THESIS 3: EXPLOITATION IS THE PRODUCTION OF THE TIME

OF DOMINATION AGAINST THE TIME OF LIBERATION.

If the law of value were to consist simply in the definition of the measure

of  labor, then its crisis would imply the crisis of the capitalist

constitution of society. But since the law of value cannot be reduced to the

definition of measure, and since even in its crisis it still afirms the

valorizing function of labor, and thus capital's necessity to exploit it, we

must define what this exploitation consists of.

The concept of exploitation cannot be made transparent if exploitation is

defined solely in relation to the quantity of labor extorted: in fact,

lacking a theory or measure, it is no longer possible to define these

quantities.  In addition, it is difficult to make the concept of

exploitation transparent if we persist in separating, dividing, searching

for transcendences or solid points internal to the circulation of social

production, of communication as the pervasive mode of production.

The concept of exploitation can be defined only if it is posed opposite the

processes of subsumption in their totality.  From this point of view, the

concept and the reality of exploitation can be recognized within the nexus

which links political constitution and social constitution.  It is in fact

the political constitution which overdetermines the organization of social

labor, imposing its reproduction according to lines of inequality and

hierarchy.  Exploitation is the production of political lines of the

overdetermination of social production.  This is not to say that the

economic aspect of exploitation can be negated: on the contrary,

exploitation is precisely the seizure, the centralization, and the

expropriation of the form and the product of social co-operation; therefore

it is an economic determination in a very meaningful way-but its form is

political.

In other terms, the concept of exploitation can be made transparent when it

is considered that in mature capitalist society (be it bourgeois or

socialist) a political extortion of the product and the form of social

cooperation is determined.  Exploitation is politically produced as a

function of capitalist Power from which descends a social hierarchy; that

is, a system of matrices and limits adequate to the reproduction of the

system.  Politics is presented as a mystification of the social process and

therefore as a mechanism which serves at times for use, at times for

neutralization, and at times for blocking the processes of the socialization

of production and labor.  In the period of the "real subsumption," the

political tends to entirely absorb the economic and to define it as separate

only insofar as it fixes its rules of domination.  Therefore, the

separateness of the economic, and principally of exploitation, is a

mystification of the political, that is of who has Power.

The law of value considers labor as time in which human creative energy is

unfolded.  In the political constitution of advanced capitalism, the

fundamental function of Power is that of stripping from the social process

of productive cooperation the command over its own functioning of closing

social production power within the griddings of the system of Power. The

time of Power is therefore, the exploitation of social time in the sense

that a machine is predisposed to emptying out the meaning of its liberatory

goals. Exploitation is therefore the production of an armoury of instruments

for the control of the time of social cooperation. The labor-time of full,

whole social cooperation is here submitted to the law of the maintenance of

domination. The time of liberation, which is the very time of the highest

productivity, is therefore cancelled in the time of production.

THESIS 5. MARX'S THEORY OF VALUE IS TIED

TO THE ORIGINS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

The definition of the form of value which we find in Karl Marx's Capital is

completely internal to what we have called the first phase of the second

industrial revolution (the period 1848-1914).  But the theory of value,

formulated by Ricardo and developed by Marx, is in effect formed in the

previous period, the period of "manufacture," during the first industrial

revolution.  This is the source of the theory's great shortcomings, its

ambiguities, its phenomenological holes, and the limited plasticity of its

concepts.  Actually, the historical limits of this theory are also the

limits of its validity, notwithstanding Marx's efforts, at times extreme, to

give the theory of value the vigor of a tendency.

To make our discussion more specific, let us note that already in the course

of the second industrial revolution, and in particular when we find the

passage from the professional worker to the mass worker, essential

characteristics of the theory of value begin to fade away.  The distinction

between "simple labor" and "socially necessary labor" loses every importance

(except that of continually stimulating absurd arguments), showing the

impossibility of defining the genealogy of socially necessary labor; and

most importantly, the distinctions between "productive labor" and

"unproductive labor," between "production" and "circulation," between

"simple labor" and "complex labor" are all toppled.  In terms of productive

versus unproductive labor, already in the second phase of the second

industrial revolution, but continually more so as we enter the third

industrial revolution, we witness a complete dislocation of these concepts:

in effect, productive labor is no longer "that which directly produces

capital," but that which reproduces society-from this point of view, its

separation from unproductive labor is completely dislocated.  With regard to

production and circulation, it is necessary to recognize that production is

"subsumed within circulation," and vice versa, to a continually greater

extent.  The mode of production finds in circulation its own form.  With

regard to simple and complex labor, we witness a complete redefinition of

their relationship (or the relationship between simple and qualified or

specialized or theoretical or scientific labor).  It does not become a

linear relation which can be led back to a quantity, but rather is more an

interaction between completely original ontological stratifications.

Finally, the criteria of exploitation come to be placed under critique.  Its

concept can no longer be brought back within the category of quantity.

Exploitation, instead, is the political sign of domination above and against

the human valorization of the historical/natural world; it is command above

and against productive social cooperation.  Now, even though this definition

of exploitation is certainly contained within the intent of Marx's

philosophy, it is nonetheless not clearly expressed within the historical

limits of his theory.