What Do You Have To Sell?

Pretty Much All You Got?

Discussion's dropped off, and I'm not sure about the usefulness of this if we don't talk about it, but I'll keep going for a while longer. Hell, I'll probably see it through, just as I plan to see my Capital blog through after I finish with this because, rough and tumble as it is, sometimes I feel like my being "out" with my convictions and my grasp of the theory behind those convictions is the most important work I do (you know, outside of being a husband and a dad and all that). If you all have any tips on how I can make the discussion more inviting, I'd appreciate it.

This italics below present the next section in Lebowitz. I've interrupted him in regular type after each paragraph. Is this a helpful approach?

The Sale of Labor Power

14. But the separation of the means of production from producers is not enough for labor-power to be sold. If workers are separated from the means of production, there remain two possibilities: (1) workers sell their labor-power to the owners of means of production or (2) workers rent means of production from those owners. As we will see below, only the first case creates the conditions for capitalist production.

Let me interrupt here. I'm not sure I get that first sentence, the transition. There seems to be a distinction in these two possibilities between a more or less feudal economy (2), and the one we live in (1). At least that's how I read it. Straighten me out of if you think I'm reading it wrong.

I had the good fortune today of getting to teach The Communist Manifesto in two classes (thanks DC), and one of the most exciting parts of both of those discussions was to look at what Marx was talking about when he said industrial capitalism had created a polarity that never existed before. While we've had all kinds of caste systems, various levels of royalty and clergy for instance, in the past, capitalism creates a polarity and, eventually, everyone winds up gravitating toward one pole or the other. Either you are an owner of the means of production--in the big business, multinational sense of the concept, say one of the 340 people who have owned half of the world's wealth for the past two decades--or you are someone who sells your productivity for a salary or wage. The majority of small business owners (all for all intents and purposes), as Marx predicted, become anomalies at best, and in the main, they fold and become part of the wage labor force.

We talked about Marx's concept of the wage laborer, the proletariat, and how it was different 150 or even 50 years ago than the way we can see it today. I told the students in these classes that it was very clear to me that, no matter what kind of subjective professional class I supposedly belong to in academia, my real job is much like that of the factory worker. I receive 100 students per semester who I am expected to move from one level of education to another. I am a paper grader, and if students pass my quality check, I get to stamp them with approval and move them on to the next person on the assembly line of education. I may be a white collar salaried employee, but it is perfectly clear that I am a wage laborer in terms of Marx's description. The heart of our labor battles in education, at least the minority of us who are full time and organized to fight those battles, revolve around how many students we can process in a given week and in a given semester. In that fundamental sense, our job is as alienating and dehumanizing as any proletariat job. The more students I take on, and the more I help them, the more the industry I work in will want to give me, and the quality of the work I do, and the happiness I associate with that work will decrease.

Is it different with what you do?

15. Who decides? Who decides which of the two possibilities it will be? The owners of the means of production, the capitalists decide. Owning the means of production ensures that you have the power to decide. The capitalists can decide how to use their property to achieve their goal. If they choose to take possession of production themselves, then the only way that workers can survive is by selling their capacity.

Though the fundamental corporate power and state power that runs the school where I work is not going to change in any fundamental way until we change the system. I am excited about the school board elections tomorrow because of the candidacy of Miguel Morales, a student who works in our library, someone who does not represent the big-monied interests, but who represents the students and the people who are last considered in our educational process, those with less money, those who do not represent our majority demographics. Will Miguel be able to change the fundamental dynamics of the system? No, but that doesn't mean I don't think we should fight for his perspective and the reforms it may allow.

I don't understand the last sentence in paragraph #15. Maybe someone can help me out. What choice is there for capitalists other than to take control of the means of production? My understanding is that that's what defines them as capitalists! Workers are defined by the fact that they have to sell their labor..... Perhaps this has a special significance in Venezeula that I don't appreciate? Let me know what I'm missing if you have any insight.

16. But, why does the capitalist decide to buy labor-power? The capitalist buys the right to dispose of the worker’s capacity to perform labor precisely because it is a means to achieve his goal, profits. Only the growth of his capital interests him as a capitalist. Once the capitalist has purchased the worker’s capacity, he is in the position to compel the worker to produce profits.

This last paragraph seems like the kind of reverse syntax Marx is known for, only it's even more hard to read. The capitalist makes profits by buying labor power (my capacity to work) and paying me only as much as will keep me on the job while maximizing profits. If someone else can make more money for my business owner in the same amount of time I can, in a given 24 hour period, I am out of work and that person is employed. If a machine can do it, then one cashier can moniter 4 automatic cash registers instead of employing 4 cashiers. If one teacher can teach 100 students on line or in an auditorium, then why employ 4 teachers to teach classes of 25, or what's argued to be the optimal amount, 15. Personally, I think I'd probably be a much better teacher if I taught maybe 3 classes with 10 people in them each, something like the load of the university professor. But look what's happening in our economy today--universities are cutting tenured positions and folks at community colleges, like where I work, are getting more and more students and are being pushed to take on greater workload. And 97 out of 27 in my department are teaching part-time with no benefits. That's the way of capitalism, as Lebowitz says, because the capitalist "is in the position to compel the worker to produce profits."

What about where you work? Does my experience reflect yours? Do you work overtime or overload? Do you work as much as you can possibly imagine working in a 24 hour period? Have you ever had a job where it seems like you were so wiped out that all you could do is go to sleep in time to go back to work again? Have you ever had a job that wasn't like that? Did you ever party or push yourself anyway, sacrificing sleep, so you could live a little before you had to go back to work in the morning, though you knew you'd pay with the way you felt?

Do you think that's the best way for you to work? Do you think that's best for your quality of life?

This blog is a priority for me, but I literally haven't been able to get to it in three days. Right now, I'm writing on it at 10:59 on Monday night although I need to read an entire book by Wednesday, and I need to read four short stories and respond to 25 student journal entries by 6:00 tomorrow night. I also have a full day of administrative work to try to manage (and probably ignore) tomorrow. This is relatively normal for me. Is it good? Do I have to tell you what I think? Nah.