Reading Capital: Part II Continued (Chapter 9 Part I: Beyond Anthropology)

Because Marx rejects the aforementioned positivism and anthropologism of Political Economy, he rejects the structure of the KO of Political Economy. Althusser next examines the fate of ‘classical anthropology’ in Marx’s work via a topological survey of the main regions of economics: consumption, distribution and production.

Consumption. Economic ‘needs’ are not explainable by way of a reference to human nature. Consumption is double—it includes both individual and productive consumption. The latter does not directly satisfy the needs of individuals. This leads to two distinctions that are missing from Political Economy: constant v. variable capital, and the two departments of production: Department I (means of production) and Department II (means of consumption).

Department I consumes use-values in quantities and at a rate not determined by individual consumption per se (but couldn’t it be argued that this is still mediately determined by individual consumption?).

But what about the part of production that is consumed individually? Is that not determined by human needs? But these are determined by the level of production and by the income at the disposal of the individuals in question, in other words they are socially-historically determined. In fact, even the desire for these products is produced.

Far from being explicable on the basis of ‘human nature,’ the latter would have to be understood as dynamic and largely determined by the forces and relations of production. The relations of production distribute human beings into social classes which are then the ‘subjects’ of production. Here, then, everything is inverted from classical anthropology (166-7). We can see that production is primary and human nature latterly in the logical structure of Marx’s KO.

Distribution. This includes 1) the distribution of incomes, and 2) the distribution of use-values. The distribution of use-values is divided into Department I and Department II. The products of DII are exchanged for individual incomes, hence this distribution actually falls under 1) above. The products of DI are not exchanged for income but rather (by a logic which is not explicated here; we are referred to Capital V II) directly between capitalists. Thus, behind the distribution of use-values there is the distribution of human beings into social classes.

Thus, we are referred to relations of production, i.e. again we see that production is primary in Marx’s KO.

The plane of positive economic facts no longer opens out onto the space of human nature or anthropology. Rather, instead of a plane of given facts anchored in human nature, we have a dynamic structure where economic phenomena are determined by the relations of production (168).

Ricardo grasped the primacy of production in his own way, but failed to develop an adequate concept of the latter.

Production. This is divided into two elements: (a) the labor process, and (b) the relations of production (more familiarly: forces and relations of production).

-(a) The labor process This is the metabolism between human and nature. It is composed of three elements: labor, the object on which labor acts, and the means with which labor acts.

Two essential features of the labor process are examined: (1) the material nature of the conditions of the labor process, and (2) the dominant role of means of production in the labor process.

(1) Labor is materially conditioned and involves a metabolism between human being and corporeal nature. Labor is not spontaneously creative, nor is it the source of all wealth (use-value). The laboring human is not a transcendental subject but a conditioned subject. This means that reproduction of the means of production is an inherent part of production, thus capitalist production is divided into constant and variable capital, and DI and DII (p.172). Thus the construction of the proper KO (conditions of labor) is crucial in order to arrive at the proper economic concepts.

Without a proper understanding of how labor is materially conditioned, we can hold that production determines all other spheres of social existence yet remain idealists, committed to a transcendental-anthropological understanding of production.

(2) The labor process, we have seen, is divided into three elements: labor (now “labor-power,” 173, but presumably the original “labor” is more accurate), the object of labor, the means of labor. Of these three, the means of labor is the dominant factor. This is what differentiates between the various epochs of production and thus determines the current state of “human nature.” The means of labor determine the mode of production and the level of productivity of labor in any given period. The concept of history itself is unthinkable without a concept of the mode of production. (Cont'd)