Marxism 8/8 - Lecture by Prof. Raymond Geuss
Raymond Geuss Lectures on Marxism & Nietzsche
Professor Raymond Geuss delivers a lecture on the evolution of Marx's economic theory, specifically focusing on the transition from alienation
Key takeaways
- Marx's later work centers on the generation and extraction of surplus value as a defining feature of social formations.
- Subsistence is not a biological constant but a historically variable magnitude that changes with societal complexity.
Main topics
- Marxist theory of surplus value
- Historical modes of production
Notable quotes
A fair day's pay for a full day's work.
Conclusion
The lecture provides a rigorous academic breakdown of how Marx identif
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:04) Okay. So Marx thinks that a... Speaker 1 (0:11) In a way, the most important thing you have to understand about a society or a social formation is the kinds of forces of production that that society has and the kinds of relations of production. Another way of thinking about that phenomenon, that central phenomenon, and another way of formulating the basic question is how surplus value extracted in that society. So the distinction between forces of production and relations of production is one way of describing a phenomenon, the central phenomenon, and another way of describing that central phenomenon is that in every society, for the society to maintain itself in existence and reproduce, surplus value must be generated. But the way of generation and extraction of surplus value is different in different societies. So every society has to generate surplus value, but it's generated and distributed in different ways in different societies, and the way in which it's generated and the way in which it's distributed is the characteristic which distinguishes one kind of social formation from another kind of social formation. Now, The idea here, so as I said in the first lecture, the early Marx is centered in a way about alienation. The late Marx is centered around the concept of surplus value. The late Marx uses the notion, the idea of surplus value as a central way of thinking about human societies. Now, what is surplus value? First thing is, Marx says, look, societies are historically extended processes. A society is not a structure which is timeless. that exists at a single time and produces a lot of goodies, comes into existence, produces a lot of goodies and goes out of existence. It's a continuous thing. You build factories which people tomorrow are going to work in, which they're going to work in the day after that, etc. It's a continuous thing. A society is a historically extended continuous thing. Now, for such a society to continue to exist, It must be the case that beyond the minimal subsistence of the individual people who constitute the society, something more is produced. So we have some notion of subsistence production. That is, here I am, I'm a hunter-gatherer, and I'm chasing... game through the forest and I need to catch a certain number of pieces of game in a week in order to keep myself and my family going. If I don't, maybe I need to only catch one animal, maybe I need to catch two, maybe I need to catch three. There's a certain number of animals I have to catch in order that we survive. If I can't catch an animal a week, we die. We don't subsist. Now, if I'm a farmer, I sow seed and I have to have a return on that seed. If I have 100 kilograms of seed, I sow the seed and the seed has to produce enough grain, enough corn for me and my family to continue to exist. So there's a notion of subsistence, of the minimal... amount of economic production that's necessary for the society, for the people in the society, sheerly to exist. But Marx says, beyond a certain level of economic development, it isn't the case that a society produces just enough for the individual member, for the individual producer to subsist. If I'm a farmer, and I need five kilo of wheat a week, I don't produce just five kilo, I produce six or seven kilo, and I do something with the surplus. So if the society really, if every one of you produced just enough to allow you to survive during the day and get through to the next day, You'd be living at a subsistence level. Virtually no society, no historical society that we know lives at such a basically subsistence level. In all of them, the farmer who sows 100... a kilo of grain and needs 200 kilo of grain to survive produces 300 kilo of grain. So the hundred kilo of grain that he produces beyond what's necessary for basic subsistence is the surplus. So in every society there's something that's produced that's beyond that which is absolutely necessary for subsistence. Now Marx also thinks that the notion of subsistence is not a biological given in any interesting sense, because the notion of subsistence is itself a term that refers to a historical magnitude, right? So what does it mean for me merely to subsist? For a slave merely to subsist, it means the slave can get up the next day and work. for a medical doctor to subsist in a highly complicated society, it isn't enough that the medical doctor can get out of bed the next day. The medical doctor has to be able to get out of bed and have enough mental energy actually to cure people. And Marx then also says minimal subsistence in France and minimal subsistence in Britain are different. Minimal subsistence for the workers in Britain contains Beer, minimal subsistence for the workers in France, contains wine. So the notion of minimal subsistence is itself a historical variable. As societies get more complicated, the conditions that are necessary for them minimally to survive become more complicated. But nevertheless, it's always possible. in any society to see that the society is producing more than is absolutely necessary, whatever absolutely necessary means, whatever subsistence means, although that's a historically changing notion, and although it's historically changing and it changes from one society to the other in a particular historical context, there's still some sense in which, although in British society, although in French society in the 19th century, the workers had to have a pint of wine. Maybe the slaves didn't have to have a pint of wine in antiquity, so there's a difference there. The needs of the French workers in the 19th century, the subsistence needs of the French workers are higher because they're not being used just as slaves. They're actually being used as workers, so they have to have some mental powers, so they may be higher, but nevertheless, there will be something beyond that, which is... produced and that's called the surplus. And now, Marx says, in some societies, so the first thing you have to ask about a society is what is the surplus, how is it produced, and how is it extracted. Now, he says, in some societies, it's very easily visible how the surplus is produced and how a surplus is distributed. But in our society in the 19th century, capitalist society, what equals capitalist society, it's not clear. It's not clear how the surplus is generated and produced. It's rather ideologically mystified. So now what are the cases in which he says it's pretty clear what the surplus is and how it's produced? He says in the ancient world you can see how certain kind of surplus is generated. You have the masters, you have the slaves. The masters keep the slaves under dire coercion, give them only starvation wages, and work them to death. And working them to death the masters simply appropriate everything they produce. Now, a slave in the ancient world is more productive during a day than he needs to be in order merely to survive. So if you have a slave working out in your plantation, the slave, there would be no point in slavery if the slave needed to eat the whole amount he was produced, he produced during the day. What would be the point of my getting a slave and sending the slave to work for me if the slave ate up in order to survive the whole amount of thing that he produced and there was nothing left over? If there's no surplus produced, there isn't any slavery, there's no point. So slavery makes sense only if you can feed the slave less than the slave actually produces during the day. That's the only point to have, that's the only reason to have slaves, that you can keep them on wages, starvation rations, and extract more from them. And the extraction is very clear. It's by brute force. The slave has no rights. The slave gets a ration that's given by his master, and the master takes the whole thing that the slave... produces. So there's a direct coercive relation between the masters and the slaves, and the coercive relation is one in which the master takes away the whole of the surplus value directly. Now, in a feudal society, Barthes says, there is also a surplus that's produced and a surplus that's extracted, but it isn't produced and extracted in that way. In a feudal society, as you know, characteristically, you'll have serfs or feudal dependents of one kind or another who will have certain traditional rights. and certain traditional obligations. And they will generally take, or at least Marx thinks this is the archetypical form they will take, they will take the form of saying, for example, you, the peasant family, you can live on this farm, you can use this farm, but two days a week, you will work on my land for nothing. So if I'm the peasant family, I work on my own plot from Monday to Friday. Friday, I work on the master's plot for nothing on Saturday and on Saturday. That's why I think Dienstag is called Dienstag in German, right? It's the day on which you have the service to your master, right? So all the other days, you know, Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch, they're days. Dienstag is the day when you don't work on your own plot, you go and work on the plot of the master. Now, Marx says, here too, there's no mystification about where the surplus is generated and how it's generated and how it's extracted. That is, it's complicated, but it's not mystified. It's