I get the general notion of what it’s saying but I also feel entirely confused. Could someone explain it to me please?

  • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    You perform work all the time: Making food, fixing things, cleaning up, etc. It’s value is it’s use, a use-value.

    When you sell your ability to do work, you enter an economic relation where your use-value (the ability to do work) is exchanged for money. This gives your work/labor exchange-value.

    However, you cannot perform your now sold labor in your home. You must go to your job. This is your spacial mobility. Extend that out logically and you can incorporate migratory labor.

    I am less familiar with the “economic relations that engender relative population surplus” but I think it has to do with the analysis in Chapter 25 of Capital, particularly part 3 where he describes the Reserve Army of Labor.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Population surplus i think isn’t an idea form Marx but (I think) from Mike Davis.

      But the way Davis uses it, is beyond the reserve army of labor, racial capitalism creates so many jobless people that it doesn’t even need them as the reserve army of labor. Like, black unemployment reaches 40% at times.

      These “surplus people” are managed spatially. The ones who are needed as the reserve army of labor are, and the rest are separated from productive society through borders, prions, ghettos, segregation and Apartheid.

      A great example is how unemployment in Israel is about 5 to 10% but in the Gaza strip is 40 to 50%. Then, Palestinians are selectively let into Israel to perform below-market-rate labor while the rest are subjected to ghettoization and genocide.

    • culpritus [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I think that last part might be talking about ‘relative population surplus’ between regions/nations. Migrations are related to the relative pop surplus in relation to regions/nations. The incentive to migrate is inherent to this relation of relativity between regions/nations. The reserve army is relatively larger or smaller in relation to other regions/nations, and that incentivizes migration as a displacement force within those populations with a larger reserve army of labor.

      I think about the fracking boom in the USA. Lots of labor force migrated (often temporarily) often from areas with higher relative reserve army to very rural unpopulated areas with almost zero reserve army causing lots of housing issues locally etc. Once labor is forced into an exchange-value relation, it is incentivized to migrate to areas of low reserve army where the exchange-value is greater.