Marx’s Subsumption: Capitalism’s Integration of Labor and Nature

Name: Class 13: Capital Chapters 14-16: Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value
Uploaded: 2026-03-26T08:46:44.195468+00:00
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Mar 26, 2026

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Subsumption is a philosophical term from scholastic philosophy meaning “to take something under something else in a way that nothing sticks out.” Marx adopted the term, likely via Hegel, to describe how the capitalist economy brings elements under its logic and control.

Marx’s Use of Subsumption

Marx uses subsumption to name the experience of everyone under the capital system. The process moves from external coercion to self‑motivation, often through the consumption of motivational books and tapes. Motivation replaces coercion, leading workers to coerce themselves.

Stages of Subsumption

Marx outlines three stages in Chapter 14.
1. Coercion – labor is forced into the system.
2. Process – cooperation, division of labor, and machinery take over work.
3. Self‑motivation – an internalized necessity drives workers, frequently mediated by commodities.

Capitalism as a “Mono God”

The economy acts as a “great overlord” that dictates actions. Mainstream economists speak for the economy as an entity that must be served, implying that humans are subsumed into the economic process. Marx described this as a new concept of the economy as a “giant other” or “giant mother,” and later called capital “the first mono God.”

Chapter 14 Overview: Absolute vs. Relative Surplus Value

Chapter 14 provides an overview of Parts III and IV, titled “Absolute and Relative Surplus Value.” Relative surplus value is extracted by manipulating the ratio of necessary labor time to extra labor time. This is achieved by increasing productivity within a fixed workday through machinery, cooperative labor, and tactics that minimize downtime.

The Labor Process: Abstract vs. Social Labor

Abstract labor is a heuristic process between humans and nature where a single worker performs all functions. Social labor, characteristic of pre‑capitalist or non‑capitalist contexts, distributes functions among multiple workers who operate by their own skill and tradition, owning both manual and mental aspects.

Division of Labor: Mental vs. Manual Labor

The key division that enables capitalism separates mental from manual labor. Mental labor becomes the province of machines, capitalists, and managers. This separation creates antagonism, with information capital increasingly dominating productive capital, such as in modern supply chains.

Machines and Necessity

Machines embody philosophical necessity under capitalism because “the machine in its machinic nature brooks no resistance.” Workers are subjected to the necessity of the process through coercion—fear of losing their job if they stop the machine. Cooperative labor evolves into labor around machines, where humans play a minor role.

Productive Labor and Surplus Value

Under capital, the concept of productive labor expands. A productive worker produces surplus value rather than merely commodities for personal needs. Labor shifts from producing for needs to producing surplus value, making labor a component of the valorization process. Laborers become materials for the capital system, often without recognized will or intelligence. Valorization creates a new system of needs: the need for value, its increase, and accumulation.

Subsumption of Nature

Nature is subsumed by fitting it into the capital system and presenting it as a product of capital. Raw materials are already subsumed; nature appears as a subsidiary of capital. This includes subsuming sources of motive power and even the timing of the day for work. Science participates in drawing nature into capital’s conceptual structure. Petroleum exemplifies subsumption, transforming from a natural resource to a substitute for motive power and then to an investment category. The process often requires old technology to extract new resources that will later supersede the old technology.

Subsumption of Labor as Process

Labor becomes a process, moving from formal to real subsumption, or from absolute to relative surplus value. Initially, labor enters factories historically, with capitalists demanding longer hours (absolute surplus value). Limits on absolute surplus value lead to increased productivity and relative surplus value. Protocols for efficiency and productivity govern work, even in the gig economy. Human needs are adapted to the economy, not the other way around.

Subsumption of Humans into Labor

The concept of “worker” and “work” becomes plastic under capital, determined by innovations that valorize value. This includes appendages of machines, drone operators, programmers, and others. Unions fight for clearer, less flexible determinations of work. Capitalists experience an inner conflict: they want to eliminate workers while needing them for value production.

Formal vs. Real Subsumption

Formal subsumption only partly fulfills the system’s needs and is less efficient. Real subsumption integrates elements more thoroughly, aiming for greater efficiency and value extraction. Marx uses Aristotle’s distinction between hyle (matter) and morphe (form) as an analogy. Formal subsumption is like loosely tying wood together to make a table that might not last; real subsumption is like fully taking the wood into the form of a table so it cannot be separated, maximizing value extraction.

Critique of Political Economy

Political economists such as Ricardo failed to see subsumption, treating capitalism as a natural system rather than a constructed social relation. Because they lacked the concept of subsumption, they could not explain the increasing misfortune of workers despite rising productivity. Subsumption provides a key explanation of exploitation and the worker’s plight.

Aristotle’s Hyle and Morphe

Aristotle distinguished between hyle (matter, e.g., wood) and morphe (form, e.g., table). In formal subsumption, the material is loosely integrated into the form; in real subsumption, labor (material) is completely integrated into valorization (form), mirroring the capitalist drive to maximize value.

Takeaways

Subsumption is the process by which capital takes elements—labor, nature, and even humans—under its logic so that they appear as products of the system itself.
Marx describes three stages of subsumption: initial coercion, a process‑driven phase with division of labor and machinery, and finally self‑motivation where workers internalize the drive to produce surplus value.
Relative surplus value is extracted by reorganizing work through machines, cooperative labor, and efficiency tactics, shifting production from use‑value to exchange‑value.
Formal subsumption integrates elements superficially, while real subsumption fully transforms labor and nature into the capitalist valorization process, an analogy drawn from Aristotle’s hyle and morphe.
Classical political economists such as Ricardo missed subsumption, treating capitalism as natural and thus failing to explain the growing exploitation of workers despite rising productivity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "formal vs real subsumption" mean in Marx’s analysis?

Formal subsumption is a superficial integration of labor or material into the capitalist system, where the element retains some independence and efficiency is limited; real subsumption fully transforms the element, embedding it completely in the valorization process so that it cannot be separated from capital’s logic.

How does Marx describe the transition from coercion to self‑motivation in labor?

Marx argues that labor first enters the capitalist system through external force, then moves into a process stage where division of labor and machinery shape work, and finally becomes self‑motivated as workers internalize the drive to produce surplus value, often mediated by motivational commodities.

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Marx's Capital Volume 1 Book Recommended

This book is the foundational text where Marx develops the concept of subsumption and analyzes the capitalist mode of production, which is the core subject of the transcript.

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Alfred Sohn-Rethel Mental And Manual Labour Book

This book is explicitly mentioned in the transcript as relevant to the division of labor under capitalism, a key theme discussed.

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Hegel Philosophy Books

The transcript mentions that Marx likely adopted the term 'subsumption' from Hegel, indicating a connection to Hegelian philosophy.

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Aristotle's Metaphysics Book

Aristotle's concepts of 'hyle' and 'morphe' are used as an analogy to explain formal and real subsumption, making his work relevant to the discussion.

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Full Transcript YouTube

(bright instrumental music)
- An important philosophical term
from scholastic philosophy subsumption,
to take something under something else
and to do it in a way
that nothing sticks out.
Very important for philosophy,
for understanding life.
And Marx discovered that along
with the other philosophical
vocabulary he was bringing in
to try and expand our understanding
of this new capitalist economy,
that subsumption was an important term.
He takes it probably directly from Hegel,
but it was in use in German philosophy
for particular things.
(clears throat)
And it names the experience
of everyone under the capital system,
which is can be called
compulsion, which starts
as coercion, which is an external thing
where someone forces you to do something
and ends as what we know very well,
self-motivation where
you need a lot of aids.
But those are also commodities
like motivational books
and tapes and videos.
A motivational education, the idea is
that motivation takes over for coercion
and you coerce yourself.
(clears throat)
Marx will narrate this in
chapter 14 in particular
in terms of the way the
capital system developed
from being at its earliest stage
in which coercion is the
way labor is brought in
and different ways of
working are made part
of the capital system to something
like an internal necessity like process.
So first things have to be forced to fit.
You can see how subsumption
is the right term.
Things have to be forced
to fit the capital system.
You're like bring your
artisanship into my factory.
I'll take half of your working day.
But you can keep doing things
the way you used to do them.
But by the way, I'll only
give you the materials
if you come and give me
half of the working day.
That's something like coercion.
In between this process which
we theorized very strongly
under the cooperation
chapter and the division
of labor chapter and the
machinery chapter, those are
where process takes over for coercion.
Why do you do this in this way?
Because this is the next step.
Because the process is a whole thing.
Outside of whatever your usual ways
of working were your traditional ways
of working, which might have included
a lot of other things,
a lot of interruptions.
Process has, you can see already
has its necessity internal
to it to something like
self-motivation, coercion
process and self-motivation are
three stages of subsumption.
We're used to this idea
in which there's something
that pushes us and keeps pushing us
along to go to work, to
adapt to the economy,
to accumulate, to convert societal goods
like healthcare into
investment opportunities
or finance instruments, privatization.
There's always a push towards these things
to serve the economy
as our great overlord,
as the thing that says you must do this.
Who says it? The economy.
Who speaks for the economy?
The economists, not all of
them speak for the economy
as something that is
a benevolent overlord,
but all of mainstream economists
speak for it as the entity
that we all serve and must
serve because if we serve it
and serve it well and completely
it's supposed to serve us.
You can see that even the
rhetoric has implied in it
that we are subsumed into this process.
We are part of the economy.
Again, this was new in
rhetoric in Marx's time
because the economy as a giant other
or a giant mother was relatively new.
So what Marx is saying in
this very short chapter,
chapter 14 a little bit,
is how the experience
of a social world came to be
the experience of compulsion
as servitude to a system.
He's not gonna tell us how
it came to be historically
that capital was the big
mother that we all served.
History just gave it to us.
In fact, from our perspective,
it happened by accident
or there are so many causes
for why capitalism became the
ism that we all talk about.
And the capital system is the system
that we are subservient to.
There are too many causes
and too little necessity
in this history, long
history leading up to it
to make it even explainable.
He will show some things
in the later chapters.
That's to say that
history is not a process.
We did not get to capital
through some inexorable set
of steps that led to capital.
But at a certain point,
inexorability started to take over.
As soon as this initially very small,
exceedingly ugly hungry
animal came into history
and started to drink up
history as possibilities
it needed them and it shifts
from history's modality,
which is contingency.
This happened, but there really is no why.
The whys are much too
complicated to be able to lay out
for you in such a way as you
could say it had to happen
or in such a way as you could say,
these are the only reasons
for which it happened.
History has too many
reasons. It's overdetermined.
Capitalism on the other hand,
redistributes this
contingency on the basis
of one very small, very tight necessity
which Marx calls the capital relation
or is the continued pressure
to accumulate the need
to valorize value,
which puts everyone in a
position of serving it.
So you could say against all odds,
the capital system got started.
And what Marx is showing
here is the process
by which it went from being
this small hungry animal
to being the prime mover
of all social, natural,
and divine things.
Capital is really the first mono God.
We had other mono gods
and other monotheisms.
But the problem was
there were many of them.
Some of them tried to
be the only mono God,
but capital seems to be
the one that succeeded.
Another way to say is how did
capital become the mono God
through the process of
making labor a process.
And making any other kind
of labor which didn't have
that kind of internal compulsion
to not serve the system.
Making labor into a process
as opposed to an activity.
And initially bringing that
process under the control
of the capitalist.
But again, the control
of the capitalist is gonna be transformed
into something else
in which the whole
thing becomes a process,
including the capitalist's function.
All right, so let's talk
about this a little bit.
We have moved on to chapter 14,
which is an overview of what happened
in the previous parts, parts three
and parts four, chapter 14 called
Absolute and Relative Surplus Value.
It's interesting why he has to do this
'cause we just went through a long section
on relative surplus value.
What is relative surplus value?
- It's it's extracted from like it
you can get relative surplus
value by manipulating the ratio
of like the necessary
labor, time for labor
to reproduce themselves
and extra labor time
that the capitalists would wanna extract.
- Relative surplus value. Exactly.
Is that surplus value that
comes from moving B2B prime
or to adjusting the process so
that you get more productivity out
of the same amount of time
given a fixed amount of time
and a fixed intensity
of labor in that time.
The only thing you can
change is productivity.
How many products come out
of the same amount of labor?
And the chief way to do
this is through machinery,
but there's other ways
like cooperative labor
and other sorts of tactics like
you know, forbidding people
to go to the bathroom, work diapers.
I'm sure that exists somewhere,
but you can imagine all the ways
in which you could close
down those gaps in time
and increase productivity
without increasing
absolute surplus value
for the time of labor.
I'm gonna just read the opening of this
so we can get into it.
How are you feeling? Ready for
Marx after the little break?
Yeah. Okay, that's good.
We first considered the labor
process in abstract terms
or apart from its historical
forms as a process
that takes place between
human beings and nature.
This is the simple definition of labor.
He still calls it a process,
but I don't think it was a process.
I think it was a contingency.
There was need in simple
labor, people had to eat,
but there was no need to do it
in any particular way except
for what was imposed on
you by the materials,
by the climate, by the size of population.
He says to look at chapter five
if you wanna know about simple labor.
When this process is purely individual,
one in the same worker
performs all its functions,
uniting them and operating
as his own supervisor,
as he appropriates natural objects
to achieve his basic life aims.
This is simple labor, it's an abstraction
because it really never existed.
It might exist in an
animal according to Marx,
although I couldn't tell
you if that's true or not.
It certainly doesn't exist in
Robinson Crusoe like stories,
which is just after society, a fantasy
that you could go back and get rid
of society while still keeping all
of its trappings like slaves and crops
and accounting and bibles, right?
But it's just a heuristic,
simple labor to be able
to understand what comes next.
Later he works under others.
The various functions of the
labor process are distributed
among multiple workers.
This you could call social labor.
This is actually the kind of
labor still relatively simple
that is pre-capitalist or non-capitalist.
I work by my own lights, by my own skill,
by the history that I took
to get there and the training
and the passing down of
traditional implements
and techniques.
I own by the way both the manual
and the mental side of this as a worker,
but I'm doing it for myself
and others in moderate exchange relations.
In exchange relations
that are still subordinated
to use relations.
Does that make sense?
It's very important that
Marx says here a little bit
farther down the page, I'm looking at 465.
It's the beginning of the chapter.
So the labor process unites
menial labor and mental labor.
If you want to read a very good booklet
by the Frankfurt School
thinker, Alfred Sohn-Rethel
who Adorno called Sohn-Rethel
or such a Such a riddle,
but it's actually much less
of a riddle than Adorno.
A great book called
"Mental and Manual Labour."
This is the key division of labor
that allows capitalism to become itself.
When the mental labor is
separated from the manual labor
and the mental labor becomes the province
of machines capitalists who organize it
in a whole other class called managers.
So keep that in mind.
These two things are eventually separated
to the point where a
hostile antagonism emerges.
We're still living in that era
in which information, capital
and productive capital
are against one another.
But the one is dominating the other.
Supply chain is a perfect example
of information capital
dominating manual capital.
Now we know what happens next.
We develop a workforce which
is only there to be put
over against organization of the process.
You have on one side the
organization of the process.
You have on the other side
the people who carry it out
subordinated to machines which
are the process concretized
in the most necessary.
If you want to think about what happens
to philosophical necessity
under the capital system
and why philosophical necessity is useful
as a term for Marx, it's the machine
because the machine
in its machinic nature
brooks, no resistance.
It will be producing the
next widget whether you
like it or not, the only thing
you can do is turn it off.
But of course the other kind of compulsion
or coercion is active there.
If you turn off the
machine, you lose your job.
So you're subjected through this coercion
to the necessity of the process.
It keeps going and you follow it.
So we move through cooperative labor
to labor around machines,
which is a version
of the cooperative in which
the humans are then cooperating
with machines and take
on a minor role compared
to the major role that
the machine takes on.
The machine again is
the concretized process.
And you are only charged as a laborer
around a machine with not
disturbing the process.
And here he says the concept
of productive labor necessarily expands,
as does that of its bearer,
the productive worker.
But the latter concept narrows
to capitalist production
is at bottom the production
of surplus value, not merely commodities.
A worker produces for
capital rather than himself
and thus it no longer
suffices for a worker
to generally produce he
must produce surplus value.
So there's a second
outcome of the subsumption
of labor into the process
or the turning of labor
into a process and the laborers into parts
of a process which we
talked about already.
And the outcome of that is
that you're no longer
producing for needs first.
You're producing surplus value.
So the process you're a part
of is not the mechanized work process
but the valorization process.
In which the machine is a part
and you are a part as a laborer.
Laborers gets subsumed
into the capital system
to the point of becoming materials for it.
Not only can you not turn off the machine,
you are generally not
considered to have a will
and an intelligence as a
laborer in industrial capital.
And Marx is adamant that we describe this
in philosophical terms,
not in sociological
or empirical terms.
We have to understand that
as the valorization process
takes over, valorization means
producing something outside of the needs
of the people who are producing it.
A whole new system of needs,
the need for value, the need
to increase value and the need
to increase the increase, the need
for accumulation and for growth.
Those take over and everyone
eventually is subsumed
in the system including capitalists.
The system has processed
that is in effect this small hungry animal
that grew huge after it ate everything
and can't stop itself has
to be fed continuously
with territories, populations,
technology and finance.
(clears throat)
I think I'm getting emotional.
(clears throat)
I can see why I stuck with Kant
and Hegel for so many years
because this is really gets
you right in the heart.
So I want to talk about
three subsumptions.
The subsumption of nature.
The subsumption of labor as process.
And the subsumption of humans into labor.
Yeah. Oh sorry.
- So this bit I didn't really
understand when I read it,
what does he mean by the concept
of productive necessarily expands?
I understood that but as does that
of its bearer, the productive worker.
But the latter concept narrows too.
- I'm not a hundred percent sure.
I feel like he's searching
around there for terms,
but what I can make of, do
you have a reconstruction?
- I think the way I understood
it was this kind of related
to the way he was thinking
about the constructive of
like the construction of
the collective social worker
where you kind of become an an appendage.
So what you're doing, if you
were to do it individually,
it doesn't really have any meaning.
But when you all
do it together-
- Yeah.
- Then it has like meaning to the world
and to the system of productivity.
So that is both an
expansion and a contraction
in the sense that the forms of labor
that are being rendered can be expanded,
but it's a contraction
in terms of not labor
as you said is not an
activity but now a process
and that is what a worker
is now compelled to do.
- Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
So you can see what's going
on here as what counts as work
and the worker is being subject
to reformulations at
the hands of the system
that you came in to to make
a shoe in a traditional way.
They say you are not a worker.
So the concept of worker has been changed.
Let's say it becomes more expansive in
that it will then the concept of a worker,
it will then include
anything that capital thinks
it should include.
An appendage of a machine,
someone flying a drone
at 5,000 miles away, computer programmers,
whatever counts there counts according
to the innovations of capital
to valorize value in a better way.
So what I would say is
that the concept of worker
and work becomes plastic under capital
is certainly taken out
of the workers' hands.
Although unions don't only fight
for a shorter working
day, they fight for clear
and less flexible determinations
of what the workers will do
on the work floor as well.
But that's just because the
notion of work has become
expensive and the productive
worker has become expensive.
But it narrows to in the
sense that it will always be
under the pressure to
reduce what the worker does
to a certain extent without
losing the worker completely.
'Cause they're the only
ones who give value.
You see the inner conflict of
the capitalist is we'd really
like to get rid of these workers.
They're the only things
that make value for us.
So how do we put them in
as smaller box as we can?
Other questions?
I wanna talk about subsumption
with you all, even though
it's almost a side issue
in these chapters because
it seems to me like
the most important critical
tool we have now given
that we will go out into a workforce
and we will be subsumed
in all sorts of ways.
There's a lot of ways
the capital system works
to subsume what isn't yet capitalistic.
First of all, it subsumes nature.
Second of all, it subsumes labor
and makes it into a process
and then it subsumes human
beings into the labor process
as deeply and as thoroughly as possible.
So let's just go back a little bit
and get a sense of the
subsumption of nature.
We know how nature is subsumed.
I'm calling it subsumption now
because it comes to be,
subsumption means not only
that it comes to fit
into the capital system.
Capital system makes it fit,
but it makes it look as
though it produced the things.
So for example, take raw
materials that is fully subsumed,
talk to a, I don't know
what's something that goes
around in a, what's a raw material?
Talk to a one of those corn eating bugs.
You tell that bug that it's
eating your raw material
and it will say, well
I just found this here.
This is what I do.
We have to allow the bugs to
speak and of course on capital,
but if the bugs speak they would not
know what raw material is.
Raw material is already subsumed
and it makes it look as though
capitalism discovered nature.
It capitalism produces
nature as its subsidiary.
So for a very strong ecologism, you'd have
to start from there.
Then you would say, well all the attempts
to engineer ourselves out
of nature does not change
the basic perspective shift
in which nature is already
included in the system
as part of the system and
the names tell you that.
So raw materials already subsumed.
Other things that get
subsumed are the sources
of motive, power places
get subsumed, certain times
of day gets subsumed like the day daytime.
This is subsuming natural
aspects into the system
so that they work for capital,
these are formal subsumption.
They come under the
control of the capitalist
and they belong to then a process.
They become steps in a process.
Is it morning we will start
work? Does that make sense?
Morning is for work, what do we say?
It's Monday, it's a work.
Let's just look at a raw
material like petroleum
or as the Romans thought of it, rock oil.
That's the bug's perspective
on petroleum rock oil.
Well it's just there.
You could say from nature's perspective,
well it might be part of its processes,
but already to think of nature
as having processes is a
post-capital view of nature.
Science is complicit in drawing nature
into the conceptual structure of capital.
So you start with rock oil
and in terms of economics, it's part
of a metabolic process, a
social metabolic process.
For example, thousands of years
ago in the form of asphalt
or bitumen, it was used
actually everywhere
in the globe to stick things together
in Eurasia and China and the Americas.
Wherever it happened to
float to the surface as bits
or in seeps as it's called, it was used
to stick things together.
And to seal them, you could
write a nice little paper
on the hypothesis that
rock oil was what was used
to stick the bits of the
tower of Babel together.
This I came across on
that great capitalist detritus
machine called Wikipedia.
(clears throat)
But it was used as a
natural thing in order
to fulfill needs, which
Marx will tell you is part
of the natural process of work.
It was used as for
sticking things together.
It was used for lighting
and it was used as a
flammable object for weapons.
But then it becomes
something that it wasn't.
It gets subsumed, it becomes a substitute
for natural sources of motive power.
You had water or wind or animals
or yourself that pushed the pedal
of the spinning journey
or the the spinning wheel.
But soon you could have this thing.
And petroleum is really a signal type
of sub-summable because it changes things
to such a degree that the force
of labor can become subsumed into capital.
(clears throat)
So instead of a river turning a wheel
or a foot turning a
wheel, heat is extracted
from the flammable oil.
And this is the story
really of the 19th century.
It happens in the 19th century
and it has an odd loop.
This is by the way, the way
subsumption happens in capital.
It always almost doesn't happen
or technological reformation
is almost always tautological
or always almost tautological.
How so?
Well in order to get
oil in enough quantities
to become the replacement for
the motive power in machines,
to make the process
work more autonomously.
Autonomously, right?
You needed a machine to
get it out of the ground.
You had to use the old
technology, a steam machine
to get it out of the
ground in the first drills
in the mid 19th century,
the first oil derricks.
Otherwise you couldn't get
to it. There wasn't enough.
But those, so imagine
this, a human being made
that oil derrick, which then
replaced their motive power
with the oil it pulled out of the ground,
which then replaced the steam derrick
with a fossil fuel motor.
This is the very knap you say
in German, it's very tight.
The way you move from one form of process
to another, it has to make
use of the old processes,
but you make use of the old
processes just to supersede them
and to make them superfluous,
to put them in museums
or into surplus populations.
I just wanted to point that out to you.
Then of course petroleum later
because it's so central
to increasing productivity
becomes a vehicle for investment.
And the reason we can't
get rid of petroleum now
as a substitute for motive power is
because it's also a
vehicle for investment.
Not because it's the only
substitute for motive power.
This is the set of transformations
of a natural object as it gets subsumed
into capital, which is also changing.
Does that make sense?
From a raw material to a substitute
for natural sources of
motive power to a commodity
and finally to an investment category
that makes the whole system stand still,
that will have to be
overcome in similar ways
to the ways in which steam power
or foot power were overcome.
It'll be a very thin passage
away to the next mode.
Okay that's just to talk a little bit
about subsumption of natural objects
and you see what happens to it in capital.
As capital revolutionizes
its process, the position
of these things and their usefulness
and even their meaning from rock oil
to what do we call to
fossil fuel investments.
This is the trajectory of subsumption.
Until it seems like not only
did capital make the oil,
but capital is totally
identified with the oil.
Next I wanna talk briefly
about labor processes
subsumed into capital.
Do you have questions about that?
Don't you like my little
genealogy of petroleum rock oil?
- So is a laborer and a laborer are labor
and a laborer, both
subsumed in the capital?
- Yeah. Labor is a
somewhat confusing name.
This is how I start my next
list of things to lecture about.
Many things are meant by
labor. So here it comes.
Simple activity, the kind of
people who do that activity.
A group that develops its own standpoint
and its own politics opposed to the owners
and what Marx mostly means
in these chapters, a process.
A process that's key to production.
So when he talks about labor here,
here he's talking about the labor process,
but he's constantly
referring to the effects
of the labor process and
its changes on the laborer.
So let's keep those separate.
What he says here is there's a process
by which labor becomes a process, sorry
to be nearly taught logical,
but it's more funny that way.
There's a process by which
labor becomes a process.
It goes from formal
subsumption to real subsumption
or it goes from absolute surplus value
to relative surplus value.
Or it goes from the beginning
where labor comes into the factory as
what it was historically
and the capitalists are just
like, well, you'll work longer for me,
that's the first step.
Labor is not yet a process.
Labor is a place on the factory
is the name of the place
of labor, but it becomes a
process only when there are
limits placed on absolute
surplus value and you have to get
as much relative surplus
value out as possible.
And so productivity is
important and you need process.
The description of this process
by which labor becomes a process.
We're still stuck in this.
You will see when you get out
the protocols that you have
to hold to efficiency protocols,
productivity protocols.
We are not out of this.
You know, maybe even in the
gig economy it's maybe even
worse because all there is is process.
There's not even place,
there's no sociality.
It may be that you are
taken into the process
and thrown out of the process much more
at will than it used to be.
But that's part of the subsumption
of labor under capital.
It becomes labor when capital needs it,
how capital needs it in
the order capital needs it
with the kinds of labor capital needs.
So that you come out into the workforce
and you're like, well where do I fit?
Well that's exactly the
subsumption question.
You have to fit yourself into it.
You don't say, I love to make pots.
Now you can do this as a kind
of cottage industry address
and cottage core if you want.
But you know the core is not
the core. I hate to tell you.
The process by which
labor becomes a process
because of the limits to
absolute surplus value internal
to it and applied to it
from laws and strikes.
The main operation of capital
becomes the subsumption
of labor into capital as a process.
If you wanna ask whether
Marx is still viable today
for digital processes
or for finance capital, you
have to start from there.
This is what capital is when
it's fully developed for him.
It is the subsumption of labor as process
and capital constantly is doing this.
It's an operation of capital.
It subsumes labor into it as a process.
This is how it takes over the world
and why it takes over the world.
The how is sumption, it makes things fit
to its needs, right?
Just going back to the very beginning,
this is the story capital of why
the economy is not there to does.
We don't fit the economy to our needs.
We fit our needs to the economy.
That's called subsumption.
We go in as laborers to produce value.
So capital can capitalize itself.
And the why it has to take over the world
in this way is because of the pressures
to accumulate and to accumulate more.
I'm afraid to say again
that this is really described
in volume three, the pressures
to accumulate, but think
of it as competition
and the fire when a technology
takes hold somewhere
and it has to spread everywhere
and everyone is constantly competing
to increase their productivity
or else they go under.
Okay? So labor becomes a process
because of the limits to
absolute surplus value.
In other words, the name for the moving
of B2B prime is process.
We saw at the beginning of the chapter
how a productive worker looks differently
once it's subsumed and under capital.
It starts out what is a productive worker?
Let's just say what it is,
a productive worker is.
Yeah, the workable who works and works
and that whole formula.
Exactly. A productive worker is a worker
that produces something
that fulfills a need.
This is what Marx is getting
to with simple labor.
It produces something
that fulfills a need,
it has its purpose,
but the purpose doesn't demand
that the worker radically
reorganize their lives.
The purpose doesn't demand
that society radically reorganize itself.
So there's this simple production
which Marx associates with animals.
The false version of
this is Robinson Crusoe,
which is is impossible because
really the second definition
of a productive worker is
one who produces societally,
who is taking the signals in
from society, is producing
for themselves and another according
to the social division of labor.
So that I know that
Anthony needs a literacy
and justice for all sweatshirt.
So that I do the lovely printing
of that beautiful statement
and then I can give it out to all of you.
And I keep one for myself
'cause I'm also down
with that project, right?
Social division of
labor puts me in a place
where I'm thinking about
society as a whole.
Actually I have that thought.
I have the thought of
keeping my connections
and of what everyone's needs are.
It's a kind of Kantian
Subjective Universal.
Every time I work I
imagine what the society is
and what its needs are
and will be for the foreseeable future.
That's a kind of beautiful
project right there.
And you do it by making a sweatshirt.
And making a sweatshirt you're thinking
also about the corn and the asphalt
and the tower of Babel that
somebody wants to build.
You're saying, well I'm
purposefully not picking up the
asphalt or making the bricks for the tower
because my job is to do this.
They'll be wearing my shirts. Yeah.
- Yeah, are there certain types of labor
that have still yet to be
subsumed in that regard?
Where like, you know, their
end goal is still some kind
of use value and not simply the
production of surplus value?
Like teaching comes to mind in which
like is a great sentence about teaching
on the page
- Yeah.
- What is the sentence? Can
you read it out, Austin?
The page 465.
- 465.
- Use an example from outside the sphere
of material production.
A school master would be
productive in addition
to working on children's minds.
He worked himself
with a bone making an
entrepreneur wealthy.
- Yeah.
- Imagine that.
- Right? But you have to also-
(students laughing)
- A really good video.
- That's the challenge to teaching,
especially in an institution
like this, but really anywhere
because of course the, I
mean, you know, we don't have
to go back to 1970 to
think about our education
as commodifying our intelligence
is certainly doing that.
Our intellectual capacities,
our skills, producing skills,
having our intelligence
formed to do certain tasks
of subsumed labor.
So there are certainly things,
I mean not everything is
actually subsumed in capital,
but capital works to actually
subsume everything in capital
and produces the frameworks for it
and needs to keep bringing
its inside into itself
because of its needs to accumulate.
That is by the way, summerisub.
Subsumption is the operation
by which capital brings the
outside into it, makes
it work for its purposes
and makes it seem as though it created it.
So a productive worker
produces usable goods.
A productive worker produces societally,
but then it begins
to be modified even
beyond those designations.
We read in the cooperation chapter.
The productive worker is now a part
of a cooperative that
it can't work without.
This is a kind of subsumption
cooperative labor fits
in a bigger society with bigger
tasks, but it's much better
for the goal of capital,
which is to produce value
because it allows increased
productivity, cooperative labor.
Just to give that one example.
It allows more people to work
around one big project
all at the same time.
That is actually an increase
in absolute surplus value.
Do you remember the parameters
of absolute surplus value?
Shout 'em out.
- The length of the day.
- Length of the day.
- The intensity of labor.
- The intensity of labor.
- Productive power.
- Productive power. No.
Although we'll find out that
that is underlying all of it.
- Physical capacity.
- Physical capacities
of the worker, physical
capacities of the worker.
Okay. That that's there.
Yep, that, so that would
make at least four,
but now I just forgot
the one I had in mind.
What did we say?
- Social constraints, like child labor.
- Oh no, this is where middle
age has eaten my memory,
My intellectual labor has
not been subsumed enough
into the task.
Well, it'll come back to me.
I did write it down somewhere,
but I just leapt ahead to it.
Length of time, intensity of labor.
Oh and number of workers, thank you.
And definitely the physical capacities,
although that's, that's
expressed as time worked
and intensity of labor.
So that would not be a separate, right.
These are the parameters of
absolute surplus value, length
of time, which is labor over time.
Intensity of labor,
which is time over labor
and number of workers.
(clears throat)
Obviously from what productive work
or a productive worker looks
like after the cooperative phase.
I'm part of a labor is I am a producer
of surplus value, which
means that what labor looks
like is totally fungible.
I won't know maybe from day to day
what my labor will look
like if there's a change
in efficiency protocols or
the way we can produce things
or the machine is speeded up
or the machine has changed,
or we've had to drop our X
widget and pick up Y widget
because the market dictated that to us.
So becoming a producer
of surplus value actually
puts the nature of work as one
of the, one of the transformations
that will go on continuously such
that you may not know not just
how to do it, but what it is.
Labor is a component in the
production of surplus value.
The machine is the
production of surplus value.
The capitalist decides how
much and by what process.
So you can see that in these
chapters we are dealing
with the total conversion
of the purpose of labor.
From the production of
use value, which we saw
in capital analytically gets subordinated
to the projection of exchange value.
But this is only necessary if labor is not
for fulfilling needs primarily,
but for the production of surplus value.
In so far as it's for the
production of surplus value.
It's no longer people with
minds and wills and skills
and histories doing things
that they know relate
to the rest of society.
It is just a process
of which they're a part and
of which they fit better
or worse to which they
fit better or worse.
I'm not saying that I'm subsumed
completely in English grammar.
Before we go, let me say a
couple of things on subsumption.
Again, it's a place where Marx
uses philosophical vocabulary
to expand and critique and
correct the political economists.
The political economists,
Ricardo included,
although he saw a lot and
is a great philosopher
of the economy, if you
wanna put it that way.
They don't just apologize
for the system when they
describe it as natural.
They can't see what it
does to the nature of labor
because they can't see subsumption
'cause they don't have a name for it
because Ricardo didn't read Hegel.
Basically he's a
schoolboy who said, Hegel,
you forgot to read Ricardo.
And Ricardo, you forgot to read Hegel,
and I'm going to get beyond
both of you with a better use
of your vocabulary
because Ricardo didn't read
Hegel or didn't read Marx,
he tends to justify these
practices of exploitation
and can't explain the increasing
misfortune of workers,
even if productivity is going up.
The way to explain this
is through subsumption.
As a basic activity of the capital system,
there are two kinds, formal and real.
Formal only partly fulfills
the needs of the system
because it isn't very efficient.
Real subsumption does it,
but it's a process of
getting ever more real.
A couple of things, let
me just give you the.
We'll skip to the simplest case.
Let's talk about subsumption in terms
of a much older economic
theorist that sometimes Marx goes
to and says, Hey, this
one knew better than Hegel
or Ricardo, and that was this
guy, Aristotle, who along
with his teacher Plato,
loved to think of tables.
Table is like there's a great,
by the way, a great book
by Jacque Ranciere called,
"The Philosopher and His Poor."
Which talks about the use of hand workers
and the poor in philosophy
to exemplify exactly what
they're unable to talk
about on its own terms.
He's a Marxist of course.
I just wanna point out
to you a distinction
that Aristotle made between hyle
and morphe between matter and form.
Hyle interestingly is a
word that means matter
in philosophy, but in regular
parlance it just means wood.
So we're talking about
subsumption as the process
by which wood becomes a table
or comes to fit into a table
with no pieces sticking out.
The form of the table is
what makes wood satisfy
its function, which is
to hold things up off the floor.
In formal subsumption, the parts
of the material are good enough so
that it holds things up off the floor,
but not so good as to forget the fact
that this is just kind of
tied together of material
and loosely put into a form
like the way I would make
a table, which would look
like it might hold things up only
for a short amount of time.
Subsumption in the Greek
sense, real subsumption would
require that the material
be totally taken up
into the form to such a degree
that you can't really separate the wood
from the its table anymore.
In capitalistic society,
the material is labor,
the form is valorization, and it
because it has to make
the process so refined
to keep increasing relative
surplus value, it needs
to subsume not just formally,
not just I say this is a
table, this is table enough.
It has to be completely a table.
It has to be completely subsumed
so that every ounce of time
and effort goes into adding
value to the product.
All right, I gave you
an extra text to read.
It's not that long.
Excerpts from a manuscript.
We'll continue talking
about this on Wednesday.
(gentle music)