 Good day again. This is Professor Resnick and today I want to introduce you to the class theory of Marx since we have now covered the logic of a Marxian theory the dialectic or what I have been calling overdetermination and I've already in the first couple lectures introduced you to the overall idea of Marx this class theory We want to today present the or begin to present the details of this class idea Marx's as I've told you Marx's entry point the way he begins to organize His understanding of society is from the perspective of class And what he means by class is the organization of surplus. So that's the first idea In the thought concrete that he's going to construct of society He argues that human beings lay human beings labor To produce wealth That's not an original idea that human beings labor to produce wealth to sustain themselves And I'm Adam Smith had that idea Ricardo and others as well What Marx however adds to this is something entirely new in social theory in other words He inaugurates a whole new idea. He breaks that labor process into two parts The first part he calls necessary labor that is the quantum of labor required to produce goods and services consumer goods to sustain the laborer notice there's two parts here The quantum of labor to produce the consumer goods In the second part to sustain the laborers we're going to come back to that throughout the course, but in any case the first Idea here is it breaking up the labor process into necessary labor any labor above and beyond necessary is what he calls surplus labor So he Begins to then ask Questions once he's done this ask questions about this Necessary and surplus labor first question you're going to ask is who produces necessary and who produces the the surplus Who gets the surplus that's being produced by those individuals who produced the necessary and the surplus labor What do they do the people who get the surplus? What do they do with the surplus that they acquire? and Are there individuals in society who get? Shares of this surplus even though they didn't initially get it and why do they get a share of the surplus? From the individuals who initially receive it so we can ask all kinds of Questions about this organization of surplus once he divides this labor process into these two parts of necessary and surplus class literally classifies a population into those who Perform an appropriate or receive this Surplus so let me let me since this is so important. This is the entry point Let me put this on the on the blackboard. Okay, this this first idea this thesis of Marx so He's arguing here that people do necessary labor once again the labor That is required to produce the goods and services to sustain the laborer Plus they do a surplus labor and then the total would be the labor that they perform Okay, that's what the new idea of Marx is this organization of surplus this idea that you can classify a population into those who perform necessary and surplus and Those who receive the surplus without performing necessary and surplus by the way It's quite possible in a society to have individuals both Perform necessary and surplus and receive the surplus And it's also possible to have a society or societies in which people perform the necessary and surplus But they don't get the surplus This is the labor process divided into these two aspects these two parts okay the necessary labor times a productivity would be the consumption to sustain those laborers so They perform let's say four days Times the wealth produced by those four days so we can put up here the little a is the wealth per unit necessary labor and Then that would be the consumption wealth to sustain the laborers, but they don't stop Marx is arguing people labor above and beyond the necessary and they do a surplus labor Times the I'm going to make the same a productivity and so they produce this surplus wealth Above and beyond their consumption and of course the total them would be the wealth produced in a society Okay, then the question is This part this aspect emanating from the necessary labor times its productivity that sustains the laborers The goods and services to sustain the people who are doing the necessary and surplus Then the question is who gets this extra wealth surplus who gets the extra wealth? Is it the same individuals that are producing it or is it a different set of individuals in? Capitalism where he spends where mark spends most of his time Analyzing the workers who produce this totality only get this amount The capitalists get this amount In communism to make the striking contrast the capitalism the workers produced this amount as they do in capitalism But in communism the workers as a collectivity not only produce it. They get it Okay, so there's the direct contract contrast between capitalism and communism in terms of this organization of Surplus I'm going to come back to that, but let me continue Why wouldn't anybody produce surplus? I mean once you introduce this you got a The logic is you could ask the question. Why would anybody produce produce an extra above and beyond what is necessary to sustain those laborers? It marks then theorize Theorizes and this is in volumes 2 and 3 of his great work capital that the surplus is necessary For a society to exist why well This extra wealth this surplus above and beyond necessary Provides the wherewithal for What kind of expression can I use for a social glue to exist in society to hold the society together? Because this is going to support those individuals in society Who provide the conditions of existence remember that that language that we use that provide the conditions of existence? the non-class processes Which will enable this organization of surplus to exist and be reproduced over time So there will be individuals in society other than these individuals who are doing necessary and surplus Who will do a different kind of labor very important labor. It's just a different kind of labor than these That label will produce political economic cultural processes Which will enable this kind of Class process that I just described to you to exist and to be reproduced over time. So those Those other individuals are you might call them initially enablers they are producing a set of non-class processes which Enable the class process to exist and be reproduced over time for example Some individual society may be producing religious ideas political ideas They may be producing tools and equipment and so forth So those various non-class processes why non-class because they're not directly They're not involved directly with the production in appropriation of surplus so they produce the the culture of religion the politics of the laws and the economics of Investment goods and so forth which enable this class structure once again to exist and be reproduced over time So each and every society Needs a surplus to support the laboring of those individuals Who provide again the conditions of existence of that surplus well the next step then Would have to be that this surplus here that has to be distributed To support all these politically economic and cultural these non-class processes Enabling the the surplus to exist in the first place. Okay now in your reading The organization this this surplus this production of surplus and This is new once again after consumption this production of the surplus and this Appropriation of the surplus is called the fundamental class process in your reading the distribution of the surplus is called the subsumed class process okay, and the individuals who get the surplus Called the fundamental class processes. I'm sorry. Let me do that again the individuals who appropriate the surplus Called the fundamental classes then have to take that surplus in Distributed that's called the subsumed class process To all those other individuals they are called subsumed classes who provide the conditions of existence of that Fundamental class process. Let me put that on the blackboard since that's a lot of words Race this we have a surplus Okay, so this refers to the fundamental class process a single process in which individuals Once again do necessary labor The yield of that is their consumption that do labor above that surplus that surplus is received Let's say by by another group then that surplus has to be distributed. That's the Subsumed class process. That's the distribution of it to support. I'll use a Greek letter That's a sigma to support all of the expenditures the subsumed class payments To whom to the subsumed classes who provide the conditions of existence of this so over here on the right hand side we have these individuals securing Let's call them non-class processes They get a cut of the surplus to help support them They produce and disseminate non-class processes politics Culture economics That is economics other than class Which provide the conditions of existence of the left-hand side? That's the logic of overdetermination, but of course the left-hand side also Supplies the condition of existence of the right-hand side in other words each side of the equation is both Cause and effect each over determines the other with deploying then are the logic we learned about the dialectic or over Determination to understand this class theory of society Okay Let me give you an example of this okay, let me start with with Capitalism our society in the United States today, so I'm going to use this I'm going to use this theory we just presented this overview to talk about then Capitalism consider the the Corporations in the United States industrial corporations Marx is claiming that the workers in working in those corporations. They produce a surplus quotes called gross profit and the surplus is received by a board of Directors why well the board of directors literally We're talking 20 22 people the board of directors in that corporation general electric they personify the corporation under the law The corporation is a person and the person is personified in its board of directors and then put the Politically and culturally and economically that small set of individuals receives the profit of the Corporation that is the surplus that the workers have produced