Re: AUT: Remarks on MIDNIGHT NOTES

[bernhard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Bernhard Doenig)]

Housework affects labour in the factory (and vice versa), this
is obviously true. But this is per se not very helpful;
everything is affected by everything. I think, to get a
revolutionary understanding of the various relationships inside
the totality of capitalist society, we have to discuss again
some basics.
I. What is "abstract labor"?
Massimo wrote:
>     "Marx defines abstract labor as 'human labor power
>     expended without regard to the ***form*** of ist
>     expenditure. (Marx CI p.128)'" and
>     "Thus second, if we understand abstract labour in the
>     way Marx defines it (see above), then yes, housework
>    is abstract labour."

Sometimes it seems not to be enough quoting only half a sentence
to get a whole philosophical concept. Marx does not define
"abstract labour" in the above sense: abstract labour is not
a special kind of work, like work which is boring.  Abstract
labour is work/labour treated as "general human labour" in
the act of exchange of products of human work.Every work can
be "abstract labour", if, when and insofar its products are
commodities. In capitalism is the production of commodities;
the search for profit and wage the definitive goal of
production. Therefore neither the entrepreneur nor the worker
are concerned about the WHAT, the HOW and so on. Today they
make cars, tomorrow perhaps missiles. This seems to me the
sense of the quote from Marx: Because the work will be later
treated only as abstract labour, it is expended without regard
to the form of its expenditure. And not the other way round.
Massimo wrote:
>     "Indeed, in these realms [factories] we recognize work
>     in its capitalist nature as 'abstract labour'"
This is either a misunderstanding or totally wrong. In the
production-process even capital must appear in its most reified
form, as machines, computers, buildings. And the work is very
real, because it is always the production of use-values.
(Therefore we are tired in the evening.) The realm of abstract
labour is the circulation-process, where the commodities are
exchanged as products of general human work, abstract labour.
Abstraction is an aspect of commodity-producing work in
capitalism, an aspect which appears before and after the real
work is done. This abstraction hides the exploitation. Abstract
labor is measured by the time spent for the real work and
represented by exchange-value and money. In capital, as the
unity of production- and circulation-process, this abstraction
becomes real, it becomes a body, a name and quality. Capital
is nothing but work, but not all work is capital.

II. "Labor Power"
Housework was often treated as production process of a
commodity: labor power. Therefore it should be mostly the same
as the work in e.g. the factory. I have the impression, that
a few points are neglected:
Raising children is at first raising human beings and not
producing labor power: We ARE NOT labor power, we HAVE labor
power. Of course, while a proletarian (wo)man grows, her/his
ability to work, her/his labor power becomes with education,
training and under the regime of family, school, police, prisons
more and more valuable. But still it is her/his property and
not the property of capital. In contradiction to e.g. the slave
or the villein who  ARE  labor power. It needs a decision,
to sell the labor power: Historically in the process of
proletarisation (see Asia), when you start a new job and every
work-day morning.
With selling our labor-power we "loose our humanity" (Marx)
and we become a part of capital in the production-process.
Its active part. And still we are not labor-power, which now
is the property of capital. It is a everlasting difficulty
for capital, to get labour out of the purchased labour power,
to get the workers working. This is the reason, why productivity
can be so high in capitalism and why productivity is sometimes
too low (in the case of a strike, or absenteeism...).
We have of course no big choice in this decision. But
nevertheless, sometimes we decide against capital: this is
class struggle.
The "production of labour power" by itself is not production
of surplus-value, it affects only in a very indirect way the
work under the regime of capital: Between the both realms there
is: the class struggle. It is no accident that child raising,
education, training and so on is usually not paid by capital
(because there is nothing to earn, the "added value" remains
with the worker!), but by revenues (wages or taxes). Capital
pays for labor power only when it actually needs it.
Class struggle: if we loose a fight for better wages, we have
to compensate this with more (house)work. Work is the activity
which is done to earn money or to avoid spending money. And
we can try to fight for another distribution of the revenues:
e.g. to force the state to pay more for education. But this
makes a difference: the enemy in this case is not capital
directly, a victory may hit the profits (and exploitation)
only in the long run (if at all).
I'm not at all an advocat of some "hierarchies of struggles".
I've earlier stated, that "class" is for me a political term;
class struggles do cover the whole society and have to cover
all the questions of living. At the same time I see, that
struggles which do not attack directly the basic fact of
exploitation and work (and instead are adressing the state)
are very easy turned in projects of modernisation, of reformism
(see the movement of "the disoccupied" in France).
And a second fact is worth to mention: In production, the
workers are already together, in different respects: In a very
concrete form at the line or in the office; as a part of global
division of labor, which is as concrete as the latter, but
not yet fully discovered by class struggle and in a historical
sense: their cooperation represents the productivity of human
work, still exploited by capital.In reproduction, we are
segregated as customers and citizens; we are relative poor
or relative rich, we can adress the state (mostly "our" national
state!) or the capital "in general". So I'm delighted about
the recent riots in Surabaya, the movement in France and the
uprising in Chiapas: Such struggles can force struggles which
will some times really attack the system at the roots..

Ciao,
Bernhard
bernhard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.rhein-neckar.de/~wildcat/


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