[PEN-L:5000] Marx, Usury, Exploitation

[cns@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

"Marxist" definitions don't always equal "definitions made by
Marx." We have made some progress. Marx's original sense of
"real subsumption" is too vague, and also wrong. If you
include "mode of cooperation" as part of the "labor process,"
capital "subsumed" labor well before technology got transformed.
The importance of defining real subsumption in terms of the absence
of a market for skills outside of the capitalist framework is that
a sociological, not only economic, truth about capitalism is revealed.
A contribution to the theory of social classes.
As for carpenters, welders, etc., -- there are damn few carpenters
(now called contractors), and lots of framers, sheet rock specialists,
shinglers, etc., few if any of whom can find employment outside of a
capitalistic workplace. All of those whose skills CAN be employed
equally in the capitalist workplace AND in self-organized production
(small commodity production) are not "subsumed" under capital.
Sociologically speaking, they can "change" classes.
Jim O'Connor