Where the fuck is the ‘revolutionary subject’ in the European crisis? (2)

Why the working class is not effectively defending itself actually is not a question posed by this crisis. Rather the question is:

“So what else did you expect?”

No matter how the working classes of Europe responded to this crisis politically, they were already effectively rendered politically defenseless before the crisis by the very structure of the euro-zone, which stripped the fascist states of Europe of their monetary sovereignty. So even before this crisis erupted into the open, the member states with their overwhelming proletarian majorities were already effectively kneecapped and rendered toothless. The very structure of the EU was nothing more than an attempt to rob the working class of any means to defend itself in a crisis. With monetary policy centralized in the European Central Bank the member states must follow procyclical policies during economic downturns. Essentially, they have no choice but to reduce their expenditures when the euro-zone experiences a depression.

Marx’s Inconvenient Truth for Marxism and the Left

In 2003, Michael Lebowitz asked an interesting question: What Keeps Capitalism Going? What explains the persistence of an exploitative relationship in which the working class must sell their labor power to the capitalists who own the means of production. This latter group — the capitalists — have no concern for the workers, Lebowitz explains; they have only two interests in the outcome of this exchange: profits and more profits. The purchase of the worker’s labor power allows the capitalist to direct the workers in the act of production for the purpose of producing more capital; and this new capital goes back into the process of producing even more capital. According to Lebowitz this was what Marx was trying to tell us in books like Capital:

This was the central message that Marx was attempting to communicate to workers. What is capital? It  is the workers’ own product which has been turned against them, a product in the form of tools, machinery—indeed, all the products of human activity (mental and manual).

When I read this passage, I wondered why Lebowitz considers the capitalist exploitation of the worker to be the central message Marx wanted to communicate to the working class? In the 19th Century almost everyone knew labor was the source of the wealth capital produced — even bourgeois economists admitted it. The capitalist and worker engaged in constant conflict over both the division of the working day and, more importantly, over its length. Is Lebowitz suggesting working people are now too dense to understand how their companies make money? But I thought, okay, so let’s see where he is taking us with this revelation.

Burn your book, Michael Lebowitz…

Michael replies:

Charley,

I don’t agree with your basic premise. I asked you for your data on necessary labour, and you replied by offering information about ‘productive’ jobs compared to ‘unproductive’ ones. By productive, you mean jobs that produce ‘real goods’ as opposed to services, which produce nothing, add no value to the economy and do nothing for the standard of living of people.

By your definition, a job producing snowmobiles is productive, presumably necessary and must be valued whereas the activity of a teacher, nurse, doctor, community worker is useless and unproductive. These are categories warped by capitalism, and we need to break out this ideological straitjacket [which they didn’t do in the USSR— and your distinction is precisely the one that was used in Soviet income accounting]. Speaking as a Marxist and socialist, we need to start from an entirely different premise than capitalism— the premise of human development, the need to create conditions by which ‘rich human beings’ and ‘rich individuality’ can be fostered. From that premise, the activity that you are assigning to the garbage can must be especially valued.

michael

Okay, Michael – we won’t call you Mr. Lebowitz. But, if you keep up this line of argument, we might also stop calling you a socialist, as well. We are trying to assign education and medical care to the garbage can? What nonsense!