From: IN%"mlebowit@sfu.ca" 23-MAY-1992 14:29:23.35 The Silences of Capital1 Michael A. Lebowitz Not long ago, Michael Burawoy commented that "two anomalies confront Marxism as its refutation: the durability of capitalism and the passivity of its working class."2 So, has it come time, 125 years after the publication of Capital, to admit that the "facts" (which meant something to Marx) simply do not support Marx's theory?3 It depends. It depends on what aspect of Marx's theory we have in mind. What reason would we have on the basis of historical experience to reject Marx's analysis of the nature of capital? Should we scuttle the idea that capital rests upon the exploitation of workers, that it has an insatiable appetite for surplus labour, that it accordingly searches constantly for ways to extend and intensify the workday, to drive down real wages, to increase productivity? What in the developments of world capitalism in the last two centuries would lead us to think that capital is any different? Do we think that, for example, Marx's statement that capital "takes no account of the health and the length of life of the worker, unless society forces it to do so" no longer holds--- and, indeed, that it does not apply as well to capital's treatment of the natural environment?4 Was Marx wrong in proposing that "the entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profit" is contrary to "the whole gamut of permanent conditions of life required by the chain of human generations" or that all progress in capitalist agriculture in "increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility"? Does our modern experience with chemical pesticides and fertilizers refute Marx's perspective on capitalism and nature, on what capitalist production does to ____________________ 1 For presentation at the Society for Socialist Studies panel, "Capital After 125 Years", at the annual meetings of the Learned Societies of Canada, Charlottetown, P.E.I., May 28-31. 2 That these "anomalies" are identified as separate is itself interesting. Michael Burawoy, "Marxism Without Micro- Foundations," Socialist Review, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April-June 1989), p. 51. 3 "I was delighted to find my theoretical conclusions fully confirmed by the FACTS." Marx to Engels, 24 August 1867, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 42 (New York: International Publishers, 1987), pp. 407-8. 4 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 381. 2 "the original sources of all wealth--- the soil and the worker"?5 Much has, of course, changed in the last 125 years--- indeed, in the last 25 years. But, is the nature of capital among them? The apparent victory of capitalism over its putative alternative is not a challenge to the theory of Capital. Modern celebrants of capital would find in Marx an unsurpassed understanding of capital's dynamic, rooted in the self-valorization that serves as motive and purpose of capitalist production. That capital drives beyond "all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life", that it constantly revolutionises the process of production as well as the old ways of life, "tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces"--- all this was central to Marx's conception of production founded upon capital.6 Thus, if capital today compels nations to adopt capitalist forms of production, creates a world after its own image and indeed shows once again that all that is solid (including that made by men of steel) melts into air, this in itself cannot be seen as a refutation of Marx.7 Nor, finally, in these days of shutdowns, growing unemployment and devaluation of capital, can we forget the contradictory character of capitalist reproduction that Marx stressed--- his injunction that capital's tendency towards the absolute development of productive forces occurs only in "the first act" and that the realisation of surplus value produced requires a "second act" in which commodities must be sold "within the framework of antagonistic conditions of distribution" marked by capitalist relations of production.8 In the signs of capitalist crisis about us, we have yet another demonstration that the understanding of the nature and logic of capital contained in Marx's Capital is as valid as ever. And, yet, there is that so-obvious failure, that apparent anomaly. And, that is that capital is still with us and shows no signs of taking its early departure. For some on the Right (as well as adherents to the thesis of the primacy of productive forces), this is simply proof that capitalist relations of production are not a fetter on the development of productive forces and, indeed, that ____________________ 5 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), p. 754n; Capital, Vol. I, p. 638. 6 Grundrisse, p. 410; Capital, Vol. I, p. 617. 7 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), pp. 487-8. 8 Capital, Vol. III, p. 352. 3 capitalism is "optimal for the further development of productive power."9 All this, of course, is despite Marx's assurance that capitalism was doomed, that it would come to an end with "the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production." But, the "knell" has not sounded for capitalism, and the expropriators have not been expropriated.10 We need to know why. What in Marx's Capital can explain it, what should have prepared us for understanding this historic failure? The answer, I suggest, is not what is in Capital but, rather, what is not. I. The "Real Silences" What is missing in Capital was stated quite well by E.P. Thompson in his Poverty of Theory. Capital, he argued, is "a study of the logic of capital, not of capitalism, and the social and political dimensions of the history, the wrath and the understanding of the class struggle arise from a region independent of the closed system of economic logic."11 For Thompson, the problems in Marx originated when he proceeded from Political Economy "to capitalism..., that is, the whole society, conceived as an 'organic system.'" The flaw was that "the whole society comprises many activities and relations... which are not the concern of Political Economy, which have been defined out of Political Economy, and for which it has no terms."12 And, the critical "missing term" for Thompson is that of "human experience". When we raise this point, he proposed, "at once we enter into the real silences of Marx."13 Who could deny that there is indeed this silence in Capital. There is no place in Capital for living, changing, striving, enjoying, struggling and developing human beings. People who produce themselves through their own activities, who change their nature as they produce, beings of praxis, are not the subjects of Capital. The idea of the "rich human being"--- "the man in whom his own realisation exists as an inner necessity, as need" is entirely foreign to Capital.14 In its place, we have structures which dominate human beings, a logic of capital that means that the individual consumption of the worker "remains an aspect of the ____________________ 9 G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 175. 10 Capital, Vol. I, p.929. 11 E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory (New York: Monthly Review, 1978), p. 65 12 ibid., p. 62. 13 ibid., pp. 164-5. 14 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, (New York: International Publishers, 1975), p. 304. 4 production and reproduction of capital, just as the cleaning of machinery does"; we have a working class that "is just as much an appendage of capital as the lifeless instruments of labour are."15 Why, however, is there this silence? Thompson argues that it is the result of the mature Marx's preoccupation with the critique of Political Economy. In contrast to his early attack on the latter for not considering the worker "when he is not working, as a human being", Marx fell into a trap: "the trap baited by 'Political Economy.' Or, more accurately, he had been sucked into a theoretical whirlpool"--- one in which "the postulates ceased to be the self-interest of man and became the logic and forms of capital, to which men were subordinated". For Thompson, the problems of Marxism are the result of the "system of closure" in which all is subsumed within the circuits of capital, where capital posits itself as an "organic system".16 And, yet, if we accept Marx's concept of an organic system as one in which "everything posited is thus also a presupposition" (i.e., in which all premises are the results of the system itself), that claim cannot be conceded. There is no organic system established in Capital.17 At the very point of the discussion of simple reproduction, intended to consider capitalism as an organic system, we see there is an element which is not part of capital, which is not produced and reproduced by capital--- a point of departure but not one of return in the circuit of capital, a premise which is not a result of capital itself. And, it is one necessary for the reproduction of capital, required for the very existence of capital itself: The maintenance and reproduction of the working class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave this to the worker's drives for self-preservation and propagation.18 Thirty-two words--- and, then, theoretical silence. What is missing is the second moment of production ("Moment IV"), the consideration of the production of the wage- labourer. And, this question, the subject matter for the projected book on Wage-Labour which was to complete "the inner totality", involves far more than concern with physical reproduction or the household; it encompasses as well the social reproduction of wage-labour.19 Rather than a ____________________ 15 Capital, Vol. I, pp. 718-19. 16 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pp. 241-2; Thompson, op.cit., pp. 59, 60, 65, 163-4, 167. 17 Grundrisse, p. 278. 18 Capital, Vol. I, p. 718. 19 Grundrisse, pp. 520-1, 264. 5 "system of closure", Capital is only a moment in the development of an organic system.20 II. Situating the Silence Let us attempt to identify a few of the problems associated with the absence of the book on Wage-Labour. A full discussion of these and other issues can not be pursued here but is the subject of my book, Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class. A. The Struggle for Higher Wages While Capital presents well the manner in which workers, indeed all human beings, are means for capital in its drive for self-valorisation, it does not do the same for the side of the worker. Little is said about what Marx identified as the goal of the worker, about "the worker's own need for development," or how she strives to achieve that goal.21 We understand quite well why, e.g., capital struggles to "reduce wages to their physical minimum and to extend the working day to its physical maximum," but we do not know precisely why "the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction".22 Further, there is no discussion at all in Capital about the struggle for higher wages. One aspect of Capital's silence is that it does not explore the manner in which new needs are constantly created for workers. Marx consistently stressed that the creation of "new needs arising from society itself" is "a condition of production founded on capital" and that the capitalist searches for means to spur workers on to consumption, "to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter, etc." Yet, although Marx emphasized that the growth of capitalist production meant that the worker's "subjective poverty, his need and dependence grow larger in proportion," none of that plays a role in Capital.23 Even though each new need becomes a new link in the golden chain which secures workers to capital, even though Marx in the Grundrisse announced that it is upon this creation of new ____________________ 20 Michael A. Lebowitz, Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), Ch. 3; Michael A. Lebowitz, "The One-Sidedness of Capital," Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Winter 1982). 21 Capital, Vol. I, p. 772. 22 Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 20 (New York: International Publishers, 1985), p. 146. 23 Grundrisse, pp. 287, 409-10; Capital, Vol I, p. 1062. 6 needs for workers that "the contemporary power of capital rests", Capital is silent here.24 Thus, the underlying basis for the struggles of workers to secure higher wages is not present. But, then, what would be the point anyway? Capital, after all, assumes the standard of necessity for workers to be a "constant magnitude" for a given country at a given period; and, Marx did this in order to avoid "confounding everything".25 As he noted in the Grundrisse, no matter how much the standard of necessity may change, "to consider those changes themselves belongs altogether to the chapter treating of wage labour."26 Marx was very clear and consistent on this point: changes in the needs of workers were not properly part of the subject matter of Capital. As he indicated in his 1861-3 draft notebooks for Capital (known as Zur Kritik and newly translated into English): The problem of these movements in the level of the workers' needs, as also that of the rise and fall of the market price of labour capacity above or below this level, do not belong here, where the general capital-relation is to be developed, but in the doctrine of the wages of labour.... All questions relating to it [the level of workers' needs] as not a given but a variable magnitude belong to the investigation of wage labour in particular....27 The point was exactly the same in the material Marx drafted for Volume I of Capital in 1864-5: The level of the necessaries of life whose total value constitutes the value of labour-power can itself rise or fall. The analysis of these variations, however, belongs not here but in the theory of wages.28 Not only does this assumption of a constant standard of necessity (the assumption in Capital which was to be removed in the book on Wage-Labour) mean that there can be no ____________________ 24 Grundrisse, p. 287. 25 Capital, Vol. I, pp. 275, 655; Lebowitz, Beyond Capital, Ch. 2. 26 Marx's reference to this section as a "chapter" may be placed in context by noting that it occurs in his "chapter" on capital, which comprises pages 239 to 882 in this edition. Ibid., p. 817. 27 Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 30 (New York: International Publishers, 1988), pp. 44-5. 28 Capital, Vol. I, pp. 1068-69. 7 examination of the implications of changes in real wages, but it is not at all surprising that Marx had little to say in Capital about trade unions ("whose importance for the English working class can scarcely be overestimated")29 There is no discussion of how the organised worker "measures his demands against the capitalist's profit and demands a certain share of the surplus value created by him"; there is no consideration of how, despite capital's own tendency, workers would not permit wages "to be reduced to the absolute minimum; on the contrary, they achieve a certain quantitative participation in the general growth of wealth."30 As Engels commented, the great merit of the trade unions is that "they tend to keep up and to raise the standard of life."31 But, all this is missing from Capital. The point is that Capital does not have as its object the examination of the movement when "the workingman presses in the opposite direction" to capital. Even in the case of the struggle over the workday (which Marx did introduce into Capital), rather than a theoretical exploration of the inherent tendency of workers to struggle for a reduction of the work-day because of their need for more time and energy for their own process of production, he focuses upon the effort of workers to retain the "normal" work-day (i. e., a defensive action). In general, while we see capital's tendency to increase the rate of surplus value, there is no treatment of wage-labour's tendency to reduce the rate of surplus value. The very tendencies of wage-labour which emerge from "the worker's own need for development" and which are the basis of the struggles of workers for themselves are absent.32 There is no theoretical framework for dealing with increases in the standard of necessity because Capital is meant to explain the logic of capital but not the logic of wage-labour. B. The Inherent Functionalism ____________________ 29 ibid., p. 1069. See Beyond Capital, Chapter 5 for a consideration of problems in the discussion of relative surplus value when the assumption of a fixed standard of necessity is relaxed. 30 Grundrisse, p. 597; Theories of Surplus Value, Vol.III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), p. 312. 31 Engels, "The Wages System," The Labour Standard, 21 May 1881, reprinted in Engels, op.cit., p. 102. Engels' comment in his critique of the Erfurt Programme was: "The organisation of the workers, their constantly increasing resistance, will most probably act as a certain barrier against the increase of poverty." Friedrich Engels,"Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme (1891)" in Marxism Today (February 1970). 32 Among these is the tendency to combine and reduce the separation among them. Cf. Lebowitz, Beyond Capital, Ch. 4. 8 Precisely because the worker as subject is absent from Capital, precisely because the only subject is capital--- and the only needs and goals those of capital, there is an inherent functionalist cast to the argument which flows from Capital. Characteristic of a one-sided Marxism that fails to recognise that Capital presents only one side of capitalism is the presumption that what happens occurs because it corresponds to capital's needs (which are the only ones acknowledged). Thus, for one-sided Marxism, if the work-day declines, it is because capital needs workers to rest. If the real wage rises, it is because capital needs to resolve the problem of realisation. If a public healthcare system is introduced, it is because capital needs healthy workers and needs to reduce its own costs; if a public school system, capital requires better educated workers. If sectors of an economy are nationalised, it is because capital needs weak sectors to be operated by the State. Such arguments are inherently one-sided. When the needs of workers are excluded at the outset and only capital's needs are recognised, it cannot be considered surprising that a one-sided Marxism will find in the results of all real struggles a correspondence to capital's needs. Yet, this problem is not unique to those who have followed Marx. The same functionalist argument can be found in Capital itself. Regardless of his account of the struggle by workers to limit the work-day and of the resistance by capital, Marx nevertheless could comment that, due to the deterioration of its human inputs, "the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same necessity as forced the manuring of English fields with guano." The limiting of the work-day, in short, occurred (was "dictated") because it corresponded to capital's requirements (just as farmers had to replenish the fertility of the soil). That clear functionalist statement appears even though Marx later commented that capital concerns itself with the degradation of the human race as little as with "the probable fall of the earth into the sun" and must be "forced by society" to do so.33 A similar problem is apparent in Marx's description of the value of labour-power as determined by the "value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the labouring power."34 The premise is that, since the worker unfortunately depreciates and has a limited life, the maintenance of the use-value of this instrument with a voice includes expenditures not only to redress its daily wear and tear but also for those "means necessary for the worker's replacements, i.e., his children."35 Since "the man, like the machine," Marx proposes, "will wear out, and must be replaced by another man," there must be ____________________ 33 Capital, Vol. I, pp. 348, 381. 34 Value, Price and Profit, p. 130 35 Capital, Vol. I, p. 275. 9 sufficient necessaries "to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labour market and to perpetuate the race of labourers."36 Frankly, to propose that the value of labour-power contains provisions for the maintenance of children because capital wants future recruits twenty years hence--- rather than because workers have struggled to secure such requirements--- is a teleological absurdity! However, it is a logical result of the disappearance of wage-labour for itself from Capital. Marx himself must bear responsibility for some of the functionalist absurdities of his disciples. For those who have followed Marx in this regard and who have furthermore treated Capital as a completed epistemological project, the results have been disastrous. Failing to grasp what is missing from Capital, failing to investigate the worker as subject, they are left with the Abstract Proletarian, the mere negation of capital. That productive worker for capital within the sphere of production (i.e., the wealth producer) and epitomised as the factory worker, that productive instrument with a voice which can gain no victories which allow it to take satisfaction in capitalist society (any apparent victories being in fact those of capital), that not-capital who is united and disciplined as the result of capitalist development--- the Abstract Proletarian has no alternative but to overthrow capital. C. The Dependence of the Wage-Labourer The expropriators, however, have not been expropriated. And, it is not at all difficult to grasp why when we focus upon the worker rather than upon capital as the subject. For, it is the dependence of the wage-labourer upon capital, that need and dependence which grows larger in proportion to capitalist production, which becomes critical to understand. Consider the position of the wage-labourer. In order to satisfy her needs, she must secure use-values from outside her own process of production. Under the prevailing circumstances, she must take the only potential commodity she has, living labour capacity, and find the buyer for whom it is a use-value--- capital. To be for self, the wage- labourer must be a being for another. We have here the worker as wage-labourer for self--- as one who approaches capital as a means, a means whose end is the worker for self. Once we understand capitalism as encompassing not only a relation in which the worker is the mediator for capital in securing its goals (K-WL-K) but also a relation in which capital is the mediator for the worker in securing hers (WL- K-WL), the dependence of the worker upon capital is apparent. Within this relation, workers need capital; it must appear as the necessary mediator for the worker. The ____________________ 36 Value, Price and Profit, p. 129. 10 maintenance and reproduction of capital remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of the worker as wage- labourer. As Marx noted in the Grundrisse, if capital cannot realise surplus value by employing a worker, then: labour capacity itself appears outside the conditions of the reproduction of its existence; it exists without the conditions of its existence, and is therefore a mere encumbrance; needs without the means to satisfy them;....37 The worker, accordingly, is produced as one conscious of her dependence upon capital. And, everything about capitalist production contributes not only to the relation of dependence but also to the "feeling of dependence."38 The very nature of capital is mystified--- "all the productive forces of social labour appear attributable to it, and not to labour as such, as a power springing forth from its own womb." Having surrendered the right to his "creative power, like Esau his birthright for a mess of pottage," capital, thus, becomes "a very mystical being" for the worker because it appears as the source of all productivity.39 Fixed capital, machinery, technology, science--- all necessarily appear only as capital, are known only in their capitalist form: The accumulation of knowledge and of skill, of the general productive forces of the social brain, is thus absorbed into capital, as opposed to labour, and hence appears as an attribute of capital....40 Thus, as Marx commented, this transposition of "the social productivity of labour into the material attributes of capital is so firmly entrenched in people's minds that the advantages of machinery, the use of science, invention, etc. are necessarily conceived in this alienated form, so that all these things are deemed to be the attributes of capital."41 In short, wage-labour assigns its own attributes to capital in its mind because the very nature of the capital/wage-labour relation is one in which it has already done so in reality. In the normal course of things, thus, capital can rely upon the worker's dependence upon capital. The very process of capitalist production produces and reproduces workers who consider the necessity for capital to be self-evident: ____________________ 37 Grundrisse, p. 609. 38 Capital, Vol. I, p. 936. 39 Capital, Vol. III, p. 966; Grundrisse, p. 307. 40 Ibid., p. 694. 41 Capital, Vol. I, p. 1058. 11 The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode as self-evident natural laws. The organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance.42 Breaks down all resistance! When we consider this last statement by Marx (buried in his discussion of primitive accumulation in Capital), how can we possibly talk about the durability of capitalism and the passivity of the working class as anomalies? Indeed, given Marx's comment that "the great beauty of capitalist production" consists in its ability to constantly replenish the reserve army of labour and thereby to secure "the social dependence of the worker on the capitalist, which is indispensable," how can we talk about the revolt of the working class (however it may be trained, united and organized") ?43 On the contrary, as Marx noted about developed capitalism: In the ordinary run of things, the worker can be left to the 'natural laws of production', i.e. it is possible to rely on his dependence on capital, which springs from the conditions of production themselves, and is guaranteed in perpetuity by them.44 By education, tradition and habit, the worker in developed capitalism necessarily looks upon the requirements of capital as common sense; and, that indispensable feeling of dependence is what provides capitalism's necessary premise and makes it an organic system--- in perpetuity. III. Understanding the Silence of Capital So, if the book on Wage-Labour was so important to an understanding of capitalism (rather than of just the logic of capital), why didn't Marx write it? To answer this requires us first to be absolutely clear as to why Marx wrote Capital (and, indeed, Volume I over and over again). The answer is precisely his understanding of the dependence of the worker upon capital. Given the inherent mystification of capital, demystification is a necessary condition for workers to go beyond capital. For this very reason, Marx considered it essential to reveal the nature of capital, to reveal what cannot be ____________________ 42 Capital, Vol. I, p. 899. 43 Ibid., p. 935. 44 Ibid., p. 899. 12 apparent on the surface--- that capital itself is the result of exploitation. To counter the inherent mystification of capital required the theory of Capital. Significantly, however, for this particular purpose only Capital---and not the originally projected six books (or even the first three)--- is required; indeed, only Volume I of Capital is required! Capital was Marx's attempt to make the proletariat "conscious of the condition of its emancipation," conscious of the need to abolish capital's ownership of the products of labour--- i.e., "to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system!'."45 That was a limited object but, nevertheless, a crucial one given Marx's understanding of capital's inherent tendency to develop a working class which looks upon capital's requirements as "self-evident natural laws". If we fail to recognise that limited object, however, we may misunderstand entirely Capital's place and importance. In the absence of the demystification of capital, there is no going-beyond capital. Immiseration, crises, stagnation, destruction of the natural environment do not lead beyond capital because so long as capital appears as the source of all wealth and as the only means to satisfy their own needs, workers are necessarily dependent upon it. Thus, Capital is not merely a moment in the understanding of capitalism as an organic system; it is also a moment in the revolutionary struggle of workers to go beyond capital. Marx did not write his projected volume on wage-labour because, ultimately, he was less interested in the completion of his epistemological project than in his revolutionary project. What E.P. Thompson forgets is that, as Engels indicated in speech at Marx's graveside, "Marx was before all else a revolutionist."46 IV. The Most Serious Silence And, yet, the failure to focus upon the worker as subject and upon the process by which the worker produces herself has had a serious effect both upon Marxism and upon the revolutionary project itself. If one proceeds simply from the contradictions inherent within capital, the central issue may become (as it has for adherents of the Regulation School) an explanation of how capital nevertheless is reproduced; investigation accordingly focusses upon the particular modes of regulation which manage to sustain capitalist relations. If, on the other hand, we begin from a consideration of the worker as subject, the central question becomes--- how, under the necessary circumstances, can capital not succeed? We are led necessarily to the central place of the process of class struggle in Marx's theory. ____________________ 45 Value, Price and Profit, p. 149. 46 Friedrich Engels, "Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx," Robert C. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 682. 13 The silence of Marx in Capital has meant a de-emphasis upon the process of struggle itself as a process of production. Just as every activity of the worker alters her as the subject who enters into all activities, similarly the process in which workers struggle for themselves is also a process in which they produce themselves in an altered way. They develop new needs in struggle, an altered hierarchy of needs. Even though the needs which they attempt to satisfy do not in themselves go beyond capital, the very process of struggle is one of producing new people, of transforming them into people with a new conception of themselves--- as subjects capable of altering their world. Nothing is more essential to Marx than this conception. The failure to understand the centrality of "the coincidence of the changing of circumstances" and of self-change---that coincidence that can only be understood as "revolutionary practice"--- is the failure to understand the dynamic element without which there can be no end to the feeling of dependence and thus no transcendence of capital!47 Understanding struggle as a process of production is the most serious gap as the result of Marx's failure to go beyond Capital. Limited to Capital, we have only the mechanical laws of capital, a structure without subjects, a one-sided Marxism--- or, to be more exact, the absence of Marxism! If, then, we accept the importance of "revolutionary practice", it is clear what cannot be a basis for going beyond capital--- the absence of people in motion. And, this is what we need to think about on this 125th anniversary of Capital. We need to think about 1967, the 100th anniversary. Capital meant something more then (as it did at its 50th anniversary). Why? Not because its account of capitalism was any truer but because people were in motion (and were changing themselves). That is what made the theory of Capital a use-value. As Marx well-knew, the struggle of workers is indispensable for "preventing them from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production." Although Marx wrote Capital to explain to workers why they were struggling, "it is not enough for thought to strive for realisation, reality must itself strive towards thought."48 When we teach about Capital, we need to teach what it left out, its silences--ie., not only what is in Capital but what is not. And, we have to help to bring an end to that silence. This is at the core of a revitalised Marxism, a ____________________ 47 Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 4. 48 Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 12, p. 169; Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction," Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 183. 14 Marxism that will continue the revolutionary project that Marx began in Capital. -- mike lebowitz E-MAIL ADDRESS: mlebowit@sfu.ca or m_lebowitz@sfu.ca (machines "fraser" or "whistler" may appear in address) SNAILMAIL: Economics Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby,B.C., Canada V5A 1S6 TELEPHONE: (604)291-3508 (department office) (604)291-4669 (my office) (604)255-0382 (home)