Laconic Work About

Produce & Realise
1/3

There is this weird feeling I’m sure we all feel at some point in our lives, where you feel connected to something so distant from you. The newspaper that bears as the canvas for these screenprints lay grounds for one of these moments. The paper from the other side of the world has been transformed through its role in a specific process. I retrieved this newspaper from my place of work, where a certain singular commodity deemed precious enough comes wrapped in the newspaper from the Zhejiang provenance of China. I don’t know anything about the worker who wrapped this, whether it was one or many, male or female, child or adult; yet I feel some way connected. This newspaper exists as the only remnant of any information about the production process. The very little myself and my coworkers get to know about the commodities production comes from this newspaper. Have these workers in China thought of the person who tears away their cautiously wrapped newspaper? Was the newspaper read before it succumbed to cushion a certain economic process? I can’t help but feel mutually connected as we both exist as nodes within a process far out of our control. We have a shared interest, or should I say disinterest in this labour, yet we still wrap and unwrap these papers. We have no real choice. We either wrap and unwrap these newspapers or do the same for another company. The sole reason the commodity was wrapped was to ensure the accumulation of capital, the same reason it was unwrapped over 5,000 miles later. This accumulation of capital relies on two distinct yet interconnected processes, production & realisation. The newspaper was wrapped at the end of the commodities production process; it was then unwrapped just before the commodities value was realised on the market. The processes of production & realisation form a contradictory unity; you can't have one without the other. Together these differing elements form a whole in the name of capital accumulation.

Screenprint
Newspaper
50 x 35cm

2/3

The idea of a contradictory unity suggests that opposites are not simply isolated but related and necessary for each other's existence and development. On the one hand capitalism requires the endless production of commodities and profits to accumulate more and more capital. However, on the other hand if these commodities values are not realised on the market there will be no profits and therefore no capital accumulation. You cannot have one without the other. If you produce but don’t realise profits on the market your capital is sunk and the expansion of capital is not possible. Alternatively if you are realising profits on the market but there is no production the market will collapse from a lack of goods. There is an also constant pressure to reduce the turnover time of capital - the faster commodities are sold and replaced - the faster capital expands. There is a contradiction here as capitalism seeks to produce more and more commodities for the accumulation of capital, however for capital to expand profits have to be realised by the effective demand of consumers. In the process of production capitalists minimise wages to increase profits, but to realise these profits they need consumers with sufficient wages to spend on these goods. This forms a systemic tension which mechanisms of the state often attempt to resolve through welfare provision and credit expansion. The underlying instability of the relation between production and realisation is not solved but deferred. Each cycle of capital accumulation tries to overcome the contradiction but in doing so only amplifies it overtime.

Screenprint
Newspaper
50 x 35cm

3/3

Under capitalism each circuit of capital accumulation through the processes of production & realisation doesn’t simply return you to the same starting point. Capitals accumulation is not a closed loop but an ever widening spiral, each rotation lifting you higher and higher. Increasing investment, output, debt and potential for crisis. Expanding and expanding endlessly until crisis strikes. Hegel differentiates this idea of a ‘bad infinity’ from that of a ‘true infinity’. True infinity includes the finite, like a circle (O) that is closed and goes round returning to itself and finishing its path before continuing; unlike something endless. Bad infinity is always chasing some beyond reach, stuck in repetition without resolution. This infinite loop has no end goal, no completion, no final destination. The accumulation of capital has no endpoint, it’s logic is perpetual expansion or death. The necessity of growth leads to humans and nature not being treated as a part of life, but solely as raw materials to be fostered for endless accumulation. Capital accumulation undermines the very factors it needs for its own existence. Workers become alienated, nature deteriorates, society erodes; yet the cycle of accumulation must go on. In the process of expanding it destroys the conditions that make expansion possible. As many have stated previously; capitalism is like a cancer, growing and growing, until it eventually kills off its host and in turn itself.

Screenprint
Newspaper
50 x 35cm