2 Triumphant Capitalism

2.1 In Search of a critiqueThus we have been chained more and more to capitalism. We were fastening our chains to it, while we were filled with the feelings of fighting it, aiming to overthrow it. A bitter reality. Capitalism has swallowed its outside, Marxism with it, and digestion seems to be completed by now. A triumphant Capitalism1 is in fronts of us and has engulfed us. An unchallenged one? It is, as it stands now! Is there any grounds left - or could open itself to us, for a renewed critique of capital? Could any critique would be possible at all? By whom? How? Why? On what grounds? This is the question. The question which I've not fount any answer to it. It is a search, not a search all on the familiar tracks, and with a danger in getting lost - or to being lost? Needless to say, it is what, that make for me an assessment of Marxism, or attempts in re-reading of Marx justified and interesting. I'm not interested in that 'disinterested', or the 'objective' kind of research-assessments, or the kind of scientific knowledge and views. There is an Ideology of Science, I believe, which I do not accept and I'm trying to avoid it, when possible and when it is discernible to me. I'm not ashamed of speculative thoughts. The craft of the hypothesis-monger is not a bad one. As far as this craft could shed some light aheadof me. Even when it indicate that 'there is no way out' and all search for a break is doomed to be in vain. As I was running away from Marxism, or the ruins, the left barren and deserted site of it, I found myself going back again and again to Marx. Icould not do without him. Every search will be in the shadow of the Marx. My plan is to go back again to the 'site of ruins'- to assess the theoretical foundation of Marxism, and then examine the kinds of critiques which have become fashion after it and have occupied its deserted space, now in the full. There are a twin pare of criticism, whichseems to hold sway. I can brand them, in advance, one as the priestly

1 See Notes of Revision, What is Capitalism?!

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critic, probably the oldest type of criticism, the self-image and self-criticism of power of itself, now reshaping itself in two branches the Justice-Moralist view and the Objective-Scientific view. The other one, the Equality and Freedom critic, as the self-image and self-criticism of capitalism of itself, its Ideology- if one like to use Marxist terms. But, before that, first I'd like to settle some accounts with some objections which are, or which could be, raised against Marx, and in reading his texts.

2.2 Objections to Marx

2.2.1 The Promised Land is Lost!, The Problem of Transformation

Marx in his perception of abolition of capital, the overthrowing of capitalism, remain at a legal, juridical level, he fails to depict any social transformation out of capitalism.I feel being lost at the face of such an objection! First of all, I'm not surewhich Marx is here being criticized? Objection points to whom? Is it not the Marx of Marxism? (The Jesus which Paul made out of him, not Jesus himself?!) Is it not that modern prophet, which we were being told about him, that he used science to reveal the secret of all history and foresee the destiny of all mankind? The reincarnation of that ancient fiery spirit of messianic Jewish prophet, pointing and warning to the incoming Apocalypse? A Jewish prophet, which (following Jesus?!) break with Moses tradition, left Jews to bring the promise of the land of bread and honey to proletariat of all nations, the slaves of modern Pharaohs, capitalists, the slaves which by the way of their act ofself-liberation, will liberate all the humanity out of slavery for ever? Is it not all the critique of this prophet? The promised land you showed us was on the paper! Mere legality! Just changing property titles and leaving social relations beyond that, intact! Hopefully we have escaped from the constrains of Marxism doctrine and away form it "revealing false revelations" could be just another religious game. We leave the prophet and his ex-believers to rest. Let us go back to more serious part of this objection! It is probably right. I think, there is an unresolved transformation problem, not so much in Marxism

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doctrine, but with Marx himself too. He has texts which could amount to a judicial view, or could be read and interpreted in this manner, if onewants. He many times hints at the idea that capital turns all the previously scattered and isolated means of production into connected and concentrated social bodies, it makes them social means of production in their function and character, and then it is for most part a matter of socializing the ownership of them, turning the private ownership of these socialized mean of production into direct public property.2 Marx knew, probably better than anybody else, that forms of

2 There is another thorny theme involved here. Is social character of the vast amount of 'productive forces' separable from their physical existence? Are them transformable? Are these not, or has not become, the 'productive forces' of capitalist society, mainly the productive forces of production and reproduction of this special from of social relations itself? Are not most of them fixed to this form of society? To the production of capitalism with all its internal working? Do these forces have, or they could retain, any 'use value' without capitalism, beyond it?! There is not any innocence 'mean of production', not anymore, I bet. At least not somuch at the present state of technology. The capitalist character is not seems to be separable from the greatest extents of the present material means, or even forces, of production, from their physical, institutional, informational and technological and 'virtual' existence. Choose any industry you want. Car industry? Sex, fashion, porn industry? Bank, credit, finance industry? Entertainment along electronic industry? War, terror, crime or health industry?! Marketing, Law, PR, affection industries?! I doubt if there could be so much salvageable in many of these industries from their capitalist skins, veins and muscles. As soon as we put aside the 'economy of subsistence"- and this economy has been on the road of an ever diminishing size and volume form when capitalism took over- then, how much of 'productive forces' and means of production in the other economy, which to distinguish it from the 'economy of subsistence' I would call the 'economy of social relations', would yield themselves to any changed social relations? Taking over the productive forces, that battle cay of state-builder Marxists, is not any real step in changing social relations. At least not anymore. I'd like to come back to thisdistinction between 'economy of subsistence' and 'economy of social relations', a distinction though artificial and very much make-shift kind of theoretic observation, probably would be useful to shed some light in this thorny theme which I just mentioned. It perhaps has something to do with the summary treatment of 'use-value' in Marx analyses. Use-value is a bearer of exchange-value. But how this relation changes the character of use-value itself? Does not theform of exchange-value making a vast amount of use-values just the bearer of exchange- values without any other use outside of this relation?! Money itself

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property rights are and could only be the surface effects of much more entrenched social relations. Here I'd like to give even to Marx the Prophet some credit, which is really his own! He thought of changing the property form, the transfer of ownership, as a first step which has to be enforced by a political act and will. He also knew that legal verdicts, rights and property titles, all have as their first, and last, resort, the naked force as their source of validity, the way of their enactment! Here, our prophet differ from Jesus! He called to arm, to use the violence, to do revolution. He called for the Dictatorship of Proletariat". This could not be put out of the Marx picture of social transformation. Changing property forms, for him, is not judicial but political. Not merely political either, the overthrowing and replacing thepower of capitalist class by proletariat one.

2.2.2 Two traits?! Agitator and Thinker!

Marxism officially presents itself as the righteous heir of "German Philosophy, French Socialism, England Political Economy". The notorious three components. It was the way Marxism looked at itself, and liked to be looked at, having all its credentials at display. It all maybe true as far as Marxism is concerned. I do not like to buy it for looking at Marx himself! More than this famous three components andthree sources, my guess is that there are two currents in Marx thoughts and personality which are much more telling than that. They are, at some and probably more active level, class struggle and critic of political economy- or could be named so. Did Marx ever managed to bring these two traits together in a coherent way, or did he illustrate their relations in any convincing way? Not, as I understand it. Was he a system maker? Probably he was and he tried hard at it. But in this matter the system is broken, apparently from the start to finish. There is two traits in Marx and these two remains separate, competing with each other to get upper hand, one at the expense of the other. In this sense, there is a duality in Max, an unresolved one, exposing to irony his endeavor in keeping to a unitary world view. This way, leaving Marx the prophet to rest, there are, to me, two other Marx which one

stands for striking evidance.

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could call to accounts for the problem of transformation. Marx, the thinker which we meet mostly in the critique of political economy; one that confine his thinking to the limits of this science, and thoroughly examines the premises of it. And Marx, the agitator, one who find the class struggle the driving force in changing the world. The political Marx, if we want, bu the Marx which here, too, in his political theories, fails to work out a theory of state, though he put a great emphasize on the political power which state is and has been its pinnacle and embodiment. There is a blind gap, or may one say an abyss, between these two Marx. (Here, I'm going ahead of myself in these points, which I intent to come back to them later). Now, let first tofollow the agitator, calling him to account for the transformation problem.For Marx, the agitator, as we said the transformation has to go through, or to be mediated by, political power, through the Proletariat Dictatorship. Transformation is to be imposed, to be forced on by violence. Marx agitated for it, organized and theorized for it, did endless polemics against those who were shy at counting for force or preached marginal, new community type way of evasion of capitalism, instead of aiming to its transformation. There was not any automatic transformation in the pictures which he depicted. (The second international and later flirtations with democracy, reformist and peaceful transformation is another story). Transformation for Marx, remained a practical matter which theory could only cast a very dim light at it. For Marx, this act, proletarian revolution, goes pretty much ahead of theory. (Remember his reaction to Paris Commune and his praise for it, which in his view was pretty much ahead of theory, showing the forms and possibility of proletarian dictatorship.) He calledon proletariat to act, to do the revolution, and told to him: believe in yourself and just do it, everything else just follow suit if you adjust yourself to your power. The whole world is there to conquer and only chains to lose! Was Marx right in his agitation?! How we can measure wright or wrongof it?! I think he was. Why not? Really! If capitalism was imposing itself with naked force all over the face of globe, if its hands was

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imbued with blood, if violence is the decisive game in the town, why not stand to force with an equally coherent and organized force, why not imitate or use the capitalism ways of acting and enforcing?! I'm not really sure if German uprising could succeed and instead of Nazi Germany ww2 was fought by Germany of Workers, Socialist, Communists (pick one you want), if Marxism fate was not totally entangled with the fate of Russian and her catching up game with modernity, what we had today was this unchallenged triumphant capitalism! Probably not the promised socialism either, but I'll bet a way of life differing somehow from both, and maybe as resilient one as capitalism itself?! Very wild and an uneducated backward speculation indeed! But my point, or my understanding, is that the instinct of force, this deep rooted instinct of political animal3 was used by Marx agitator to fill the great gap which left empty and open in his theoreticalthinking. (Was not Lenin the heir of this blind trait in Marx thought and character?! Look, I have already too many parentheses which push me out the subject!) History did not strike that course of actions, and I'm left with my further questions.

2.2.3 Class Struggle

Was Marx, the agitator, betraying Marx the thinker? Did he put aside his line of analyses and deeper insight for the sake of agitation, or perhaps these insights came to him later in time, insights which we find in a more mature form in Grundrisse and Capital?! The text which give our agitator thoughts a free ride, free from later insights into politicaleconomy is that grand recipe for action, the Communist Manifesto. And this free ride thinking on the wave of class struggle, has its own

3 Instead of political animal, I'd like to use the term city-animal. I hope to betterdistinguish and opposed him to other one: tribal animal, or herd animal. This one has for his prevailing instinct the gregariousness of the herd. Instead of power play among the citizens its is used to force out a head from the body of tribe, or the head, and to follow this head, to become resentful and revengeful against the head and himself! A Bio-power, genetic distinction between culture of Greek city-states and Jewish, old testament, culture? Or for that matter between former and the Chinese or Iranian one?! I'll have a better chance to delve in this theme latter!

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blind spots too! At the head of this text we read:The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. It is the key sentence to whole body of this text, a key which become a source of criticism, explanation and drawing conclusion from it regarding the status and fate of bourgeois society. But, was this sentencereally a correct, not a selective, more or less an accurate outlining of history? We had the history of hitherto existing societies and the history of class struggles. Were these two, one and the same? Was it an oversimplifications for the sake of argument, or a deliberate omission of one whole line of histories for the benefit of the other line of histories- the omission of societies in the benefit on class struggles? Could we not say that the history of every existing society, and at the middle of 19th century there were many of them standing on their own, not as yet all being integrated into the world market, was not the history of all those separate and independent societies, at the same time, the history of their constant struggle for power and survival against others, the struggle which some time drivingthem to the brink of extinction in the hand of their competitors? Was Enlightenment influence and it exaltation of humanity too strong to making even Marx inclined to forget about, or cover up, animality in history of humanity, or in constitution of its societies?! We know that many societies could sustain their existence and many were perished. Was not the mere fact of existence as much the outcome of this more than often mutual savagery, violence, wars and blood baths? The outcome of competing for territory, dominance and living or empowerment at the expense of the other side? Was not this outer, the exterior constrain and context of existence of societies, playing as much an important role as the one which class struggle played inside these societies? Was not the history of societies at the same time, or more than class struggle, the history of non-ending violence between societies, their territorial power game? Is not any serious theory of political power, and a theory of state, obliged to takeinto account this outer context, this bedrock of all history? Orthodox Marxism Doctrine tends to call even the ancient wars the class wars, as

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it did call the WWI and WWII capitalist wars. But this will not do in thelater cases, let alone the former. It will stretch the class, and the class struggle too thin for covering everything, overriding nations, societies, and states, entities which had more than often a more coherent configuration, stronger cementation, and are more capable of act as a body, compare with classes which are diffused in the bodies of states and nations - and it seems to be even more true in later times. Class struggle was one force among many others and not always that force dominating, but most often under the constrain and dominance of the others forces. Could not the passed history could be read more richly at the level of states? This is the level at which the power functions of any society derived form its interior relations as well as the constrains imposed form its exterior, took shape and solidifies itself in it. I fall, leaning towards this view of the passed, pre-capitalist history of societies, then any class-struggle view!Then, there is that related and thorny theoretical question itself: what is a class?! Is not class something more connected to state than to political economy, or lets say to the relations of production? Classes had to be sustained by economy, by relations of production, but it does not mean that they arose from it, or being equally involved in it. Many classes stood outside the imminent sphere of production and its internal relations and this fact was what that made them a class. In pre-capitalist modes of production, the dominant class, nobles, priests, sultan, 'divan', are outside the proper sphere of production. When they did engage themselves more directly in production process, it was whenthey were consuming the surplus labor and surplus product of land, in building their monuments, palaces, churches, mosques, castles, in doingkillings or produce killing equipment the war enterprises. Putting it in my make-shift terms, the economy of subsistence and the economy of social relations were separate from each other, often even in space, and the force was what bridged them together. It was historical setting and the state in its attempts in ordering social strata, which invented, maintained and imposed classes. Political economy, or production of material life, by itself could stay clear and innocent of classes.4

4 In Athens city-state there was heard many complains, among others from the

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Putting it in a black and white color, class is a product of history and notthe economy. Class struggle too, could be considered as a sub-part of violence which drove the general history along other forces.Marx tries to strike a compromise with himself in order to assign to class struggle the central stage. He has an eye on a basic trend in capitalism which could and would bring down all territorial frontiers, which could bring about a world society integrating all separate and independent societies into its encompassing orbit. Exterior context and constrains was vanishing, at least theoretically. In this picture, the inner force, the class struggle, would be the dominant and determining one. Itis how Manifesto depict class struggle. Two problem lies here: Marx in his analyses of capital, considers it in its developed state. When capitalism is standing on its own feet, general rate of profit has been formed and is in place, meaning all production is now mediated throughcirculation, all surplus labor take the form surplus value, profit, interest,wages, taxes, are all arouse from capitalist production itself and not anymore from exploiting the others forms and sphere of production. It is a modeling like any other so called scientific modeling, when one putaside all which seems to be accidental, effects of other influences, and try to reduce the whole thing to its own patterns of regularity. It could work for political economy, where it can reveal at a theoretical level all possibilities and limits of capital as objectified labor confronting living one, on the track which already was paved by Smith and Ricardo.But this kind of modeling, scientific or not, could be very risky and could fail badly at the level of history or analyses of developing bourgeoisie society. From mid 19th century, British Empire and its effort to establish a world market and a world Empire on a capitalist line, to a world society which would be the equivalent of capitalism fully stand by itself, or capitalism fully realized, there is a very long shot. In the path way there has been, territorial states, nations, and nation-states, numerous power-weighing wars, Soviet Empire, two WW,the collapse of British and up and down of American Empire and as yet

Plato's friends, that in agora it is not possible anymore to say who is free and who is slave! The slaves and free citizens more than often shared the same condition of life.

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we could not say that mission is accomplished, that we are living in the world society. Modeling could not replace or capture the reality in the sphere of history and politics, which are at least event-driven and are prey to chance and accident in the ever-shifting balance of powers. Probably Marx himself taught us about these points, better than all others when he was commenting on his own contemporary history and its events. It was the first. The second problem is this: what will happen to labor itself in the sphere of political economy? What is a class, whichwith political economy now has become an economical class? First I'll try to tackle the second question. And my best guess, or suspicion, for an answer, is that it was Young Hegelian philosophical tricks which could save Marx the agitator from Marx the thinker in these matters!

2.2.4 The class

The problem of transformation could also be reduced to this one: Was not Marx, in his assessment of wage-laborers as class, its potential in that capacity to bring about a social transformation, too much off? Off, from his own analyses and insight? Was proletariat really a class, capable of carrying on what the power agitators, or their philosophical tricks, burden him with it? What really a class in capitalism was, and how much wage-laborer could constitute a separate one, a class which could be brought under its own and independent ceilings, a body standing on its own? Was the class defined from the view-point of political economy will be the same with the class which one can drawfrom a historical setting? What is expected of a class is this: she is capable to bring about, and actually carry with himself, not in his inspirations, but in his distinctive way of life, a specific form of society. Was not Marx which probably more the anyone else, pointed us in look at a class this way? Embodiment of a distinct way of social life. It was what bourgeoisie was and proved to be. Was working class of the same mold?Looking in this light, the working class seems to be one of the least capable among all known and named classes. How can this class could signify a separate form of society of its own, in an active and positive manner and outside capitalism? Wage-labor is condition of capital, or is

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capital itself, if looking at it from other side of capital relation. Even peasants had a better shot at it! Peasants had a style of living which lordcould be exclude from it and their mode of life suffice to bring about and define societies of their own. Is it not funny to demand form workers to forge an independent class identity, solidify it, for the purpose of annihilating it, for dissolving it in a classless society?! In the face of it, it amounts to the worse of all Hegelian tricks! No, wage-laborers were not that class - merchant with sword, the pirate merchant, which came out of blue with all its violence and cunning, turned himself into merchant-banker and make the world after its own image. New proletariat was not bourgeoisie, that class which against and among other classes, fought for the bringing down all barrier to his life style, commerce and trade, and sat down to out root all the classes, orders, and ranks which could not find a solid foot-hold in commerce and trade. Bourgeoisie was The Class. The last product of historical setting if we like. He was all embracing class, bringing all, forcing all population into its own mode of life. New proletariat was its creation and not this, he too was created after its own image, from its own mold. He too was man of trade and commerce, though a poor one, having nothing else than its labor-power to trade. Looking from this side, from the sphere of circulation in the economic condition, working class is capitalist class!5 It was destined to become 5 I'm infected here by those images flying around in the Gilles Deleuze and Felix

Guattari attractive work, Anit-Oedipus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Could it be a symptom of French influenza, or post-modern disease?! They- the authors, have a picture of capitalism as the limit to all other forms of societies. The limit other societies could reach. Here, casts, orders, classes and all previously given social hierarchies are dissolved in the one unitary flow, the flow of money, one cansay. Authors refer to Pelekhanov which notes that the French School of the nineteenth century, under the influence of Saint-Simon, should be credited with thediscovery of class struggle and its role in history -precisely the same men who praise the struggle of the bourgeois class against the nobility and feudalism, and who come to a halt before the proletariat and deny that there can be any difference in class between the industrialist or banker and the worker, but only a fusion into one and the same flow as with profits and wages p255. They add that looking intohistory in terms of class struggle, could amount to insisting in a bourgeoisie outlook. Their work is really attractive and full of new sights and insights. But for me it suffer from the worst kind of anti Hegel, anti-dialectic which I think was

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part and parcel of the class. If one insist, what has been called class struggles could be seen as 'inter class struggle', the fierce competition which is the condition of bourgeoisie's life.

2.2.5 Labor and Political Economy

Now we could turn to Marx the thinker for the subject of transformation. Did he, out of critique of political economy and his breathtaking analyses of capital, show or trace any necessary, self-moving, autonomous kind of social transformation out of capitalism? Does labor move in such a direction or pave the way for, carry and inter-grow with such a transformation, just waiting for a midwife - in shape of a political revolution, to give birth to it, or give it a last push bringing it to its full power?! At the very outset, let me put aside what could be considered, or could be named, the preconditions, or the material foundation, of a possibility for a social transformation out of slavery. Here the only line which seems certain is this: capitalism put a decisive end to predominance of,

the French fashion of the day. The book is like depicting a stormy river by the way of making a lot of snapshots of it, static pictures, from a lot of angles and distances. You see those images, some of them very decisive and telling which otherwise could not be seen. But the movement of the river always fails you, it escape even from your strongest grip, it becomes beside you, not sizable, like Kantian thing in itself, closed to you. You could know everything about thing without knowing it. Thing remain for itself and will not become yours! Reading their works, gave me a lot of trouble. A difficult work. One gets buried under abundance of images they produce. In contrast, Hegelian style is like taking the buffalo by its horns! It is a dive into the stormy river and moving with it. You are not an observer, an image maker, at best you could have blurry images, but you become prat of movement, your force and efforts too is part of it, you may be blindto many, many of its moments, but there remain no things in itself, it is always your relation to the thing, not thing itself, or you, which occupies the center- a nice strategy from overcoming the subject-object division! As you see I pretty much prefer this Hegelian style, when ever it is applicable, and as far as it give me free ride! But it is a dangerous sport. The chances of a deadly crash to the banks of river, the History, or being entangled with debris which the current assemble in font of itself out of your sight, is very high! Kantian disinterest and objective knowledge which leave things in themselves, is much safer bet! There is a reason why everybody is afraid of Hegel! I plan to come back to this point in main text.

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lets call it the economy of subsistence. This does not exclude that other forms of society, like those found in pre-capitalist modes of life, could not do it too! Capitalism, differ in that, that it give shocking drives to the productivity of labor, blows productivity out of any hitherto known or imagined proportions. According to Marx, along the way of capitalism development, though the needs increase and multiply, the needs which are either imposed by nature or just arise from the complexity and improvements in social living, the needs which have to be satisfied in order that society be able to sustain itself, this necessary labor for satisfying needs, decrease and diminish in all relative measurements. Relative to total available labor time which could be at the disposal of society; relative to daily labor time which every man can master reasonably in himself; relative to working life-span which everyone is endowed wit it. That is all! That material precondition for stepping out of slavery, or precondition of a transformation to a non-slavery social relationships, if we could name itso. Ancient Greek culture looked at toiling and laboring, the drudgery of bringing out a life out the breast of land, as a shameful slavery, deserve only for slaves, but unavoidable for free man too. Life of a free-man could not be drudgery, but being entertained or being educated by Sophies in the art of pleasures and pains, knowing himself, mastering his own life, cultivating his taste and emotions, playing philosophical orathletics games, engaging in politics, exercising in the art of oratory andsocial persuasion, hanging with fiends, arranging festivals, dancing and drinking and playing with gods, contemplating at the sight of tragedies or laughing at himself in the sight of comedies, pretty much what all lifeis about or could give a worldly meaning and purpose to it. Capitalism brought about this precondition, the possibility of stepping out of shameful slave life. We know that there is a possibility open to us in a very wide scale in and with capitalism. It is all that there is to it. Let's forget about that now silly looking and miserable exercise which was infashion some times ago, the socialism of productive forces! That game is out of the town, though its child, the full occupation is with us and hunt us. The child now is an orphan, had grown into the worst and most corrupted one, prostituting itself with the game of job

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creations at every door, turning every politician into its fully occupied pimp! All that is forgotten about is that the whole justification for capitalism and its development, that justification which many socialist with Marxist leaning or not bought it, was to make us and everybody else pretty much jobless, having time to enjoy the life! The point is that this possibility of stepping out of slavery, this possibility of a social transformation, is the same the possibility, or the potential of capitalism itself. Capitalism create it and rely on it. Driving the productivity of labor to unimaginable heights and driving the economy of subsistence to ever diminishing scale, it is the whole story of capitalism, the source of all its power and its command. The gap which is open, however and whenever it is wider, capitalism acts stronger. It is the gap which M-M', money begetting money create, defend and widen it. It is its home and its living place. Let's put it in these words: pre-condition of transformation is the ever reproducing of potential of capitalism itself. It tell us nothing. If there is a sea, it does not mean one can or want to swim in it. Possibility is just over there, not as a neutral ground, not as no-man's land. It is occupied by capital. The other point to make at outset is this: the theme of a Proletarian Revolution, that forceful actor of historical setting, is not an actor in the theater of political economy. Nothing in the sphere of political economy calls for it. It is not part of conceptual analyses and can not emerge from it. It is out of stage actor. One which Marx brings in in his analyses for the sake of moral sensations, or dialectical dramatization. In the course of analyses it can only comes in and acts like deus ex machina (god from a machine) in the manner of ancient Greek theater!It is not a player by itself. We leave the occupied territory of transformation and our out of the stage explorer of it, aside and to restfor now.

2.2.6 Labor Transformed ? Two Forms of Labor?

That out of our way, lets go ahead and consult the wisdom of political economy. With political economy we leave behind the history. Classes,here are striped down from their historical casting, they are unburdened

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from their political and cultural heritage, stripped down to their mere economical bare bones. In wisdom of political economy, as Marx have it,capitalist is a personification of capital. Wage-laborer too is a personification of living labor. Beside, in the course of Marx analyses, or his critique of political economy, we have to leave the sphere of circulation to meet the labor in its true existence. In that sphere of circulation, capitalist and wage-laborer were from the same mold. They both stood on an equal footing, as traders, and as free man in charge of their own body and mind, and in the legal and actual command of their belongings. This world of the sameness, equality and freedom is behind us. We have entered into the sphere of production, where in Marx account we could find all the covered up secrets of capital. It is the central stage, the power house which keep other spheres running around it and encompassing it. In this sphere capital and labor are not same mold, there become opposite, or the live and dead form of the same thing. They are not on equal foot either. The dead, objectified labor, commands and consume the live labor. The objectified and living labor, stand oppose to each others, in a relation of command and obedience, eating and being eaten up. Now I'll try to outline the story of this opposition as Marx worked it up, in the most stretched and generalized sketch. Leaving aside all actual, social and historical constrains and counter balancing tendencies, I'll be only concern with the theoretical and conceptual limits, the utmost reaches of all the possibilities of this relation, this opposition. Fortunately I do not need to labor it, Marx did it himself and I'll just going to quote him. To the astonishment of many Marxists, it probably do not works in its predicted Hegelian track, do not give birth to a new relations sublating its parents opposite ones! Let us see!Another flashback is necessary. Every imaginable production could be seen as coming together, the confronting of the passed, objectified laborand living labor. Even the hunter brought his stick or stone tool, his passed work, at the service of his live activity, catching the prey. This is a fact of life and not one which is only special to its capitalist form. Though, in capitalist form this relation seem to have been somehow reversed. Instead of dead serving the live, it is the living activity that

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serve the dead one. All this, because capitalist production is not any productions, it is value production. Living labor is not using passed labor for producing some use value in order to entertain oneself, or to satisfy some need, desire, whim, or arousing them whatsoever. Living labor is used and consumed by dead labor for maintaining and adding toits own value. We have to go back to value relation and keep in mind that the production and labor process, is subsumed in value-relation, and is only one phase of reproduction of value-relation itself. The whole body of political economy was being built around the labor theory of value. Consistency in elaborating it and explaining different phenomenons at the surface of circulation in terms of this theory, was a criterion which Marx often used to distinguish a serious economist form the vulgar one. According to political economy, thelabor which is at the bottom of value-relation is not any labor. It is a special form of labor, labor in its form of homogeneity, reducible, countable and exchangeable. It is abstract labor, human activity stripped to its bare bones, the expenditure of muscle and brain, measurable with its intensity and its duration in time. It is not the concrete work of producing use-values, means for satisfying needs and whims, which is common in all ages. In Marx own words, the labor that forms the substance of value is equal human labor, the expenditure of identical human labor power. Socially necessary labor-time. This is the labor which produce values, and is separable from the labor which produces use-values. Marx is very strict on this characterization. He emphasizes that I was the first to point out and examine critically this twofold nature of labor contained in commodities. It is this homogeneous, measurable, the abstract labor, distinct and separable form useful or concrete work, which he establishes as the solid base of his reconstructing or his critique of political economy. Needless to say, for Marx this abstract labor, labor pure and simple, is not a theoretical device, a scientific gauge torender reality constrained and under observation. It is reality itself, the social reality, the form which labor takes or imposed on it to be used and accounted as socially-necessary labor6. It is the capitalist from of

6 Marx explain adequately the reality of abstract labor among others in the following

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labor, or a form of labor which capitalism found it emerging from commodity production, took it over and drove it to dominance as common form of labor, the source of its own empowering. As capitalist counts only as personification of capital, wage-laborer too, counts as embodiment of this form of labor, the abstract, the mere expenditure of muscle and brain, labor power, simple and devoid form any further usefulness and concreteness. How can we identify this form of labor at the level of actuality and in its physical being, not in value relation which manifest itself in the sphere of circulation, where this relation tend to hide itself out of sight, but in the concrete processes of production and its place and role in it? I can get help form Marx text, when he describes another form of labor, this too formed in the relation of capital and is caught in the net of capitalism, but totally distinguishable from the homogeneous, abstract labor, which lies at bottom and constituted the historical base of value relation.

Labor no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate to

text: The last point to which attention is still to be drawn in the relation of labour to capital is this, that as the use value which confronts money posited as capital, labour is not this or another labour, but labour pure and simple, abstract labour;.. the worker himself is absolutely indifferent to the specificity of his labour; it has no interest for him as such, but only in as much as it is in fact labour and, as such, a use value for capital. It is therefore his economic character that he is the carrier of labour as suchi.e. of labour as use value for capital; he is a worker, in opposition to the capitalist. This is not the character of the craftsmen and guild-members etc., whose economic character lies precisely in the specificity of their labour and in their relation to a specific master, etc. This economic relation- the character which capitalist and worker have as the extremes of a single relation of production- therefore develops more purely and adequately in proportion as labourloses all the characteristics of art; as its particular skill becomes something more and more abstract and irrelevant, and as it becomes more and more a purely abstract activity, a purely mechanical activity, hence indifferent to its particular form; a merely formal activity, or, what is the same, a merely material activity, activity pure and simple, regardless of its form. p296 Grundrisse. Moreover, what is interesting in this text is the positing of capital and abstract labor as two extreme of a single relation of production whose development is marked by transforming all the previous form of labor into this form. Abstract labor is characterized as use-value of capital here. We can mark, in reverse, or on the other end of extreme, capital as being the exchange-value of abstract labor.

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production process more and more as its watchman and as its regulator, rather than being pat of production process itself. (What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing as middle link between the object and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In this transformation, it is neither the direct human labor he himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body - it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth.

This lines are quoted from a passage in Grundrisse, when Marx is contemplating on the Machinery and living labor and Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development. Machines etc. For the time when it was written, not far passed from mid 19th century, not only the lines quoted above, but the whole passage strike one as a very audacious and wild theoretical speculation. As I said, a far reaching theorizing on the limits of possibilities. I'll return to this passage with more quotes from it. It worthevery bit pausing at it. It tell us much more about the present day capitalism and the place of labor in it, than all those historiographic accounts about condition of working class, the conditions which any honest eye looking at it, could not avoid the deep sentiments involved in it, those sentiments which I believe bothered Marx too throughout histheoretical exposition on capital and tainted it out-of-place, here and there, with a touch of morality. It is another matter. I was trying to figure out the labor which wage-laborers, in constituting an economical class, are personification of it. The text quoted contrast this form of labor with another form, or could be used to do so. It seems that we have two forms of labor, both under the mold and stamp of capital, but

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non-the-less different forms as far as their role in the production processand their place in the development of productive forces is concerned. The first is the familiar one, it counts and constitutes the building block of political economy. It is the abstract, homogeneous labor, measurable with time and capable of providing a base for value and its forms, exchange-value, money, prices, wages, profits, etc. This labor, in its physicality, is a part, is enclosed in material production process itself.It is the labor involved it the material production process as one of its inner elements. It is a modified natural thing which laborer insert as middle link between the object and himself. It is part of production process itself and is consumed in it. It is productive labor measurable in time. It is labor, replaceable with machines, a modified natural force which could be replace with another tamed and modified force or any such a process from nature. The other form of labor, is the transformed one. It does not seem as exerting a modified natural thing, but is characterized as exercising, discharging, putting to action of a charged or accumulated social force7- a force which individual becomes its accumulator. It is a kind of labor, which stay aside, or step to the side of production proper, acting as its watchman, regulator, designer, or in more general terms, it the work involved in all other social layers which encompass the production as its core, the labor involved in preparing, stimulating, manipulating social forces and social7 I've not managed to phantom what Toni Negri calls immortal labor. Probably it

is similar, could correspond, or is the same in some extent as this transformed labor which I try to depict here. I've not managed to read his influential work withHardt, Empire, to the end as yet. According the Anderson, this work, with the Givani Arraghi's the long twentieth century, had been most prominent theoreticalMarxists works in recent yeas. Anyway, my first impression encountering Nigris immortal labor was not encouraging and push me away from his work. It seemedto me he is despair to find something to restore the lost world of the opposition of capital and labor, that central theme of Marxism. It happens that I look from another end of spectrum, I guess. Making it completely black and white, striped of all its shades of gray, the transformed labor to me is not against or oppose to capital. It is the site of capital, the living force of it in the present configuration of capitalist society. In this view labor has lost all its innocence, it is the main accomplice of present time slavery, slavery to labor. Critique of capital push me in the direction of critique of labor! I could amount to turning the Marx of his head, or on his feet, depending from where one looks at it!

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body to set and keep in motion the material production. This second form could be seen more in that field which Marx puts in parentheses, the work involved in the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse. From the standpoint of capital, it isthe labor which is more involved in the outer, exterior, life cycle of capital, that which engulf production, stimulate it, bring it to halt, or drive it to explosive proportions.How political economy, or Marx in his critique of it, accounts for thissecond form of labor? Marx is badly in pain, in Volume III of Capital,when he apparently opposes the capitalist notion which regards the profits of enterprise - that part of profit which after counting the rent, interest, and taxes, and deducing them from total profit, remain in his hands his wage, wage of his own labor, his labor of superintendence.

Since the estranged character of capital, its antithesis to labour, is shifted outside the actual process of exploitation, i.e. into interest-bearing capital, this process of exploitation itself appears as simply a labor process, in which the functioning capitalist simply performs different work from that of the workers. The labor of exploiting and the labor exploited are identical, both being labor. The labor of exploiting is just as much labor as the labor that is exploited. The social form of capital devolves on interest, but expressed in a neutral and indifferent form; the economic function of capital devolves on profit of enterprise, but with the specifically capitalist character of this function removed.

There is a bit of cat and mouse play of forms of capital here, which suppose to say: watch, the interest-bearing form of capital has shifted the estranged character of capital to outside of production process, and that shift make one blind to antithesis between labor and capital which remain at the core in the production process. There is a subtle differentiation between the social and economic functions of capitaltoo. Marx apparently, opts for viewing it from social side. Alongside this, there came a measured dose of morality, the sharp contrast of exploiting and exploited labor. They have a meaning in social

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view, but what about the economic one? Social view is supposed hereto save Marx, in writing off the line of economic analyses, in his failing to recognize the two forms of labor, and in his reluctance of counting the labor of exploiting as labor, a labor with a legitimate claim to wage as exploited labor has claim to it. But what if the labor of exploiting is not laboring to make somebody else launders his dirty underwear for him, but laboring to exploit them in building the public rail roads? What if the exploitation is not at personal level, but for the good of accumulation of capital and in its fixation in the infrastructure of productive forces? It has been what capitalists as a class have always claimed. Exploitation is a moot argument, a notion with a charge of morality, we better to write it off from the accounts of political economy. Even Marx's social view, in its longer perspectives, could not bear exploitation, when he, many times, credits and with it justifies, the capital and bourgeoisie for theirrole in unprecedented development of productive forces. I'll leave this failing of Marx in Capital aside fro now. The point was that there is two from of labor, not one, and the second from, though not recognized in Capital, hunts the analyses there too. I prefer to call these two forms of labor, first and second form, or value-creating labor and valorizing-labor, if one prefer such names that could hints to some significations. Let's try again to figure out the theme in a morally neutral, or in an immoral, grounds. In place of capitalist society, we can consider a society of the sort of the famous example of association of free producers- not the boring Christian, Amish type kind of communities, but some imaginary lively one which will not deprive us from a lot of fun discovered in present day capitalism if one have a choice in it! We Can imagine this society based on two different assumptions, in two extremes as much as political economy is concerned. First, our imaginary society is out of grips pf political economy altogether. It means that the work is not any longer something separable from social life and social intercourse with all its enjoyments and pains; the principle of work as something separable from life has been vanished toa great extent, separation of work and life and coupling of work and

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reward, or work and wage or share, is at most a marginal nonsense left over from previous forms of social life. Here there is no political economy and with it social accounting has lost all meanings. In our second assumption, the imagined society is still one of the type of political economy. Work and rewards and social accounting of it is at the core of social relations and organizations. It is based on, as yet, the same fundamental separation of work and life as two aliens which only wage or rewards could bring them under one ceiling. We suppose, that there is a lot fairness in sizing the rewards to the amount of work, and there is a lot of accounting and planing for avoiding waste in social production and organization. In other words, we have a capitalism purged and cleansed according to priestly, moral, criticism of fairness, and the scientific-technocratic criticism of minimizing waste, but political economy is in place. In such a society citizens have to work not for their direct-consumption, but have to do work to replace the all which is consumed in their work, and on top of this an extra portion for expanding the condition of their work, and a plus for their whims, desire and having fun. They have to do surplus-work. And to do all this,some of them have to do the managerial, superintend work, some fun creating, desire and whim stimulating work, some science and technological innovation work, and some distribution and accounting work and some industrial and production work. Apparently here too, wehave two different kinds of work, lets call them social-work and production-work. We can not deny here that social-work is work, social necessary works though all the accounting labor could be seen as a big waste, as the whole apparatus of welfare state in many European countries has become itself a grand kind of waste more expensive to maintain compare to cost of those which this apparatus is supposed to maintain! Anyway, economy always is political economy, meaning, under the constrain of social relations that economy has to uphold. The question is how such a society remunerate such works, the social-work. How does this kind of work enter into social accounting? Twoalternative arises. As far as the production-work is dominant, all claims of social-work, would be resolved on the bases of surplus-work-hours of total production-work, what is left after deducing the production-

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workers rewards. But as the production-work lose it centrality and its importance, and as the social-work become more predominant, all bets will be off, social accounting and remunerations loses their base and logic. The same processes which made possible to replace production-work with machines, also make many services, and servants, replaceable with machine too, and as a consequence the social-work tends to become the kind of irreducible, heterogeneous, not measurable kind of work, the kind of work which is involved in accumulating and exertion of social power by individuals. As a result, we will have a crisis of political economy. It is political economy, because it is an economy on the foundation of work and reward, and it is in crisis because work has ceased to be what it used to be, the rod of all measurements and the bases of social accounting. It seems, probably, asa purely technical matter, but only at the face of it. Social-labor is not only heterogeneous, and irreducible, it is charge and discharge of social-power8 in individuals which are putting it in motion in social relations, or looking at it form the other side, it is the power of social relation itself which is charged in individual and is discharged by him. It is something totally unaccountable on the basis of work and reward. Capitalism does all that which our imaginary labor based community does, and in case of capitalism, apparently without the constrains of social fairness and social efficiency. Here instead of work-hours, which in case of our imaginary society could be used for value and valuation, value has its independent from and run its own course. At the first phaseor stages, all claims of valorizing labor, could be resolved in terms of

8 A good example of what could constitute 'social-labor', or 'valorizing-labor', could be found in Marx lively description of theft work which give an impetus to vast range of all sorts of works. It is an ironic, a little bit sarcastic, and very funny passage in the Theories of surplus-value, when Marx expose how a thief could be a productive laborer and theft a productive force. Theft bring work for the police, the workers who produce food and cloth and equipment for him, and so on. The whole social-body come in motion by theft! It is the kind of valorizing labor, without any moral and legal prejudice, the kind of work which keeps values in circulations and give impetus to their creation out of blue in the excitements of social body, it could be science, charm, crime, law. It is the real economy which capital thrive in it, economy of production is just a diminishing sub-part of it, and economy of subsistence, even a much smaller part of the latter.

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what is left of value-creating work, in terms of the pool of total surplus-value available to it. But as we go on, as value-creating works diminish,it is valorizing labor which put claim to everything, to all available, and also potential wreath which is now is produced and could be produced relatively independent of labor, but has to be accounted and kept in motion and circulation as values. We can not discriminate the exploiting labor which is as necessary as exploited one in the course of value creation. How much capitalist add to produced value with his work, or is he, too, contributing to total surplus-value which he extracts, is another matter. As much as capitalist step-aside from production, replacing himself with managerial wage-salary workers, or relying to a better trained, integrated self-exploiting workers and redefined himself at the top their social ranks, we more see that there was a capitalist work involved in production which justified him to claim wage for it! Marx, in Capital, as I mentioned, failed, or refused to distinguish clearlybetween these two forms of labor. He did not work out those two stages in development in productive forces, which give prominence to one or another form of labor in turn. He did not bring the second from, the valorizig labor, into analyses of value relations. Though, I think, it hunts him in many guises, form example in the guise of unproductive labor. What is this unproductive labor? Marx rightly, reject Adam smith's characterization of it. For Max every labor which create value, or contribute to creation and realization of surplus-value counts as productive labor. Under this characterization of productive labor one can count not only the labor of capital, which could be performed by capitalist himself or by the growing army of wage-earners who take over the function of capital in both spheres of circulation and production, but one can also counts all other labors of charlatans, thefts,criminals, law worker and any imaginable labor all those labors whichoutside value relation could be considered even destructive, any labor which could give impetus and excitement to creations, circulation and realization of values and surplus-value. Productive labor, in Marx exposition of it, when he puts aside his social preferences and moral judgments, and judging it only on its capitalist basis, include both

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value-creating and valorizig labor, though Marx did not recognize the second from and do not give to it its due place in the course of analyses. Marx insists in holding the criteria of earlier stages. In his explanations, superintendent, managerial works, scientific or technical invention, entrepreneurship in exploring, or cultivating some new social needs or whims, arts, the labor involved in these activities could claim for wage. But it did not mean that this labor was a source of value, or could createvalues. This from of labor did not create values, but had its price and more often monopoly prices. It had its price, like the land had its price or the capital had it, later in the form of interest and former in the form of rent. It could be even a monopoly price, like the best located lands in the heart of cities, which could often be the case for the second form of labor too. But this price, whatever its form of claimant, rent, interest, taxes, salaries, was accounted as a ticket. A ticket to have a share in the greater pie of total surplus-value which was extracted from the first form of labor. Marx recognizes the second form of labor, in the privacy of his manuscripts, not in the public face of published Capital. We can guess why. In the mid 19th century, the second form of labor was as yet in its very embryonic forms, one could see it with the speculative theoretical eyes, but not in the actual configurations of the capitalism of the day. Asfar as the first form of labor, the value creating labor was the dominant form of labor, the second form of labor could be considered as labor ofexploiting, labor involved in upholding the overall condition of the creation of greatest pie of surplus-value which claimants could share among themselves. Even morality had its appeal there. The antithesis between capital, the self-valorizing value, and the first form of labor, value creating labor, seemed to be too strong a force, not allowing anything to escape form its field of action and influences. It was a magnet forcing everything to be either attached or attracted to one of its two opposite poles. It was the age of coal and iron. It cast its shadowsin the story of political economy as Marx reconstructed and narrated it in Capital. All this may or may not contributed to the expositions which Marx laid out in Capital. But he was not the kind of thinker to give up

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to morality or transient circumstances without a good theoretical justification. I think he had one: price. Theory of price, and specially monopoly price could explain and save the phenomenon for a while.

2.2.7 Two trajectories in Marx's Critique

My suspicion is - and I admit that it is only a suspicion which has to be inquired closely, but for now I'll hang to it as a hypothesis, a far reaching one - that there is two trajectories in Marx critique of political economy, and in his reconstruction of it. The first trajectory has, or try to keep, the antitheses of capital and labor at the center stage and account for it as the ultimate outcome of value-relation. In this, lets call the shorten trajectory, value-relation seems to have been worked outonly to bring that antitheses, the opposition of capital and labor into sharp focus. The whole analyses is being chased, is in a hurry to blow out this opposition, conclude all its development in the birth of a new social relation that sublate that opposition, or lets say, all sounds like a kind of bringing out a Hegelian rabbit out of the hat of political economy. This trajectory, as I mentioned, could be seen also, as the one that follows the shadows of gods from machine- those political preferences of Marx the agitator, which are cast from off the stage of political economy, they are not native player in it. The second trajectory, the longer one, is the analyses of value-relation in its far reaching development, there is a lot of oppositions, contradictions, zigzags, unending fluctuation in search of a balance, in the developmentof this relation, but there is no duality in it- in the sense which there is in the making the labor and capital two opposite poles, it is unitary movement of value and its forms. Capital is one and a single relation, it is not something essentially different or oppose to social labor, but a definite form of social-labor itself, which shape and transform it as whole. Social labor here, in its capitalistic form, move along with its value creating phase and is transformed by it. This second trajectory subsume the first one and do not seeks, or mange, to conclude the line of development, in any politically desired blow up out of the opposition or not, and consequently is not by itself tends to bring about,or give birth, to any new social from or social relation which would be

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free from mold and stamp of exchange-value. The encounter of self-valorizing-value, capital, and value-creating-activity, bare bone labor, no doubt is a decisive moment in the development of value relation. But just as one of its moments, it is not the whole story. Whatever the force of antitheses between labor and capital, there is another tendency inherent in capital which could subsume it and bring that antitheses to some conclusion within itself. It transforms the labor. It is not just that, that value-relation somehow precede and outlive that antitheses of capital and labor which is just an episode of it. Their encounter brings a new from of labor and new form of capital, one can say, very much merged into each other. The opposition, antitheses is overcome in the transforming of value relation itself. As I said, the first trajectory is more evident in the public and published texts of the Capital. The second is in hideous of Manuscripts, showing its 'pushed back presence' and its marks in these texts. Let me go back to Manuscripts, to that passage which is my reference. I'll do an attempt tobring out, or reconstruct, the longer trajectory, with help of this passage.Here we look at capital, moving on its own limits, in the overall trajectory of value-relation. This is a picture of capital, not as opposition, the two poles of labor and capital, but as a moving contradiction:

Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labor time to a minimum, while it posits labor time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labor time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition- question of life and death - for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of the wealth independent (relatively) of the labor time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labor time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within thelimits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations - two different sides of

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the development of social individual - appear as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high.p706

Marx seems is in hurry to drive this line of his thoughts to some end. Hejust imagine that this contradicting movement, making the creation of wealth independent from labor-time, and at the same time relying on it as measuring rod of wealth, will blow this foundation sky-high. Blown into what forms? Will it be a blown out of value-relation which is encompassing all the wealth and its creation, despite its relative independence from labor? We do not find so much hints here, except, perhaps, the emergence of social individual which relies on, stands onforces of production and social relations as its two feet and is ultimatecreation of these forces. I'll do a preliminary and speculative attempt to figure out this social individual in the context of development of value-relation later. For now, what we can draw from the text is that capital, and value-relation, is eroding its reliance on value-creating labor.

To the degree that labor time - the mere quantity of labor- is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree does direct labor and its quantity disappear as determinant principle of production - of creation of use values - and is reducedboth quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate moment, compared togeneral scientific labor, technological application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force arising form social combination in total production on the other side - a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labor (although it is a historic product). Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.p 700

Again, it seems a hurried ending, Capital thus works toward its own dissolution as the form dominating production. What kind of production this refer to? Text make it clear that it is the kind of production based on, in my jargon, the first form, or the value-creating labor, the production that labor as yet act as its internal

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element. Capital, dissolve itself as the from dominating production,as far as it make possible that the labor step aside of production process, by this development, capital is not the form dominating production, as production itself is not anymore the encounter of dead labor with the live labor, and the consummation of the later by former. What happens in the meanwhile to the labor which has been brought outfrom the inside of production process, and what happens to the production which is not the immediate production of material wealth, but is solely the production of exchange-values, is the production and reproduction the social relations and social condition of value-relation?Do capital works to dissolve itself as the form dominating this larger and greater sphere, the circulation, or the reproduction sphere? The text is silent about it. But it does not exclude that the dissolution of capital as dominating from of production, could not be accompanied, oreven itself being a resultant of its consolidation and its penetration as the dominant form of the outer spheres of material production, the form dominating the production and reproduction the social condition which engulf not only the material production of wealth, but social-life as a whole.

The exchange of living labour for objectified labour- i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capitaland wage labour - is the ultimate development of the value-relation and of production resting on value. Its presupposition is - and remains - the mass of direct labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry develops, the creationof real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production... Real wealth manifests itself, rather - and large industry reveals this - in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the

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qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth,labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to positsurplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.

The above text sums it all up. This text could be read and interpreted in two ways. As an explanation of an inherent tendency in capitalism to break down, as the production based on exchange value breaks down,if we take the production in its narrower sense, immediate production of material wealth, abstracted and separated from the totality of social-reproduction which at the same time,encompass the production and reproduction of social-relations and conditions of material production too. Text somehow over looks this totality of production. The other wayof reading the text is to see it as an indication of the break-down of political economy as a definite science of capitalism. The development of capitalism reaches a point that the science which has accompanied it, could not keep pace with it. I'm leaning toward this later reading. The exchange of living labour for objectified labour, could not be seen as the ultimate development of the value-relation. Though it could be the ultimate development of the production resting on value. These two phrase, value-relation and production

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resting on value which has been brought together in a hurry are not pointing to the same thing. Capital is self-valorizing value, it is M-M', money begetting money, which found and did establish in the exchange of dead and live labor its source of valorization. If that exchange ceased to be the prevalent mode of production of material wealth, as I mentioned in the previous comment, it does not mean that itis the end of value relation, or capitalism as over prevailing form of thisrelation, or any definite break-down of it. Value relation, money and capital with it, by penetration and reshaping all the layers of social life and social relations, have captured and have rebuilt stronger spheres to live on it, though all of theses spheres could be seem as if they are very precarious, are suspended structures without foundations, or relying on a shaky foundations- compare with the solidity of material production from the stand point of political economy. Text could be read more as a break-down of political economy, in so far as this science was narrowly built on the labor theory of value. But labor as it is being transformed under value-relation and under the stamp of capital, could not any longer accounts for value and value relation as it did before. Political economy come down on its foundation, but capitalism escape, expands it foundation not on labor, but on value-relation, which now seems to beall suspended in the air, detached from its material base, like the world of credit. I'll pause on the break-down of political economy later. Before that, let me try to drive this line of speculation to another twist, to fill the gaps which has been left empty in the text, not stopping at those hurried end that marks the text, but driving it to its imaginable conceptual limits. I'll attempt to outline the longer trajectory in Marx.

2.2.8 A Longer trajectory, an Outline.

The shorter trajectory in Marx critique of political economy finds its climax in capital encountering labor. The contradiction of capital and wage labor, in this trajectory, -is the ultimate development of the value-relation. It is the end of the road, or the beginning of the end. The class struggle between capitalists who are the personification of capital, and wage-laborers who are equally in sociopolitical terms,

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personification of living-labor, considered to be the force which eventually will dictate and bring about that end. Capital, a moving contradiction, tends to explode sky high - presumably in a Proletarian Revolution. With it, the value-relation - that underlying social relation which called forth and gave birth to capital as its contradictory form, the form of its self-expansion, is presumed that will be buried under the debris of its own exploded form. Capital, will bury value-relation, too. Will capital and value-relation follow such a fate? How, and in which sociopolitical configurations? Any such a prophecy, will lie outside the horizon of the political economy. The end does not come from inner working of value-relation and capital, it comes as a verdict of History9. It is a Historical Judgment imposed on capital and value-relation from outside. This exterior Judgment of History on capital and value-relation is what that gives Marx his moral and political critique ofpolitical economy. This critique, in turn, brings its own perspective: a Messianic one, which tends to shortcut the movement of value-relation in its contradictory phase in an apocalyptic eruption of class-struggles. This Historical Judgment could find as much support - by putting class-struggles on the edifice of political economy - as it could be rejected from within it. The blown up stage in the Judgment perspective, from within political economy, could be seen, not as a final, but as a mediatory phase. The contradiction of capital and wage labor, could be seen as the moment in which value-relation gathers strength, counteracts and builds up to suppress and surpass precisely those contradictions which are endangering it. If we push back the Historical judgment and its companion, the Messianic outlook, a longer trajectory in the Marx's reworking of

9 With History capitalized, I'd like to refer to history as it is constructed as a teleology of social-life. A teleology overarching social-life from a beginning to an end, and providing it with meanings as we could find it in its elaborate and secular from in Historical Materialism. This History could differ from actual history. The latter is constructed as a time dimension serving in sequencing and arranging events, possibly in a causal or reciprocal inter connection, or merely for juxtaposing them next to each other. Das Kapital could be characterized among other thing by over-presence of History and the absence of history in it!

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political economy began to come forth. It is as yet, somehow suppressed. But it is there. ..

[Note:I'm editing this sub-section, as it is now, it is too log and make things more confused than clear!..]

2.2.9 The Break Down of Political Economy?

There is an analogy from Physics. It may help to look at political economy and its present demise in more imaginative way. We know, physics has been a more solid science than political economy, and it is well known too, that different sciences borrow from, and imitate each other to the point of exhaustion! Once upon a time physicists begun to explain every constellation in the skies and all the distribution of planetsand stars in universe, in term of gravitation. Gravitation promoted to thestatus of a law governing the shape of material universe. Then came an erupting question. What if a star, a constellation of them, collapse underits own weight, what if forces counter-balancing the force of gravity lose their strength, or overcome by gravity? The answer was black-holes. Sure, three was as yet physics in black holes, and this physics was even more in the grips of gravitation. But for physicists all the lawsof his science were broken down. Not because the gravity was not there,but because it was two strong which made all hitherto assumptions of space and time out of shape and rendered any measurement and accounting impossible. The whole trade of physics seemed overturned at once! It seems to me that political economy, and Marx reconstructing of it, has reached such a fate. Marx draws this fate for political economy inmany places, among them in the texts quoted above. But it seems to me he took the break down of the science for that of reality.Political economy as analyses of value-relation, reaches a phase which no longer could count on labor-time as the measure of value. The classic labor theory of value proved to be inadequate for explaining

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fully developed value-relations. Value on the basis of labor-time could not account for creation, circulation and distribution of social wealth and it condition. It is not because exchange-value has been weakened in social relations, that it is no longer the bond which glues individuals and holds and society together, because it has become too strong, too dominant kind of force, a force which seems to be its own base and holding everything else to itself. Not because it is absent, because it has penetrated and shaped all social-life in its mold, even emotions and affections is now subsumed in value-relation. It is the force which defines all the labyrinth of relations, animate social body, keeps its material forces in motion, and glues every one and everything connected itself. To return to analogy of physics, value-relation is not anymore in the grips of time and space of material production, it seems that it has now created its own social space and time, or, its ownspace-time which act as the foundation and meteiality in all things.The way that political economy treated the problem of prices and specially monopoly prices, .was showing to it that that the possibility ofa break down has been there all the way after the initial starts. In Marx analyses, price assume to be the form of value in actual exchange,where the trace of any real value and count of it, could be lost or disappear. A thing could command a high price, without containing any value as objectified labor time. The total prices of, say a total commodities produced in a year, assume to correspond to total value produced in that year, which is total labor time spent in their productions. But whether the price of a given commodities is the same as its value or not, is more a matter of chance than the rule. For a commodity as a member of community of commodities, to have a price correspond to its value, it has to prove containing a socially necessary labor-time, no more, nor less. But this socially necessary labor-time isan average, a moving target, and a thing that is not only determined by the degree of changing productivity of labor in its own branch of production, but by necessity of total labor in that branch in relation to other branches. Value as necessary labor-time is a moving reality and Price is the actual form of exchange-value, but a the form of it which.

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As we move away from economy of subsistence, this divergence of value and prices became more , price, the actual exchange-value, is a claim into the pool of all values. It is like a molecule in a chamber of gas, hit by other and hit them, A thing can have price, without having a bit of value. The totality of prices is supposed to be the same as the totality of , the necessary labor time for producing them. But this necessary is never given and stand still, and it is not only the changing of productivity that render it to fluctuation, the total labor time spend in the total of the special commodity too. Like a container of gas10, molecules keep themselves in motion. We will have a self-move, self-contained and baseless relational world, a step away from Newtonian torelativity point or view11!There is another assumption which accompanies 'political economy'. It is a social-configuration assumed to be in place and to keep pace in the whole development of political economy, or to the end of it in Marx narration. Society pictured on its wealth producing merit and capacity and the dividing line is that of 'productive labor'. The are those who produce this wealth, and those who accumulate it and those who consume it. Apart from accumulators of produced wealth, which played an useful social function, there were wealth producers themselves, 'productive laborers', everybody else could be an unproductive burden to this feast. Adam Smith thought that A man grows rich by employing10 It seems to be the trick which make of economy a modern science. Find an

analogous model, say of gas chamber, fluids in a tanks, waves in the sea, clouds in the skies, weather patterns, and then superimpose that model on the surface of circulation of credit, money, and commodities; work out the observation patterns of movement and put them in modified mathematical equations! Now you have an objective science of economy which more than often proved to be a good device in the hands of a Wall Street gamblers. If you are clever and lucky the model couldbring to you a Nobel Prize too! Poor classical political economist. They were very much mistaken thinking they are doing a science. They were doing an social endeavor very much biased in their subject of their inquiry. They were as yet far away from the luxury of objective economics. Only an over powerful capitalism and over confident a scinetific apparatus could afford such objectivity in the sphereof economics, or the other social sciences for that matter!

11 There has been talk about a linguistic turn in the sciences of man. It has brought about new outlooks and new attempts to decipher value. It worth to take a look at them.

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a multitude of manufacturers: he grows poor, by maintaining a multitude of menial servants'. He marked that The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour. This view was not challenged by Marx, he tried to inject a bit of dynamism into it and characterize it with its specific social form. Marx emphasized that from the standpoint of capitalism 'menial servant'too could be productive laborer, if he produce surplus-value. Consider aservant which at the private table of his master is consume the wealth ofhis master, but at the public table of a restaurant he could bring more wealth to the master12. From standpoint of capital the line between the productive and unproductive was drawn between those which produce surplus-value and those who consume it unproductively, namely not using it in a new, or a further value creation processes. Other judgments about the usefulness or harmfulness of activity, or the labor which was performed doomed irrelevance. Money begetting money, it is capital and productive or unproductive, could be judged only in this light. It fitted into that sociology which Marx wanted to build around politicaleconomy, or the other way maybe more true, to narrate political economy with an eye to the limiting dictate of the sociology. The society was divided into two classes. Capitalists, who accumulate all theproduced wealth, and with it all the means and condition of producing of wealth in their own hands, against the laborers which on the other side have been reduced to a mere wealth producing slaves deprived

12 The determinate material form of the labour, and therefore of its product, in itselfhas nothing to do with this distinction between productive and unproductive labour. For example, the cooks and waiters in a public hotel are productive labourers, in so far as their labour is transformed into capital for the proprietor of the hotel. These same persons are unproductive labourers as menial servants, inasmuch as I do not make capital out of their services, but spend revenue on them.In fact, however, these same persons are also for me, the consumer, unproductive labourers in the hotel. It seems that Marx, despite his characterization of it as surplus-value producing activity, is not comfortable with the notions of 'productive'and 'unproductive' labor, or his characterization of it at all! Consistency in holding to capital characterization of productivity ends to considering the most notorious activities, artful cheating, charming and enchanting, charlatanism and crimes, among the most productive activities which keep in motion the M-M' drive at the surface of whole society.

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form the means and conditions of their social life. They are two pillar poles of society and everybody else, at most is in and push and put stateof living between these two poles. It is society reconstruct, not as 'personifications' of dynamic of value-relation, but as personification of capital and labor, which was a transient state of that relation. As we move away from this initial state, or as capitalism capture the production process and gather strength, other development and changes in the class configuration began to leave their marks. It is not only that the labor, abstract, pure and simple one, become more and more redundant in production and pushed out and it not the service . Alongside it the 'capitalist in person', too, become more and more and redundant social being. Nearly all functions of capital which were performed by capitalist is now more and more become separated from him, and organized and lobar exchanged for wage. What hitherto was accounted as the exchange of revenue with services, in their turns assume the form of capital. Following value-relation, apparently, we move away from that kind of social configuration, and 'sociology13 which is known as Marxian one. It

13 I do not believe that one can make any sound conciliation between a Marxian viewand a sociology of not only of