Thursday, August 26, 2010

Sunday night shakes and the declining rate of profit

If you've ever had the Sunday night shakes then you know the capital-relation well. Your time is soon to become someone else's, to do with as they please! And yet it can be scarier to contemplate life without this self-discipline that has been instilled in us since youth, that sustains our reputation as dependable employees, and informs our identity otherwise. People retire and die -- that sort of thing!

Not a penny of profit can come from a production system composed entirely of machines: this is part of what Marx is saying. So you've got to keep showing up -- you can't take half the year off to do something you'd like! Technology does its part, but the real trick behind capitalism is convincing human beings to work one portion of their lives as necessary for their own subsistence, and another portion as an unpaid contribution to their employer. The two parts come together in varying proportions and are expressed superficially as a working day, a working week, a working year, and so on.

Much of the politics of class conflict revolves around how the two components of a working day fit together, i.e. how much of the day is spent working for oneself and how much is given without compensation to an employer. At first employers made people work 18-hour days, etc., in order to maximize what they could get above and beyond the cost of subsistence for their workers.

Now employers use a number of different means, including lowering the cost of subsistence (e.g. making food and other commodities cheaper for the general population -- think of how fast food sustains the American family!); increasing productivity via technology; dividing compensation between more members of the household, as with women's emergence in the workforce; or increasing the number of hours in a workweek, as from a neat 40 in most of our parents' day to whatever unholy combination is fashionable now.

One of the contradictions here is that while human beings form the portion of capital out of which profit is made possible, technological advances in production throw increasing numbers of people out of work. This leads to a scenario which Marx called "the declining rate of profit" -- the profit-bearing portion of capital grows smaller in relation to its automated forms, which are in turn maximized for the productivity gains they support. This is one phenomenon which can contribute to a generalized crisis.

That's probably enough to think about for now. Just remember the importance of self-discipline in all things, with working for others at the top of your list!

9 comments:

Justin said...

"or increasing the number of hours in a workweek, as from a neat 40 in most of our parents' day to whatever unholy combination is fashionable now"
As in - instead of 1 40 hour a week job, you can have 2+ 30 hour a week 'part time' jobs.

JRB said...

You said it, brother!

Anonymous said...

overproduction/under-nutrition...sorry, trying to think of the words here while at work...take the big mac: vast amounts of labor to produce one big mac (the cow, who gives it all for the team, after giving some for the "cheese," some wheat/soy/corn thing that becomes a "bun," some veggiemite product labeled pickles, lettuce, tomato, some mayo/mustard/catsup/ketchup thing; and, all deference to the poor cow, the human labor involved in producing this monstrosity), then a consumer buys this thing, spending x% of his/her labor to do so....& this but a metaphor for the entirety of the relationship b/n our work & the products we consume b/c of our work, products we ourselves have made via our work & are enabled to purchase via our work, none of which even biologically satisfy....

Hattie said...

I am astonished at how many people eat fast food. It isn't even necessary to do so. And the drugs people take!
I blame long hours of work and television for destroying people's pleasures in everyday life. Shopping, cooking, exercising, socializing, become burdens instead of necessities and enhancements of existence.

Ben There said...

Don't get me wrong here - I'm with you on this whole line of thinking, trust me - but when we talk about giving up some of our time to basically go do something we don't really want to be doing...I can't comprehend a realistic way of most individuals avoiding that in ANY social system. Perhaps I'm overly conditioned but I can't imagine any setup that would allow the vast majority of people to sit around playing guitar, reading literature, and making love all day (or whatever their thing is).

Now if we want to talk about how much time we have to give up and what kind of sacrifices are involved and critique American capitalism from
that perspective then it's game on; from what I can tell the European-style social democracies have our asses kicked in that regard. I think we vastly improve in that area but not without a change in our general value system. Specifically, putting less emphasis on the acquisition of more 'stuff' (ipods, lattes, and whathaveyou) in exchange for more leisure time. But of course the folks who own the media and can control the narrative would never allow that to occur. However, I'd argue it can be done on an individual level with the proper strategy.

JRB said...

[W]hen we talk about giving up some of our time to basically go do something we don't really want to be doing...I can't comprehend a realistic way of most individuals avoiding that in ANY social system. Perhaps I'm overly conditioned but I can't imagine any setup that would allow the vast majority of people to sit around playing guitar, reading literature, and making love all day (or whatever their thing is).

Considering that we've gone from an 18-hour day to an 8-hour day back up to something in between, the question of how much of time we give up and to what end seems like a good one.

After all, what is the justification for the time we give up? Is it because other parts of our lives derive some benefit? Are we contributing toward something worthwhile?

There are plenty of areas in life where people manage to negotiate between what they want and what is necessary under the circumstances -- and even manage to do it without a boss.

The issue isn't whether human beings can do this -- as I say, they do it all the time -- but whether they will choose to do it in realms of primary importance to their lives.

DPirate said...

Would you mind if I print this and pin it up at the grocery store?

JRB said...

DPirate,

I wish you would! And if you find a reasonable way of printing posts from blogger do let me know.

DPirate said...

I'll just cut and paste into a word-processing program. What strikes me about the post is that you use examples which will never occur to most people, but when they hear it in this context, the light goes on.