this is matthew
This is Matthew Remski 1 he posted something on TikTok about when one gets paid or is expected to pay. I thought it was worth highlighting, and I generally like what comes out of his brain.
In a passage in the fourth chapter of Capital, Marx states that in all countries where the capitalist mode of production prevails, it is customary not to pay for labor-power until it has been exercised — typically at the end of each week (then, month now).
Karl Marx, Capital, volume I (1867)
In every country in which the capitalist mode of production reigns, it is the custom not to pay for labour-power before it has been exercised for the period fixed by the contract, as for example, the end of each week. In all cases, therefore, the use-value of the labour-power is advanced to the capitalist: the labourer allows the buyer to consume it before he receives payment of the price; he everywhere gives credit to the capitalist.2
His point is that if you are a worker, i.e., you work for someone else, you always pay for your labor in advance. You work first, get paid later. You let the buyer consume the use-value before you’ve seen a penny.
He argues that we do everything to hide it from ourselves. The word “payday” has a happy ring to it. One is rewarded for a job well done, one gets a pension after a long working life, in some religions one has to wait for heaven. Getting paid somehow makes us forget that the surplus value has already been extracted – that we have already given away the credit. And at the same time, he says, we convince ourselves that credit is something only the big guys have, when the original credit in production comes from us.
Then he turns it around. Everything we pay for, we pay in advance. Rent, subscriptions, memberships. You’re supposed to be up on the first of the month and both offer your body on credit to the employer and have money to house yourself in advance. You have to trust that the boss will pay you in arrears – which means that you yourself cannot be trusted to work after you’ve been paid. But you have to trust the landlord in advance, that he won’t let the house fall into disrepair.
He points out that deferred payment was nothing new – the Romans had it for contracts and wages – but that the idea there was more moral, that you demonstrated your worth. Capitalism demands that it becomes structural and mechanical: the capitalist must gain control over your body before production, so that surplus value can be produced during the unpaid period.
What he concludes is that this order says something about the constantly rushed feeling of time. This gives the metaphor “hamster wheel” weight and explanation. And he finishes with a detail I hadn’t thought of: almost all proposals for basic income are designed to be paid out in advance, not in arrears, precisely to guarantee the right to exist in the future. Before, not after.
This also lays the foundation for an invisible bedrock in our culture: if then rewards.en - something I intend to write more about. And shows how it is fundamentally built on a lack of trust.
It also connects with what I write about business models – how things are presented as the obvious order when they actually only benefit someone else. But that connection is mine; the analysis itself is his.
Footnotes
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Source: Matthew Remski (TikTok @antifascistdad) — the specific clip, about Marx, time, and credit. Remski writes about “cults, capitalism, and hope” on matthewremski.com and Substack. ↩
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https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm ↩