RE: [AUT] Productivity

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Paul thanks, I read this very carefully and then went and read the
article of yours that you cited. It was quite informative, but I'm not
clear enough to say whether I agree with you on any of the specific
points. So I'd like to initiate a little dialogue if that's possible by
taking up some of the points below. (It may be that I am
misunderstanding you).
Tahir

>>> "Paul Bowman" <helvetius@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 04/20/07 6:02 PM >>>
Hi Tahir,

On the subject of productivity, I'm afraid I haven't directly responded
to 
your point by point question, but I'll throw in the following in case
it is 
of any interest/help:

Productivity is at the heart of the molecular conflict that is at the
base of all other contradictions of capitalist. That is that the
economic relations are such that the individual interest is
fundamentally opposed to the interest of society as a whole (as
William Thompson* noted back in the 1820s). It is in the interest of
society as a whole that productivity levels in a given line of
production increases, but it is against the interest of the individual
producer to pass on, disclose or circulate advances they have
discovered as this would either result in a loss of the opportunity
for individual accumulation (or reduction of necessary work) at the
expense of others, and/or, in the situation of capitalist employment,
the likelihood of increased productivity allowing capitalists to
reduce the workforce. My personal introduction to the central role of
productivity in both the class struggle and the central contradictions
of capitalist society was my father's observation to me back in the
mid-80s that the steel industry of Western Europe had, within the 20
years he had then been working in it, gone from employing over 1
million men to just around 100,000 and yet the amount of steel being
produced was still roughly the same. Good news for society as a whole,
pretty crap news for 900,000 european steel workers (though a mate of
mine, himself an ex-Sheffield steel worker, did once make the point
that steel mills weren't exactly the pleasantest or healthiest places
to work, to be fair). 

Tahir: I would say that this is not good news for society as a whole;
in this context it is good news rather for the corporation and its
shareholders. It would only be good news for society as a whole in a
more communal form of society. The main problem with productivity under
capitalism is that it is itself driven by the need to compete, rather
than anything else. As such it very seldom benefits society as a whole.
And in the longer run its harms to society may turn out to be prodigious
(mass unemployment, environmental degradation, you name it.) I think I
know what you're getting at in the above but I would be much more
careful in the way that I put it than you have been. I would say that
productivity is potentially better for society, but mostly only on
condition that that 'society' is not capitalist!

My take on this is to call it the "productivity
paradox" as in...

"The system of exchange valued by labour time introduces the
'productivity paradox' - the longer you take to produce a given output
the more of another's output you can exchange it for. Conversely the
more efficient you are in producing your output, the less you get in
exchange for it. The productivity paradox is that labour value
incentivizes inefficiency and disincentivizes efficiency. This is why
capitalism necessitates that the promotion of efficiency is
specialised off as a management function over and against the
interests of the productive workforce. The roots of class conflict in
production are to be found in the productivity paradox arising
directly out of exchange by labour time value itself." (from "What is
Communism" http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1555)

Tahir: You only get more for working 'unproductively' if everyone is
doing it that way. It only takes one captitalist to up the organic
composition of capital and then everyone else has to do it or go
bankrupt. It is also not the case always and everywhere that the worker
is worse off under a more productive regime. The 'relative surplus value
strategy' is usually accompanied by a shorter working week than it was
before and, some of us might say, a raising of the general intellect.
But it is not clear in the above paragraph whether the 'you' that is
mentioned is the capitalist or the worker, so maybe I'm misunderstanding
you?

further an appreciation of how productivity is at the heart of the
economic contradictions of capitalism helps understand the historic
failure of "really existing socialism" or state capitalism. To whit...

The central error of the Gothakritik is the uncritical acceptance
of the notion, inherited from capitalist ideology, that the wage
is an incentive to promote increased production and
the "development of the forces of production".

Tahir: I would be little careful here. Without wanting to defend the
Critique in any detail, I do recall that Marx did not defend a money
wage there as such, but rather some other measure of value. There is a
difference.

 If, however, we
take the productivity paradox to it's ultimate implications, we
see that, counter-intuitively, in actual operation the wage has
the opposite outcome to its intended effect, rather than being an
incentive to increasing production, it disincentivises efficient
working and the sharing and spreading of innovations in
productivity.

Tahir: I'm sorry I really don't understand what you're getting at here,
but yet I sense that  the above formulation is at the heart of your
argument. I don't see what you mean by the wage's "intended effect"
here. In my marxist view, the only intended effect of the wage that I
know about is to reproduce labour power. You seem to be confusing the
wage with invested capital here, what marxists call variable capital and
constant capital, or else you are positing some relationship between
these two that I really don't understand. Could you clarify?

 Within the private property relations of capitalism
the drive to accumulate serves to counter-balance this braking
effect of the wage. However, in the context of the state
socialism of Marx's lower phase, the possibilities of accumulation
being denied to productive workers able to out-perform the current
level of productivity in their field, the only way to benefit from the
advance is to reduce the actual amount of work done during the
official work day. The end result over time is the historic irony of
worker's states where, most of the time, no one actually works,
despite official full employment.

Tahir: Don't understand again, but this reasoning looks hugely suspect
on the surface.

Finally, the importance of the productivity paradox as opposed to the
attribution problem, as used by Kropotkin in "The Wages System" to
deconstruct the Collectivism of de Paepe and Marx, is that the latter
concentrates only on the ethico-political question of justice. Whereas
productivity brings in the question of productive efficiency as well,
which helps to explain phenonema like the free software movement where
the participants have adopted a communist mode of production not out
of political conviction (indeed the likes of Eric Raymond would
probably have a heart attack if they thought they were advocating
communism, which just makes it funnier...) but simply because it was
the most effective and efficient way of getting the job done.

Tahir: I recognise nothing of Marx in this phrase "concentrates only on
the ethico-political question of justice". I really mean this quite
literally, without wanting to be argumentative. I think you are too keen
to find some 'fatal flaw' in Marx that explains the failure of the state
capitalist regimes, but it is not clear at all that you are familiar
with Marx's critique of political economy. The most relevant pieces of
Marx for me on the question of productivity, would be the 'fragment on
machines' in the Grundrisse, the bits and pieces from Capital on formal
and real subsumption of labour, and of course his whole treatment of the
organic composition of capital. 

Sorry this is so fragmentary but it's cobbled together from various
pieces I'm struggling with at the moment.

Tahir: Paul, please understand I'm not in any sense hostile to
anarchism. I personally believe that marxism and anarchism are the two
broken parts of the communist movement that need to be put together
again ultimately. It is true that Marx didn't go on to write much about
post-capitalist society, but his critique of political economy is way
more sophisticated than many anarchists suppose or than you are giving
him credit for here. Once again my apologies if I have misunderstood
you.


cheers,

Paul Bowman
----
* Early Irish communist (1775 - 1833), his Distribution of Wealth was
  an influence on Marx when he read it in 1845 and contributed to the
  his shift from the Manuscript's of 1844 which rejected to the LToV
  to his accpetance of the latter in Poverty of Philosophy of
  1847. With the help of the WSM I've been trying to get some extracts
  of Thompson's work available online - see
  http://www.wsm.ie/thompson. There's more of his texts in the
  pipeline at the moment.



>From: "Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: "Autonomia, Operaismo,and Class Composition" 
><aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "Operaismo and Class Composition Autonomia"
<aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [AUT] Productivity
>Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:22:24 +0200
>
>Now that we have started talking again, it occurs to me that there is
a
>question that I might get some help with here. I'm doing some
research
>around the notion of productivity. I'm aware of Harry Cleaver's
>treatment of that topic in Reading Capital Politically, but I'm
looking
>for more stuff. It stems from my interest in Higher Education and the
>pressures being put on it by changes in the economy. Some of the
things
>connected with capitalist productivity that are interesting me are
its
>relationships with the following issues:
>
>1. (un)employment
>2. urbanisation, and the food supply
>3. capitalist competition
>4. prices, falling rate of profit, etc.
>5. ideological functions (productivity is 'good' etc.)
>6. Formal/real subsumption, fordism, post-fordism, etc.
>7. a possible non-capitalist notion of productivity (bearing in mind
>food supplies to urban masses)
>8. general intellect
>9. biotechnology, nanotechnology and similar
>
>Readings, ideas are what I'm after, perhaps some discussion here too.
>Tahir


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