Lecture
In reality, the problem of exploitation is multifaceted and includes, at the very least, the following levels of ascent from the abstract to the concrete in the study and development of capitalist exploitation. The first is the disclosure of the general formula of capital and its contradiction. Fixing the general formula of capital: M — C — M' — money that yields additional money through exchange — this "formula" itself sets the definition of the phenomenon of "capital" that is used in all modern economic works and even in everyday consciousness. Marx's merit here lies not in the fact that he gave this definition of capital, but in the fact that he theoretically proved that this is merely the appearance of capital. The latter is important and relevant today, since a great many phenomena that are not capital in their essence, but have the appearance of capital ("human capital," "social capital"), now fall under this appearance. Moreover, Marx showed that this appearance is contradictory, formulating the famous antinomy: additional money is both created and not created in circulation. The puzzle of this antinomy gave rise to powerful debates, in particular in Soviet political-economic and philosophical literature, which became especially intense in the 1960s-70s. The essence of the position of our teachers — Evald Ilyenkov and Nikolai Khessin, arguing against I. S. Narsky and his colleagues1 — consisted in proving that this antinomy is not a speculative construct or a mere expository device, but a reflection of the actual contradiction of the emergence and non-emergence of capital in circulation, for here both statements are equally true and equally false. This view allows us to draw several important conclusions. Thus, it allows us to show that Marx does not simply postulate the existence of a special commodity, "labor power," whose use-value consists in the ability to create value greater than its own, but rather derives the necessity of such a commodity as the only possible means of resolving this contradiction. Otherwise the contradiction remains an unresolved antinomy, and the phenomenon simultaneously exists and does not exist. And this, again, is not a logical trick but the actual practice of the genesis of capitalism. This is true, if only because the antediluvian forms of capital that were not based on capitalist production were not, strictly speaking, capital, and therefore could not lead to the formation of capitalism as the dominant mode of production. Merchant-usurer enterprises always remained merely an unstable (now flourishing, now withering) enclave within pre-bourgeois economies. Marx's definition of the contradiction of the general formula of capital as real is a theoretical explanation of this historical regularity. For the study of the relation of exploitation, however, something else matters more — namely, that both theoretical research and an appeal to practice make it possible to show that resolving the contradiction of the general formula of capital is possible only where and when all the basic components of the capitalist process of creating and appropriating surplus value are present. These are (1) an economically and legally independent worker who is the owner of the commodity "labor power," and (2) a private owner of the means of production that have the socio-economic form of capital; this owner (3) buys the commodity "labor power" and combines it with the means of production belonging to capital, thereby initiating (4) the capitalist process of production, in which the hired worker creates (5) value greater than that for which he was bought (surplus value); this surplus value is then (6) appropriated by the owner of capital, and it confirms itself as value (rather than merely an expenditure of labor) only after (7) the commodity produced by the hired worker is realized on the market, though (8) alienated from him and belonging to capital. Thus Marx derives, in strictly theoretical fashion, the relation between the worker's production of surplus value and its appropriation by capital (the relation of exploitation) as a necessary and sufficient condition for the stable existence of capital. And history confirms this. The difference between Marx's theory and neoclassical economics and the like in this case lies not only in the fact that the phenomenon of exploitation is theoretically represented, but also in the fact that it is not postulated on the basis of a fact but is derived, thereby explaining a puzzling fact. The second level of ascent from the abstract to the concrete in the unfolding of the theory of exploitation is the study of the process of creating and appropriating surplus value as such. These are Marx's propositions on surplus time, labor, and product, and especially their quantitative relations. The abstractions m and v and their ratios are well known, and here we may confine ourselves to three remarks. The first: the numerical illustrations in "Capital" are nothing more than examples for a not-too-inexperienced reader; they carry no substantive weight. Marx never tried to calculate value, and accordingly surplus value. Only the market forms of these phenomena (profit, wages) can be calculated, and Marx was not wrong to call them perverted, or inverted forms, for they distort the actual content. We wrote about this in one of the preceding sections of the book and will not return to it here. The second remark concerns a phenomenon that even experts on "Capital" very rarely pay attention to.
In anticipation of the study of surplus value proper, Marx shows very precisely and subtly how and why the value of constant capital (machines, equipment, raw materials, etc.) does not change in the process of production, thereby proving the untenability of the thesis that profit is created by [constant] capital. For this, the study of the dual character of labor carried out in the first chapter turns out to be absolutely necessary, for only it allows us to show how and why, within one and the same labor process, there occurs both the transfer of the value of constant capital to the final product (this is the "mission" of concrete labor) and the creation of new value, including surplus value (and this is already the "mission" of abstract labor). Without this nuance the entire theory of exploitation collapses; therefore the study of the dual character of the labor that creates commodities — one of the few developments that Marx himself credited to his own account — is an absolutely necessary theoretical foundation for the whole of Marxist economic theory.
1 Let us give just one example of the continuing relevance of this problem today. In the 21st century, in a country belonging to the "Group of Eight" — Russia — one of its largest entrepreneurs, the oligarch Prokhorov, proposed introducing... a 60-hour work week. Another example is the practically arbitrary lengthening of the working day (to 10-12 hours) and the working week (to 60-70 hours), typical of Russia and a number of other CIS countries, among employees of many private companies in the service and financial sectors. And these are only examples from the Russia we know well. We are confident that the situation is analogous in many countries of the "Third" world.
Outside of it, all talk of value and surplus value within the Marxist paradigm remains, at best, illiteracy. The third remark is very brief. Marx's study of absolute surplus value and the working day is a very important, and unfortunately still not outdated, aspect of his theory of exploitation. Capital's drive to increase the length of working time does not disappear even in the 21st century, especially in the countries of the periphery and semi-periphery1. Accordingly, the struggle to shorten the working day, the working week, and the retirement age has been, is, and will remain relevant throughout the entire existence of capital, and explaining the reasons for this, along with the theoretical interpretation of the nature of the contradictions underlying this struggle, is Marx's achievement. The third level of Marx's study of exploitation — the theory of relative surplus value — is also well known from a quantitative point of view. But theoretically there are many discoveries here that are far from reducible to the fact that an increase in surplus labor can be achieved by reducing necessary labor while the working day remains constant. Having implicitly formulated yet another antinomy — the working day cannot increase without limit, yet surplus value must increase infinitely (such is the general formula, the "fate" of capital) — Marx again derives the necessity of the constant growth of labor productivity. The latter means that capital has objective incentives to initiate and develop technical progress and more productive labor. This progressive mission of capital was emphasized in every possible way by Marx, Lenin, their followers, and even Soviet textbooks1. At the same time, Marx shows that the immediate object of capital's concern is raising not the social productivity of labor, but the productivity of labor at its own private enterprise. The latter allows the capitalist to reduce individual costs below the socially normal level and to obtain surplus value, which Marx called surplus profit [excess surplus value]. Hidden within this often-forgotten line of study is an entire cluster of extremely relevant propositions. First, from a methodological point of view, this study by Marx is important as an example of the most important feature of the interaction between productive forces and relations of production — namely, how, why, and to what extent a given relation of production conditions the progress of productive forces, and which productive forces specifically. The theory of the exploitation of the hired worker turns out to be firmly grounded in the material foundation of technological development, which, as we shall show further on, allows Marx to reveal a host of important consequences. Second, Marx reveals the system of objective incentives for technical progress that flow from the nature of the relations of production and the process of exploitation, rather than from the good will or innate qualities of the entrepreneur. The author of "Capital" shows that the drive for innovation is an attribute of capital, and he does so half a century before Schumpeter (to whom this "discovery" is usually attributed). Moreover, he does this by deriving it from the specific laws of capitalism, showing that it is a consequence of the particular objective relations of production of capitalism, rather than a "natural" psychological trait of some select circle of people — entrepreneurs — as Schumpeter postulates. Third, in this same context, the capitalist limits of technical progress are revealed: capital resorts to using new technology then, and only then, when other paths are closed to it — increasing the length and/or intensity of labor, drawing in cheaper labor power, and so on. The history of capitalism, and in particular the contemporary export of industrial enterprises to countries of the "Third" world, directly confirms these propositions. In Russia, confirmation of this took the grotesque, parodic form of Russian capital parasitizing on raw-material and other social resources, right up to the "carving up" of the state budget2. Moreover, capital has developed and continues to develop only those spheres of technical progress that lead to growth in surplus value. If the result is "merely" an increase in the volume and quality of public goods that brings no additional profit, capital does not get involved at all, or does so only in the form of charity — that is, in a form that has no relation to capitalist production as such. The fourth — perhaps the most important and most forgotten — level of Marx's ascent from the abstract to the concrete in the study of the relations of exploitation is based on this line of study: the investigation of the formal and real subordination of labor to capital. The alienation of labor in its capitalist form (which develops on the basis of the abolition of preceding forms — extra-economic coercion, personal dependence) presupposes the presence of formal-legal preconditions, namely, the presence of ownership of the means of production in the hands of a non-worker (the capitalist), and its absence in the hands of the worker, given the latter's personal independence. The first step of alienation, then, is the alienation of the means of production from the worker, and (this is noticed less often) the separation of the quality of labor power from the worker's other properties, the transformation of this quality into a commodity (an alienable thing), which then allows this commodity to be sold to the owner of capital. Quite logically, this is followed by a second step along the path of alienation: the worker loses his labor power, which passes into the ownership of the owner of the means of production. The latter now determines all the basic components of the labor process: what, how, by means of what means of production, and for whom to produce. Labor turns out to be alienated in its socio-economic form. The third step: the product created by the workers, and part of its value (namely, surplus value), is likewise alienated by capital. The premise for analyzing these phenomena is the understanding that capital's purchase of the commodity labor power has a number of fundamental qualitative differences from any other market transaction. This is a relation that changes the very nature of human labor and management. Since, under market conditions, the owner of a commodity may use it as he wishes, it follows that, through the act of purchasing the commodity "labor power," capital becomes the owner of all the parameters of its use.
Therefore, under capitalism, it is capital, not the worker, that determines the parameters of the labor process: to what end, what, how, and by means of what means of production the worker will produce is now determined not by the producer but by the owner of capital or his representative. Thus capital alienates from the hired worker not only the means of production but also his labor, turning the person at work into something resembling an ant or a bee, whose activity differs from human labor precisely in that it lacks the function of independent goal-setting1.
1 "...A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the worker at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will." Marx, K. Capital. Vol. I // Marx, K., Engels, F. Collected Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 23. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1960, p. 189.
Moreover, since the capitalist process of production, both historically and logically, begins with relations involving the use of cooperative labor (the hiring of a group of workers to carry out a collective labor process — a point Marx develops in the chapter on cooperation in Volume I of "Capital"), capital thereby appropriates three further attributes of this process. The uniting of people into a collective and the formation of a combined worker — first; the productive force of their cooperative labor — second; the functions of managing this collective productive process — third — all of this is appropriated by capital. Note that the greater productivity of cooperative labor compared to the sum of the labor efforts of isolated individuals — a fact known in classical political economy and, indeed, well familiar to every foreman — is now interpreted in economics as an "economy of scale." In this connection, note: first, the establishment of this regularity is an achievement not of economics but of classical political economy, in particular of Marxism; second, the productive force of cooperation is a more complex and richer phenomenon than a mere "economy of scale"; third, Marx showed not only the existence of this regularity in the functioning of the productive forces of any society where a cooperative labor process exists (starting from the building of the Egyptian pyramids), but also how and why capital subordinates it, and what follows from this. "The directing of capitalist production is twofold in content, from the double aspect of the process of production itself, which it has to control, and the process of exploitation, of the process of production," writes Marx in this connection, "in that it is at the same time a function of exploiting the social labor process, and is consequently conditioned by the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the raw material of his exploitation. It is likewise a necessary result of the fact that, as the means of production which confront the wage laborer as another man's property grow in extent, so does the necessity for controlling and supervising their proper employment increase. The cooperation of wage laborers is, further, simply the effect of the action of capital that employs them simultaneously. The connection existing between their various functions and the unity that binds them together as a combined productive organism lies outside themselves, in capital, which brings them together and maintains them in that situation. The connection existing between their functions, therefore, confronts them, in the shape of a plan drawn up by the capitalist, and in practice as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them, who subjects their activity to his purpose"1. As a result, capital, as a distinct relation of production, subordinates the labor process to itself.
Thus arises the formal (dictated by socio-economic form) subordination of labor to capital. However, capital's unrestrained drive to extract not only absolute but also excess surplus value, obtained through the initial use of the benefits of raised labor productivity at its own enterprise, leads (once innovations subsequently spread generally — the contemporary contradictions of this process are discussed below) to the emergence and growth of relative surplus value, and, together with this, to technical progress. The latter becomes the cause of the transformation of simple cooperation, first into manufacture, and then into the factory. For us this process matters above all because the development of manufacture already brings about a further step in the process of subordinating labor to capital — the formation of the fragmented (partial) worker.
Since the labor of workers in manufacture is divided, and each individual worker performs only one of the operations in which he is specialized, he ceases to be an integral worker capable of creating the final product and becomes instead a partial worker, capable only of performing some narrowly specialized operation. Under these conditions, the labor process as a whole becomes productive only on condition that it is organized by some third force, which under capitalism is, in most cases (leaving cooperatives aside for now), capital. As a result, the labor of the hired worker as a partial worker is subordinated to capital in its very technology as well, and capital becomes the owner of yet another free productive force — the one given by the division of labor.
But this is only the first step on the path to the real subordination of labor to capital (one that affects the content of the labor process, the productive forces themselves). This subordination takes on its adequate form as machine production develops and a system of machines — the factory — is formed. Here the worker is subordinated not merely to capital as a distinct socio-economic form. He is subordinated to capital technically, for in the factory the worker is nothing more than an appendage of the machine, a supplement to this "dead" labor (to use Marx's figurative expression). From this moment begins the period of the domination of "dead" labor over "living" labor, and capital and the system of machines (fixed capital, in the terminology of "Capital") become synonymous; moreover, the very category of "capital" begins to be used, both by "mainstream" economic theory and by economic practice, to designate primarily the system of machines. The apogee of the development of the real subordination of labor to capital under industrial production is the assembly-line organization of labor (so-called "Fordism") and Taylorism, which partially affects even manual labor, both of which we have already discussed above. Thus, the essence of the real subordination of labor to capital consists in the fact that the very content of the process of production — the technology of labor activity, the nature of the means of production (the system of machines) — is subordinated to the process of the reproduction of capital and, in turn, serves to subordinate labor to the material factors of production as capital. The division of labor, the machine, the assembly line, and so on, turn the worker into a partial worker, an appendage of the system of machines, while themselves becoming a function of capital (constant capital, "dead labor") — a force that subordinates living labor to the logic of dead labor, the logic of the system of machines that has become capital. As a result, capital acquires an adequate material-technical base. This base — let us repeat — becomes the system of machines, where human labor is, first, divided (the human being is turned into a partial worker incapable of independently creating a useful product) and, second, subordinated to the machine (which is the exclusive property of capital, its direct material embodiment). "It is not only that they are subject to the material conditions of production, but also that these conditions themselves become subject to it" — no, more precisely, as Marx notes: "Owing to its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during the labour process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour power. The separation of the intellectual powers of production from manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual machine worker, now emptied of all content, vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic natural forces, and the mass of the labour of society embodied in the system of machinery, which, together with those three forces, constitutes the power of the 'master'" — remarks Karl Marx on this in "Capital"1.
Under these conditions the worker is subordinated to capital not only economically but also technologically. Moreover, he loses his key human qualities: the capacity for creative, independent transformation of the material world, becoming an appendage of the material factors of labor and losing the property of goal-setting (elements of the humanization of labor at contemporary enterprises in developed countries somewhat mitigate this connection, but for most enterprises of the "Second" and "Third" worlds it remains just as relevant as ever). It is no accident, therefore, that it is precisely the factory — the system of machines — that constitutes the technical-productive basis of the real, substantive subordination of labor to capital under classical capitalist industrial production. All of this amounts to no more than the basics of the Marxist political economy of capitalism, and we would not have repeated them were it not for (1) their fundamental significance for analyzing the current state of affairs in the most developed segments of the capitalist economy, where, in post-industrial spheres, many of these phenomena are being modified as a result of the development of both the relations of production and the productive forces, thereby sublating (negating while preserving) their classical foundations, and (2) the persistence of all these attributes of exploitation and the subordination of labor to capital everywhere that the domination of industrial and pre-industrial technologies is preserved and/or reproduced1.
Before turning to the most contemporary forms of exploitation, which involve the subordination of creative activity to capital, let us emphasize that contemporary global capitalism represents a complex system of all the main "strata" of the interaction between wage labor and capital characteristic of the historical evolution of the capitalist mode of production, sublated within its contemporary spatial existence. To put it more simply, the contemporary "geography" (socio-spatial existence) of the world capitalist system is, at the same time, the living history of capitalism: from pre-industrial, semi-feudal forms in the most backward enclaves, through the "classical" exploitation of industrial workers at industrial enterprises, to the more than specific forms of subordinating the creative activity of programmers and teachers to capital... Considering the process as global, we can identify a number of features that are easily established both empirically and theoretically, and which will serve as the starting point of our analysis. First, the world still retains many hundreds of millions of people engaged predominantly in manual (pre-industrial) or early-industrial labor, who are the object of semi-feudal, semi-capitalist exploitation in forms closest to those described by F. Engels in "The Condition of the Working Class in England"2, by K. Marx in the concluding chapters of Volume I of "Capital"3 devoted to the history of capitalist accumulation, by V. I. Lenin in "The Development of Capitalism in Russia"4, or... in some rather realistic soap operas on twenty-first-century Russian television. Second, beginning in the late twentieth and especially in the twenty-first century, the stratum of classical industrial wage workers (more than a billion people worldwide) creating surplus value in the classical manner has become more massive than ever before. The amount of labor creating surplus value in the classical capitalist way is today greater than ever, since both the volume of hired industrial labor and its productivity worldwide are higher today (even calculated per capita) than in any previous epoch. Third, a significant portion of workers in the so-called "service sector," which is usually regarded as a post-industrial sphere, is engaged (even from the standpoint of classical Marxist theory) in productive labor — that is, labor that creates value and, accordingly, surplus value. This includes all those engaged in spheres that directly continue the functioning and reproduction of the productive forces, including labor power itself. Accordingly, the spheres in which (from the standpoint of classical Marxist theory!) value is created include not only that part of trade in which the process of producing material goods, broadly understood, is continued, but also that part of the service sector that is similar to it in nature and functional role. Thus, no less than half of the world's labor force today is employed in traditional spheres of productive labor that create surplus value in the classical manner. Taking into account the capital value accumulated over centuries, this production creates the mass of wealth that not only ensures contemporary reproduction but also creates certain foundations for the growth of a perverted (useless) sector that parasitizes on it (though not exclusively on it). Thus, contemporary capitalism is characterized by the persistence of "classical" relations of capitalist exploitation. Accordingly, we can conclude that the first "stratum" of the subordination of labor to contemporary global capital is the "restoration" of the classical relations of formal and real subordination of labor to capital (partially limited by the preceding period of social reformism) and, correspondingly, of the extraction of absolute and relative surplus value. Nor should we forget that the neoliberal stage of late capitalism is characterized by the restoration, in most countries (including the "First" world, for example the USA), of relative — and in certain periods even absolute — impoverishment of the proletariat as a stable tendency. Thus, for example, average real hourly compensation in the USA over the last 25 years of the twentieth century practically failed to grow, and in certain periods actually declined. The gap in incomes between the highest and lowest income groups increased; the gap between the pay of senior managers — which today is more a form of receiving surplus value than payment for the commodity labor power — and that of most hired workers grew almost twofold1.
The second "stratum" of relations of the total subordination of labor to capital is connected with the dialectical sublation (critical inheritance), under contemporary conditions, of the relations between labor and capital characteristic of the subsequent historical stage (and, at the same time, logical level) of the evolution of late capitalism. These are new aspects of exploitation and of the subordination of labor to capital characteristic of the first stage in the undermining of the foundations of capitalism — monopoly capitalism, or imperialism. From this historical-logical stage in the evolution of late capitalism there is "preserved," in particular, a multi-tiered hierarchy of the redistribution of surplus value in favor of (1) the developed countries and (2) the monopolistic associations of these countries (monopoly super-profit), with a double, triple, and so on burden of exploitation for the hired workers of the developing countries, and (3) financial capital. From the next historical-logical stage in the evolution of late capitalism — social reformism — there is preserved (though in a somewhat curtailed form) the complex system, characteristic of developed countries, of both limitations on exploitation in the narrow sense of the word (from limits on the length of the working day and week to progressive income tax and various forms of social protection) and "corrections" to the mechanisms of formal and real subordination of labor (from labor protection to worker participation in ownership and management). This is the third "stratum" of contemporary relations of the subordination of labor to capital. However, the neoliberal period not only limits the achievements of the preceding stage but also undermines the mechanisms that secure them: the weakening and diminished role of various workers' associations, occurring under the pressure of neo-marketization, and the "privatization" of social life, are destroying the foundations for resisting the growth of exploitation. The most interesting and complex question, from the standpoint of Marxist exploitation theory, at this level of analysis, is the question of the seemingly changing nature of capital and the apparent "overcoming" of the exploitation of wage labor in connection with the emergence of numerous pension, investment, and other funds that accumulate the savings of hired workers and thereby, supposedly, transform them into a combined capitalist. This achievement of the "welfare state" has now been substantially transformed, but its basic components are still preserved today, not having passed into history, and therefore require analysis. The thesis of the diffusion of capital and the genesis of "post-capitalism" became widespread in the second half of the twentieth century. In our view, the conclusion that the world has moved to "post-capitalism," based on theses about the so-called disappearance of capital as accumulated surplus value and its transformation into the savings of citizens, is fundamentally incorrect (at least from the standpoint of the Marxist theory of surplus value). But not because we deny the role of pension funds and other forms of savings used for capitalization: their role is indeed great, though not decisive in the global economy. The matter is different. In pension and other funds (health insurance, savings for children's education, and other components of the reproduction of skilled labor power), part of the worker's necessary product is accumulated, and part of society's surplus product. As a brief digression, let us emphasize the distinction we draw here between the surplus product of society and the surplus product appropriated by a private individual — as a rule, a capitalist. The former, unlike the latter, consists of resources that are used in any society (and especially under late capitalism, which has passed through a period of the "welfare state" and has not entirely abandoned it) for the realization of nationwide needs: from security to (under contemporary conditions) maintaining ecological balance. Let us continue our analysis. The surplus product of society is currently quite large and, under a non-capitalist system of social appropriation, ought to be used to increase life expectancy, for the rational use of free time, and for the support of those no longer, or not yet, able to work.
Under capitalism, matters are more complicated. Initially, "classical" capitalism, characterized by child labor, low life expectancy, and so on, did not envisage including these expenses in the worker's necessary product. The technological progress of the last century made necessary (at least in the developed countries) a transition to a different type of worker. Secondary specialized and higher education for a significant proportion of workers in developed countries became a condition for the accumulation of capital. In parallel, an increase in life expectancy and stability of life became a condition for the reproduction of the labor power of "professionals." Factors such as the organized struggle of workers and citizens, competition with the "world system of socialism," and, ultimately, the transition to social reformism all worked in the same direction. As a result, in the twentieth century part of these expenses entered into the price of labor power, while part became a deduction from surplus value, redistributed (under pressure from forces opposed to capital) in favor of working people. The crisis of social reformism and of the "two-thirds society," and the partial rollback of social spending, led to the following: (1) in a number of cases these expenditures declined overall; (2) the proportion between their private and public components changed: expenditures financed from workers' own savings relatively increased, while public expenditures relatively, and in a number of countries absolutely, decreased; and (3) the concentration of these savings in private funds intensified. The latter is especially important, since it indicates that, at the present stage of capital's involution, capital has begun to privatize part of both the worker's necessary product and society's surplus product used for social and humanitarian purposes. This privatization has become the real content of the process that, in appearance, takes the form of... the diffusion of capital and of capitalism. It should also be taken into account that these savings are, to a considerable extent, made by those hired workers whose wages, from the standpoint of Marxism, are in fact part of the surplus value (and, more broadly, of the surplus product taking value form) created by the labor of workers in material production and in the creatosphere — the sphere in which the creative content of labor functions plays the decisive role.
The creatosphere is the part of the system of reproduction in which the creative functions of labor activity play a substantial role, as a source of the acquisition and technological application of new knowledge.
Among the hired workers receiving such incomes are all workers of the perverted sector (most specialists in finance, marketing, PR, and other creators of simulacra, workers of mass culture, private lawyers, political consultants, stars and "starlets" of show business and professional sports, and the like), as well as all senior managers, to the extent that their income is formed from surplus value (profit) while merely taking the form of a wage. In the latter case, no "diffusion of capital" occurs at all: the incomes of these "workers" used for investment are, we deliberately repeat, nothing other than part of the surplus value appropriated by combined social capital. Thus, remaining at this level of analysis, we can establish that, in the contemporary global economy as well, one of the main sources of income and of the formation of capital remains "classical" surplus value created by the productive labor of hired workers (below we shall show that today another such source is becoming universal wealth, taking value form, created by creative labor in the creatosphere). These sources, however, are transformed into investment and personal consumption by the complex system of classes and intermediate strata of capitalist society (including the corporate nomenklatura, "professionals," and the like — on the social nature and structure of these strata, see below), being mediated by a complex system of perverted forms. One of these is the camouflaged appropriation of profit (including in material production) in the form of wages and other income of senior managers and "professionals." Another, perhaps even more important form, is the redistribution of part of the surplus value created worldwide (including part of the "wages" of senior employees and "professionals") in favor of the perverted sector. This redistribution takes place through two main channels: the investment of firms' accumulation funds in the perverted sector, and the direction of personal savings — whose source is surplus value and intellectual rent — into that same sector. Moreover, let us recall that late capitalism (especially in the period of neoliberalism) is characterized by corporate capital's privatization of that part of the necessary social product (the value of labor power) that is set aside for the reproduction of the highly skilled worker. This part is likewise used for the reproduction of capital, including investments in the perverted sector. Finally, a complex system of redistribution is characteristic of the income derived from such a source as intellectual rent (this is the profit of corporations that own intellectual "capital," as well as part of the income of intellectual workers). This income, too, in its savings component, becomes a source for the reproduction of capital, including the perverted sector. Further, the resources of the perverted sector, as well as the value-form wealth created in the creatosphere and the profit of material production, are transformed, directly and indirectly (through savings out of "wages"), into sources for the formation of new capital value. These processes show how the process of exploitation is camouflaged and how there arises the objective appearance that capital as such (the private property of a physical person hiring a wage worker) has disappeared, and that what exists is merely the saving of workers' income, used by "professionals" for the expanded reproduction of the economy. And yet the most interesting stratum for our present material is the fourth "stratum" of the subordination of labor — the new relations of exploitation being formed at the present stage of late capitalism. These are relations involving the exploitation of creative activity and the subordination to corporate capital of the Human Being as a Person (and not merely as labor power). Contemporary capital is present not only in classical industrial production but also in the spheres of creative activity where the "creative class" is employed. It is precisely here that new forms of capitalist exploitation arise, for, as will be shown below, contemporary capital partially appropriates the wealth created by universal creative labor. And the spheres in which creative components play a significant role in the activity performed (which, let us recall, we have called the creatosphere) today include a broad range of branches of social reproduction. These are education and upbringing in all their diversity, healthcare, technical and scientific creativity, the recreation of nature and society, the productive part of managerial labor, art, and others. Labor in all these spheres is productive, but no longer by properly capitalist criteria, but by universally human ones, for it serves the reproduction and development of the human race within any social system. It is well known in Marxist theory that this universal creative labor does not create value, but it does create real (non-simulated) social wealth, which, under conditions of the total market, takes on the form of value. This value-form is, for it, a perverted form, but the social wealth itself is real, productive, and lies at the basis of the reproduction of the material and cultural goods appropriated by contemporary capital. Moreover, under conditions of private ownership of the results of creative activity, this wealth is to a considerable extent appropriated by capital free of charge, in the form of the so-called "intellectual rent," which is the main form of income from such activity under late capitalism.
Intellectual rent is the results of creative activity, based on universal labor, that are appropriated by capital and, under capitalism, take on the form of value.
It is important for us to note a fairly well-known and empirically observable phenomenon: a smaller part of intellectual rent constitutes a kind of "supplement" (over and above the value of labor power) hidden within the wages of the hired worker-"intellectual," while the larger part is appropriated by the owner of the "creative corporation" that employs hired creative labor. Yet another part of this rent is appropriated by creative workers whose labor is not hired, but even here a significant portion of these rental incomes is reinvested (mediated through the form of savings) into capitalist reproduction. Thus intellectual rent becomes, alongside classical surplus value, a principal source of profit for contemporary capital. So, the modern system of exploitation presupposes a contradictory and far from always organic integration (a peculiar counterpoint) of four historical-logical "strata" (subsystems of production relations) of the exploitation of labor by capital:
1) the "classical" system of relations of production [by hired labor] and appropriation [by capital] of "ordinary" surplus value;
2) relations of production and appropriation of monopoly [super-profit and financial profit;
3) the relations of redistribution of part of the surplus value and the "diffusion" of capital, partly abolished by neoliberalism and reproduced in a curtailed and deformed form;
4) relations of exploitation of creative activity and appropriation of intellectual rent, and other components specific precisely to the current stage of capital's total hegemony and, in particular, of exploitation. We now turn to the study of this last problem, making, before that, one more digression and looking at the question posed from the standpoint of neoclassical economic theory.
CREATOSPHERE — the part of the reproduction system in which creative functions of labor activity play an essential role as a source of obtaining and technologically applying new knowledge.
INTELLECTUAL RENT — the results of creative activity, based on general labor, that are appropriated by capital and that take on a value form under capitalism.
A.5.1. Within what limits is capital interested in technical progress?
A.5.2. What forms of the exploitation of labor by capital coexist within global capitalism?
A.5.3. Under what conditions does the pattern of absolute and relative impoverishment of the proletariat manifest itself?
A.5.4. Does the "diffusion of ownership" lead to the elimination of the subordination of labor to capital?
A.5.5. How does the exploitation of creative labor and the extraction of intellectual rent take place?
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