Page 166 - Culture Society and Economy

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CONCLUSION

were nonetheless sustaining of the system, even while vigorously opposing
oppressive outcomes. But second, and perhaps more important, the eco-
nomic system operated not only to produce a false picture of how it
worked, but also to conceal the true mechanism by means of which it
actually worked – a secret hidden from the public view in the sphere of
production by the dazzle of the marketplace and everyday life.
Elsewhere, Marx makes the point that this ideological cunning reflects
a real cunning and is a unique characteristic of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction. He argued that the hiding achieved by the abode of capitalist pro-
duction is a subtle one, easily missed even when the sphere of production
is itself observed. For, unlike capitalism, in other modes of production the
real sources of exploitation are much more visible. In slavery, where the
slavemaster takes the entire product from the slave who is herself property,
exploitation is obvious. In feudalism, in which the peasants worked for
themselves for some of the days of the week and then on other days of the
week provided bonded unpaid labor on the land of the ‘lord’ of the land,
it was also difficult for exploitation to be hidden: the surplus labor for the
lord was distinguished from work for themselves by being located in a
separate place and by being performed at a different time. In other forms
of exploitation such as tributary systems, the abode of exploitation is also
visible, since the exploited party has to hand over physically a given sum of
produce or service or cash and valuables to the exploiter. For this reason,
public consciousness seldom fails to grasp the reality of exploitation, only
whether and how this exploitation is ordained.
Not so in capitalism. Here the official ideology, accepted by the mass,
is that equality, justice and freedom reign and, where they do not, this is
an adventitious failure, not coming from within, not systemic. This illu-
sion is maintained because here, in the hidden abode itself, there was no
distinction in place and time between work done by workers to support
themselves and work done for the exploiter – the two were merged into a
single working day. Here there was no separate physical product, part
retained by the workers for themselves and another part transferred by
them to the capitalist. Here the worker never had control over the physi-
cal product at all – it belonged as always to the owner of the means of
production – the capitalist. Here the worker received a money wage,
apparently in return for the entire day’s work. Thus the telling reality was
revealed that the crux of exploitation under capitalism was not ‘low’
wages which popular consciousness (and trade unionism) to this day
assumes to be the case. ‘High’ wages could be even more exploitative. The
heart of the matter was that any level of wages which the worker received
under capitalism, whether high or low, always represented only part of

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