conception of the subsumption of labor by capital that makes it into a minor
footnote on the historical emergence of the capitalist mode of production.
There is a world beyond Brenner and Woods. A full reading of the various
places where the concept of subsumption appears in Capital I makes it clear
that it is central to Marx's analysis of the labor-capital relationship under
capitalism, to struggles over labor process under capitalism. This is
especially clear when one examines the passages which appear on pp. 1029 ff
of the Vintage edition of _Capital_. Here Marx examines the concept of the
subsumption of labor in terms of the transition from the artisan, the world
of the guild master and his apprentices, to the wage laborer. What becomes
clear in this analysis is that capitalism is the first mode of production in
which the ruling economic class actually endeavors to control the labor
process itself; in pre-capitalist modes of production, surplus extraction
takes place after a labor process under the control of the producer, while
under the capitalist mode of production, the capitalist seizes as much
control as he can, given the resistance of workers, over the labor process.
Marx's discussion of absolute and relative surplus value is based on this
analysis of the subsumption of labor.
It was the virtue of Braverman's _Labor and Monopoly Capital_ and the work on
the labor process that flowed from it that it demonstrated how the
subsumption of labor by capital centered on the 'de-skilling' of worker qua
artisan, on the reorganization of the labor process, epitomized by scientific
management, which separated out the knowledge and science of production from
the actual work of the producer. This work had its flaws, but the central
insight was both valid and incredibly important to an understanding of the
actual dynamics of class struggles under capitalism. It is in the context of
this insight that one begins to see that many of the themes highlighted in
so-called post-modernist analysis -- questions of knowledge and science --
are rooted in the labor process, and that Marxian analysis has something
important to add to the conversation over them. To the extent that H&N pick
up the theme of the subsumption of labor by capital, they highlight the
continuing contribution the Marxian tradition can make on these themes.
Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --
