Reflexivity of class relationships - quotes please!

The dialectic of capital can only function insofar as it can impose itself as a second order mediation of human praxis; that is, only insofar as it can subordinate human labour to its own ends and purposes and thereby impose the ontological inversion whereby capital becomes the object/subject. But there is no guarantee of this subordination. Capital can never be certain of imposing its logic on human society. It must always and repeatedly confront the potential class subjectivity of the working class.

labour-power must be reduced to variable capital. But this presupposes the worker as both a free subject and as non-capital. Unlike the slave or the serf, the worker must be posited as a free individual -- free to enter the market to sell her labour power to anyone she pleases, and free to spend her wages on anything she may fancy. So, if capital is to treat the worker as object -- as means to its own ends -- it must first, and repeatedly, posit labour as subject and as such its own, potentially antagonistic, opposite.

The subjectivity of worker therefore repeatedly stands opposed to that of capital and must be repeatedly subsumed to capital within the process of production. Yet this subsumption not inevitable; the contradiction between capital and labour is not necessarily resolved within a closed dialectic of capital. The workers may resist and seek to impose their own will and purpose on production over and against that of capital. The dialectic of capital must be taken as radically open.