Introduction
This is the second section of the second part of a series of criticisms of a recently published pamphlet on climate change and class, titled Climate Change is a Class Issue (2024), written by Sarah Glynn, a radical activist and writer located in the United Kingdom, and John Clarke, a radical activist located in Toronto.
The first part questioned whether their view that the exploitation of workers and the natural world are similar if not identical. I demonstrated that nowhere do Glynn and Clarke indicate how exploitation of workers and the exploitation of the natural world are similar. I also pointed out that what they mean by exploitation could probably be equivalent to the meaning of “oppression” for them–but although such terms are related, they are not by any means the same.
I argued that the pamphlet in no way provides anyone with an understanding of the specific nature of capitalist exploitation, in the first instance in relation to the exchange process between an employer and workers. The immediate exchange process hides the exploitative relation that exists between the employer and the workers in that it makes it appear as though the workers receive a wage equivalent to the value of what they produce, but in fact workers, as a class, produce a surplus of value, which forms the basis for the profits of employers.
Finally, I showed that the authors, despite the apparent identity of the exploitation of workers and the natural world in a capitalist society priorize the exploitation of the natural world over the exploitation of workers–a strategy bound to fail since it does not focus on the central aspect of capitalist production and exchange–the constant need to produce a surplus of value, to invest it and reinvest the surplus value in an infinite process on a finite planet.
The first section of the second part showed that the capitalist exploitation of workers does not just involve immediate exchange between workers and employers (hiring) and the subsequent exploitation of workers but also previous exploitation of workers so that the present hiring and exploitation of workers is reinforced by past exploitation and the accumulation of the profit (a surplus of value); the weight of past exploitation becomes ever more oppressive for workers.
This section of the second part continues with that theme.
Glynn and Clarke’s Complete Neglect of the Nature of Capitalist Exploitation of Workers
Let us begin with a quote I made in the other post from their pamphlet:
Capitalism exploits nature in the same way that capitalism exploits the working class.
They do not argue their case; they provide no reasons for believing that. As a consequence, it is mere opinion and not in any way a conclusion. [In analyzing Weinberger’s defence of a United States buildup of nuclear arms, Alec Fisher (2004) points out the following in The Logic of Real Arguments, page 58:
One last point. It is surprising how often people think that ‘Our policy is peace’, in paragraph (m), is Weinberger’s main conclusion. But this is not argued for at all, so it can’t be a conclusion: conclusions have to be argued for and reasons have to be given for them. A bald statement of belief or policy (of which there are several in Weinberger’s text) is one thing; an argument presenting a case for such a belief or policy is quite another.
Providing an opinion without enlightening workers about the nature of their exploitation does workers a disservice. It will hardly contribute to pursuing socialism (the abolition of the class power of employers and the associated economic, political and social structures).
A Simplified Model of Capitalist Exploitation of Workers: Simple Reproduction
The following couple of long quotes by Teinosuke Otani (2018), A Guide to Marxian Political Economy: What Kind of a Social System Is Capitalism?, points to the need for workers to understand their situation and to engage in inquiry into the nature of capitalist relations of production and exchange.
The first long quote has to do with what is called simple reproduction, where the private employer exploits workers by obliging them to work for more time than they themselves cost to produce, thereby enabling the private employer or capitalist to appropriate and then consume the entire surplus value (profit) produced. Since the entire surplus value (profit) is consumed, each year the same level of investment arises–simple reproduction.
From Otani, pages 218-224 ( emphases in the original):
8.4 Capital as the Materialisation of Unpaid Labour of Others
Under simple reproduction, it is assumed that the capitalist consumes the entirety of the surplus-value appropriated from the worker year after year. Now let’s assume that during a period of 5 years, a capital value of 1000 brings the capitalist a surplus-value of 200 every year and that the capitalist consumes this entire amount. At the end of the 5 years, he still has the 1000 in capital value that he possessed at the outset, but over the 5 years, he has appropriated 1000 in surplus-value from the worker and consumed this 1000 in value.The capitalist would likely say: «It is precisely because I initially possessed 1000 in value, as the fruit of my own labour, that I was able to appropriate and consume 200 in value every year. The 1000 in value that I advance each year—no matter how many years this is repeated—is the initial value created by my labour».
The situation appears quite different, however, if we carefully observe the process as repeated reproduction.
Let’s take our capitalist at his word here and assume that the 1000 in value he started off with was appropriated through his own labour, so that it is the materialisation of his own labour.
During the 5-year period, the capitalist consumes a sum of value equal to the value he initially possessed. Yet after the 5 years, he is still in possession of a sum of value equal to what he started off with. Why? What is clear is that it is precisely because the capitalist has received the 1000 in surplus value for free that he can still have 1000 in value despite having consumed that amount. The 1000 that he holds after 5 years is thus the result of the 1000 in surplus-value appropriated during the 5 years, merely representing the total sum of 1000 in surplus-value obtained for free. This point can be well understood if we consider what would happen to the capitalist, who consumes 200 in value every year, if he did not appropriate any surplus-value during those years. In such a case, even if he had 1000 the first year, he would have no alternative but to consume 200 every year, reducing by that amount the sum of money that could be advanced as capital. After 5 years, the sum would reach zero and he would cease to be a capitalist. The fact that he is able to still exist as a capitalist at the end of 5 years, with 1000 in capital, is clearly the outcome of appropriating 200 surplus-value every year over the course of that period.
The capitalist in our example has appropriated the materialisation of 1000 in value from another person’s labour during a 5-year period. Since the capitalist is still in possession of 1000 in value after 5 years, having lived by consuming 200 per year, his 1000 is nothing but the materialisation of the labour of others. Even if the capital value the capitalist initially possessed was the materialisation of his own labour, the capital value he is now in possession of after 5 years is the materialisation of the worker’s surplus-value, which is to say, thematerialisation of the labour of others. Starting from the sixth year, the capitalist appropriates further surplus-value that is the materialisation of others’ labour by means of capital value that is also purely the materialisation of the labour of others.
8.5 Reproduction of Capital-ownership Through Appropriating the Labour
of Others…
At first glance, the capital relation, which is the relation of production between capitalists and workers, seems to continue to exist, as is, year after year. In particular, it seems that the pivot of this continuity is the capitalist’s continued possession of capital, which he owned from the outset. In fact, however, as noted in the previous section, the capital relation is not an inorganic entity like a cornerstone, which cannot collapse once put in place unless some outside force is applied, but rather is maintained by being constantly reproduced and formed through the labour of labouring individuals within the production process. This is similar to how the human body is maintained by the infinite number of cells that compose it being replaced every day by newly created ones.
…
Now let’s imagine that a person with no money borrows 1000 in value from someone (assuming that the loan is free of interest) and makes it function as capital for a 5-year period, during which he appropriates 200 in surplus-value every year and that after 5 years he repays the 1000. Once the loan had been repaid, he would return to his penniless state and cease to be a capitalist. In this case, the fact that he was able to exist as a capitalist for 5 years was not because he held on to 1000 in value during the 5 years. Indeed, if the 1000 had not functioned as capital, he would have consumed the 1000 during the 5 years, leaving him with nothing but the debt for that amount. The reason the capitalist is instead able to still have 1000, and was able to consume 200 in value every year, is that during those 5 years, he made the 1000 in value function as capital and was thus able to appropriate 200 in surplus-value from workers each year. It is precisely because of appropriating this unpaid labour that the capitalist is able to exist as a capitalist for a period of 5 years.
Even if, during the 5-year period, he had been able to live without consuming the 200 of surplus-value or had somehow been able to procure a separate consumption fund to last the 5 years, so that even after repaying the 1000 by the end of that period he would have a total of 1000 in value appropriated from workers, it would still be clear that this value is the mass of surplus-value appropriated from the workers.
In short, the capital value owned by the capitalist must sooner or later, through the progression of reproduction, be transformed into the materialisation of the appropriated labour of others, so that the ownership of capital value by the capitalist (even if initially the result of his own labour) is transformed into the outcome of the appropriation of others’ labour, i.e. transformed into the outcome of exploitation carried out in the production process.
In simple reproduction, it is assumed that the original investment came from the labour of the purchaser of the labour power of workers and of the means of production (machinery (such as computers), buildings, raw material, and other such products), but on the basis of that assumption the preservation of the same initial investment arises through the constant exploitation of workers.
In simple reproduction the preservation of the original value of the investment year after year, therefore, is due to the continued exploitation of workers year after year. Can the wages the workers receive then be considered in any way decent under such circumstances (a phrase which Clarke used only a few years ago)? Let Mr. Clarke why he would have used such a phrase if he understood the nature of capitalist exploitation.
A More Realistic Model of Capitalist Exploitation of Workers: Extended Reproduction, or the Accumulation of Capital, and How It Plays Out in the Exploitation of Workers in the Present
When we consider the real accumulation of capital, where part of the surplus value (profit) produced for free by workers and appropriated by private employers (capitalists) for no equivalent is not consumed but ploughed back into further investments, not only is the original value of original capital preserved through the continued exploitation of workers but the relation between the original capital invested and the new capital invested due to the exploitation of workers increasingly becomes smaller and smaller relatively as the accumulation of capital and the continuous exploitation of workers proceed.
Before entering into a more complicated explanation of workers’ exploitation and oppression in a capitalist society, I will quote from another author from the perspective of the nature of property relations in a capitalist society. From Sabine Nuss (2006), Copyright & Copyriot
Conflicts of Appropriation over Intellectual Property in Informational Capitalism (in German): {translated using ChatGPT), page 158:
“This apparent identity between labor and property seems to ‘flip’ when one closely examines the capitalist production sphere: The worker enters the market as the owner of their labor power. The capitalist, on the other hand, faces them as the owner of their money – a process of equivalent exchange takes place. Here, labor and property are still combined on both sides of the exchange (one might assume that the capitalist ‘earned’ their money through labor themselves). Now, if we look at reproduction on the expanded scale of accumulation, this identity of labor and property undergoes a transformation: In the first act, between the money owner and the worker, the capitalist purchases labor power with their ‘own money.’ Through the labor power, surplus value is created, which results from unpaid overtime work. When the surplus value is capitalized, the capitalist buys labor power again, but this time they pay with the result of unpaid labor, and the newly purchased labor power once more produces unpaid labor. That is, unpaid labor once again appropriates unpaid labor, and the more frequently this process repeats, the more labor and property diverge.”
This passage reflects Marx’s analysis of how labor and property are initially tied together but gradually become separated through the process of capital accumulation and surplus value extraction. Initially, the capitalist’s money is connected to the worker’s labor, but over time the process of capital accumulation separates the two, resulting in the exploitation of labor.
From Otani, pages 228-234:
Our assumption here again will be that a capitalist has advanced 1000 in value and then appropriates 200 in surplus-value, all of which is subsequently advanced as additional capital.
Where does the capitalist get this 1000 in capital? The capitalists and the economists who defend their interests respond in unison that this capital was the fruit of the capitalists’ own labour or that of their forbearers. But we have already seen that, even seen from the perspective of simple reproduction, all capital is transformed into a mass of unpaid labour of others through the recurrence of reproduction and that capital-ownership is also reproduced through the appropriation of unpaid labour. But, for now, let us accept the capitalist’s view of the situation.
… commodity holders in the sphere of commodity exchange recognise each other as private owners, but in so doing, they do not concern themselves with how the other person came to possess his commodity. Instead, they can only assume that this other person obtained it through his own labour. This socially accepted assumption that a private owner’s property title stems from own labour is the property laws of commodity production.
When the capitalist initially appears on the market with 1000 and purchases means of production and labour-power at their value, those involved in the commodity and labour markets do not care how he came into possession of the 1000 in value, provided he is the proper owner of that sum. Those involved in the transaction all assume with regard to each other that commodities and money were obtained through their own labour, with each quite content to declare: «I worked to save up this 1000» or «It was obtained through my parents’ hard work». And it seems that this is the only assumption that could be made, according to the property laws of commodity production.
The situation is completely different, however, in the case of the 200 that the capitalist seeks to advance as additional capital. We are perfectly familiar with the process that generates this sum of value, knowing that it was originally surplus-value. This means that the 200 in its entirety is the objectification [materialisation] of the unpaid labour of others. The additional means of production and additional labour power purchased with this sum are nothing more than a new form taken by this value qua [as] objectification of unpaid labour.
Viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and working class, we have a situation where the working class, through its surplus-labour in the current year, creates the new capital that becomes the additional means of production and additional labour-power the following year.
Now let us assume that the 200 is advanced in the second year as additional capital and yields 40 in surplus-value [the same rate of profit as the initial investment of 1000 with a surplus value of 200: 200/1000=40/200=1/5=20 percent]. Since the original capital also generates 200 in surplus-value in the second year, by the third year, there is 440 (in addition to the 1000) that can be advanced as capital [First year: 200s from the initial exploitation of workers+ second year, an additional 200s from the 1000 again invested and used to exploit the workers +the 40s produced in the second year by the workers and used for further investment in the third year=440]. Not only is 400 unmistakably the objectification of unpaid labour, 40 is the objectification of unpaid labour appropriated through the additional capital, which itself is the objectification of unpaid labour. If this process of accumulating all the surplus-value is repeated for the subsequent 4 years, by the end of that period the capitalist will have—in addition to his original capital of 1000, which we could call the «parent»—the surplus-value appropriated through the parent capital during the 4 years… Together this forms an «offspring» of 1074. So if the capitalist advances the aggregate capital in the fifth year, there will be 2074 of capital («parent» and «offspring») in operation that year. [The capitalist is assumed to exploit workers to the extent of 20 percent per unit. At the end of the first year, 1000×1.2=1,200; this is invested in the second year, and at the end of the second year, 1,200×1.2=1,440; this is invested at the beginning of the third year, and at the end of the third year, 1,440×1.2=1,728; this is invested at the beginning of the fourth year, and at the end of the fourth year, 1,728×1.2=2074, which again can be invested at the beginning of the fifth year…].
Even if we assume that the capitalist possessed the 1000 of the 2074 to begin with, he certainly cannot claim that the remaining 1074 in value was created through his own labour. As long as it is recognised that the 200 in surplus-value appropriated every year from the 1000 in capital is the objectification
of surplus-labour, then this 1074 in value is, from top to bottom, the surplus-value transformed back into capital and thus the objectification of labour of others. … In other words, we are dealing with a mass of surplus-labour appropriated through a mass of surplus-labour.The more the reproduction of capital is repeated, the smaller the original capital advanced, until it becomes an infinitesimal amount. The surplus-value transformed back into capital, whether it is made to function as capital in the hands of the person who accumulated it or in the hands of someone else, comes to represent the overwhelming part of the capital that currently exists.
The capitalist every year buys the means of production and labour-power on the commodity market and labour market in accordance with the property laws of commodity production in order to repeatedly carry out production. The result of this is that the capitalist appropriates unpaid living
labour on an increasingly large scale by making the unpaid surplus-labour of others function as capital. Marx refers to the capitalist’s appropriation of unpaid labour in this manner as the laws of capitalist appropriation.In the market, which is the surface layer of capitalist production, the property law of commodity production operates. But if we consider the production of capital that underlies this in terms of social reproduction, it becomes clear that the law of capitalist appropriation is in operation. Where the capital relation exists, the law of capitalist appropriation is the necessary consequence of the property laws of commodity production. Marx expresses this reality by referring to the inversion of the property laws of commodity production in the laws of capitalist appropriation.
The surplus-value qua [as] objectification of the surplus-labour of another person, which the capitalist appropriates in the production process, is turned into capital; and the ownership of this capital value is thus the result of the appropriation of surplus-value in the production process. The capitalist’s appropriation of surplus-value in the production process precedes, and brings about, his ownership of capital. Here it is precisely the production of surplus-value by the labouring individuals first. Rather, it is precisely the behaviour of the labouring individuals within the production process that is always generating the ownership of the means of production by the capitalist within the production process that generates capital ownership.
At first glance, there seemed to be a vicious circle with regard to capitalist ownership of the means of production by the capitalist and his appropriation of surplus-value, wherein the latter is only possible through the former, but the latter always generates the former.
However, within this relation, the active determining moment that continues capitalist production as such is the constant reproduction of products within the production process by the labouring individuals and the constant production of surplus-value. Labouring individuals are the active subject of continual production, regardless of the form of society, but under capitalist production, we have a situation where labouring individuals completely separated from the conditions of labour come into contact with the means of production in the production process as things belonging to others, which means that the resulting surplus-labour always belongs to others as well, and through this there is the continual reproduction of capital and wage-labour and the relation between them. Thus, in terms of the capitalist ownership of the means of production, and the capitalists’ appropriation of surplus-value, it cannot be said that the former is the immovable premise or even that it is a vicious circle where it cannot be said which of the two comes first. Rather, it is precisely the behaviour of the labouring individuals within the production process that is always generating the ownership of the means of production by the capitalist.
When conceived as a continuous process of exploitation and accumulation of capital, the exploitation of workers gains new meaning–the dead weight of the past exploitation of workers weighs ever more heavily on the present exploitation of workers.
You would never it from what Glynn and Clarke wrote. In fact, the word “exploitation” has little meaning in the pamphlet other than as a moral term to vaguely criticize “capitalism”–another vague term.
I will merely repeat what I wrote in the first section of this post.
Vagueness of meaning permits individuals to evade intellectual (and, ultimately, practical) responsibility for their beliefs, as John Dewey, the American philosopher of education noted long ago (from How We Think, 1910/2011, How We Think, pages 129-130):
A being that cannot understand at all is at least protected from mis-understandings. But beings that get knowledge by means of inferring and interpreting, by judging what things signify in relation to one another, are constantly exposed to the danger of mis-apprehension, mis-understanding, mis-taking—taking a thing amiss. A constant source of misunderstanding and mistake is indefiniteness of meaning. Through vagueness of meaning we misunderstand other people, things, and ourselves; through its ambiguity we distort and pervert. Conscious distortion of meaning may be enjoyed as nonsense; erroneous meanings, if clear-cut, may be followed up and got rid of. But vague meanings are too gelatinous to offer matter for analysis, and too pulpy to afford support to other beliefs. They evade testing and responsibility. Vagueness disguises the unconscious mixing together of different meanings, and facilitates the substitution of one meaning for another, and covers up the failure to have any precise meaning at all. It is the aboriginal logical sin—the source from which flow most bad intellectual consequences. Totally to eliminate indefiniteness is impossible; to reduce it in extent and in force requires sincerity and vigor. To be clear or perspicuous a meaning must be detached, single, self-contained, homogeneous as it were, throughout.
Conclusion
Glynn and Clarke provide no justification of their identification of capitalist exploitation of workers and the exploitation of the natural world. Not only do they fail to describe the nature of the immediate process of capitalist exploitation and how the exchange process hides that capitalist exploitation, but they also fail to even consider how previous rounds of exploitation form the basis for current exploitation. Their focus on climate change and their lack of focus on capitalist exploitation indicates an unrealistic view of large-scale social change since it will require substantial ideological struggle (and not just “activism”)–and theoretical development of the working class as well.
The Abolitionary 