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CAPITALISM AND COMMODITY PRODUCTION

PRESENTED BY :

RENI WAIKHOM

BEDA PRAKSH DUTTA

SHUVAM SARMA

TIACHENLA IMCHEN

What is Marxism ?

•Marxism is a philosophy of history. It is also an economic doctrine.  •Marxism also a theory of revolution and the basic explanation for how societies go through the process of change. 

•Marxists believe that they have an empirical, scientific approach to  human history and society

• “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature,  so  Marx discovered  the  law of development of human history.” (Engels, 1884)

Historical Materialism

• This is the idea that development is contingent on the emergence and maintenance of social classes. Ideologies and political structures. Materialism dictates our consciousness.

• “That legal relations as well as forms of states are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so called general development of the human mind, but rather are rooted in the material conditions of life.”

(Marx : A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy).

• Also, can be conceptualized as economic determinism.

Materialist Thesis

• Differentiating from Feuerbach's idea of Philosophical materialism, Marx argues materialism does not refer to the assumption of any logically argued ontological position.

• Human consciousness is conditioned in dialectical interplay between subject ( man in society) object (the material world), in which man actively shapes the world he lives in at the same time as it shapes him, that is even our perception of the material world is conditioned by society.

• The creative interchange between and their natural environment, the foundation of human society

Relations of productions & Class structure

Modes of Production has two elements 1. Forces of Production : Knowledge, Technology, Skills, Labor etc. 2. Relations of Production : Bourgeoisie, Proletariat, Owner, Non owner etc.

To understand Relations of Productions , we need to understand Means of Productions.

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Owners : Those who owns the Means of Productions. Non-Owners : Those who don’t own any Means of Productions.

Forces of Production + [raw materials, warehouse, buildings etc.]

= Means

of Productions

Capitalist Mode of Production:

Ways of thinking==Capitalist Ideologies.

Capitalism allows individual freedom, democracy, social mobility etc. This liberalism serve to conceal the exploitation which is at the core of society.

Class structure in a capitalist society wrt Relations of Production

• Bourgeoisie

• Proletariat

Capitalist Development

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Forces of production- materials- technology- labour

Politics Ideology+ +

Law CultureSuperstructure

Relations ofProduction

i.e property relations

SocialformationProjective

ConsciousnessCooperates in setting of scarcity and surplus

Mode of production- Asiatic- Ancient- Feudal- Capitalist

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Ideology and consciousness According to Marx, consciousness is rooted in human praxis (practice) which is in turn social. This is the sense of the statement that ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Ideas that naturally emerge out of everyday life with capitalism and reflect reality in an inverted manner.

Marx believed there was a system of ruling ideas that are in place to hide the contradictions in society.

Marx did not believe people are free under capitalism because they do not have control over their own labor and products of their labor.

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY: Communism- the establishment of a classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownership of the means of production in which the state “withers away”.

“Consciousness is from the very beginning a social  product.” -Marx

Commodity Production•Capitalism as stated by Marx is a system of commodity production.

•Every commodity, as Marx states has two- fold aspects: use value and exchange value.

•Use-value, which is realized only in the process of consumption, exchange value refers to value a product has when offered in exchange for other products.

•Also according to Marx, that exchange-value cannot be derived from use-value .

• The two aspects of commodities are simply an expression of dual character of labor itself.

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These commodities have use values

You can eat an apple

Or write with a pen

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•But they also exchange: say,4 apples = one pen

•Almost everything has a number (price tag) attached to it. We work in return for numbers on coloured bits of paper, rather than because we want the products of the work for ourselves or our community, or because we are forced to.

•So what is equal here?It's not something naturalIt must be something social

==

Apples and pens are equal things in society in both being “congealed” social labour time.

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Commodities are values.

Congelation of Labour time.

Value is expressed in exchange value or price.

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•One particular commodity is separated off from others and becomes money. Later, commodity-money is replaced by purecredit-money

•Most of us exchange one particular commodity, labour-power, for money, and then for food, etc.

•Labour-power is not the same as labour. You own labour-power when you are not working. When you sell your labour-power, your boss owns it and "consumes" it by making you labour. •Marx offers a theory of profit because he does not take it for granted that things have prices, and then explain one price (selling-price) from another(cost-price).

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•Markets long predate capitalism but primarily for use values C M C•Under capitalism markets predominate Overwhelming for exchange value

M C M’

Value of Output = Value of Material Goods + Labour Time

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"Material inputs" includes wear and tear of machines etc.

So profits, because value added (labour-time) is more than value paid out for labour-power.

What is the value of labour-power? It is not a commodity produced in factories. You produce it yourself, in your free time, which does not count as social labour-time. But to produce it, you need inputs which do embody social labour-time: food, etc.

Inherent contradictions in capitalist societies

•This results is Alienation, where the man is alienated from object he produces, from the process the process of production, from himself, and from the community of his fellows, caused by the antagonistic relation of the two dominant classes.

• Alienation may be described as a condition in which men are dominated by forces of their own creation, which confronts them alien powers.

•Economic alienation under capitalism is involved in men’s daily activities and not only in their minds, as other forms of alienation might be.

Marx’s envision and social reality Marxists envisioned The Theory of Class as a Grand Theory.

They saw the rise of Socialism over Capitalism.

Pure Socialist societies as envisioned never occurred.

Possible Reasons-

As history tells polarization never really happened to a great extent as Marx believed.

Concentration of industries within few hands never really happened. Small scale industries also emerged, emergence of stock market etc.

Continue : Industries as unfolded – there has been proliferation of new occupations. Rise of service sector, outsourcing in developing countries etc.

Due to embourgeoisement, working class tried to get into the middle class rather than trying to bring radical change. Co-operation rather than conflict between employer and employee emerged. Co-operation is brought by working class itself. Negotiation played a bigger role in bringing co-operation between two classes. Resolution of conflict is institutionalized through collective negotiation.

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Evolution of managerial class- with the emergence of a managerial class to control

and manage the working class people, a separation between the

Property class(Owners) and Non-property class(Workers) occurred.

The cohesiveness in working class actually very less than Marx thought They are rather much differentiated (heterogeneity among workers). Hierarchy based on skills etc. exists within class.

In Marxism there is no accounting for an industrialist like Henry Ford, who granted his workers the unheard of wage of $5.00 per  day, because, as Mr. Ford argued, “If I don’t pay them enough to buy my cars, who is going to buy them?” (Mazlish, p. 117)

Working class of the whole world never really united.

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