[PEN-L:4833] Marx on subsumption and exploitation, Pt. 2

[GSKILLMAN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Second question:

Is formal subsumption necessary for the exploitation of labor
(understood in the strict sense of expropriating surplus labor) via
relationships of exchange?

I have in mind here not only usury, the circuit of capital Jim
focuses on in his post, but also those circuits corresponding to
merchant's capital and ground-rent prior to the era of capitalist
production.  Did these circuits support the exploitation of labor in
Jim's sense, and if so did they require at least formal subsumption
of labor, understood in either Jim's or Marx's sense?

Jim says yes. He writes:

> My perspective, which fits with Marx's general views but goes
> beyond them, is that the production of a surplus-product which is
> then redistributed to some non-producer is fundamentally based on
> subjection of some sort...

And what are Marx's views on this score?  According to Jim, who
writes (after making several cogent points which are however not at
issue, at least between us):

> Except for the hint in the quote from the RESULTS and some other
> partial references, *Marx does not consider seriously* the
> possibility that an independent producer might, like the slave-
> owner or "feudal" lord, produce a surplus-product [to pay
> interest]...That is, we have to consider the possibility that the
> usurers could exploit the peasant without formal or real subjection
> of their labor (the possibility that Gil stresses as part of his
> view).  As noted, *Marx doesn't given us an answer here*. [Emphases
> added]

Really?  I count at least six distinct passages in which Marx
explicitly and emphatically affirms the existence of exploitation,
understood in Jim's sense, via circuits which do not presume even the
formal subsumption of labor, understood in Marx's sense. (In fact,
two of these passages, which contradict Jim's conclusions, are cited
by Jim himself).  Furthermore, since Marx is in all cases referring
to historical cases which preceded the era of capitalist production,
these circuits also did not presume even the formal subsumption of
labor understood in Jim's alternative sense--that is, workers were
not in general "free in the double sense", though some may eventually
have *become* that way as the result of the operation of these
circuits.

All of the following references are to the Penguin paperback edition.

First, one of the passages quoted by Jim, from the RESULTATE, p. 1023:

"The exorbitant interest which [usurer's capital] attracts, the
interest which...it extorts from the primary producer, is just
another name for surplus-value.  It transforms its money into capital
by extorting unpaid labour, surplus labour, from the immediate
producer.  But it does not intervene in the process of production
itself...here we have *not yet* reached the stage of the formal
subsumption of labour under capital."

Marx goes on in this passage to talk about merchant's capital:

"A further example is merchant's capital, which commissions a number
of immediate producers, then collects their produce and sells it,
perhaps making them advances in the form of raw materials, etc., or
even money....Here too we find no formal subsumption of labour under
capital."

What is the nature of exploitation via merchant's capital? Marx
writes in CAPITAL, Vol III, Ch. 20, Historical Material on Merchant's
Capital, p. 453:

"Without revolutionizing the mode of production, [merchant's capital]
simply worsens the conditions of the direct producers, transforms
them into mere wage-labourers and proletarians under worse conditions
than those directly subsumed by capital, appropriating their surplus
labour on the basis of the old mode of production."

Further down the page, he adds:

"Under these conditions [the handicraft masters] are really only
middlemen between the merchant and their workers.  The merchant is
the real capitalist and pockets the greater part of the surplus-
value."

Returning to the case of usurer's capital, we find Marx writing in
Ch. 36, p. 730:

"In the form of interest, the usurer can in this case swallow up
everything in excess of the producers' most essential means of
subsistence...(the usurer's interest being the part that later
appears as profit and ground-rent)...If the usurer, not content with
extracting his victim's *surplus labour*...Usurer's capital, in this
form where it actually appropriates all the *surplus labour* of the
direct producer, without alterning the mode of production..."[Emphases
added]

On the basis of such considerations Marx concludes on p. 732:

"Usurer's capital has capital's mode of exploitation without its mode
of production."

Further comments on usury and the putting-out system are found in the
GRUNDRISSE, pp 851-2:

"[In India] profit as well as part of wages itself is appropriated in
the form of interest by the usurer...[Mr. Carey] ought to have
compared the interest which English handloom-weavers...pay, whose
material and interest is advanced (lent) by the capitalist.  He would
have found that the interest is here so high that...the worker ends
up being the debtor,...also having *added his own labour to [the
capitalist's advance] free of charge*." [Emphasis added]

And in a separate passage, on p. 853 of the GRUNDRISSE:

"On the other side, the [worker] is not yet subsumed into the process
of capital.  The mode of production therefore does not yet undergo
essential change....What takes place is exploitation by capital
without the mode of production of capital.  The rate of interest
appears very high, because it includes profit and even a part of
wages."

Marx also sees exploitation emerging from pre-capitalist forms of
ground rent which clearly do not presume formal subsumption even in
Jim's sense.  After discussing various pre-capitalist and capitalist
forms of ground rent, Marx states in Vol. III, pp 772-73:

"*All* ground-rent is surplus-value, the product of surplus labour.
In its more undeveloped form, rent in kind, it is still a direct
surplus product."

I could keep going, adducing corroborative passages from Volume I of
CAPITAL and from THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE, but you get the drift.

Next up:  if exploitation in these cases didn't require even the
subsumption of labor under capital, did it require instead the
existence of individual market (i.e. price-setting) power?