Re: [OPE-L] Bloody Capital and Dead Labour Cultural Studies or the Critique of Political Economy? By Mark Neocleous

[Jerry Levy <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: [OPE-L] Bloody Capital and Dead Labour Cultural Studie

Rakesh,

 

Wow, that was a long time ago.  Here's what I think I meant.

If capital fed off of the "capitalized blood of children", then

capital was vampiric.  But when the undead bite the living the

living also become transformed into the undead.  The bitten

labor then, if one pursues the vampire metaphor to its logical

end,  would be neither living nor dead.  If you see the subsequent

posts I wrote shortly afterwards in early May, 1996,  I raised

the question of  *workers'  subjectivity*.

 

To truly have subjectivity requires that workers be conceived as

subjects with wills that are not totally at the command of others,

unlike what happens to the victims of vampires who do not have

the capacity to challenge the commands of their vampire masters.

 

That's what I _think_ I meant, but I wrote that way back in 1996

and, frankly, had forgotten about it.  The point is, though, that

the notion of capital as vampiric is consistent with conceiving of

labor as undead.  This highlights a problem with the metaphor:

it is  *one-sided* since it can not conceive of workers employed by

capital who truly have subjectivity.  This does not mean that the

metaphor should be rejected, but it does suggest that it needs to

be surpassed in the further unfolding of the theory.

 

In solidarity, Jerry

 

PS: there seem to be some posts, including this one, which are

missing from the May, 1996 archives.  Fortunately, there are copies

of the posts elsewhere (I had to look up the post in a cd-rom Iwao

sent me _many_ years ago!) so they can be recovered.

glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

Sat, 4 May 1996 04:56:48 -0700

Massimo asked in [OPE-L:2072]:
> "A great deal of capital, which appears today in the United States
> without any birth-certificate, was yesterday, in England,
> the capitalised blood of children." (V.I. p. 921)
> I guess also the quote could be dismissed on the ground that
> it represents a simple metaphor, in which case I would like
> ask: a metaphor for what? May I have your

> distinguished views on the matter
It's a vampire metaphor, of course. Taking the metaphor literally, one could

refer to labor as "undead labor" -- neither completely living or truly dead.