Introduction
In my first post in this series (Limitations of a Radical’s Views on Class Exploitation: The Blog of the Toronto Radical John Clarke, Part One, I started with an hypothesis: many activists in practice assume that it is unnecessary to engage in theory in any rigorous manner (even if they claim the contrary) since they engage in practice—they are activists. John Clarke, a former major organizer of the defunct organization Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, illustrates this hypothesis in many ways and, in particular, in relation to his very inadequate characterization of the exploitation of workers by employers.
In the first post, I referred to Clarke’s most extensive post on the exploitation of workers on his blog (see his post titled “Truth Is on the Side of the Oppressed https://johnclarkeblog.com/node/97); I again include it as an appendix at the end of this post. I showed the inadequacy of Clarke’s belief that being a radical and engaging in practice or being an activist were sufficient to gain an understanding of the specific nature of the employer’s exploitation of workers. Being a radical, an activist or even a revolutionary is hardly sufficient for understanding the nature of the exploitation of workers by employers.
Despite Clarke’s claim that: “The present period we live in, a time of societal crisis when … the importance of socialist ideas is greatly elevated,” he provides the working class with inadequate tools for understanding and developing socialist ideas–which includes an understanding and critique of their own exploitation and oppression. If it is indeed such a time when socialist ideas are particularly important, then what are these socialist ideas? Are they linked to the exploitation of workers? Perhaps ending such exploitation? Would such an aboliton of not only the exploitation of workers by employers but all forms of exploitation require a fairly deep and widely held understanding of the specific nature of exploitation by employers. Or is the abolition of such exploitation to be achieved without such a consciousness?
Since Clarke does not really enlighten us or other workers about the nature of such exploitation in any “comprehensive” manner, such “socialist ideas” will likely be—utopian–like Paulo Freire’s implicit assumption that socialism was being built in one country–Guinea Bissau, a West-African country. Paulo Freire wrote, among other books, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but Freire’s own lack of in-depth analysis of the specific nature of capitalist exploitation likely contributed to a practical lack of effectiveness towards the creation of a socialist society –and that despite Freire engaging in practice in various capacities (as National Literacy Program Coordinator, Brazil (1963–1964, after which he was jailed and then exiled) and as an educational advisor to the revolutionary government of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in the 1970s).
Clarke’s Inadequate Characterization of the Obstacles for Workers Becoming Conscious of Their Own Exploitation by Employers
Clarke may point out that he did point out that there are processes that hide the nature of capitalist exploitation in a capitalist society whereas in earlier societies it was more evident. He writes:
This exploitative reality isn’t nearly as apparent as it was for slaves, who could readily see that they worked as directed and only got back what their owners provided in the form of food, clothing and shelter. … b. For modern workers, though they widely view their employer as an exploiter, the unpaid portion of their labour is not immediately identifiable. The agreement they enter into with the capitalist creates the illusion that they are being paid for the work they perform.
This view, though correct, vastly understates the nature of the problem, and it is such an understatement because it is vague. There are systematic mechanisms inherent in the process of capitalist exploitation that prevent workers from realizing that they are exploited in the sense of producing a surplus of value or producing profit (or in performing surplus labour in the case of government workers).
There are objective relations between workers and employers that result in the workers’ exploitation by employers–but such exploitation is not visible–unlike earlier kinds of society (for the nature of exploitation and how to calculate the degree of exploitation, see for example The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Magna International Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto, Part One).
There are various mechanisms which hide the nature of class exploitation of employers from the working class.
The First Mechanism that Hides the Exploitation of Workers: Relations of Exchange, or Relations of Buying and Selling
Class relations and exploitation are hidden by relations of exchange, or relations of buying and selling commodities. From Meghnad Desai (1974), Marxian Economic Theory, page 23:
The difference lies not in the characterization of the productive process, similar for all schools of economics, but in the process of buying and selling labour power, which lies at the beginning of the productive process and leads to appropriation of surplus value by one class. Throughout all the participants perceive only legitimate exchange relations and not unequal relations of class and exploitation.
Exploitation is hardly evident in a class society characterized by capitalist relations of production, distribution, exchange and consumption. Quite to the contrary. The capitalist process of exploitation appears in the form of its opposite, as relations of freedom and equality. From Desai, page 55:
In Neoclassical economic theory, preferences and technology are the structural relations which explain the observed pricequantity data. Marx would reject these Neoclassical relations as not penetrating beneath the surface of exchange relationships to the relations of production and the forces of production. But Marx went further than this. He also emphasised that the observed reality was the inverse or mirror image of the true social relationship. Thus, exchange shows equality where the true relationships are of exploitation. In this sense, observed reality is upside down, and empirical data unless approached within a value theoretic framework would lead to conclusions which will contradict the predictions of the value theory.
Exchange relations appear as what they are–formal relations of equality between buyer and seller. No one threatens through the use of physical violence for workers to work for a particular employer. This formal exchange relation, however, conflicts with the exploitation and oppression of workers when they are working.
The exchange relation itself hides this relation by making it appear that the exchange is a free relation among equals–which it is in a limited sense (and that limited sense needs to be acknowledged). Workers are not forced to work for any particular employer (exceptions are, for example, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), where so-called foreign workers are tied to a specific employer through an employer-specific work permit (also called a “closed work permit”).
A related reason why workers do not perceive their exploitation is that one of the basic features class relations in a capitalist society take the immediate form or situation of a relation between things and thus hide the nature of class exploitation. Social relations between workers become an objective relation that controls the workers rather than vice versa. From Nicholas Gray (Winter 2012), “Against Perversion and Fetish: The Marxian Theory of Revolution as Practical Demystification,” in pages 13-24, Studies in Social and Political Thought, Volume 20, page 19:
Thus, in bourgeois society, although individuals hold their “social power in their pocket” or “in the shape of a thing” [money] (Marx, 1973, p. 157), in fact it is they who are beholden to it, or under its sway: they are “ruled by abstractions” (their own social relations which have become abstracted from them – i.e. alienated from them) (1973, p. 164). The alienation of social power goes hand in hand with an ontological inversion characteristic of the money form of value: money is transformed from means of exchange to a relation of power which subjugates individuals; a social relation alienated such that it becomes autonomous, self-standing, and an end in itself.
These objective relations between workers results in their exploitation–but such exploitation is not visible–unlike earlier kinds of society. From Meghnad Desai (1974), Marxian Economic Theory, page 16:
The contradiction between the juridically free status of the labourer and his exploitation is the original contradiction of capitalism. It is original since it appears at the origin in capitalism. In no other society does exploitation take the value form [objective form of the relations between producers as a relation between produced commodities and money] since in no society does it have to be masked from visible relationships.
Exchange relations appear as what they are–formal relations of equality between buyer and seller. No one threatens through the use of physical violence for workers to work for a particular employer. This formal exchange relation, however, conflicts with the exploitation and oppression of workers when they are working–but workers hardly are conscious of this process unless they begin to reflect critically on the processes of exchange, production, distribution and consumption.
In relation to equality, they generally exchange equivalent values, with the employer paying for the value of the labour power (the general capacity to work–even if in a specific form with a definite concrete use value). This exchange of equivalents hides the exploitation of workers. From John Weeks (2010), Capital, Exploitation and Economic Crisis, pages 29-30:
Marx repeatedly argued that value rules only under capitalism, and the exchange of equivalents … occurs only under capitalism and, most importantly, the exchange of equivalence hides exploitation. In Chapter 2 there was a quotation from the Grundrisse [a draft of what, in part, was to become Capital] to this effect, and almost the same passage appears in Capital, Volume I,
[I]t is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that
are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by
their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite.
The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started,
has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent
exchange. (Marx 1970b: 547)This inversion does not occur historically; it is the relationship between surface appearance (“necessary illusion”) and the underlying reality of that appearance,
At first, the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man’s own labor. At least, some such assumption was necessary since only commodity owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole means by which a man could become possessed of the commodities of others, was by alienating his own commodities . . . Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its product, and to be the impossibility, on the part of the laborer, of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labor has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity. (ibid.: 547, emphasis added)
Having made this line of argument, Marx refers sarcastically to a society of independent
producers exchanging equivalents as the “paradise lost of the bourgeoisie, where people did not confront one another as capitalists, wage-earners, landowners, tenant farmers, usurers, and so on, but simply as persons who produced commodities and sold them” (1970a: 60). …Neither the importance of this insight nor the difficulty in fully appreciating it can be exaggerated. Commodities exchange, an amount of money for an amount of a commodity. The money is the equivalent of the commodity, and from this equivalence is generated a great ideology to justify capitalism as a social system. For example, from the commodity-money equivalence derives the belief that people are free to choose their work, that through diligence they can advance by the fruits of their labors and that this society of the economically free brings forth a society of the politically free. Marx demonstrated that the real basis for this exchange of equivalence is the monopoly of productive wealth by a few. In exchange commodity-producing society appears as “free markets, free people”,
and its basis is “free markets, exploitation.”
Conclusion
Despite being very one-sided aspects of the the total relation between the working class and the class of employers, formal freedom and equality are nonetheless real, and this formal and yet real aspect of the process itself contributes to workers being unable to perceive their own exploitation. These real but limited forms of freedom and equality need to be taken into account when organizing and fighting for a society without a class of employers.
Clarke’s vast understatement of the extent to which there are unconscious, systemic and objective processes that hide the exploitation from the consciousness of workers will undoubtedly prevent him–and many other radicals who fail to take this situation into account–from contributing effectively to the demise of capitalism.
Clarke provides no plan on how to show workers that they are exploited. Without such an understanding, it is unlikely that workers will organize to abolish their exploitation–and the class power of employers and its associated economic, political and social institutions and structures.
In a follow-up post, I will more briefly demonstrate further unconscious, systemic and objective processes that hide the exploitation from the consciousness of workers.
Appendix
“TRUTH IS ON THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSED”
Submitted byJohnnew onFri, 02/24/2023 – 19:27
He went on to argue that
‘The fact that a scientifically acceptable solution does exist is of no avail. For to accept that solution, even in theory, would be tantamount to observing society from a class standpoint other than that of the bourgeoisie. And no class can do that – unless it is willing to abdicate its power freely. Thus the barrier which converts the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie into ‘false’ consciousness is objective; it is the class situation itself. It is the objective result of the economic set-up, and is neither arbitrary, subjective nor psychological. The class consciousness of the bourgeoisie may well be able to reflect all the problems of organisation entailed by its hegemony and by the capitalist transformation and penetration of total production. But it becomes obscured as soon as it is called upon to face problems that remain within its jurisdiction but which point beyond the limits of capitalism.’
No ruling class can possibly draw the stark conclusion, however overwhelming the evidence may be, that it has become historically anachronistic. Surely, the relentless pursuit of oil and gas profits that are drawn from productive activity that threatens the very existence of life on this planet must be considered a vindication of Lukacs’ conclusions and the strongest possible proof of the durability of the class lie.
Class truth
There is now an obvious need to consider the other side of the question. If the capitalist class can’t look reality in the face, how do things stand for the working class? I’ll argue that the the very same factor of class interests that Lukacs considered drives the exploited class towards a full and clear understanding of the workings of this society and the influences that limit its time on earth. As true as this is, however, there are some very substantial countervailing tendencies that serve to block that understanding.
First of all, oppressed classes reflect their oppression in their consciousness. In ‘The German Ideology,’ Marx and Engels famously asserted that ‘The ideas of the ruling class are, in any age, the ruling ideas.’ This is so much the case that most working class people accept those dominant ideas most of the time to a very considerable degree. It is at times of social crisis, when masses of people are drawn into struggle, that the grip is loosened and a leap in thinking can occur.
Moreover, such leaps in thinking are only possible because they are resisted for greater or longer periods. The development of working class consciousness is therefore uneven and periodically explosive. As Trotsky put it in his ‘History of the Russian Revolution,’
‘The swift changes of mass views and moods in an epoch of revolution thus derive, not from the flexibility and mobility of man’s mind, but just the opposite, from its deep conservatism. The chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is what creates in a period of revolution that leaping movement of ideas and passions which seems to the police mind a mere result of the activities of “demagogues.”’
It is also true that, while capitalism has produced an exploited class that carries out the labour process in a form that provides opportunities for resistance and social transformation that earlier societies lacked, the function of exploitative is rendered less clear. The slaves worked for the slave owner because they were his property and acted under physical compulsion. The feudal peasants were tied to the land of by law and custom and had very little ability to alter that. Things are somewhat different for modern workers, however.
Since we are considering class lies, the mythical ‘fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’ is one of the biggest in this society. As Marx showed, the wealth of the capitalists, however much they may see it as resulting from their business skills and competitive antics, comes from that portion of the workers’ labour for which they receive no compensation. If workers put in eight hours’ labour and get paid for only four, the unpaid portion goes into the capitalist’s pocket. The ‘surplus value’ stays with the exploiter.
The workers aren’t actually paid for the work they perform. The capitalists buys the commodity of ‘labour power’ or the ability to work from workers and pays them at its value. This is determined by the value of the goods and services the workers must purchase in order to renew their labour power. Once the capitalists have paid for it, however, they have in their possession a commodity that creates value and they milk it for all its worth. Indeed, this particular commodity has the capacity to create far greater value than it is itself worth.
This exploitative reality isn’t nearly as apparent as it was for slaves, who could readily see that they worked as directed and only got back what their owners provided in the form of food, clothing and shelter. For modern workers, though they widely view their employer as an exploiter, the unpaid portion of their labour is not immediately identifiable. The agreement they enter into with the capitalist creates the illusion that they are being paid for the work they perform. As Marx put it in ‘Wage Labour and Capital,’
‘(Workers) would all agree upon one point: that wages are the amount of money which the capitalist pays for a certain period of work or for a certain amount of work. Consequently, it appears that the capitalist buys their labour with money, and that for money they sell him their labour. But this is merely an illusion. What they actually sell to the capitalist for money is their labour-power.’
Class interests
These difficulties in arriving at the truth notwithstanding, it remains clearly in the interests of the working class to embrace it. If the capitalist class needs to conceal the exploitative process and pretend that the society that has developed around it is unchanging and inevitable, the working class is in the opposite situation. It has an interest in understanding the nature of its exploitation, so as to abolish it. If the social and economic system that oppresses it is of limited duration, that is not an inconvenient reality to be denied but an opportunity to be acted upon.
What emerges in this, however, is the need for a very high level of comprehension. When the capitalist class took power from its feudal predecessors, it had neither the ability to fully understand the social change it was initiating or an interest in doing so. It could wrest power from a rival exploiting class with very imprecise ideas that were significantly couched in religious terms.
Since the capitalist class was only a replacement set of exploiters, it needed a mass of people to send against against its feudal rivals. It is now very clear the promises of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ should have been taken with a much larger pinch of salt than they were. Even as Cromwell set in motion a revolutionary army against the kingly power, his leading generals were informing the lower orders, at the Putney Debates, that their share of the new liberty would be strictly rationed.
If an understanding of social reality, is in the interests of an exploited class, then that understanding won’t be arrived at through a process of contemplation. The class lie of the capitalist class must be exposed and refuted in the course of the class struggle. Having said that, there is also a decisive role for analysis and political organization.
However, these two factors are entirely interconnected. A clear understanding of the exploitative nature of this society can’t be discerned simply from direct experience of the labour process as a worker. On the other hand, Karl Marx could only grasp the real exploitative mechanisms at work under capitalistm because he was a revolutionary and, as such, was free of the restrictive class interests that Lukacs described.
The present period we live in, a time of societal crisis when the class struggle is escalating and the importance of socialist ideas is greatly elevated, makes the truth particularly precious. The working class, in all its great diversity comprising the many pitted against thefew, has an interest in understanding the fundamental limitations of this society and in fighting for a new one. It does so, moreover, not as a new exploiting class but as a social force that can bring exploitation and oppression to an end. In this regard, it has nothing whatever to hide or to hide from.
On that day in Harlem
in 1964, Malcolm X delivered a message that he lived by and that we need to act upon. “Truth is on the side of the oppressed.”
The Abolitionary 