to work; no one points a gun at her head & says tote that cotton. Marx makes this point over and over again in all his works . It is that freedom which enchains! When a peasant in Kiev labors in his lord's kitchen it does not enslave a peasant in China. The two acts of appropriation go on in complete independence of each other. Nothing either peasant does affects the other. But I in capitalism the very _meaning_ of the labor of X (say in France) is determined by and determines the meaning of the labor of Y (say in Brazil). If the wages in Brazil are radically depressed, that makes worthless the labor power of millions far away. The serf can free himself by achieving political power (as did the peasantry of Athens). But in capitalism the economy is separated from political power; hence overturning the state does not affect the capitalist relations which link X & Y.
This is crude. People really should read Fredy Perlman and Postone and Tamas & Meiksins Wood.
Workers in Brazil decide to sell their labor power at a lower price: the decision is wholly free and is a decision to work, not a decision to oppress French workers. But it does oppress French workers. And the very existence of their (now "free") labor power as a commodity waiting for a buyer oppresses workers all over the world. The unemployed in the U.S. oppress workers in Algeria and New Delhi.
And notice: agency has disappeared. As long as people keep looking for the Villain in the drama they will be unable to understand capitalism
fCarrol
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