Book contents
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Chapter Four - The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2022
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Capital exists in a great variety of forms and configurations both historically and in the contemporary period. Yet, appropriate concepts and frameworks for capturing this diversity remain underdeveloped. This chapter argues that a fruitful methodological approach to grapple with this diversity of capital is by deploying a key but underexplored concept in Marx of ‘fraktions’ – fractions of capital. This concept highlights a relatively cohesive group within a class having a comparatively distinct location within the process of capitalist social reproduction and concrete sociopolitical interests which may be contradictory to other strata, even as it shares with them the same relationship to productive property and the process of accumulation. The chapter proposes three dimensions along which fractions within a class can be identified: a spatial dimension which identifies capital-accumulating classes in various locations; a scalar dimension which highlights the existence of capital at different scales of operation and a social origin dimension, which recognizes that modern capitalist classes transmute from prior social groups and that their origins stamp their current form in determinate ways. Using this framework and drawing from a variety of examples from the Global South, including the author's own fieldwork in rural and small-town Pakistani Punjab, the analysis highlights how a more concrete study of the different forms of capital can be undertaken which is sensitive to both the specificities of capital in different contexts as well as the threads that bind social groups despite their diversities.
Introduction
One of the main criticisms levelled against Marx's conception of class is its highly abstract nature. Throughout much of the three volumes of Capital, as well as in his most widely read works, he simplifies the class structure of capitalist society to the bourgeoisie and proletariat, sometimes including ‘landowners’ as a separate group. This simplified schema was obviously created as a necessary abstraction since the subject matter of Capital is not the concrete class structure of specific capitalist societies but an analysis of the ‘laws of motion’ – to use his own expression – of capital in general.
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- Marx in the Field , pp. 49 - 62Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021