Dead Labor, Homo Sacer, and
Letting Die in the Labor
Market
James A. Tyner
Abstract
Within philosophy, a long-standing debate has
addressed the moral distinction between ‘taking life’
and ‘letting die’. In this paper I re-situate this debate
within the context of the capitalist labor market.
Drawing on insights from both Marx and Agamben,
I re-theorize the figure of figure of homo sacer as a
(potentially) dead laborer to argue that an ideology
of ‘letting die’ is systemic to capitalism; however, our
legal, spiritual, and moral values, and the privileging
of ‘negative rights’, continue to promote the belief
that killing is morally worse.
Key Words: premature death, dead labor, homo
sacer, letting die, capitalism, Marxist Geography
Trabajo Muerto, Homo Sacer y Dejar Morir en
el Mercado de Trabajo
En la filosofía existe un largo debate acerca de la
distinción moral entre ‘quitar la vida’ y ‘dejar morir’.
En este artículo se re-sitúa el debate en el contexto del
mercado de trabajo capitalista. Basándome en ideas
de Marx y Agamben, re-teorizo la figura del Homo
Sacer como (potencial) trabajador/a muerto/a para ar-
gumentar que en el capitalismo existe una sistemática
ideología de ‘dejar morir’. Sin embargo, nuestros
valores legales, espirituales y morales, y el privilegio
de los ‘derechos negativos’ siguen promoviendo la
creencia de que asesinar es moralmente peor.
Department of Geography
Kent State University
Palabras clave: Muerte prematura, trabajo
muerto, Homo Sacer, dejar morir, capitalismo,
Geografía Marxista
Introduction
Karl Marx (1990), in his critique of capital-
ism conceived of ‘dead labor’ as labor power—the
expended energy—that is embodied within a thing,
whether that thing is a machine, a factory, or even
a piece of fruit. For Marx, the term ‘dead labor’ was
used metaphorically. However, in a series of articles,
Don Mitchell (2000, 2003, 2007; see also Kirsch and
Mitchell 2004) reworks Marx’s conception of ‘dead
labor’ and asks geographers to consider the concept in
less-than-metaphorical terms.
In a provocative chapter addressing the political
economy of California’s agricultural landscape, for
example, Mitchell (2003) considers the humble
strawberry. The strawberry, Mitchell (2003: 235)
writes, “says nothing of the labor that makes it; it
merely appears as just what it is, a complex biogene-
tic entity---a berry.” However, as a commodity, the
strawberry embodies the social relations of its own
production. These include, but are not limited to, the
labor involved in cultivating the agricultural fields; the
planting and harvesting of the crops; and the distribu-
tion of the berries. In short, commodities—such as the
strawberry—‘stabilize’ social relations; they are “‘dead
labor’, work ossified and made concrete” (Kirsch and
Mitchell 2007: 696).
35
Dead Labor
When considering the dialectics of dead labor,
however, it is important to remember that ‘dead labor’
itself is a social relation; and that all relations contain
their own inner contradictions. One of the contradic-
tions inherent within dead labor is within the realm
of both ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ bodies. Indeed, as
Mitchell’s work so clearly demonstrates, the labor
that is embodied by commodities—the living labor
that transforms dead labor into commodities—is fre-
quently injured or killed in the labor process. In other
words, living labor, through its working of dead labor
(i.e., commodities), may itself become (quite literally)
dead labor.
In this paper I respond to Mitchell’s suggestion
to take seriously—and literally—the idea of ‘dead
labor’. I do so through an engagement with a long-
standing philosophical debate, namely the moral
distinction between ‘taking life’ and ‘letting die’—a
distinction that resonates also with the legal division
between crimes of ‘omission’ and crimes of ‘commis-
sion’ (Rachels 1979; Green 1980; McMahan 1993;
Steinbock and Norcross 1994; Cartwright 1996;
Lippert-Rasmussen 2007; Asscher 2008). My task is
accomplished, on the one hand, by re-theorizing the
figure of homo sacer as a (potentially) dead laborer and,
on the other hand, by re-theorizing structural violence
as systemic and endemic to capitalism. In the end, I
hope to contribute both to recent calls for a more
peaceful geography (Megoran 2010, 2011; Inwood
and Tyner 2011; Ross 2011; Tyner and Inwood
2011; Williams and McConnell 2011) and a more
attenuated understanding of survivability (Heynen
2006; Kearns and Reid-Henry 2009; Mitchell and
Heynen 2009; McIntyre and Nast 2011; Yates 2011).
As scholars, educators, and activists, we recognize
that life depends on meeting material basic needs like
food, water, and shelter (Heynen 2006: 920). But this
recognition itself should necessitate a more ethical
approach to both our theoretical and empirical work
(Wright 2008, 2010). Jean Carmalt (2010, 296), for
example, suggests that we must challenge ourselves
to conduct our research with ethically appropriate
methodologies and to translate our scholarship into
political action, on the one hand, and to think through
the consequences of what we choose to study and the
36 Human Geography
theoretical frameworks we choose to engage. A serious
and sustained engagement with the valuation of life
and death within capitalism addresses both challenges.
Letting Die
It is often presumed that the act of killing is
morally worse than letting die. Such a presumption
hinges on our understanding of agency: to kill is
considered an action whereas letting die is perceived
as an omission, or lack of action. Furthermore, this
moral division is founded upon a distinction between
‘negative’ and ‘positive’ duties (cf. Davis 1994;
Lichtenberg 1994). On the one hand, we have duties
not to harm others, which require restraint; these are
termed negative duties. We also have, on the other
hand, positive duties whereupon we have duties (some
might say, obligations) to help others. All else being
equal, the obligation to not harm people is considered
to be more stringent than the obligation to benefit (or
even to help) people (Davis 1994: 301).
In law, religion, and medicine, negative duties to
not harm often outweigh positive duties (Steinbock
1994). Indeed, we are neither expected nor always
encouraged to engage in charitable or philanthropic
activities. If one does pursue these goals, fine; but
no one is punished for not pursuing positive duties.
In part, this attitude results from the fact that it
isn’t possible for a person to aid everyone who needs
help and, accordingly, we should not be expected to
try (Lichtenberg 1994: 214). Furthermore, negative
duties involve less sacrifice and are therefore ‘easier’ to
fulfill; to help others might necessitate an expenditure
of resources (e.g., time, money) whereas to refrain
from directly harming requires no such efforts. We
may readily see this as an exceptionally conservative
position, whereby with no moral guidance to affect
positive change, we necessarily reproduce the status
quo. However, as Lichtenberg (1994: 214) argues,
our inability to help everyone should not reduce our
obligation to help any particular person in specific sit-
uations; as such, positive duties should be as stringent
as one’s duty to not inflict physical injury.

Infringements on the duty to not kill are consid-
ered graver than infringements of the latter. Such a
position is predicated on the idea that killing exem-
plifies the extreme of two morally relevant factors:
certainty that one’s action will result in harm (death),
and minimal sacrifice needed to refrain (Lichtenberg
1994: 219). From this perspective, practices that
intentionally injure or kill—with the exception of both
capital punishment and declarations of ‘just’ war—
are significantly more serious than the state’s failure
to enact positive practices that aid its citizens. And
indeed, it is this distinction that designates extrajudi-
cial murder or war-rape as ‘crimes against humanity’
while the lack of providing adequate health care (i.e. a
structural inequality) is not considered to be a crime.
In the former situation, the state, for example, may
be found guilty through its perpetration of specific
practices that kill people; in the latter situation,
however, the lack of action is considered to be neither
morally nor legally wrong. In short, we are left with
the moral position that since we (apparently) did not
bring out the dismal conditions confronting other
members of society, we are neither morally nor legally
obligated to rectify those conditions; it is simply easier
to ‘blame the victim’ and rely on charitable actions.
Intentionality also is the pivot upon which ‘direct’
violence is distinguished from ‘structural’ violence,
where the former refers to concrete, visible acts
committed by and upon particular people while the
latter occurs as inequalities structured into society.
According to Galtung (1969: 171), this “distinction
is important when guilt is to be decided, since the
concept of guilt has been tied more to intention, both
in Judeo-Christian ethics and in Roman jurisprudence,
than to consequence (whereas the present definition of
violence is entirely located on the consequence side).”
More specifically, a focus on ‘intention’ as opposed to
‘guilt’ risks understating the level of violence within
any given society. As Galtung (1969: 170) explains,
“ethical systems directed against intended violence will
easily fail to capture structural violence in their nets.”
In the following sections, I will argue that social
relations structured within the capitalist labor market
ensure that some people—those reduced to bare
Volume 7, Number 1 2014
James A. Tyner
life—with be disallowed life through a process of
‘letting die’ and, accordingly, that ‘letting die’ should
be considered on an equal moral footing with killing.
More precisely, however, we will see that capitalism is
necessarily structurally violent and the attainment of a
more peaceful society requires a sustained critique and
transformation of capitalism itself.
Life in the Labor Market
A cherished ideal of American society is that of
the free (labor) market. Such an ideal consists of a
self-regulating market, free from governmental inter-
ference; an arena that is open to all potential buyers
and sellers and one where no individual buyer or seller
can determine the terms of exchange (Martinez 2009:
37). Of course, this portrayal of the labor market is
just that: a myth. Indeed, for many academics, the
ideal labor market has become a caricature of itself;
but it remains salient insofar as this mythical arena of
exchange is the site whereby the moral differentiation
of killing and letting die is manifest. Thus, while no
doubt familiar to many readers, it is important to think
through Marx’s critique of capitalism in anticipation
of future arguments.
Following Marx, therefore, I begin with the
abstract concept of the ‘commodity’. I do so because,
as Postone (1993: 44) writes, “this category refers not
only to a product but also to the most fundamental
structuring social form of capitalist society, a form
constituted by a historically determinate mode of
social practice.” Indeed, within the writings of Marx
the commodity is “presented as both the unexamined
material of day-to-day experience under capitalism
and the key to all of its riddles” (Read 2003: 32).
Consequently, following Wright (1999: 461), to
begin with the commodity is “to demonstrate that the
things of capital cannot be understood without seeing
their intimate relationship to the people who make
them.” This includes, as I argue, the moral distinction
between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’.
According to Marx, commodities have a dual
character, being composed of both ‘use values’ and
‘exchange values’. On the one hand, commodities, as
37
Dead Labor
products of human labor, possess some useful quality
for people and, on the other hand, commodities have
exchange values, in that one commodity may be
exchanged for another commodity. Marx explains,
however, that within capitalism (unlike, say, a barter
system), commodities are not simply exchanged (i.e.,
a shirt is exchanged for a bushel of corn). As Marx
(1990: 138) writes, these “are only commodities
because they have a dual nature, because they are at
the same time objects of utility and bearers of value.”
Marx argued that commodities are not exchanged
according to their degree of usefulness; instead, there
is a quantitative relation that appears in all com-
modities that facilities their exchange. This common
denominator, Marx concluded, was labor-power. Such
an argument is crucial in that it establishes a founda-
tion by which life is evaluated within capitalism. As
Marx (1990: 274) identifies, labor-power “exists only
as a capacity of the living individual. Its production
consequently presupposes his [sic] existence. Given
the existence of the individual, the production of
labor-power consists in his reproduction of himself or
his maintenance.”
Marx (1990: 188) writes, “Because all com-
modities, as values, are objectified human labor, and
therefore in themselves commensurable, their values
can be communally measured in one and the same
specific commodity, and this commodity can be
converted into the common measure of their values,
that is into money.” Consequently, the “process of
exchange is … accomplished through two metamor-
phoses of opposite yet complimentary character—the
conversion of the commodity into money, and the
re-conversion of the money into a commodity” (Marx
1990: 200). This is illustrated in Marx’s well-known
form: ‘Commodity-Money-Commodity’, or simply
C-M-C. The first transformation, C-M, represents
the conversion of a commodity into money (i.e., the
act of selling), while the second transformation, M-C
represents the conversion of money into a commodity
(i.e., the act of buying). Hence, this single process is
two-sided: from one pole, that of the commodity-
owner, it is a sale, and from the other pole, that of the
money-owner, it is a purchase (Marx 1990: 203).
38 Human Geography
Alongside this form of circulation is another form
of circulation: M-C-M, the transformation of money
into commodities, and the re-conversion of com-
modities into money (Marx 1990: 248). Whereas
the first circulation resulted in the exchange of com-
modities (albeit mediated through money), under the
second circulation there is an exchange of money for
money via commodities. And here, Marx (1990: 248)
finds the crucial component of capitalism in that “the
circulatory process of M-C-M would be absurd and
empty if the intention were, by using this roundabout
route, to exchange two equal sums of money.” Marx
(1990: 250) explains that “in the simple circulation
of commodities [C-M-C] the two extremes have the
same economic form. They are both commodities,
and commodities of equal value. But they are also
qualitatively different use-values, as for example corn
and clothes.” However, within the second circula-
tion, “both extremes have the same economic form.
They are both money, and therefore are not qualita-
tively different use values, for money is precisely the
converted form of commodities” (Marx 1990: 251).
Consequently, the “process M-C-M does not … owe
its content to any qualitative difference between its
extremes, for they are both money, but solely to quan-
titative changes” (Marx 1990: 251). As Harvey (2010:
85) writes, “M-C-M only makes sense if it results
in an increment of value,” this being surplus-value
and re-written as M-C-M’. Surplus-value is thus the
defining feature of capitalism. As Marx (1990: 254)
maintains, “Use-values must … never be treated as the
immediate aim of the capitalist.”
For Marx, commodities are exchanged not
according to their usefulness; rather, commodities
are exchanged according to how much labor-time
they take to produce. Stated differently, the value of
a commodity—and not its ‘price’—is determined by
the amount of labor-time necessary to produce that
commodity. The capitalist labor market, therefore,
appears as a system whereby a person’s capacity to
work becomes a commodity that can be bought and
sold on the market. In an oft-cited passage, Marx
(1990: 280) writes of this social space as “a very Eden
of the innate rights of man [sic]. It is the exclusive
realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham.”
He (p. 280) continues:

Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a
commodity, let us say of labor-power, are determined
only by their own free will. They contract as free
persons, who are equal before the law. Their contract
is the final result in which their joint will finds a
common legal expression. Equality, because each
enters into relation with each other, as with a simple
owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent
for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only
of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks
only to his own advantage.
As this quote well-illustrates, many of our
contemporary values and rights are grounded in
the waged labor market. Consider, for example, the
promotion of ‘freedom’ in the United States. It is
frequently claimed (usually by those on the far right
of the political spectrum) that participation in ‘the’
labor market—one’s right to sell his or her labor-
capacity—is a matter of free choice. Recall however the
distinction made between ‘positive rights’ and ‘negative
rights’. Positive rights permit or oblige action, whereas
negative rights permit or oblige inaction. In other
words, the promotion of positive rights is to actively
intervene: to create those conditions that allow one to
participate fully in society. The promotion of negative
rights, conversely, is to ensure that one is not denied
the right to participate within society. In the United
States, negative rights are promoted to the degree that
all members are to be allowed to participate in the
labor market; this is not the same as a provision of
equal participation, in that this ‘right’ only indicates
that the state will ensure that no one is prohibited
from participating. Stated bluntly, the state does not
guarantee (full) employment; it only guarantees (in
principle) that one is not prohibited from participat-
ing in the quest for employment.
Labor-capacity (or labor-power), following Marx
(1990: 270), is defined as “the aggregate of those mental
and physical capabilities existing in the physical form,
the living personality, of a human being, capabilities
which he [sic] sets in motion whenever he produces a
use-value of any kind.” However, “labor-power can
appear on the market as a commodity only if, and in so
far as, its possessor, the individual whose labor-power
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James A. Tyner
it is, offers it for sale or sells it as a commodity” (Marx
1990: 271). It is necessary, therefore, that structural
conditions are established to ensure the ‘free exchange’
of labor.
How labor-power was and remains incorporated
into the labor market is a complex historical process.
As Albritton (2009; see also Peck 1996) explains,
within capitalism people must participate in the labor
market and this enforcement is well illustrated by
Marx. Central to capitalism is the requirement that
the means of production come to be completely con-
trolled by capitalists, thereby excluding workers from
subsistence production. This entails the historical
process of separating workers from the means of pro-
duction and may be accomplished via the usurpation
of common property, enclosures of ‘common’ land;
and the destruction of domestic, artisanal production
(see also Harvey 2003; Glassman 2006; Li 2009;
Neocleous 2011; McIntyre 2011; Hall 2012). As Peck
(1996: 27) states rather bluntly, “in capitalist societies,
the preparedness of workers to offer their labor on
the labor market is largely secured by the systematic
erosion of possibilities of subsistence outside the wage
system.”
The historical transformation of social relations
embedded in and stemming from practices of
primitive accumulation mark not an elimination but
a transition from ‘direct’ to ‘structural’ violence.1 As
Marx (1990: 899) explains, “the silent compulsion of
economic relations sets the seal on the domination of
the capitalist over the worker. Direct extra-economic
force [i.e. direct violence] is still of course used, but
only in exceptional cases.” This marks the moment
whereby ‘living’ laborers become ‘dead’ laborers not
through direct violence but through a systemic process
of letting die.
As Marx (1990: 376) writes, “capitalist produc-
tion … not only produces a deterioration of human
labor-power by robbing it of its normal moral and
physical conditions of development and activity, but
also produces the premature exhaustion and death of
this labor-power itself.” Indeed, Marx wrote at length
on the direct harm caused to laborers by their being
39
Dead Labor
forced to work in injurious conditions and by the
failure of the employers—or society more generally—
to prevent suffering and premature death that could
easily and at little cost be prevented (cf. Harris 1974:
197). The class struggle over the value of labor-power,
consequently, must be seen as the fulcrum between
‘killing’ and ‘letting die’ within capitalist society.
Marx argued that the value of labor-power (wages)
is equal not to what a worker can produce (e.g., a
shirt) but instead to the labor-time necessary to make
up what it costs to keep the laborer and his or her
family alive, in other words: “the value of labor-power
is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for
the maintenance of its owner” (Marx 1990: 274).
As Harvey (2010: 103) elaborates, the “value of
labor-power is fixed … by the value of all of those
commodities that are needed to reproduce the laborer
in a given state of life.” This value, of course, is both
geographically and historically specific; of immediate
concern, however, is the generation of surplus-value
vis-à-vis the valuation of labor-power and how this
translates into the worth of both individuals and
classes of individuals.
Within the production process, capitalists
combine the means of production (e.g., machinery
and raw materials) with labor-power (purchased on
the labor market) in order to transform materials into
commodities (use-values) for exchange. The exchange-
value of the commodity, consequently, is composed
of two parts: constant capital and variable capital.
Constant capital is past labor—the aforementioned
‘dead labor’—already congealed in commodities that
are used as means of production in a current labor
process; variable capital, conversely, is ‘living labor’
(Harvey 2010: 128). As Marx explains, variable
capital is added in the process of production and is
thus the source of surplus-value (i.e., profit). The
increase in value accruing from variable capital occurs
in two forms. On the one hand, ‘dead labor’ is passed
on into the value of the new commodity and, on the
other hand, laborers add value by congealing ‘socially
necessary labor-time into the commodity’ (Harvey
2010: 129).
40 Human Geography
This assertion requires further elaboration. When
capitalists purchase labor-power—the capacity to
work—they do so on two conditions: first, that the
laborer works under the control of the capitalist to
whom his or her labor belongs and, second, that the
product is the property of the capitalist and not that
of the worker (Marx 1990: 291-292). In so doing, the
capitalist is able to “produce a commodity greater in
value than the sum of the values of the commodities
used to produce it, namely the means of production
and the labor-power he [sic] purchased with his good
money on the open market” (Marx 1990: 293).
Therein lies the original source of surplus-value, in
that “by incorporating living labor into their lifeless
objectivity, the capitalist simultaneously transforms
value, i.e., past labor in its objectified and lifeless
form, into capital, value which can perform its own
valorization process” (Marx 1990: 302). In effect,
according to Marx, the exploitation of labor—which
entails the metamorphosis of ‘living’ labor into ‘dead’
labor—is perfectly just within capitalism.
To clarify this process, Marx distinguishes between
‘necessary labor time’ and ‘socially necessary labor
time.’ He explains that necessary labor time is that
amount required to reproduce the laborer and his or
her family; this is, as indicated above, the ‘value of
labor-power’ and is used to determine wages. Workers,
for example, may produce enough value in six hours
to offset their reproduction. Capitalists, however,
purchase labor-power for a full day’s work, say, ten
hours. The remaining four hours, Marx argues, appear
as absolute surplus labor time.
Marx argues that all value (including surplus value
or profit) is created by labor, and that surplus value is
brought about by the exploitation of direct or living
labor (Saad and Filho 2010: 34). Initially, greater profit
may be derived from extending the working-day. Thus,
if the labor-power purchased by the capitalist is twelve
hours, rather than the aforementioned ten hours, then
an additional two hours of surplus value are created.
The prolongation of the working day, according to
Marx (1990: 645), “forms the general foundation of
the capitalist system.”

There are, however, significant limits on the extent
to which capitalism can depend on the production of
absolute surplus value; the working day, for example,
can only be extended so long. Moreover, the extension
of the working day “produces the premature exhaus-
tion and death of this labor-power itself ” (Marx 1990:
376). It is not necessarily that the capitalist evinces
concern over the plight of any given worker; rather,
if “the unnatural extension of the working day, which
capital necessarily strives for in its unmeasured drive
for self-valorization, shortens the life of the individual
worker, and therefore the duration of his labor-power,
the forces used up have to be replaced more rapidly,
and it will be more expensive to reproduce labor-pow-
er” (Marx 1990: 377). Consequently, other means of
increasing profit, defined by Marx as ‘relative surplus
value’, must be sought.
For Marx, it was not therefore ‘necessary’ labor
time that was the root of labor-power’s value; rather
it was socially necessary labor time. Defined by Marx
(1990: 129) as “the labor-time required to produce
any use-value under the conditions of production
normal for a given society and with the average degree
of skilled and intensity of labor prevalent in that
society,” a consideration of socially necessary labor
time transfers the level of argument from any indi-
vidual capitalist to society as a whole. This is possible
because, as Fine and Saad-Filho (2010: 38) explain,
“production of relative surplus value depends criti-
cally upon all capitalists, since none alone produces
a significant proportion of the commodities required
for the reproduction of the working class.”
Simply put, an increase in average productiv-
ity increases the average number of commodities
produced per unit of time; it thereby decreases the
amount of socially necessary labor time required for
the production of a single commodity and, hence, the
value of each commodity (Postone 1993: 193) With
an increase in the productivity of labor—through re-
finements of the division of labor or the introduction
of machinery—the value of labor-power falls and the
portion of the working day necessary for the repro-
duction of that value will be shortened. Capital thus
“has an immanent drive, and a constant tendency,
Volume 7, Number 1 2014
James A. Tyner
towards increasing the productivity of labor, in order
to cheapen commodities and, by cheapening com-
modities, to cheapen the worker himself [sic]” (Marx
1990: 436-437).
Harvey argues that at this point “we now can see
more clearly why a world of equality, freedom and in-
dividuality in the arena of exchange conceals a world of
class struggle” (2006, 30). Moreover, by moving from
the level of the individual to that of class we clearly see
how violence has both a “historical and moral element”
in capitalism. Here we see an originary moment of
structural violence within capitalism. As Marx (Marx
1990: 381) explains, “under free competition, the
immanent laws of capitalist production confront the
individual capitalist as a coercive force external to him.”
The violence of capitalism—imminently visible in the
form of primitive accumulation—becomes fetishized
beneath the supposed free exchange of labor. Any
given capitalist is no longer viewed as intentionally or
personally inflicting violence upon his or her workers;
direct violence gives way to structural violence. This
structural violence is therefore socially necessary to the
perpetuation of capital.
Marx (1990: 275) writes that if the worker’s
“appearance in the market is to be continuous, and
the continuous transformation of money into capital
assumes this, the seller of labor-power must perpetu-
ate himself [sic].” However, in anticipation of later
arguments, this transformation occurs as long as the
class of laborers perpetuates itself; it does not matter
if any individual laborer sells his or her labor-power,
as long as someone can replace the first worker. It is
permissible that some may die as long as the class as a
whole continues. This, in turn, relates back to the idea
of socially necessary labor time in that “… the sum of
means of subsistence necessary for the production of
labor-power must include the means necessary for the
worker’s replacements i.e., his [sic] children, in order
that this race of peculiar commodity-owners may per-
petuate its presence on the market” (Marx 1990: 275).
Consumption by any given worker is necessary not
simply for his or her individual survival; it becomes
necessary for capital itself.
41
Dead Labor
Following Marx (1990: 717), “the worker’s con-
sumption is of two kinds. While producing he [sic]
consumes the means of production [dead labor] with
his labor, and converts them into products [com-
modities] with a higher value than that of the capital
advanced. This is his production consumption…. On
the other hand, the worker uses the money paid to
him for his labor-power [wages] to buy the means of
subsistence; this is his individual consumption.” In
turn, Marx (1990: 717) argues, “the worker’s produc-
tion consumption and his individual consumption are
therefore totally distinct. In the former, he acts as the
motive power of capital, and belongs to the capital-
ist. In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs
his necessary vital functions outside the production
process. The result of the first kind of consumption is
that the capitalist continues to live, of the second, that
the worker himself continues to live.” Note, however,
that the ability of the worker to continue to live is
dependent upon the wages received—the amount
of exploitation—from the capitalist. Crucially, this
determination, as Marx (1990: 275) well-understood,
“contains a historical and moral element.” It is this
condition of capitalism that I now turn.
Death in the Labor Market
The exchange between labor and capital, where
workers are forced by their very survival needs to seek
employment, is readily and routinely portrayed as a
fair exchange between two equal partners (D’Amato
2006: 55). Of course, such a portrayal—of a fair
exchange of a day’s labor for a day’s wage—is anything
but fair. As indicated earlier, no ‘surplus value’ is added
to commodities during the process of circulation—
C-M-C—but instead originates in the process of
production: the difference between socially necessary
labor time and surplus labor time. In turn, “capital asks
no questions about the length of life of labor-power.
What interests it is purely and simply the maximum
of labor-power that can be set in motion in a working
day. It attains this objective by shortening the life
of labor-power, in the same way as a greedy farmer
snatches more produce from the soil by robbing it of
its fertility” (Marx 1990: 376).
42 Human Geography
That said, capitalists cannot (usually) consign
their laborers to a premature death. Indeed, Marx
(1990: 348) recognized that the health and fitness
of the working class is often a matter of considerable
state interest. It often becomes necessary for both the
‘state’ and the capitalist to limit the exploitation and
degradation of the living worker, if only to facilitate
the production of the next generation of workers (see,
for example, Harvey 2010: 141-142).
How though might this exchange operate if it
were truly ‘open’ and unregulated? Albritton (2009:
37) provides a particularly apt summary of life and
death in the capitalist labor market:
A completely commodified labour market would
be managed completely by the wage rate, which in turn
is a result of the supply of and demand for workers. A
large supply of workers relative to demand will lead to
lower and lower wage rates. If this situation continues,
wages will eventually fall below bare physical sub-
sistence and workers will die off, until their supply
shrinks enough to once again push wages to a level at
or above subsistence.
In other words, a pure, completely commodified
capitalist labor market would necessarily operate
on the basis of letting die a certain proportion of
workers. In theory, the inability to survive within the
labor market would operate as a biological regula-
tory mechanism, not unlike ecosystems. Of course,
given the vagaries of the capitalism, it is not always
profitable to have excess labor die off. At times, when
capital is rapidly expanding, additional workers are
required immediately. Capitalists cannot wait for
additional workers to be born, raised, trained, and
inserted into the labor market. Consequently, this is
one reason (among others) why it is advantageous to
capitalism to have a reserve supply of labor waiting
in the wings. As Harvey (2010: 145-146) notes, the
existence of a surplus population permits capitalists
to super-exploit their workers without regard for their
health or well-being; consequently, a surplus popula-
tion affects whether the capitalist has to care about
the health, well-being and life expectancy of the labor

force (see also Li 2009; McIntyre 2011; McIntyre and
Nast 2011; Merrill 2011; Yates 2011; Tyner 2013).
No labor market has ever been completely
commodified and, in fact, throughout much of
the twentieth-century many capitalist societies—
including the United States—witnessed attempts to
de-commodify the labor market. Governmental inter-
vention, in the form of ‘safety nets’ such as welfare,
social security, and Medicaid, worked to (literally) keep
workers alive in economic down-turns. Likewise, the
formation of unions and other forms of community
organizing achieved modest gains in the improvement
of workers’ lives (Albritton 2009). The pendulum,
though, is once again moving. Under neoliberalism
we are witnessing a re-commodification of the labor
market. Thus, “although couched in the ostensibly
apolitical discourse of free markets, competition, and
flexibility, neoliberal attempts at deregulating the labor
market have been associated with an unprecedented
attack on the social and working conditions of labor”
(Peck 1996: 2).
Critics of capitalism, from Marx to Polanyi to
Marshall, have long understood that labor is a fictive
commodity. However, as Peck (1996: 3) finds, “if the
reading of the labor market as a commodity market is
a fiction, it is a powerful fiction.” He (p. 3) explains
further that such an unfettered faith in the market
gives rise to the presumption that “the market gives
people what they deserve.” In other words, those who
fail—the impoverished, the homeless, the destitute—
do so (presumably) because of their own poor decisions
and personal failings. These presumptions have only
deepened within the neoliberal state: the gutting of
social welfare programs and the withdrawal of public
and corporate support for the social wage (Katz 2001).
Indeed, as Nadesan (2008: 32) concludes, neoliberal
promoters hold that the “market’s role in producing
inequality is an unfortunate, unforeseen, and un-
intended consequence” and is therefore a condition
“that should not be redressed through government
intervention.”
To bring this argument full circle, we are left
with the unpalatable proposition forwarded by con-
Volume 7, Number 1 2014
James A. Tyner
servatives and proponents of neoliberalism (among
others) that people fail in the market not because
of systemic inequalities or inherent exploitation,
but rather because of individual limitations, poor
decision-making, and (possibly) bad luck. And while
positive duties (e.g., charity and philanthropy) may be
promoted to temper some of these inequalities, there is
no obligation on behalf of either capitalists or the state
to intervene. This point cannot be over-emphasized.
Under the myth of the free market, coupled with a
long-standing tradition to privilege negative duties
over positive duties, we have in place a system that is
inherently and intentionally oppressive with respect to
one’s survivability.
Homo Sacer as Worker
The concept of the ‘state of exception’ provides
insight into the structural violence of the capitalist
labor market and, by extension, an understanding
into the calculated valuation and management of life
and death. We begin with the paradox of sovereignty,
namely that the sovereign is both outside and inside
the juridical order. This sovereign exception is readily
understood when one considers that the sovereign,
such as a king or president (or ‘government’, more
broadly), is not subject to the same laws and regula-
tions as are other citizens (Murray 2010: 60). Given
that the sovereign has the legal power to suspend the
validity of law, the sovereign may also situate itself
outside of law. This produces a fetishized state of
exception whereby law may be suspended under the
guise of society’s protection from internal or external
threats. The sovereign, through this practice, presents
itself as justified in suspending law, while promising
to reinstitute law when the threat is reduced or elimi-
nated. For Agamben (1998: 16), therefore, the essence
of sovereignty is not the monopoly to sanction but
rather the monopoly to decide: to decide when, or
where, or to who law is to apply.
Nowhere is this exception more salient than in the
presumed right over life and death, in the legal dis-
tinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’. Following
Foucault, the right of life and death was one of the
sovereign’s basic attributes. In other words, to say that
43
Dead Labor
“the sovereign has a right of life and death means that
he can … either have people put to death or let them
live.” Life and death, therefore, are removed from
the realm of the ‘natural’ and fall within the field of
governance. Foucault suggests, also, that the sovereign
cannot grant life in the same way that he or she can
inflict death. The right of life and death, therefore, “is
always exercised in an unbalanced way: the balance
is always tipped in favor of death.” Consequently,
the “very essence of the right of life and death is
actually the right to kill: it is at the moment when
the sovereign can kill that he exercises his right over
life.” (Foucault 2003: 240). According to Foucault,
however, the ancient right to take life or to let live
was gradually replaced by a power to foster life or to
disallow life to the point of death (1990: 138). The old
power of death that symbolized sovereign power was
supplanted—but not entirely erased—by a ‘calculated
management of life” (Foucault 1990: 140).
The right over life and death, much like the
determination of the value of labor-power, are both
historically and morally constituted. As Marx (1969-
1970) argued, “Right can never be higher than the
economic structure of society and its cultural develop-
ment conditioned thereby.” In other words, the only
principles of justice which are appropriate to judging
a particular event or action are those that both cor-
respond to, and sustain and legitimate, any particular
mode of production (Geras 1985: 51). Within capital-
ism, the exploitation of workers—the reduction of life
to that which is socially necessary—is not considered
criminal. Within capitalism, whereby “the lowest and
the only necessary wage-rate is that providing for
the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his
work and as much more as is necessary for him [sic]
to support a family and for the [class] of laborers not
to die out” (Marx 1988: 20) is considered a ‘free’ and
‘equal’ condition of existence.
Marx’s (1990: 988) argument that “living labor …
ceases to be anything more than a means by which
to increase, and thereby capitalize, already existing
values” resonates with the work of Giorgio Agamben
and, specifically, his well-discussed reworking of
the figure of homo sacer. Briefly stated, Homo sacer,
44 Human Geography
according to classical Roman law, constitutes ‘bare life’,
a threshold position between zoē and bios, the former
term designating “the simple fact of living common
to all living things” (Agamben 1998: 1) and the latter,
bios, representing a collective and qualified life—that
which emerges when life enters the polis, or political
space. One who was reduced to bare life occupied a
liminal position, similar in this respect to that of the
sovereign: Bare life remains included in politics in the
form of the exception, that is, as something that is
included solely through an exclusion (Agamben 1998:
11). For homo sacer, however, the operative principle
was that he or she could be killed with impunity, one
whose death constituted neither homicide nor sacrifice.
Returning to our understanding of sovereignty, what
is conceived within the sovereign ban is a human who
may be killed but not sacrificed (Agamben 1998: 83).
Homo sacer inhabits a political space that is simultane-
ously placed outside of human jurisdiction without
being brought into the realm of divine law.
Agamben (1998: 114) holds that “what confronts
us today is a life that as such is exposed to a violence
without precedent precisely in the most profane and
banal ways.” The violence, to which Agamben writes,
however, is a structural violence that is contingent
upon the valuation of labor-power. In the following
penultimate section I reposition the figure of homo
sacer next to that of ‘dead laborers’, arguing that life
and death in contemporary society must be under-
stood within the context of a totality determined by
capitalist social relations.
Homo Sacer as Dead Laborers
In a seducing—but ultimately misleading—quote,
Agamben (1998: 115) suggests that “If today there is
no longer any one clear figure of the sacred man [sic],
it is perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.”
We are not however all virtually homines sacri; for we
are occupying different relations within capitalism.
The structural violence, defined by Galtung (1969:
171) as social injustice, that permeates—indeed,
constitutes—our contemporary state of exception is
unevenly experienced, for the calculated valuation and
management of life and death ensures that survival

operates on an uneven playing field. This playing field
is, in fact, the waged-labor market, a violent social
arena whereby the condition of ‘letting die’ holds sway.
Within capitalism, there is no positive ‘right’ to full
and gainful employment; instead, only the negative
‘right’ to not be prohibited from working is guaran-
teed—a point well-made by Engles (2005: 115): “…
no one guarantees [the worker] a subsistence, he [sic]
is in danger of being repudiated at any moment by his
master … and left to die of starvation, if the [capitalist
class] ceases to have an interest in his employment,
his existence.” As Barkan (2009: 256) writes, “life,
once politicized as necessary for the accumulation of
capital, becomes expendable at that moment when it
no longer assists in the circulation of value.” Those
who are expendable, in other words, may be left to die
with impunity.
According to Cartwright (1996: 354), a plausible
account of the difference between ‘killing’ and ‘letting
die’ may be that one kills someone if one initiates a
causal sequence that ends in one’s death, whereas one
lets another die if one allows an already existing causal
sequence to culminate in that person’s death. In effect,
Cartwright is addressing the broader context, or
conditions, that may result in pre-mature death. These
conditions fall under the rubric of structural violence
and are inherent to capitalism. Historically, capitalists
have shown little or no interest in the health of their
workers of their general quality of life, unless forced
to do so by the mobilization of workers, or by legisla-
tion, or by profit considerations (Albritton 2009: 27).
Marx (1990: 381) is clear on this point: “Capital …
takes no account of the health and the length of life of
the worker, unless society forces it to do so. Its answer
to the outcry about the physical and mental degrada-
tion, the premature death, the torture of over-work, is
this: Should that pain trouble us, since it increases our
pleasure (profit)?”
Marx’s (and Engels’) point is not simply that
capitalism is violent; rather, his critique lies in the
assertion that as long as capitalism exists, struc-
tural violence is both necessary and unavoidable;
and that capitalism causes unnecessary and avoidable
premature death (see Buchanan 1987: 125). That
Volume 7, Number 1 2014
James A. Tyner
these structural conditions are not considered criminal
is therefore a reflection of how crime and violence
are also ‘historically and morally determined’. For as
Marx recognized, the standards of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’,
of positive and negative duties, are not transhistorical
but rather conditioned by the dominant economic
(and hence legal) relations of society. This, ultimately,
is the point raised by Engels (2005: 127) towards
the conclusion of his magisterial The Condition of the
Working Class of England:
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon
another, such injury that death results, we call the deed
manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance
that the injury would be fatal, we call hi deed murder.
But when society places hundreds of proletarians in
such a position that they inevitably meet a too early
and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much
a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet;
when it deprives them thousands of the necessaries
of life, places them under conditions in which they
cannot live—forces them, through the strong arm of
the law, to remain in such conditions until that death
ensues which is the inevitable consequence—knows
that these thousands of victims must perish, and
yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is
murder just as surely as the deed of a single individual;
disguised, malicious murder, murder against which
none can defend himself, which does not seem what
it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the
death of the victim seems a natural once, since the
offence is more one of omission than of commission.
But murder it remains.
Conclusions
I began this paper by heeding Don Mitchell’s call
to re-consider Marx’s conception of ‘dead labor’; to
think seriously how ‘living’ laborers become ‘dead’
laborers. I have done so through a critique of the
moral distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’
from the standpoint of Marx’s critique of capitalism.
The ‘commodity’, that which personifies the metamor-
phosis of living labor into dead labor, also fetishizes
the structural violence that is intrinsic to capitalism.
What appears as an equal exchange within a ‘free’
45
Dead Labor
market is simply that: an appearance. In so doing, I
have recast our understanding of structural violence as
something that is historically and morally conditioned
by capitalism itself; that violence is not transhistorical
but conditioned by dominant economic relations;
and that our current conception of positive and
negative rights and duties are conditioned specifically
by our acceptance, and promotion, of the capitalist
wage-relation as something that is ‘free’ and ‘equal’. I
have argued that ‘letting die’ is on moral footing with
‘killing’, and yet has been fetishized by the myth of
the free market. This matters, both conceptually and
politically, for if, as Norcross (1994: 22-23) writes,
“there is no morally significant difference between
killing and letting die, it is that much harder to justify
our neglect of the underprivileged, both in our own
country and abroad. We might well be forced to
conclude that most of us who possess even modest
resources are seriously at fault for not doing more to
help others.”
My call to Mitchell, finally, is positioned within
the on-going efforts by Geographers to promote a
more peaceful society. I argue, however, that such
efforts must extend beyond questions of war and
armed conflict to engage directly with capitalism. The
promotion of a more peaceful, non-violent society
requires an analytical approach that acknowledges
that the problem of violence in contemporary society
is structural rather than abstractly moral or concretely
political. Consider, for example, the well-established
distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ peace.
In its negative function, peace implies the preven-
tion, or elimination of some pending or existing
violence. Such practices may include the deployment
of military forces or the local police. Positive peace,
conversely, involve actions concerned with a just and
humane world; practices include those that encourage
the development of social, political, and legal institu-
tions that address underlying causes of violence. At
this point, the connections between ‘positive’ and
‘negative’ peace and between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’
duties should be clear; likewise, the extension of
differing ‘peace’ practices and the moral distinction
between the act of killing and the act of letting die
should be obvious. We can readily perceive that simply
46 Human Geography
the promotion of negative peace—the elimination
of direct violence—does nothing in and of itself to
promote positive peace (e.g. the elimination of struc-
tural violence). Forwarding a conservative position
of negative duties, while neglecting the salience of
positive duties, forecloses efforts to transform unjust
systems and may promote additional suffering (cf.
Ross 2011). That capitalism is necessarily violent
suggests that any peace agenda must necessarily call
for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are extended to Dick Peet, Don Mitchell,
Nik Heynen, Melissa Wright, Joshua Inwood, Alex
Colucci, and Sam Henkin for critical comments
on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Any errors that
remain are entirely my own.
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