I would caution that Marx was in some respects "too modern" and constructed an image of the capitalist that was, if anything, more progressive than the actual, living English upper classes of the day. It's not just that the capitalists overestimated the importance of dead labour but also that the upper classes regarded labourers as having no subjectivity, period.
The feudal mentality slowly evolved from the 17th to the 19th century but even by the 1860s there was a strong element of disdain toward workers and "the poor" from those who considered themselves from the "better" classes. So Marx's critique of bourgeois ideology was, in effect, a critique of the best case scenario. Today, we have reversions to a pre-bourgeois, feudalistic mentality dressed up as "neo-liberalism." On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Mike Ballard <[email protected]>wrote: > "Since the economists identify past labour with capital—past labour being > understood in this case not only in the sense of concrete labour embodied > in the product, but also in the sense of social labour, materialised > labour-time—it is understandable that they, the Pindars of capital, > emphasise the objective elements of production and overestimate their > importance as against the subjective element, living, immediate labour. For > them, labour only becomes efficacious when it becomes capital and confronts > itself, the passive element confronting its active counterpart. The > producer is therefore controlled by the product, the subject by the object, > labour which is being embodied by labour embodied in an object, etc. In all > these conceptions, past labour appears not merely as an objective factor of > living labour, subsumed by it, but vice versa; not as an element of the > power of living labour, but as a power over this labour. The economists > ascribe a false > importance to the material factors of labour compared with labour itself > in order to have also a technological justification for the specific social > form, i.e., the capitalist form, in which the relationship of labour to the > conditions of labour is turned upside-down, so that it is not the worker > who makes use of the conditions of labour, but the conditions of labour > which make use of the worker. " > > Marx THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE > > Product to the producers, > Mike B) > *********************************************************************** > Wobbly Times > http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/ > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Sandwichman
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