Rhetoric 170, Spring 2004
The following article is © Michelle Walker with external references noted.

While we trudge through--most of us not severely marginalized but still undoubtedly strained in some way by the shit economy right now--I've been wrought with a freight train of thoughts on the economy, labor, and the actual inability to "Create Jobs" as of late -- moreover with the stupidity of arguing politics in a realm that is still wholly a social construct of specific economic theories. What do I mean by "inability to create jobs?" Here's a thought: Whether Obama or anyone else is in office right now, you cannot "create" jobs. You can create a mess of excess work, and then throw people in the mix to handle that work, but eventually the work will run out and the process of addressing that work will cease to be a job. The length of that process is determined by the rest of our society's ability to afford the outcome or product of all that extra work. If none of us can fucking afford to buy shit, that extra work serves no purpose, will sink rather than help grow that business, and the job is thus eliminated. Basic supply and demand. We have no demand for shit because we can't afford shit right now. The only way to lengthen the life-span of those superficial "jobs" is to create a mess of work for high-ticket items that only wealthy people can still afford, because lord knows us Regulars can't. This enslaves us in production of a lot of expensive crap. Even this, for all practical purposes, will have a finite demand if you just agree, for the sake of this argument, that a wealthy buyer can only buy so many of something within reason and finite resources. The other option is to create a mess of work via mass-produced, cheap items we can afford which, frankly, we can only afford because it is not produced in the US. If everyone overseas involved in the production of most of our low cost, non-durable goods made $50k + per year, we wouldn't be able to afford that shit either. SO, really, the only way jobs can be sustainably created is if that Some Billion the government spent on "Creating Jobs" was magically reintroduced into American households, from within which buying power would gradually increase demand. I honestly hope that right now you are thinking, "Duh." Because if you aren't I hope to god you are not in any position of power or convenience to interfere with anyone else's life.

The irritating thing about political arguments among half-wits is that they often leave out the underlying economic, social or other theories and concerns at play. Granted he came with a lot of complexities and detractors, Karl Marx had this shit down from day 1. While Das Kapital was one of the most complex and frustrating books I've ever read, and I admit I had to read a lot of supplemental material, I have to give credit where credit is due. I finally learned to read and appreciate Marx, and like to continually revisit his arguments. The following is a discussion of Labor Wages vs Extracted Labor Value, and the presence and reinforcement of exploitation through contract and will.

Throughout Capital, Marx explores several aspects of the capitalist system, with the concept of exploitative social / production relations seeming to be the common thread running through his work. Exploitation of labor has surely been present in many systems throughout history, but unlike the overt exploitation of feudalism or slavery, capitalism seems to have embedded and hidden exploitation in the very processes of commodity production. The introduction of machines and technology, as well as the source of surplus value, play an integral role in Marx’s discussion of exploitation. However, in the capitalist system, the idea of laws, regulations, and contracts between the worker and the capitalist seems to give a semblance of fairness and willful entrance into such contracts, further masking the presence of exploitation in the capitalist system. Godelier’s “Market Economy and Fetishism,” Pashukanis’ The General Theory of Law and Marxism, and Bob Fine’s Democracy and the Rule of Law help to understand Marx’s discussion of exploitation.

With the emergence of machines in the production process, the human worker is no longer able to monopolize a highly specialized set of skills or tools. His once-meaningful existence as a skilled worker or artisan is obsolete in the face of machines. The machine is now able to produce the same products as the skilled worker, yet in a much greater quantity, and the worker thus becomes merely a button-pusher or lever-puller in a factory of machines. Machine production does not only encourage the workers’ alienation from each other, as well as from their products (as commodities appear to only relate to themselves, not the human labor invested in them), but as Marx points out, machines tend to allow for greater exploitation of their operators.

Machines in the production process reduce the human worker to “merely the motive power of an implement-machine” instead of “working with an implement on the subject of his labor” himself (Marx: 230), through his own physical skill and with his own physical tools. In this arrangement, the machine “supercedes the workman” (Marx: 230), making the laborers’ work mindless and dull, not to mention potentially dangerous (as seen particularly through the early stages of the industrial revolution).  In a way, the machine seems just as important, if not more so, to the capitalist not only because it cannot revolt or monopolize a set of skills, but also in that it aids him in extracting as much labor as possible from the paid labor-power.

In other words, when a human laborer is producing more products via machinery while receiving the same wage, the machine seems to contribute to inadequate compensation (or “unequal exchange” of wages for labor power). Marx is thus determined that technological progress is not so much for the sake of great intellectual / machine advancement, but rather it is simply “intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening [the paid portion of the work day], to lengthen the other portion [the laborer] gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist” (Marx: 229). Therefore, if the production of commodities is cheapened, as well as expanded / accelerated to create more product in a workday, and the paid portion of the workday shortened, the capitalist is able to quickly realize his goal of profit beyond the cost of production. This easily suggests the sole purpose of machines, for Marx, is a “means of producing surplus value” (Marx: 229).

Machinery, while helping to increase the amount of labor the capitalist gets out of the contracted / paid labor-power, “throw[s] every member of the family” into the process of production, and “augment[s] the human material that forms the principal object of capital’s exploiting power, at the same time raises the degree of exploitation” (Marx: 245).

Hence, Marx refers to the relationship between laborer and machine as one of “strife” (Marx: 263) and antagonism. In addition to its previously mentioned harmful effects on the worker, and its constant threat of worker displacement, the machine also plays a role in the exploitation of contract labor, as “a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous… [a] power inimical to him” (Marx 267) in the factory setting.

Marx argues that the very aim of the capitalist is the production of a surplus value, because without any kind of profit or return on investment, the capitalist has little motivation to reinvest in the process of production, or even continue to produce his commodity. This desired surplus value, with which he does not necessarily have to pay workers, the capitalist can use as he wishes. Marx describes this motivation as the capitalist’s desire “to produce a commodity whose value shall be greater than the sum of its [price of] production… not only value, but at the same time surplus-value” (Marx: 121).

Though the worker is paid some given wage for his labor-power, the capitalist will always benefit most by getting as much labor out of the paid labor-power as possible, and thus it follows that the worker will generally be made to create more value for the capitalist than he is compensated for. This surplus value created, when not reimbursed to the laborers, is at the capitalists’ disposal for rent, paying off any interest on his production purchases, etc, and his own profit. Godelier restates this situation as “when a man works,.. he creates not only the equivalent of the value which his wage represents, but something more… which is not paid to him” (Godelier: 162). This value beyond the paid wage is the “substance of surplus value” (Godelier: 162); basically, profit.

With this in mind, the gain of profit starts to reveal itself in the capitalist system at the workers’ expense. It is assumed profit must come at the workers’ expense, simply because once wages and products necessary for production are paid for, any profit beyond the capitalist’s original investment need not return to the workers, no matter how much extra labor they have given the capitalist.  In creating surplus value then, Marx finds the greatest incidence of exploitation.

However, because the workers’ labor-power is paid for with a certain wage, “wages, therefore make unpaid labor seem like paid labor” (Godelier: 162), which helps to hide the exploitation of the labor-power for the sake of creating a pleasant amount of surplus value. This is where the concept of wages, set through some manner of formal contract “willingly” entered into by the worker, appears to fairly compensate the worker for his labor-power. As opposed to slavery or serf relations, a laborer in the capitalist system is appears to be “a legal subject and a bearer of rights,” as well as a “free and equal” owner of his labor-power as a commodity (Pashukanis: 112-116). In this system, workers “contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will” (Marx: 113).

However, as Pashukanis states, the assumption that all conditions of the labor are fair, willful, and compensated for according to the contract, is “out of touch with reality” (Pashukanis: 116). Though it may seem fair if the worker has entered willingly into a contract (which must adhere to at least some standards or regulation, and is to some degree protected by a set of laws), law and will only apply to what is contracted, the labor-power, and does not inherently apply to whatever amount of labor the capitalist still intends to extract from the labor-power by whichever means he finds most successful (countertendencies, other threats).

Though there may be all sorts of laws regulating the hours in a workday, or a minimum wage, law itself as an “abstract ideology” (Pashukanis) cannot fully remove or prevent exploitation in the system. In fact, as Fine suggests, the law can become “the means by which the government substitutes its own private will [and moreover cases the capitalists’ will] for the will of the people” (Fine: 67) in a capitalist system, and not really serve the “will” or rights of the laborers at all.

Fine further explores the idea that the relations of production, in their legal form as embodied by a contract, per se, make free will and equality before the law “appear as natural qualities of people,.. attributes of human nature” (Fine: 98). However, the “ideas of justice, law, rights and so forth to capitalist relations of production are lost from sight” (Fine: 99) when the “fetishized character of law” merely hides the realities of worker-capitalist relations in “legal mysteries” (Fine: 100). With labor-power as a new kind of commodity “that can be bought and sold on the marketplace,” it appears as “the external embodiment of [the workers’] individual will in things” (Fine: 101).

However, rather than protect the worker as the owner of his own commodity, the contract “in fact signifies the alienation of the individual” (Fine: 101) from the commodity as the laborer is forced to sell his labor-power for whatever wages he can get on the marketplace, depending on his circumstances, and forced to enter into any kind of contract necessary to sell his labor-power.

However, these wages tend to go down, as Marx suggests, through still more exploitive situations in order to maintain the capitalist’s desirable rate of profit; unemployment, higher and cheaper productivity, and foreign sources of production are among the factors that weaken the workers’ bargaining power and coerce him to work for depressed wages and / or under other sub par working conditions.

Yet through the legal contract face of labor relations, “the exchange [of labor-power for a wage] appears as a self-sufficient relation,.. between free and equal property owners who enter a contract in pursuit of their own self-interest” (Fine: 107). However, it is more likely that in the end the capitalist’s self-interest will be served much more than the workers’, particularly as “the means of production [become] property of some and the non-property of the vast majority” (Fine: 113) and allow the owners of the means of production [the capitalists] to dictate that production and the fate of its laborers.

Fine further explains that “nobody enters exchange as an abstract individual but rather as an individual rooted in definite social relations… between worker and capitalist” (Fine: 114); this will, no doubt, at the will of the capitalist, assume the aforementioned form of an exploitative relation. The exploitative relation is obscured by the wage-form (Fine: 115), because as per the willfully-entered contract, “it appears as though [the workers] are paid for the entire labor,” when in fact they are paid for a very small part of the labor, which is their original labor-power.

Thus it seems the “exchange of equivalents” is not upheld in the wages, while “all the notions of justice… [make] the actual relations invisible” (Fine” 115). So, flat out, Fine concurs that “capitalist production, [is] based on relations of exploitation and domination,” and “was revealed as compatible with” (Fine: 119) the law via the “willful” contract; what actually takes place in the factory may not be totally “divorced” from law, but exploitation for profit shows that these relations are also not totally governed by law in the interest of the worker.

Another factor to consider briefly in regards to contractual labor is the issue of exporting labor to foreign countries. Not only is the capitalist generally able to produce the same goods for much cheaper abroad, but the socioeconomic conditions in many countries that produce for large capitalist nations force the working class to take whatever factory work is made available. As Berkeley’s Peace & Conflict Studies professor Jerry Sanders often states, “there are still rich people in poor countries,” whose job it is to ensure that there is a steady pool of workers available to produce the desired surplus value.

The presence of socioeconomic oppression of the working classes in these poor, factory-laden countries makes it impossible to assume or even consider that all workers fully understand, or willfully agree to (desire), the contracts into which they are entering, or that the capitalist is not knowingly extracting exorbitantly more labor out of the workers than the labor-power he has paid for.

The exploitative relation (social / production) between the laborer and the capitalist then culminates in Marx’s larger concern with the social implications of capitalism as expressed somewhat in his discussion of the Trinity Formula. Marx is adamant that capital, and the bourgeoisie in capitalist society, permits “the means of production [to be] monopolized by a certain section of society,” in a “very mystical, social form” (Marx: 465). Capitalist production, as both an exploitative social relation and a process of exploitation, subordinates the human laborer to the machine, puts him at the mercy of the capitalist, and then shrouds unequal exchange in convoluted legalspeak of contracts and supposedly-beneficial regulations.

This shroud differentiates capitalist production from the overt, often physical coercion found in slave and feudal systems. By presenting the laborer as a free-willed, consensual “free agent,” his labor-power appears to be fully compensated as set forth in the labor contract, while in actuality he creates a value above and beyond his wage, a much greater quantity of labor that the capitalist is not contractually obligated to compensate.

However, as Marx et al examine, the “fair” compensation for labor-power only takes place on this surface / contract-level under the guise of laws and regulations. In actuality, this only serves to mask the abounding exploitation as discovered in the production of surplus value, the function of machines, and many other processes and activities of the capitalist system. So the capitalist, rather than moving away from the slave / serf relations to a master, simply reorganizes the system, and still oppresses / exploits the workers while extracting as much labor as is desired without any bearing on the wages he feels compelled to give his workforce. This massive exploitation deeply troubled Marx, spurring his description of the relationship between the proletariat and bourgeoisie class as a rival, subordinated one.

Further, the appearance of willful contracts and regulations seems to place law in the service of the capitalist and his motives, as the contractual labor-power and compensation seems, on the surface, somehow regulated and even fair, while the actual labor-intensive workday takes place far removed from the “official” contract governing its form. This seems to position the ideology of law and the concept of the contract in Marx’s fetishistic realm alongside commodities and money. Law and the contract (supposedly entered into willingly by the laborer), is given this almost god-like power, yet as merely an ideology, it cannot in any physical way control what goes on in the factory during the workday.

So despite this semblance of will and fair compensation, there is still a high capacity for, and presence of, exploitation in the capitalist system of production (which is masked, not eliminated, by wages and contracts). The extent to which exploitation is hidden and denied through contract or the concept of free will, gives law in the capitalist system almost absurd, super-human, autonomous qualities akin to the other fetishes, commodities and money.

Such exploitation, however, seems almost inevitable in any system of social relations in which one or a few powerful individuals own the means of creating a livelihood for the general population. In such a situation the general population has little bargaining power and, in order to support themselves, must succumb to whatever the individuals in power demand. No matter how free their will to work, or how fair their contract to work appears, the laborer will, nevertheless, experience some degree of exploitation of his labor-power for some surplus amount of labor. Without this exploitation, to create more value than the laborer has to actually be paid for, it seems, at least for Marx, the capitalist would not make his profit and thus would have no reason to hire the laborer in the first place.