Summary of the Main Ideas on Capitalism
Michael Dawson, in his article, says that exploitation centered conceptions of capitalism cannot in any means explain its persistent entanglement with racial oppression. He instead suggests for the expanded understanding that also encompasses the ongoing expropriation though it is disavowed at the moment. Through the schematizing that the other “ex” he discloses the role that is played by the capital accumulation through the unfree and dependent labor, which can be referred to us as confiscated as opposed to exploitation. Secondly, it also shows an equally indispensable role of politically enforced status between free, dependent, exploitable workers, and appropriable subjects.
Dawson offers compelling insights into the relationship between capitalism and racial oppression. He explains that the expanded conceptions of capitalism can be seen as a traditional social order, which is better than the more common notions for theorizing the structural imbrications of race being a capitalist society. He finalizes by saying that there is no legitimating crisis in Habermas’s sense in the US today.
Michael believes that capitalism is understood narrowly as being an economic system simplified. The understanding equates with the market exchange and private property as it neutralizes the categories. Marx’s has been the most influential critique as his account goes beyond the market perspective of the system’s apologists through to the most fundamental commodity level of production. There is the discovery of the secret of accumulating the capital’s wage exploitation for laborers. Understanding that these workers are neither slaves nor serfs but just unencumbered individuals who have the freedom to enter the labor market and sell their labor power like anyone else. Expropriation as a mode of exploitation in this sense can be defined as dispensing with the contractual relationship through whom capital can purchase labor power with the exchange for wages. It works by confiscating the capacities and resources as they put them into capital circuits of self-expansion. The crucial issue here is that the commanded capabilities always get incorporated into the value expanding process that defines capital.
In this sense, expropriation is meant to cover the multitude of sins that correlate with racial oppression. Expropriation finally plays a role in the construction of distinctive explicitly realized forms of exploitation and example being the prior history of enslavement which casts its shadow on the wage contract an idea that segments labor markets while levying a confiscatory premium on the exploited proletarians who carry the mark of the race even long after emancipation.
On Gramsci’s Marxism, there are three concepts discussed which constitute the essential components in his philosophy. The hegemony concept that was defined as the system of the class alliance in which the hegemonic was exercised in political leadership over the subaltern classes through winning them over. The concept is believed to have brought illusion to the proletariat, which had to free itself from corporatism to embrace other categories, mostly the peasants. Gramsci presents the concept with a very advanced definition as he goes beyond the simple alliance and political leadership to include the intellectual and moral guidance and elaboration of the process of forging the class alliance.
Gramsci’s concept of power is based on the two moments of power relations Dominio and Direzione. The moments are very crucial for they constitute the elements of state balance and the equilibrium between social forces that are identified as the leaders and the people they lead. According to him, hegemony is a condition in which a basic class exercises a political and moral role of leadership within the hegemony system that is cemented by prevailing worldview ideologies.
On his concept of ideology, there was the initial claim on the ideological superstructure, which was mechanically determined by economic infrastructure, and that it played no role in the economic life of society as the revolutionary change was asserted and the result was dynamic tensions of economical contradictions grounded in the mode of production. The crisis could only be solved by the decisive capture and smashing of the state apparatus by proletariat so that the revolutionary class could hold to legitimate power.
The concept of organic intellectual, which included the scholars, artists, or in other words, the culture organizers were given the roles to act as directives in the society. Gramsci classifies them in two categories; traditional and organic. The conventional intellectual is linked to tradition as they are not so much related to the economic structure. The organic intellectuals, in this case, were very instrumental in a struggle for hegemony.
In comparing the theories of both authors, it becomes evident that Gramsci’s concept is the best since it does define not only an actual alliance but also a social and political condition that needed to be achieved. The reasons for this are above the political, and they all have to do with the dynamics of conjuncture. And what seems to be necessary here is the unit around the struggles and movement of resistance. Michael’s theory is not as well elaborated than that of Gramsci, but it works when well implemented.
In conclusion, when comparing Michael’s theories of capitalism with Gramsci’s, the philosophy of praxis by Gramsci becomes the best as it redelivers to the working class a powerful theoretical weapon that is well equipped against the capitalists class in the class struggle. In this, there will remain only the conscious making history in the hands of the proletariat. The questions that will remain asked in this articles are: what relationship which is not as an implication of the unit of spirits’, will there exist between the political-economic moment and other historical activities? Is a speculative solution of these problems possible given the concept of the historical bloc as presupposed by Sorel?