Re: [OPE-L] vampire blues

[Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx]

Title: vampire blues

> in Capital as a vampire? definitely, yes

 

Riccardo,

 

Capitalists as blood-suckers is a variation on the trans-historical

image of the ruling class as parasites. 

 

Let us consider the vampire analogy -- and all it implies -- more

closely. 

 

The analogy to bloodsucking is colorful but misleading.  It is

not workers' blood that capitalists survive on, it is by

capitalizing on what they produce.    The commodity is not

the blood of workers even if it was produced with workers'

blood, sweat, and tears.

 

There is no distinction that capitalists make between virgin workers

and experienced ones.  If anything, experiences ones -- to the degree

that they have more skill -- are more highly prized.   Virginity

has special meaning in Victorian society when the Dracula myth

was popularized;  capitalists are willing to exploit both virgins and

non-virgins equally.

 

Sunlight is poisonous for vampires.  Not so for capital.  All

hours of the day are utilized where possible to accumulate

capital (and, contrary to the image in Volume 1) consume

unproductively surplus value.  Also, the extraction of surplus

value (unlike the extraction of blood by vampires) takes place

during all hours of the working day rather than only during the

night.

 

Vampires are neither living nor dead -- they are undead.  This might

seem to fit in rather well with the imagery of capitalists as capital

personified.  It certainly fits in well with the predatory nature of

capitalists as a class. 

 

Yet, if capitalists are vampires what does that make workers?

Once bitten by a vampire one joins the undead and is condemned

*forever* to slavishly follow the commands of  one's master.

There is *absolutely* no room for subjectivity or revolt on the part of

the bitten.  Thus, the only prospect for defeating the vampire must

come from an *external* source -- i.e. somebody who has never been

bitten.    This perhaps represents a fantasy of capital but by no

means a reality.  A good thing too since the working class could

never be the "gravediggers" of capital and "expropriate the

expropriators" if that were true. 

 

Thus, if one believes that this is the message of _Capital_ then

all hope is lost and all struggle by workers is impossible since

the bitten can not struggle against their vampire master: their

blood has been poisoned and they have no will. If this is the

message then it is not a revolutionary one.

 

It is therefore a nice analogy but one that is highly misleading

if we take it too literally.

 

 

> my point is that the commodity compels Marx to speak the

> language of ghosts and vampires.

 

 

He spoke the language of ghosts throughout his literary career.  For

fun I did a search at in the Marx archive at www.marxists.org (click

on Marx's head) by typing in "ghost."   For an atheist, there

were an enormous quantity of references to ghosts -- and on

*many* more topics than just the commodity. 

 

A "specter" is haunting Europe!  It is not the specter of capital, is it?  

Rather, the specter is communism  -- an image that is quite contrary

to the imagery of workers as lacking in subjectivity and only capable

of following the commands of their vampire master.

 

Perhaps we should have saved this topic for discussion near the

end of the month ....

 

In solidarity, Jerry