Chapter 20, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4

Here's the first half of my section of Chapter 20. I'm still working on the other half but thought I'd put this up in the mean-time, because it's kind of a lot.

Part 1: Formulation of the Problem

This section is particularly important, so I’ll write a lot more about it than other sections.

The necessary perspective to be taken here is one of the total social capital, in which individual capitals that at first appeared as autonomous movements in fact serve as necessary links in the movement of the total capital. The simple reproduction of this total social capital can be seen from the total commodity product which is consumed. This means that, to understand reproduction, we must analyze the social whole within the circuit “total C’ … total C’,” therefore to understand the periodic replacement of the component parts of the entire product “C” within the social whole: the constant capital, variable capital, and the surplus that make up the total commodity product.

But Marx notes right from the beginning that reproduction is antagonistic: to reproduce the total social capital necessarily means the “reproduction (maintenance) of the capitalist class and the working class, and hence too the reproduction of the capitalist character of the entire production process” (468). (It is possible to trace a line of class antagonist running throughout the exposition of reproduction in Ch 20.)

Here the importance of use-value returns to the analysis—basically irrelevant in Marx’s earlier treatment of reproduction (Volume I, Chapter 24/25). We can no longer assume, as we did with an individual capital, that there is always ample opportunity for the commodity product to be used and so taken off the hands of the capitalist. Instead, social reproduction means the replacement not just of values but of materials that form the use-value basis for renewed production—and therefore use-value conditions the reproduction of the social whole in an important way.

Finally, Marx claims that the abstraction “simple reproduction” which he’ll be pursuing here is adequate to the task of introducing us into the reality of reproduction. This is because even in “expanded reproduction” simple reproduction must still take place, and can therefore be analyzed by itself.

But I think this abstraction is problematic for a few reasons, casting some doubt on what he means by “simple reproduction.” True, expanded reproduction must be able to simply reproduce the social whole. But in Volume I’s analysis of reproduction (Ch 24) we find that accumulation isn’t just quantitatively different from simple reprod.: instead, expanded reprod. qualitatively transforms the entirety of the material process of production (transfigures the original capital) as it occurs on an ever greater scale (Vol. I, p. 753), so that accumulation is irreducible to a simple “maintenance” of total capital. Moreover, as Marx says later in Ch. 20 of Vol. II (487), the simple-reproduction scheme presupposes a capitalist society whose driving motivation isn’t solely the production of surplus-value but consumption. But can we call such a simply-reproducing social whole properly capitalist? What exactly do we mean by a “motive” of consumption, anyway, as a driving force of “capitalism” in which “consumption” is subsumed within the drive to realize surplus value? In other words, I’m wondering: is the abstraction “simple reproduction” sound? And why not just start with expanded reproduction, which must contain its own basic repetition anyway?

Part 2: The Two Departments of Social Production

Department 1: Means of Production, representing the branch of total production producing all the commodities which function within productive consumption. These have the value-constitution represented by “c” (constant capital).
Department 2: Means of Consumption, representing the branch of total production producing all the commodities meant for individual consumption of the capitalist and working classes. These will have a value-constitution of “v + s”.

Marx’s central example, to which he returns throughout the chapter, is this:

Department I: 4,000c + [1,000v + 1,000s] = 6,000
Department II: 2,000c + [500v + 500s] = 3,000

The exchanges between and within the departments are, briefly, as follows:

a.) In Department I: the 4,000c is involved in intra-departmental reproduction of its means of production (discussed in Ch. 20, Part 6).
b.) In Department I: the [1,000v + 1,000s] exchanges with Department II’s 2,000c (discussed in Part 3) In this exchange (always mediated by money, Part 5) Department I receives the means of consumption needed to reproduce the workers (v) and capitalists (s) through individual consumption. Department II receives the means of production to produce its means of consumption.
c.) In Department II: the [500v + 500s] is involved in intra-departmental production and immediate consumption (still mediated by money, though) of the means of consumption for the individual use of workers (v) and capitalists (s). (Discussed in Part 4)

Part 3: Exchange between the Two Departments

Department I’s [1,000v + 1,000s]—in the form of means of production—exchanges for Department II’s 2,000c—in the form of means of consumption—but always by way of money circulation.

This means that Department I obtains the means of subsistence for worker and capitalist alike—their reproduction for renewed days of labor; and that Department II obtains the new means of production for producing more means of consumption. This happens by way of innumerable individual transactions. Only a limited amount of money is needed to make all of the successive transactions necessary. In “simple reproduction,” therefore, there must be no remainder between Department I’s [v + s] and Department II’s [c].

It’s important to note—Marx comes back to this again and again—that the money for these transactions always begins with the capitalist class—either in the payment of wages (v), the use of surplus product extorted from workers (s), or as the purchase of means of production which is impossible for workers (c) (475). Therefore, all this money returns to the capitalist endlessly. Here the antagonism at the heart of social reproduction comes out again (478): Marx describes the web of transactions within which the proletariat is constantly re-woven (by itself as well as capital). The working-class is paid wages which always return to the capitalist class. Those wages return to the capitalist class of Department I indirectly, by way of Department II; whereas they return to the capitalists of Department II directly. In both cases, the payment of wages is indirectly involved in the reproduction of the means of production from which the proletariat is alienated and to which she is enslaved.

Part 4: Exchange within Department II: Necessary Means of Subsistence and Luxury Items

Marx claims this is not the most important question to be asked about reproduction. This is probably because it involves the production of luxury items and therefore cannot involve the most fundamental aspects of social reproduction.

Department II produces the means of consumption for the entire social whole. That means the workers as well as capitalists there are involved in intra-departmental exchanges for the means of subsisting and reproducing themselves. Here, in other words, the workers use the wages they receive from the capitalists to purchase the fruits of their own labor. Thus “it is just as if they had paid the workers in mere tokens of value” (479).

The products of Department II’s commodity production must therefore be broken down into two main categories:

II(a), necessary means of subsistence (which both workers and capitalists purchase for self-reproduction)
and
II(b), luxury items (affordable to the capitalist class alone)

(But isn’t it necessary to add that there seems to be a constant movement of commodities from category II(b) to II(a)—what were once luxury items become “necessities”? For instance, in America the cell phone has become a product of mass consumption and necessity, just like the television, car, etc. This may point to a phenomenon of “bourgoisification” of the working class insofar as it gains access, after a time, to the luxury items of the capitalist class.)

Thus there is a direct reflux of wages back to the capitalist in II(a), but an indirect reflux in II(b). In the latter case, the capitalist must wait until the workers he has paid, use their wages to buy necessary means of subsistence from II(a), whose capitalists then purchase luxury items.

Marx’s point here seems to be that the exchanges between II(a) and II(b) happen in certain ratios that allow the reproduction of each. And this, of course, still presupposes the interaction of Department II as a whole with Department I, which produces the means of producing both necessary subsistence items for II(a) and luxury items for II(b)—and the flow of both necessities and luxury-items to Department I as well.

Really interesting mention of crisis at the end of this section. Here Marx says it is a “pure tautology” to say that “crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption” (486). Then: “The fact that commodities are unsaleable means no more than that no effective buyers have been found for them, i.e. no consumers … If the attempt is made to give this tautology the semblance of greater profundity, but the statement that the working class receives too small a portion of its own product, and that the evil would be remedied if it received a bigger share, i.e. if its wages rose, we need only note that crises are always prepared by a period in which wages generally rise…” (487).

In the Introduction to Volume II, Mandel suggests that this directly contradicts what Marx says on p. 391, n. 1: “Contradiction in the capitalist mode of production. The workers are important for the market as buyers of commodities. But as sellers of their commodity … capitalist society has the tendency to restrict them to their minimum price. Further contradiction: The periods in which capitalist production exerts all its forces regularly show themselves to be periods of over-production … the sale of commodities, the realization of commoditiy capital, and thus of surplus-value as well, is restricted not by the consumer needs in general, but by the consumer needs of a society in which the great majority are always poor and must always remain poor. This however belongs to the next Part.”

I’m not sure we find Marx out-and-out contradicting himself here. But a lot could be said about this so let's talk about it at some point later.