Analysis of Marxs Conception of the Capitalist Labour Process - Report Example

MARX The current report discusses and analyzes Karl Marx’s conception of the capitalist labor process, referencing both Marx and other who have been influenced by his writings and ideas. Basically, the capitalist labor process, as with most ideas in Marx’s texts, involves the historical progress from capitalism, to socialism, to communism. Marx describes communism in terms of a historical process that, due to its perceived roots in the European past, is seen to be continuing in a modified manner during the authors’ present. In this progression, “The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones” (Marx-Engels). The capitalist labor process is part of this class oppression. That is, the relative historical complexity of feudal social and economic relationships have been seen to be replaced by a simplification into two exclusive ways of defining social class and oppression through the capitalist labor process: as the relationship of struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, or vice versa. To Marx, the capitalist labor process is about history continuing in the same vein of a relationship between the class oppressed and oppressor. Thus, an expiation of the proletariat in terms of bourgeois evil follows: the reader sees that commerce and industry brought about the end of serfdom, the industrial middle class replaced the guild system, and the factory destroyed theworkshop. This is due to their implicit opposition of modern industry and serfdom, a position that may have bound more coherence in terms of a more progressive argument. Of course, this is hypothetical, and the main point of Marx and Engels is that the political advance of the new bourgeois has replaced natural right with self-interest. With a capital base for all forms of commodification, the bourgeoisie replaces “exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Marx-Engels). The authors go on to state that this exploitation manifests itself most clearly in the oppression of the proletariat, which was a major theme considered by Marx throughout his life. In his works, Marx wonders if the bourgeois system will topple due to a loss of control, as property laws are encroached by the objectively nonsensical endangerment of surplus in the capitalist labor system. And he states that the proletariat laborers, “who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market” (Marx-Engels). The capitalist worker becomes a sort of willing slave to the system that perpetuates insecurity, and is thus insecure him/herself, as the laws, conventional morality, and religion perpetuated by the system seem to all lead back to the bourgeois motivations set by capital and private property. This struggle is seen as very difficult by Marx because the laborer, although they inherently suspect that the bourgeois system is their enemy, is unable to effectively fight it, since the system controls the worker so totally. Therefore, the laborer, when s/he lashes out, does so more against material objects that represent the system than the conditions that are perpetuated by it. The stated goal of Marx’s communism in the Communist Manifesto is the “Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, (and) conquest of political power by the proletariat” (Marx-Engels). Marx is concerned with abolishing the bourgeois system of private property, but not all property standards necessarily, stating that the bourgeois system creates capital, not true property. The main point of Marx is that the political advance of the bourgeois has replaced natural right with self-interest and created a capitalist system of labor in which the bourgeois owners of land and capital control the means of production and naturally oppress the proletariat, who is called upon by Marx to mobilize in terms of consciousness of the class struggle. With a capital base for all forms of commodification, the capitalist bourgeoisie is seen to exploit the proletariat in order to continue the capitalist system of production. Marx states that this exploitation manifests itself most clearly in the oppression of the proletariat, and also mentions that the proletariat creates more wealth than they get paid for. Conflict theory is different from functionalist theory in that it concentrates on the clashes between social groups rather than the balance of society as a whole. Marxists are often called conflict theorists because of their focus on continuing class struggle. They see the social order as being maintained through the imposition of authority onto the people by those in power, who write laws that reinforce their power. In terms of focusing on capitalist labor processes, conflict theorists may emphasize the economic position played by workers in terms of authority and belongingness, and may see the stratification of workers into different tropes and reputations as being an issue of class representation. Conflict theorists may also examine issues of minority presence in terms of visibility and representation in the workplace. Other thinkers who were influenced by Marx, such as Weber, have also contributed to a Marxian understanding of the capitalist labor process. Both Marx and Weber saw society as being made up of classes who had causal relationships in relation to their opportunities in relation to the labor market, and this would have informed their interpretations of the bureaucracy as well. Weber also saw that there were more complex links between social status and class that Marx did not see, and that this concept of social status was not necessarily linked to the possession of vast amounts of capital. The idea of status groups was proposed by Weber as a sort of addition onto Marxian theory, and it was based on patterns of consumption rather than place in production. Status groups were seen to be communities with similar notions as to what is socially acceptable, and it is not too much of a stretch to see a bureaucracy as a status group from Weber’s definition. It is arguable that a Marxian approach would not take as much time looking at the consumer group or status group, instead seeing things according to a comparatively simple polarized class paradigm based on production. When Weber claims that bureaucracies are motivated by misinformation, for example, he is explicating the capitalist labor process, through the reflection of the ideal type bureaucracy, in which it is assumed that information has a relatively high degree of accuracy. Drucker is another author who looks at the capitalist labor process and is influenced by Marx. Drucker’s main thesis is that the sneaky social change of the twentieth century saw the decline of the farmer (apparently to be mourned), the rise and fall of the blue-collar proletariat (with Marxist allusions), and the rise of the knowledge worker (with attendant challenges), who threatens the developing world, which seems to be only fit for blue-collar capitalist labor, according to the author. Drucker states that “Knowledge workers will not be the majority in the knowledge society, but in many if not most developed societies they will be the largest single population and work-force group” (Drucker, p. 22). The means of production controlled by the bourgeoisie must be constantly revitalized and changed, as the system is not static and is seen to be inherently uncertain. The system manifests itself in a more global type of economy, as national boundaries perhaps become less important than trans-national capitalism. Of course, in terms of Marx’s times, “The contemporaries of Marx knew nothing about automobiles, radios, moving pictures, airplanes. A socialist society, however, is unthinkable without the free enjoyment of these goods” (Trotsky, 1937). Marx’s points on the capitalist labor process that were discussed earlier are all determined ultimately by the organization of material production, including rules of surplus value. The first thing that a human being wants to do is satisfy his/her needs, and the production process is an extension of this. As the human becomes more social, they become more ruled by the modes of production, which produces the wealth of society. The mode of production is therefore the basis of society, and it consists of everything in the spectrum of production, from raw materials to social relations between workers. It is all related to Marx’s formulation of historical materialism. Political change in this society can only occur through change in the modes of production, which would in turn change the surplus value equation. The state has its basis in the mode of production, and the conflict between intercourse and production is complicated. Basically, this represents Marx’s point of view that the Hegelians were isolated and unable to connect with the real world, while he was able to see historical progress in a new way and thus see new developments such as surplus value. In conclusion, Marx establishes the legitimacy of his arguments by stating that communism is not an over-intellectualized or abstract process, but a real phenomenon based on the real world and real events, such as the capitalist labor process as he sees it. He supplies these events throughout his text in the form of historical processes that are seen to be continuing in the present. Marx sees many other types of historical scholarship as being too abstract by the nature of the abstract lives led by the scholars themselves, and proposes communism in opposition to this sense of a theoretical world, thus establishing it in the world of people and systems rather than the world of ephemeral ideas. He wants to make it clear to the reader that communism is not a wish-list or a set of unrealistic demands, but an extension of the historical process as it has been continuing in Europe for many years, through serfdom and capitalism and the set-up of the capitalist labor process. He states that the conditions of the communist movement are not installed by ideas, but already exist. A Marxian view of history concentrates on the social stratification of groups into social classes since the fall of serfdom and the rise of private property and the middle class, or bourgeois social-class, who were seen to become the social oppressors of the working-class or proletariat social-class The worker is subjugated in this system in terms of opportunities for basic human fulfillment: “By reducing the worker’s need to the barest and most miserable level of physical subsistence… he (the capitalist of the dominant class) says: Man has no other need either of activity or of enjoyment” (Marx). Marx sees history as a continued and continuing between the class oppressed and oppressor in which the two are continually at odds until the bourgeois is overthrown. Marx shows the reader that class struggle is mostly a matter of whose side you’re on in terms of social stratification, and in all likelihood, the author realized that he was speaking through the manifesto to the statistical segment of the population he himself posited as the 9/10ths proletariat majority, which must seek out ways in which to better their conditions by rebelling against the system of class separation that holds them in bondage and stasis. REFERENCE Drucker, Peter F. (1994) The Age of Social Transformation. The Atlantic Monthly, pp. 10-43. Marx, Karl (1993). The Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. New York: International Publishers. Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels (2010). Manifesto of the Communist Party. http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1848-CM/cm.html. Trotsky, Leon (1937). The Revolution Betrayed. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Doran & Co. Read More