SESSION III — Labor-Power

Capital Reading Group

25 October 2018

Reading
Capital, Chapters 4-6
Harvey, Chapter 3 (“From Capital to Labor Power,” pp. 85-108)

Session notes
Bullshit jobs1
- What determines if a job is “bullshit”?
- If its direct effect is limited to a small slice of the population?
- Can, for instance, a job in finance be good in its own way?
- There’s a difference between bullshit jobs and bullshit people.
- A job can be bullshit even if the people doing them have intrinsic value.
- Contrasts with emotionally satisfying labor.
- Contradiction:
- Capitalism is supposed to be efficient, but people know their jobs are bullshit.
- Everyone is miserable and wants others to be miserable.
- Why do they exist?
- Form of appeasement from the ruling class?
- Provides individuals with a false sense of agency --- e.g., managerial class
simulating role of the capitalist.
- Money is autonomous --- we’re just following along.
- Who is the ruling class?
- Those that possess capital? Governments?
- Is framing them as the “enemy” useful? Is it about eating the rich
or helping the poor?
- Does this framing matter? Do our intentions affect the
policies/ideas/people we support?
- Similar to “bread and circuses” --- keeping the masses happy with entertainment.
- Analogous to gay marriage --- a reform that does not change the
structural conditions most live in.
- But, transition away from “bullshit” industries can be anarchic or dangerous.

Mailed pipe bombs in the U.S.

- Is Trump responsible?
- Is he an enabler with his beliefs and rhetoric?
- Contradiction between the rhetoric/ideology of free agency and everyone being
miserable.

1Graeber, David. (2016). “Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs.” Evonomics. Retrieved from
http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/.
 - Despite contradictions, the system does not collapse because the people give
consent to those in charge.
- Will it inevitably implode --- as Marx thinks it will?

Labor-power
- Labor is unique:
- It creates value and is in a relation of dependency.
- This is where surplus comes from.
- There is dependency because:
- Laborers need sustenance (wages to purchase goods) in order to
survive.
- Laborers do not own the means of production --- there is an
unnatural power dynamic at work.
- Incredibly cheap products are possible because labor is short-changed and
externalities (such as environmental damage, health risks, etc.) are not factored
in.
- Similar to heterosexuality:
- The ideal of a heterosexual union pushes people to produce children --- marriage
is rewarded by the system, which reinforces the norm.
- Same-sex marriage only further reinforces the norm of marriage --- just
creates a more capacious definition for it.
- Why sex work is disparaged --- nothing (i.e., children or marriage) gets
produced.
- Can value change?
- Is it time/context/country-dependent?
- If the amount of labor used to create a commodity differs, does the commodity
then have different values?
- Marx’s idea of “socially necessary” labor addresses this paradox.

Trade agreements case study

- Trade agreements can be a double-edged sword:
- Subsidies can undercut producers in other countries, which negatively affects
those populations.
- They can create protections for vulnerable labor forces.

- Why does this happen?

- When business and humanitarian interests overlap?
- Has humanitarian concerns been commodified?
- E.g., companies marketing that they sell “fair trade coffee” in
order to assuage consumer guilt.
- This just masks the contradictions that have yet to be resolved.
- E.g., Stacey Dooley Investigates, “Fashion’s Dirty Secrets”2 ---
all we see is New York Fashion Week, not what’s behind
the curtain --- fetish.

2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bn6034.
- When money and politics intersect:
- Money places the thumb on the scale of political decisions.
- The autonomy of money:
- This is the driving force.
- Ethical consumption is not enough --- the market works in favor of the current
situation.
- Only paying the workers their worth can resolve the final contradiction.
- The individual can’t address it alone --- that just punts the more
fundamental issue.