5 - Class Alliances and Surplus Labor Time

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of class alliances and surplus labor time. The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of direct producers determines the relationship of rulers and ruled. Upon this is founded the entire formation of the economic community. In any society, there is likely to be more than one form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of direct producers. These different forms of expropriation constitute distinct modes of production, giving rise to many vertical or class relationships—of expropriator to worker—and a correspondingly large set of possible coalitions and conflicts: the expropriator and workers in one class relationship united and pitted against other classes, the coalitions of the have-nots against the haves, and the more complex alliances. For simplicity, the economy is conceived as composed of two distinct forms of the social organization of production, or modes of production, characterized by two distinct class relations. The surplus labor time in the capitalist sector is the total labor time expended in capitalist production minus the total direct and indirect labor time embodied in the wage workers' consumption bundle. The corresponding ratios of surplus labor time to labor time embodied in the consumption bundle are termed the rates of exploitation.