SOCI 2110H Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Progressive Tax, Deskilling, Electrical Telegraph
16 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCI 2110H – Discovering Social Theory
Jesse Carlson
Oct 15st, 2018 – Lecture #5
From Positivism to Materialism (Marx)
Marx’s Concept of Alienation
1. Alienation from product of labour – “labour produces wonderful things for the rich – but
for the worker… privation” (21)
2. Alienation from the producing activity (it’s not fulfilling for you)
3. Alienation from ‘species-being’ (from one’s own body, from nature, from social life) –
“Species-being [turns into] a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence”
(21)
4. Alienation from other people
The Origin of Private Property
• Private property is the result of alienated labour, not the cause (22) – property has been
stolen
• Increasing wages does not eliminate alienation
• Emancipation from private property will bring truly human and social property
Wage-Labour & Capital (1847 Marx)
• Labour-power is a commodity, like sugar
- How are wages set?
• Three-sided competition: 1) between buyers; 2) between sellers; 3) between buyers &
sellers
• Piece of labour determined by cost of its production (& reproduction)
• Wages = cost of existence (bare minimum to keep people alive) + reproduction of worker
• Wage minimum (holds good in general, not particular)
Labour Was Not Always Wage Labour
• Labour-power wasn’t always a commodity
• Labour was not always “free labour” / wage-labour
• Slaves do not sell their labour-power just as the ox doesn’t sell their labour to the farmer
• The wage-labourer sells labour-power; “he does not count the labour itself as a part of his
life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life…the product…is not the aim…What he produces for
himself is wages…life for him begins…at the tavern, in bed…” (24)
The Exchange Between Capitalist & Worker: Their Opposed Interests
• Worker receives means of subsistence
• Capitalist receives profit
• Worker produces 1) an object (e.g. clothes) & 2) capital “capital can mulstiply itself only
by exchanging itself for labour-power” (26)
So, do worker and owner have shared interest?
The Division of Labour and the Wages & Quality of Labour
• With the expansion of machinery, the division of labour, & increase in productive
capacity
• Workers compete for wages 7 by becoming more productive (through machines)
• “The more speedily the worker arguments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be
the crumbs which fall to him” (27)
• The division of labour leads to further deskilling
Capital Volume I (1867 Marx)
• 1600s-1700s: Origin of Manufacture (co-operation based on division of labour)
Growth out of handicrafts:
1. Handicrafts untied into a larger process
2. Or further divisions within a handicraft
Capitalist Manufacture:
1. Disciplines & commands the worker
2. Creates a hierarchy amongst workers
• Simple co-operation vs. manufacture, which deforms the worker into “a mere appendage”
(38)
Machinery and Modern Industry
• From manufacture to modern industry: rise of the machines
• Manufacture revolutionized relations of production by extending the division of labour
• Modern industry revolutionizes the instruments of labour
• The Modern Factory: “Machinery organized into a system” (39)
• Makes people into appendages of machines
• Takes workers’ remaining time by extending working day
• Huge increase in production and in exploration of labour-power
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848 Marx and Engels)
• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (28)
1. Freeman and slave
2. Patrician and plebeian
3. Lord and serf
4. Guild-master and journeyman
Bourgeois society:
Simplification of class antagonisms:
Bourgeoise vs proletariat
Bourgeoise & Proletariat
• Either get a bigger business or loose the business
