Conversation in the subjunctive with quotations from Karl Marx: Das Kapital
Conversation in the subjunctive with quotations from Karl Marx: Das Kapital — ((Helmut Hissenbuttel) — a chapter from Projekt Nr 1 DÁlemberts Ende) (first draft, published here simply because its lovely)
Mrs. d’Alembert supposes that no Federal Minister of Finance has ever bothered whether, since the birth of great industry, after capital has taken centuries to extend the working day to its normal maximum limit (and then beyond it, to the limits of the natural day of 12 hours), then an avalanche of violent and excessive precipitation could take place, so that even the concepts of day and night became so blurred that in 1860 an English judge had to summon up veritable Talmudic acumen to declare authoritatively what was day and night. Mrs d’Alembert assumes that no federal finance minister has ever bothered to find out where capital was having its orgies.
Eduard, on the other hand, assumes that no tram conductor, for example, has any idea that the surplus-value produced by lengthening the working day is called absolute surplus-value; the surplus-value, on the other hand, which arises from a shortening of the necessary working time and a corresponding change in the proportion of the two parts of the working day, relative surplus-value.
The turtle thinks about how far a tram conductor can be aware that the value of labour is determined by the value of the habitually necessary food of the average worker; that the mass of this food, although its form may change, is given in a certain epoch of a certain society and is therefore to be treated as a constant quantity.
Andie Wildermuth, on the other hand, reflects on the fact that the basis of all developed division of labour, mediated by commodity exchange, is the division of town and country, and that one can say that the whole economic history of society is summed up in the movement of this opposition. The turtle: but no tram conductor has in fact the faintest idea that we need not go back to the natural form of common, i.e. socialised, labour in order to consider it.
Bertold Wildermuth suspects that the president of the German Bundesbank also has no clue that the riddle of the money fetish is only the riddle of the commodity fetish that has become visible and blinds the eyes.
Mrs. d’Alembert would like to say who else knows that the entire capitalist class of a country cannot take advantage of itself.
D’Alembert, for his part, suspects that no president of the German Bundesbank has ever cared that capital did not invent surplus labour (for wherever one section of society holds the monopoly of the means of production, the worker, free or unfree, must add surplus labour time to the labour time necessary for his self-preservation, in order to produce food for the owner of the means of production, whether this owner be an Athenian aristocrat, an Etruscan theocrat, a civis romanus, a Norman baron, an American slaveholder, a Wallachian boyar, a modern landlord or a capitalist).
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: Never in his life can the Federal Chancellor know that equal exploitation of labour power is the first human right of capital. Ottilie Wildermuth: but whether the Chancellor can distinguish that the productive power of labour cannot double without a change in the means of labour or the method of labour or both at the same time (therefore a revolution must occur in the conditions of production of labour, that is, in the mode of production and therefore in the labour process itself).
D’Alembert affirms that the Chancellor could never in his life come to terms with the fact that the constant recurrence of exchange makes it a regular social process (therefore, in the course of time, at least a part of the products of labour must be intentionally produced for the purpose of exchange, and from that moment on the distinction between the usefulness of things for immediate needs and their usefulness for exchange becomes fixed). That their use-value separates from their exchange-value.
Bertolt Wildermuth: Whether a film actress like Lauren Bacall is well aware that the commodity is first of all only an external object, a thing, which by its properties satisfies human needs of some kind; that the nature of these needs, whether they spring, for example, from the stomach or from the imagination, changes nothing about the thing; and that it is also not a question here of how the thing satisfies the human need, whether directly as food, that is, as an object of enjoyment, or in a roundabout way, as a means of production.
Dr. Johnson: someone will already know that the productivity of the machine is measured by the degree to which it replaces human labour. Bertolt Wildermuth suspects that perhaps someone can actually distinguish that the riddle of the money fetish is only the riddle of the commodity fetish that has become visible and blinds the eyes.
And d’Alembert would now like to say it again, that perhaps even a tram conductor could be aware that since the birth of great industry, after capital has taken centuries to extend the working day to its normal maximum limit (and then beyond it, to the limits of the natural day of r2 hours), there has then been an avalanche of violent and excessive precipitation, so that even the concepts of day and night have become so blurred that an English judge in 1860 had to summon up truly Talmudic acumen in order to declare authoritatively what day and night are. That perhaps 169 I70 even a tram conductor could be in the picture about how capital celebrated its orgies.
Ortilie Wildermuth would like to say that Laureen Bacall, of course, has no clue that the usefulness of a thing makes it worth using; that this usefulness does not float in the air; that it, conditioned by the properties of the commodity body, does not exist without it; that the value of use is only realised in use or consumption.
Helmut Maria Wildermuth asks whether the Chancellor knows that the absolute instinct of enrichment, the passionate hunt for value, is common to the capitalist and the treasure creator; but that while the treasure creator is only the mad capitalist, the capitalist is the rational treasure creator.
D’Alembert: whether not even a tram conductor could care that the productive power of labour cannot double without a change in the means of labour or the method of labour, or both at once (hence a revolution must occur in the conditions of production of labour, that is, in the mode of production and therefore in the labour process itself).
Mrs. d’Alembert ponders whether a film actress like Laureen Bacall could even ask whether the circulation of commodity-money-commodity starts from the extreme of one commodity and ends with the extreme of another commodity; whether she could ask whether in the simple circulation of commodities both extremes have the same economic form, both are commodities; whether in the end, however, more money is withdrawn from circulation than was initially thrown into it (that is, the sum of money originally advanced plus an increment); whether it can ask whether this increment or the excess over the original value is to be called surplus-value (whereby the value originally advanced has not only been preserved in circulation, but has changed its magnitude of value, has added surplus-value or has become valorised).
Bertolt Wildermuth states that no chancellor has ever been aware of the fact that the religious reflection of the real world can only disappear as soon as the conditions of practical everyday life present to man, day in and day out, transparently reasonable relations to one another and to nature.
The tortoise: can even the president of the German Federal Bank distinguish whether the use of labour-power is labour itself? whether the buyer of labour-power consumes it by making its seller work? whether he thereby becomes an active labour-power, a worker, which he was formerly only potentia? whether, in order to represent his labour in commodities, he must represent it above all in use-values (things that serve to satisfy some kind)? whether, then, it is a particular use-value, a particular article, which the capitalist has the labourer produce? whether the production of use-values or commodities does not change its general nature by the fact that it proceeds for the capitalist and under his control, and whether the labour process is therefore to be considered in the first instance independently of any particular social form?
Andie Wildermuth assumes that at some point someone must realise that the second period of the labour process, which the labourer straddles the boundaries of necessary labour, costs him labour, the expenditure of labour power, but does not create value for him; that it rather creates surplus value, which lures the capitalist with all the charm of a creation out of nothing.
The tortoise affirms: the President of the United States certainly has not the faintest idea that the process of production, whatever its social form, must be continuous or must periodically pass through the same stages anew; that a society, as little as it can cease to consume, so little can it cease to produce; that every social process, considered in a constant context and the constant flow of its renewal, is at the same time a process of reproduction.
Eduard makes the statement that certainly no federal finance minister knows that capital did not invent surplus labour (for wherever one section of society has the monopoly of the means of production, the worker, free or unfree, must add surplus labour time to the labour time necessary for his self-preservation, to produce food for the owner of the means of production, whether this owner be an atheistic aristocrat, an Etruscan theocrat, a civis romanus, a Norman baron, an American slaveholder, a Wallachian boyar, a modern landlord or a capitalist). Mrs. d’Alembert: but someone must be able to see that the basis of all developed division of labour, mediated by commodity exchange, is the division of town and country, and that the whole economic history of society can be said to be summed up in the movement of this opposition.
Dr. Johnson: whether the President of the German Bundesbank can distinguish whether the last limit or minimum limit of the value of labour power is formed by the value of a mass of commodities without whose daily supply the bearer of labour power, man, cannot renew his life process, i.e. by the value of physically indispensable foodstuffs?
Mrs. d’Alembert: whether the Chancellor could find his way if he knew that the totality of the capitalist class of a country cannot overreach itself? Eduard makes the statement that someone like Laureen Bacall will never know that in the analysis of absolute surplus-value it is first of all a question of the ex- tensive magnitude of labour, while the degree of its intensity is taken for granted and one now has to consider the transformation of the extensive magnitude into intensive or degree magnitude.
The turtle, on the other hand, affirms: someone must have at least a glimmer of the fact that since the birth of great industry, after capital has taken centuries to extend the working day to its normal maximum limit (and then beyond this, to the limits of the natural day of 12 hours), then an avalanche of violent and unmeasured overthrow could take place, so that even the concepts of day and night became so blurred that an English judge in 1860 had to summon up true Talmudic acumen to declare authoritatively what was day and night. Someone must at least have a clue about where capital celebrated its orgies.
Andie Wildermuth supposes that even the President of the United States could well understand that the worker, when he produces in a state based on social division, does not produce his food directly, but in the form of a special commodity, yarn, for example, a value equal to the value of his means of subsistence or the money with which he buys it.
The turtle: even someone like Laureen Bacall should be able to distinguish that nature does not produce owners of money or commodities on the one hand and mere owners of their own labour on the other, namely that this relationship is not a natural-historical one and just as little a social one common to all periods of history, but that this relationship is obviously itself the result of a previous historical development, the product of many economic upheavals (the downfall of a whole series of older formations of social production).
Bertolt Wildermuth sticks to the statement, who else is in the picture about it, that it is only the certain social relationship of people themselves that takes on the phantasmagorical form of a relationship of things for these people.
Mrs. d’Alembert, in turn, ponders whether someone like Laureen Bacall is even capable of asking why capital cannot arise from circulation and likewise cannot arise from circulation (it must arise in it and not in it at the same time).
D’Alembert: even which tram conductor cares that the hours of work are limited by laws of nature which are not violated with impunity? Helmut Maria Wildermuth asks whether a Federal Chancellor has ever known that the sale of labour power always takes place only for certain periods of time; that the transformed form in which the daily value, weekly value, etc. of labour power is directly represented is therefore that of time wages, i.e. daily wages, etc. Ottilie Wildermuth would like to say that she doubts whether the president of the German Bundesbank has the faintest idea that on the commodity market it is not labour that confronts the money-owner directly, but the labourer; that what the latter sells is his labour-power; that his labour, as soon as it really begins, has already ceased to belong to him, and can therefore no longer be sold by him; that labour is the substance and the immanent measure of values, but has no value itself.
Even d’Alembert would like to say blatantly that someone must be aware that the price is the money name of the labour objectified in the commodity.
Bertolt Wildermuth, on the other hand, suspects that the President of the United States, of course, never knew that it was not unusual in Nottingham to find up to 20 children crammed together in a small room perhaps no more than 12 feet square, engaged for 24 hours at a time in work, exhausting themselves with overwork and monotony, and practised under all kinds of health-destroying circumstances.
Dr. Johnson: who else knows that commodity circulation is the starting point of capital? that commodity production and developed commodity circulation, trade, form the conditions under which it comes into being? that world trade and the world market opened up the modern life history of capital in the 16th century?
Bertolt Wildermuth: that not only someone, but everyone, must be aware that in the social production of their lives people enter into certain relations which are necessarily independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces; that the totality of these relations of production forms the economic structure of society, the real basis on which a juridical and political superstructure rises and to which certain social forms of consciousness correspond; that it is not the consciousness of men which determines their being, but conversely their social being which determines their consciousness; and that at a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing relations of production or, what is a juridical expression for it, with the property relations within which they had hitherto moved; that now from forms of development of the productive forces these relations change into fetters of the same; that then an epoch of social revolution occurs; that with the change in the economic basis the whole immense superstructure is being overturned more slowly or more rapidly; but that in the consideration of such upheavals one must always distinguish between the material upheaval in the economic conditions of production, which is to be stated faithfully in scientific terms, and the juridical, political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
D’Alembert affirms that not only someone, but everyone must come to terms with the fact that the power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings or Etruscan theocrats, etc., has in fact passed over to the capitalist in modern society, whether he appears as an individual capitalist or, as in the case of joint-stock companies, as a combined capitalist.
Ottilie Wildermuth: Who else can distinguish between the objective and complementary phases by which the process of the intertwining of the metamorphoses of different commodities proceeds, which do not fall spatially next to one another, but can only follow one another in time? and that therefore periods of time form the measure of its duration, or that the number of times the same pieces of money circulate in a given time measures the speed of the circulation of money?
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: can, for example, the tram conductor, who has already been asked many times, even know that the frequent repetition of the change of place of the same coins reflects not only the series of metamorphoses of a single commodity, but also the intertwining of the countless metamorphoses of the world of commodities in general?
D’Alembert suspects that the Federal Minister of Finance has never bothered whether or not we need to go back to the natural form of common, i.e. socialised, labour in order to consider it.
Mrs d’Alembert would now like to say once again that the President of the United States has of course never known that it was nothing unusual in Nottingham to find 1s to 2o children crammed together in a small room of perhaps no more than 12 feet square, while 1s were occupied for 24 hours at a job, exhausting themselves through weariness and monotony, moreover practised under all possible health-destroying circumstances.
Bertolt Wildermuth suspects that the aforementioned tram conductor could not have the faintest idea that the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extermination, enslavement and burial of the indigenous population in the mines, the beginning of the conquest and plundering of East India, the transformation of Africa into an enclosure for the hunting of black skins marked the dawn of the era of capitalist production; that these idyllic processes were the main moments of the original accumulation; that this was followed on its heels by the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe as its theatre; that this commercial war was opened by the defection of the Netherlands from Spain, that it assumed gigantic proportions in England’s war against Jacobinism, that it continued in the opium wars against China, and so on.
The tortoise: should not only someone, but everyone have at least the faintest idea that the driving motive and the determining purpose of the capitalist production process is first of all the greatest possible self-exploitation of capital, i.e. the greatest possible exploitation of labour power by the capitalist? that with the mass of workers employed at the same time their resistance grows and with it necessarily the pressure of capital to overcome this resistance? But that the management of the capitalist is not only a special function arising from the nature of the social labour process and belonging to it, but is at the same time a function of the exploitation of a social labour process and therefore conditioned by the inevitable antagonism between the exploiter and the raw material of his exploitation?
The turtle once again ponders whether the president of the German Bundesbank is aware that the absolute instinct of enrichment, the passionate pursuit of value, is common to the capitalist and the treasure creator, but that while the treasure creator is only themad capitalist, the capitalist is the rational treasure creator.
Eduard assumes that even the Federal Minister of Finance has no idea that the use of labour-power is labour itself; that the buyer of labour-power consumes it by making its seller work; that through this the latter becomes an actuating labour-power, a worker, which he was formerly only potentia; that in order to represent his labour in commodities he must represent it above all in use-values (things which serve to satisfy some kind); that it is therefore a particular use-value, a particular article, which the capitalist has the labourer produce; that the production of use-values or goods does not change its general nature by proceeding for the capitalist and under his control, and that the labour process must therefore be considered first of all independently of any particular social form.
After all, Mrs. d’Alembert assumes that perhaps even the Chancellor has an inkling of the fact that machinery always enters entirely into the labour process and always only partially into the process of utilisation; that it never adds more value than it loses on average through its use; that there is thus a great difference between the value of the machine and the part of value periodically transferred from it to the product; that there is a great difference between the machine as a value-forming and as a product-forming element, etc.
And so everyone testifies, affirms, assumes, thinks about it, would like to say it, accept it, ask about it, whether even the said tram conductor has an idea of it, knows his way around it, has taken care of it, can distinguish it, asks about it, at least has a clue about it, is in the picture about it, knows about it, understands that the absolute instinct of enrichment, the passionate hunt for value, is common to the capitalist with the treasure-maker, but that, while the treasure-maker is only the mad capitalist, the capitalist is the rational treasure-maker and why.
