The highlight of Marx’s Labour Theory of Value is surplus value. Marx interpreted society as labour being the source of all value and humans being capable of producing more than needed. Marx understands human labour naturalistically, as cooperative activities that human beings must endure in order to produce the use-value required to meet their needs in order to sustain them (Callinicos, 2007:82). Marx understands social relations through the basic elements of production, human labour power and the material means of production. Human beings are a part of nature, but cannot exist without mutual labour and social cooperation. Essentially, modes of production, social classes and social formations are existent in human life and will never disappear. According to Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Program, “Labour is no longer merely a means of life but has become life’s principal need; when the productive forces too have increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of shared wealth flow more abundantly – only then will it be possible completely to transcend the narrow horizon of bourgeois rights and only then will society be able to inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs” (Manuel, 1976:61). Implicit in this statement is commodity fetishism, wherein people are obsessed with having material goods and are constantly compelled to acquire more. It is therefore crucial to make the distinction between want and need.
This year in New York City, a protest movement took to the streets of the financial district due to discrepancies between the wealthiest 1% of the population and the other 99% who are held down by social and economic inequality. The protestors, known as the ‘Occupy Wall Street Protesters’, crowded the streets to stand up for America’s vast population whose incomes, wealth and security are drastically reduced by the prevailing 1% of income earners who obtain roughly 25% of all income and own 40% of all wealth. At the turn of modernity, New York’s display of economic crisis is interchangeable with Karl Marx’s works. Marx explains the accumulation of wealth in capitalist societies through social segregation. A small section of society effectively owns and controls the means of production such as factories, manufacturing companies and business firms. Marx’s labour theory of value provides us with the answer as to how huge corporations have become so wealthy and maintained this at the expense of society at large. There are different classes that exist in capitalist society, the Bourgeois have the means to acquire these companies and therefore end up gaining control of the Proletariat. The Bourgeois, in terms of physical labour, essentially owns the working class. The Proletariat’s access to resources is limited and they seek little to no opportunity of advancing beyond what they have become subjugated to. The working class, or rather, the wage-labourers have no means of production of their own and are reduced to selling labour power (Kamenka, 1983:396). The oppressed continue to be oppressed, as the oppressors do little to no work and make a high quality living at the labourer’s expense. The Bourgeois continue to accumulate wealth while the Proletariat remains impoverished and undignified. The Bourgeois’ ownership of these assets plays a large part in their ability to maintain this monopoly.
The capitalist system separates the labourers from all the property so that they can realize their labour. As soon as capitalist production sustains itself, it maintains this separation and reproduces it on a consistent and extensive scale. This process is a constant revolving cycle of the capitalist oppressing the labourer. The capitalist maintains the ownership of production, while taking away from the labour the possession of his means of production. Therefore, this notion of primitive accumulation is nothing more than separating the producer from the means of production.
Marxist theories contribute to the explanation of accumulation, and he asserts that the current crisis of capitalist production “moves in contradictions which are constantly overcome but just as constantly posited” (Panitch & Gindin, 2011). Marx would identify the deep crisis tendencies that occur in the sphere of production, that revolve around the capitalist’s constant drive towards accumulation. There is a basic problem that exists in explaining why the falling rates of profits are not always forewarned. The very problem lay within the dynamics of capitalism – higher rates of class exploitation, new technologies, emerging new markets, expansion into the world market, credit provision and state interventions (Panitch & Gindin, 2011).
Marx also identifies capitalist economies’ tendency towards a falling rate of profit. For Marx, the decline in profits are, “...a consequence of rising productivity” (Callincos 2007:91). Crisis occurs when the fall in the rate of profit makes investment illogical. The result of this crisis is an overall reduction in the amount of capital that exists in the economy. Capitalists underestimate the long-term consequences of domestic consumption and accumulation. When capital is reduced amidst an economic recession, the rate of profit will level off so that growth can recommence. For this reason, crises are inescapable in a capitalist mode of production. Capital is not a personal, but a social power. “When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is the only social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character” (Kamenka, 1983: 220). For the Bourgeoisie, accumulated wealth is a means of increased accumulated labour. The past always dominates the present and the existence of social classes. Capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. Therefore, it is plausible to say that human beings will never be free of capital. In essence, people have become dependent slaves on what they have created as the economy.
Modes of production are driven by class, as discrepancies amongst classes are the forces behind much historical conflict. This is evident in the earlier epochs of history. In almost every historical society, we see a complex arrangement of society organized into classified social orders and a progression of social ranking. In ancient Rome, patricians, knights, plebian, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeyman, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations (Manuel, 1976:61). This is the pinnacle of the Proletariat relying on the Bourgeois for means of survival, and the Bourgeois relying on the Proletariat to produce material goods from the fruits of the Proletariat’s own labour, as one cannot exist without the other. Although class separates them, they are codependent at best. Embedded within modes of production and social formation is gender. Gendered roles are intrinsic in society, where the woman’s focus is on reproduction and rearing of young families and men’s focus is on supporting his family with material wealth.
Marx’s Historical Materialism explains how class struggle is the “ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent vision of society into distinct classes, and in the struggle of these classes against on another” (F. Pearce: Lecture 12b). The most important variable for historical development is the economic facts of society. There are always two main social classes that are always futile. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx says, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another” (Marx [1848] 1983 The Communist Manifesto (henceforth CM): 204). People act in their social roles appropriately to the economic class they take membership in and engage in political struggle over control of the economy and its commodities.
Class struggle is not just comparative; they are an interactive conception of inequality. The relation to the mode of production determines class. Through the lens of globalization, Marx ties gender to the relationship of economic struggle and class. Globalization “means that one does not have to acknowledge the capitalist material basis of the phenomena lumped together under the globalization label. Trendy and ubiquitous, globalization is, as its market value confirms, an inherently conservative way of thinking about an analyzing current processes of social, economic, political and cultural change” (Gimenez, 2010:88). Globalization explains how the capitalist nature’s processes and its effects have affected the female population. The women’s movement was uproar in response to the development in capitalism in advanced industrial economies. In countries that have advanced capitalist economies, capitalism has had paradoxical effects on women. Capitalism contributed to undermining traditional forms of gender inequity, while creating new forms which increased gender inequality, The capitalist economy opened up educational and employment opportunities for women, specifically in the upper and middle classes of society. These opportunities contribute to their desire to achieve self-determination. This intensifies gender inequalities because even though women were given these opportunities, their male counterparts will always succeed them.
Not only does this process lend to the intensification of gender inequity, but it also contributes to the liberation of specifically privileged women while furthering the oppression of working class women. The rise of a female aristocracy is a product of exploitation in the third world. The powerful class of working-women derives from the exploitative relationship between the imperialist countries and their colonies and neo-colonies (Gimenez, 2010:88). The intrinsic nature of capitalist development is comprised of exploitation and poverty of a large group in society, therefore economic equality is unavoidable. Upper and middle class women were the only classes of female society exposed to education and employment opportunities, while women in the working class will continue to sell their labour to the capitalist.
The modern bourgeoisie can only sustain itself through a process of consistent revolution, of the instruments of production, the relations of production and the relations of society. In order to compensate for a constantly expanding market, the bourgeoisie establishes economic connections on a global scale. The bourgeoisie has its roots in every society, taking advantage of exploitation of the world market by creating patterns of production and consumption. Large-scale modern corporations continue to thrive as new wants arise, constantly satisfying the production and consumption processes. Industries such as these will continue to thrive because they are constantly satisfying the bourgeois who both own the means of production and have access to these products.
The result of the modern bourgeois is a means of production and exchange that both relies on and supports the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois builds up this monopoly, but in turn the bourgeois become slaves to what they have created. The bourgeois relies on the proletariat to do his labour for him, in order to make the production occur consistently, and in turn reap the benefits of consumption. Karl Marx believe that labour was the source of all value and humans have the abilities to produce more than what is needed. “Marx argued that capitalism was characterized not by an underlying harmony of interests but by an irreconcilable conflict of interest between capital and labour” (Hall & Gieben 1992: 152). The owners of production appropriate this surplus labour and these owners then pay the labourers for the value of what they have produced but rather what the labourer needs to survive (Kamemka 1983:220). This analysis retains its relevance to the fact that the richest 1% makes up one predominantly male class of society; meanwhile the remaining 99% is comprised of both men and women from another class of society. The Wall Street movement itself roots itself in two classes of society: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. These classes have existed throughout history and will continue to until a Socialist revolution takes place and abolishes capitalism.
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