Introduction
In a previous post (On the Need for Ideological Struggle to Expose the Exploitation and Oppression of Workers, Part One), I pointed out that, despite some interesting and relevant political views expressed by the Greek philosopher Panagiotis Sotiris during a lecture, such as the need to engage in radical politics and not succumb to neoliberal threats out of fear of high unemployment, the gutting of public services and other austerity measures (since such measures occurred even after the capitulation of Syriza), Sotiris contradicted himself when he implied, during the lecture, that workers were indeed semi-conscious of their exploitation. In an article written by him in 2015 (“Althusserianism and Value-form Theory: Rancière, Althusser and the Question of Fetishism” in Crisis & Critique, Volume 2, Issue 2), he argued that the value form ensures that the process vanishes in the form itself, leading to exploitation being hidden from the workers.
In this post, I will elaborate on how current exploitation is hidden from the workers. A possibly third and final post will show how current exploitation is hidden from them. It will be in two parts. The first part will first discuss whether workers sell their labour or something else. Then I The second part . In both forms, the immediate exchange relation between workers and an employer hides the process of exploitation from the workers.
Part I: How Workers Are Currently Exploited Without Being Conscious of Their Exploitation
Do Workers Sell Their Labour to Employers?
To understand how exploitation is hidden from workers, it is first necessary to understand how Marx’s theory enables workers to grasp that they are exploited. The first way he does this is by making a clear distinction between labour power or labour capacity and labour. From Capital, volume 1, page 277:
When we speak of labour, or capacity for labour, we speak at the same time of the worker and his means of subsistence, of the worker and his wages.’ When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any more than we speak of digestion when we speak of capacity for digestion. As is well known, the latter process requires something more than a good stomach. When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On the contrary, their value is expressed in its value. If his capacity for labour remains unsold, this is of no advantage to the worker. He will rather feel it to be a cruel nature-imposed necessity that his capacity for labour has required for its production a definite quantity of the means of subsistence, and will continue to require this for its reproduction. Then, like Sismondi, he will discover that ‘the capacity for labour … is nothing unless it is sold ‘.
Labour power is a capacity for labour–a potentiality, not an actuality. It expresses the separation of workers from both their means of subsistence (consumer goods) and their means of producing their lives indirectly (means of production, like machines, buildings, raw material, office supplies, utilities such as electricity, computers and the like).
The concept of “labour power” captures one aspect of the employer-employee relation–the separation of workers from the conditions for the production of their lives. It is another class that owns and controls access to the use of the conditions or means of production. Until the workers are incorporated into the labour process dominated by the class of employers, they remain separate from the means of producing their lives. Outside that context, they have greater control over their own body (although it should not be forgotten that the capitalist state also limits such control over their body).
The specific nature of labour power is outlined on page 270:
We mean by labour-power, or labour-capacity, the aggregate ·of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being….
This capacity needs to be distinguished from its realization or actualization. Page 270:
When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any more than we speak of digestion when we speak of capacity for digestion. As is well known, the latter process requires something more than a good stomach.
The process of the exploitation of workers occurs initially by way of the exchange relations between workers and employers (for further details, see The Money Circuit of Capital). The capitalist owns or borrows money (M), and uses it to purchase means of production (MP) and labour power (L). Thus, if we represent a dash as an exchange, we have: M-C (MP+L): the workers, being separated from MP, sell their labour power (L) to the employer, who owns (or borrows) money (M) and buys (or rents) means of production (MP). For this process to occur, the workers must of course be separated from MP in terms of property–they lack the property necessary to realize their capacity to work. They therefore must sell labour power, or the capacity to use the means of production, to the employer.
To unite the workers with the means of production is one of the functions of money capital (and the capitalist). However, workers are initially separated from those means. If they were able to sell their labour, they would already be able to use the machines, desks, computers, etc. without any sale whatsoever–which obviously contradicts the nature of the employer-employee relation. Page 677:
It is not labour which directly confronts the possessor of money on the commodity-market, but rather the worker. What the worker is selling is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him; it cantherefore no longer be sold by him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but it has no value itself.
This exchange process between employer and workers is the prelude to their integration into the production process. The exchange process involves an exchange of already past labour processes. In the case of the employer, the past labour process is in the form of money that has been obtained by means of selling a commodity previously produced–C-M, where C means a commodity produced, say beer). In the case of workers, the past labour process is the commodities purchased and consumed from previous rounds of selling their labour power.
What the Worker Sells is Labour Power, not Labour
Geert Reuten (2019) explains the illogical nature of the concept of selling labour in his book The Unity of the Capitalist economy and State: A Systematic-Dialectical Exposition of the Capitalist System on page 68:
3 Labour-capacity
In contradistinction to means of production, ‘labour’ is not produced in the past, as it is the activity of production itself. If anything, it is labour-capacity that is “produced” previously.
Workers cannot sell labour time since labour time is the actual performance of labour. Once workers sell their labour power, they then are united with the indirect means of producing their own lives (MP), and they produce both those indirect means and their means of subsistence or consumer goods and purchase those means of subsistence by means of the wage or salary they receive.
As Elena Lange points out (2021, Value without Fetish: Uno Kōzō’s Theory of ‘Pure Capitalism’ in Light of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy), page 148, by quoting Sáenz de Sicilia:
…the purchase of labour-power is the basis for its subsequent determination as activity … [it] is the means by which the worker, qua living labour … is incorporated into capital, functionally determined as one of the elements (the essential element in fact) of its life-process: variable capital.
Jorgen Sandemose (October 2014) elaborates on this issue (“Flaws and Excellence: From Leftism to Marxism,” In pages 521-534, Science & Society, Volume 78, Number 4, October 2014): the employer-employee relation is characterized by a unity of unity and separation, where the second unity is actual work, the separation is the separation of workers from the indirect conditions for producing their own lives, and the whole process as the unity composed of both unity and separation. Page 528:
… capitalist production must be “real,” defined as a unity of unity and separation, not simply as a separation from the means of production. For in actual production, the laborer’s activity is in unity with them.
As labour power, workers are separated from their means of subsistence or consumer goods and from the indirect means of producing their own lives. What they sell to the employer is not labour or “labour time” but their right to use their own body for a certain period of time. They cannot sell labour or labour time since labour time is the actual performance of labour.
Once work is finished, they then become separated from the indirect means of producing their lives and are united with their direct means of producing their own lives via the consumption of consumer goods. The consumption of these consumer goods then requires them to sell their labour power again.
Confusion Over What the Worker Sells: Labour Power or Labour
How often do you hear someone say that they sell their labour, or that their labour is worth a certain amount of money per hour, per day, per week or per month?
This idea of workers selling their labour time is hardly limited to workers. Academics often are confused about what workers sell. A case is point is Jim Stanford, former major Canadian economist for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW, now Unifor, the largest Canadian private-sector union). Stanford claims that what the worker sells the employer is his labour time in his book (2008) Economics for Everyone A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism, page 100:
When labour is bought, there is an important distinction between what the buyer purchases, and what they actually desire. Employers need someone to perform work (human effort or activity). But what they purchase, usually, is labour time: that is, a certain number of hours a worker agrees to be on the job.
Stanford, earlier on the same page, contradicts himself by claiming that workers sell labour (and not labour time):
By definition, wage labourers must sell their labour to survive.
Indeed, Stanford expresses this contradiction in one and the same sentence on the same page:
Converting time into work is a central and complicated problem of employment.
If labour time is what the workers sell, then there would not arise any need to “convert time into work”–since what the worker sells, in one version of Stanford’s confused theory, is labour. If workers sell their labour, then it is work, is it not? If, on the other hand, what the workers sell is labour time, then there is no need to “convert time into work” since what is sold is already converted into labour time.
However, the idea that what workers sell is labour time is logically flawed. The actual act of labour already involves the linking of workers to the means of production, but as noted above one of the functions of money in the act of exchange (from the point of view of the employer) involves united workers to the means of production.
Furthermore, how can workers sell labour time if labour time involves their connection with the means of production? Once workers are connected to the means of production, they no longer can sell their labour power because it has already been sold–with their subordination to the power of employers as the right of management to direct operations as it sees fit (with limitations specified by collective agreements (if they exist) and legislation). In other words, labour cannot be sold to the employer because actual labour time already presupposes the sale of labour power (which is in a state of separation from the means of production), as Patrick Murray (2016), in his work The Mismeasure of Wealth: Essays on Marx and Social Form, argues on pages 195-196:
One crucial instance of Marx’s critique of common language concerns the phrase ‘the value of labour’ (as opposed to ‘the value of labour-power’). The surface grammar is unobjectionable; the phrase is perfectly well formed. But a closer look reveals the confusion in it. … Marx contends that the phrase ‘the value of labour’ is grammatically flawed for two reasons: (1) only commodities have value, and labour is not a commodity. For labour to be sold as a commodity, the wage labourer would have to own it. But wage labourers are unable to labour until they get access to means of production. And that occurs only as a result of the sale of their labour power to the capitalist.
The Wage Form, or the Way in Which Workers Receive Their Consumer Goods (Means of Subsistence) Hides Current Exploitation
The process of exploiting workers involves paying them a certain amount of money that represents a certain number of socially necessary labour hours required to produce labour power as a commodity and using the resulting use of that power to work for longer than what it costs the workers to produce their labour power. Page 300:
The value of a day’s labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day’s labour [6 hours] is objectified in that quantity of labour-power, i.e. because the means of subsistence required every day for the production of labour-power cost half a day’s labour. But the past labour embodied in the labour-power and the living labour it can perform, and the daily cost of maintaining labour-power and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former determines the exchange-value of the labour-power, thelatter is its use-value. The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the worker alive during 24 hours does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore the value of labour power, and the value which that labour-power valorizes [verwertet] in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes; and this difference was what the capitalist had in mind when he waspurchasing the labour-power.
Do workers usually, as Sotiris claimed in his lecture, recognize their exploitation?
Since a surplus of value (profit) arises because of the difference between the value of labour power and the value that is produced by that labour power, workers, if they were conscious of this difference, would likely find such a situation unfair and struggle much more against the class power of employers. Union reps certainly often express the contrary view–that wages are fair (see for example Fair Wages: Another Example of the Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Two: Unifor).
If most workers were somewhat conscious of their exploitation, surely there would be major conflicts between their views and those of union reps. Although there are indeed some conflicts between the two, there is little evidence that they diverge to any great extent over the issue of whether wages can, ultimately attain a fair level. Given the lack of such conflict, there must be some processes that prevent workers from becoming conscious of their exploitation.
One major mechanism which prevents workers from becoming conscious of their exploitation is the wage form. Similar to the commodity form, the relation of exploitation between employers and workers vanishes from sight for workers because of the wage form. Pages 679-680:
We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated upon a certain length of the worker’s life, and that this corresponds, in turn, to a certain length of the working day. Assume that the usual working day is 12 hours and the daily value oflabour-power 3 shillings, which is the expression in money of a value embodying 6 hours of labour. If the worker receives 3 shillings, then he receives the value of his labour-power, which functions through 12 hours. If this value of a day’s labour-power is now expressed as the value of a day’s labour itself, we have the formula: 12 hours of labour has a value of 3 shillings. The value of labour-power thus determines the value oflabour, or, expressed in money, its necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price of labour-power differs from its value, the price of labour will similarly differ from its so-called value.
As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the value of labour-power, it follows of course that the value of labour must always be less than its value-product, for the capitalist always makes labour-power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above example, the value of the labour-power that functions through 12 hours is 3 shillings, which requires 6 hours for its reproduction. The value which the labour-power produces is however 6 shillings, because it in fact functions during 12 hours, and its value-product depends, not on its own value, but on the length of time it is in action. Thus we reach a result which is at first sight absurd: labour which creates a value of 6 shillings possesses a value of 3 shillings.
We see, further: the value of 3 shillings, which represents the paid portion of the working day, i.e. 6 hours of labour, appears as the value or price of the whole working day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours which have not been paid for. The wage-form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labour and surplus labour, into paid labour and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. …
In wage-labour … even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. … the money-relation conceals the uncompensated labour of the wage labourer.We may therefore understand the decisive importance of the transformation of the value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself. All the notions of justice held by both the worker and the capitalist, all the mystifications of the capitalist mode of production, all capitalism’s illusions about freedom, all the apologetic tricks of vulgar economics, have as their basis the form of appearance
discussed above, which makes the actual relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that relation.
As workers work more or less hours, their wage increases or decreases, thus giving the appearance of workers selling their labour rather than their labour power. From Harry Cleaver (2019), Thirty-Three Lessons on Capital: Reading Marx Politically, page 364:
Marx’s analysis of how the wage hides the exploitation of labor is reminiscent of his discussion of fetishism in Chapter 1. There he discussed how the commodity and its relationship to money appeared to be merely a relationship between things, but upon analysis, both turned out to be moments of the social relationships among people. Here the wage appears to be payment for work performed and is often called the price or value of labor. But just as we have seen how price more generally embodies a complex set of class relationships, so too the wage embodies the class relationship of exploitation: the invisible distinction between necessary and surplus labor.
The wage, he argues, makes exploitation invisible by making it seem as if the worker is paid for the labor performed. With most common forms of the wage, e.g., time and piece-wages analyzed in the next two chapters, the more workers work the more they are paid. There seems to be a one-to-one correspondence between work performed and wages paid.
Conclusion
Contrary to what Sortiris said in his lecture about workers understanding implicitly that they are exploited, the above points to the wage form constituting a mechanism that hides the exploitation of workers by having workers and their representatives (such as unions) misidentifying what workers sell to employers is their labour rather than their labour power. Such a view of the mystification of exploitation is more consistent with Sortiris’s article than with his response during the lecture.
If radical socialists are going to contribute to a movement towards a socialist society that lacks the class power of employers, surely one of their essential practices is to show that workers are exploited by demystifying the process of their exploitation that vanishes from the perception in the very process of their exploitation.
The Abolitionary 