#7: DIS-UNITING CLASS (Ch. 11-14)

Reading Capital With Comrades

Our seventh episode covers chapters 11-14. After covering the rate and mass of surplus value, we examine how capitalists can increase surplus value (and therefore exploitation) without making the working day longer, which leads to the distinction between absolute and relative surplus value. Absolute surplus value is produced by prolonging the working day, but given the political and natural limits of the working day, how can capital increase surplus value? By shortening necessary labor time (the value of labor power and variable capital) and therefore lengthening surplus labor time. The last half of the episode considers some of the ways capitalists pursue relative surplus value, specifically through cooperation and the division of labor. Through cooperation, we see how capital begins producing the social collective worker--and the potential for class unity against capital--at the same time as it produces new forms of exploitation. By examining the division of labor in handicraft and manufacture, we see how capital individualizes workers at the same time as it unites them. At the end, we observe how manufacture--because the worker is the motive force--poses a limit to capitalism’s command, and how this is an example of the disjuncture between the forces of production and the relations of production.

Contact us with questions or feedback at [e-mail]