| This question <606|615> overall <612|614> Panacea: <609|38>. |
| Term Paper 299: Essay about Chapter Twenty-Five |
| [613] Panacea: Re: Term Paper: Chapter 25 Plenty has already been written about the structure and impact of chapter 25. Most significantly, in my opinion, many have written about section four, where Marx has explained his 3+1 division of labour: floating, latent and stagnant labour populations, and the a-productive (or anti-productive, as you like) paupers. |
| In recapping his/her essay, I found the quotation submitted by Peaches to be very controversial: |
| As the Venetian monk Ortes stated, “the poor and idle are a necessary consequence of the rich and active.” |
| This reads, for me, almost as an excuse. I havn't seen the source, nor do I know the context of the statement, but it has similarities with the quotations provided by Marx from Malthus and Harriet Martineau, both found on page 787, in chapter 25 of Kapital. It is this aspect of the chapter I would like to address. |
| Reverend Malthus, a major capitalist theorist who influenced Ricardo and others greatly, is known for his extreme views on labour, marriage, and virtue of the lower classes working in industry. Marx quotes him in order to illustrate and substantiate his analysis of surplus population: “”Prudential habits with regard to marriage, carried to a considerable extent among the labouring class of a country mainly depending on manufactures and commerce, might injure it...“” Malthus has seen the light - but this is a two faced answer, forming a paradox for the labour class which proves impossible to escape from, but which even many today readily buy into.. One of Malthus's basic tenets was that the lower classes WERE lower classed because of their lack of virtue. The were simply immoral, and constantly procreated like rabbits (because who could call this virtue? sex all day! shame on the lower classes for having time for such pleasure because they are out of work!) Any rise in wages provides the lower class with more chance to be lazy and immoral and sexual - so wages need to be kept right at subsistence levels in order to keep the lower class from overpopulating itself and putting resources at risk. |
| Now, in this quote Marx takes from Malthus' Principles of Political Economy, Malthus explains that “prudence” on the part of the lower classes would actually injure capitalism. If the lower class would suddenly begin to have only two kids instead of twelve, if they would cease having illegitimate children and all manner of immoralities, then it could bring capitalism to it's knees, for there would be no longer any substantial reserve army of labour. |
| The paradox? The people are lower class because they are immoral. Malthus explains that the only way for them to rise in class is to struggle to be more virtuous. Here in Marx's quotation, we see that if the lower class ever actually become virtuous, then they can cripple capitalism - and then where would be? |
| In this light, indeed, the monk's quote sounds like a sick apology. Maybe Malthus would have written “the immoral and unvirtuous are the necessary result of the moral and wealthy.” |
| Marx notes other apologists, who dare to make similar statements directly to the ‘redundant’ workers: (this is from Harriet) “We manufacturers do what we can for you, whilst we are increasing that capital on which you must subsist, and you must do the rest by accommodating your numbers to the means of subsistence.” |
| How could someone have taken this person seriously? Who is creating capital? Who is dependant on whom? Malthus understands that without unemployment then it might spell disaster for the capitalists. This chapter is significant for me because it unmasks the truth behind statements like his and the Harriet one. Marx is telling us - never again believe your employer again when he says “Look, we are doing you a favour, providing you with a job and doing all we can, so you had better just accept the wages we offer...” |
| The capitalist is a parasite, he needs the worker, and what is even more disheartening, he needs to pay them low and keep some unemployed in order to reap his benefits. And we do not need to have poor and unemployed in order to have wealthy and employed, there must be another way. |
| Panacea |
| “...we won't vote conservative, because we never have - everyone lies...” MOZ |
| Hans: The Ortes quote is on p. 800, and of Marx disagrees with him to some extent. Ortes saw the contradictions of capitalist society, but he attributed them to eternal laws of balance. |
| You are recognizing well the explosive situation implied in the dialectic that the worker's dependence on capital is created by the workers' own product. |
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