concrete labour refers to the use-value that is made. so the concrete labour of shoe-making makes a use-value in the form of a shoe. general/abstract labour is labour in general, i.e. labour without reference the concrete activity of labour (now I am sure others can give a better and more detailed version). the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value. without abstract labour there would be no capital.
concrete labour refers to the use-value that is made. so the concrete labour of shoe-making makes a use-value in the form of a shoe. general/abstract labour is labour in general, i.e. labour without reference the concrete activity of labour (now I am sure others can give a better and more detailed version). the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value. without abstract labour there would be no capital.
can someone explain the difference between these two like I'm five years old? I mean, really, truly, condescend to me.
Khawaga
concrete labour refers to the use-value that is made. so the concrete labour of shoe-making makes a use-value in the form of a shoe. general/abstract labour is labour in general, i.e. labour without reference the concrete activity of labour (now I am sure others can give a better and more detailed version). the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value. without abstract labour there would be no capital.
If yoda understands Khawaga's simple explanation for five year olds, I obviously need the eighteen-month-old, barely-off-the-teat version.
I'd prefer one that uses Janet and John, say, like:
Janet spends 10 hours making a pair of shoes. John spends 5 hours making a box of cakes.
Is the 'concrete labour' 15 hours? Or is it an average like 7.5 hours?
And what is the 'abstract labour'? Or does that require a third character, like Jeremy the Boss, to explain an exploitative relationship?
I know this sounds like a piss-take, but I'm deadly serious. I'm sure many others hesitate to ask these questions about Marxist economic categories, for fear of looking stupid.
Well, I'm fearless. But stupid, nevertheless. I, for one, need your educational efforts.
In that example Janet and John are both expending concrete labour- a specific type of labour of a specific person.
The concept of abstract labour requires a third character: the entire working class. I.e. the abstract labour of the working class as a whole creates everything. With the amount of abstract socially necessary labour time corresponding to the value of goods created.
The concept of abstract labour requires a third character: the entire working class.
Right, so to continue the 'Janet & John' theme, if we let J&J stand for the entire working class, and give J&J the surname 'Smith', then 'abstract labour' relates to 'the Smiths', not J&J as individuals.
Steven
With the amount of abstract socially necessary labour time corresponding to the value of goods created.
So, the value of goods created by the two workers, J&J, was by 15 hours 'concrete labour'.
And... the Smith family created 15 hours of 'abstract labour'.
Hmmm.... I am missing something? It doesn't seem too profound to me.
I think you know personally, Steven, from other threads, that I am serious about this problem. If you remember, I likened 'value' in Marx's ideas to 'grace' in the Catholic church.
I want to be wrong about Marx, and I'm even prepared to accept that I have a particular blindspot about this issue, but I'm still keen to seek the 'revealed truth'!
The concept of abstract labour requires a third character: the entire working class.
Right, so to continue the 'Janet & John' theme, if we let J&J stand for the entire working class, and give J&J the surname 'Smith', then 'abstract labour' relates to 'the Smiths', not J&J as individuals.
exactly, and not just to the labour of shoemaking in particular but any labour.
Steven
With the amount of abstract socially necessary labour time corresponding to the value of goods created.
So, the value of goods created by the two workers, J&J, was by 15 hours 'concrete labour'.
And... the Smith family created 15 hours of 'abstract labour'.
Hmmm.... I am missing something? It doesn't seem too profound to me.
yes, you are missing something. Because of course Janet and John are not the entire working class.
If Janet spends 10 hours making a pair of shoes, they do not have 10 hours of value in them necessarily. The value they embody is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour which makes them up. So if most shoes are made using machines, only requiring in total 30 min of average labour time, they embody the value of 30 min labour, not 10 hours.
You dig?
I think you know personally, Steven, from other threads, that I am serious about this problem. If you remember, I likened 'value' in Marx's ideas to 'grace' in the Catholic church.
I want to be wrong about Marx, and I'm even prepared to accept that I have a particular blindspot about this issue, but I'm still keen to seek the 'revealed truth'!
yeah, I think you misunderstand a couple of aspects.
I think what capital volume 1 does very well is explain how labour is the source of value, and how basically capitalism is entirely based on the exploitation of workers, following the violent creation of a dispossessed working class.
yes, you are missing something. Because of course Janet and John are not the entire working class.
But for the purposes of this explanation, why can't the concept of 'the Smiths' represent the collectivity of the proletariat?
Steven
If Janet spends 10 hours making a pair of shoes, they do not have 10 hours of value in them necessarily. The value they embody is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour which makes them up. So if most shoes are made using machines, only requiring in total 30 min of average labour time, they embody the value of 30 min labour, not 10 hours.
You dig?
No, I understand that if someone else, say Janet's cousin Jacqui, has a sewing machine, then Janet's 10 hours do not produce 10 hours of value. But, for the purposes of this discussion, why introduce the complexity of a sewing machine?
Surely, if Jacqui and her sewing machine don't exist, thus leaving the original two-member Smith family, one can still use the concepts of 'concrete' and 'abstract' labour to say something?
I'm still digless, I'm afraid.
Steven
I think what capital volume 1 does very well is explain how labour is the source of value, and how basically capitalism is entirely based on the exploitation of workers, following the violent creation of a dispossessed working class.
Yeah, I agree labour is the source of value, that capitalism is the structural exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, and I know about the clearances and enclosures.
What I don't get is Khawaga's explanation that "the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value".
Why can't the simple Smith family model be used to explain the relationship between abstract/concrete labour and value/use value?
The more people have to add greater complexity to a simple question, the more I'm reminded of the introduction of eccentrics, epicycles and equants into the defence of the Ptolemaic geocentric model.
yes, you are missing something. Because of course Janet and John are not the entire working class.
But for the purposes of this explanation, why can't the concept of 'the Smiths' represent the collectivity of the proletariat?
unfortunately the real world is more complicated than the workings of two people.
However, if you want to shoehorn this discussion into these two people then you have to use the example of say Janet making shoes by hand in 10 hours, and John making one with a machine in an hour- both would embody the same value, as value is determined by socially necessary labour time.
No, I understand that if someone else, say Janet's cousin Jacqui, has a sewing machine, then Janet's 10 hours do not produce 10 hours of value. But, for the purposes of this discussion, why introduce the complexity of a sewing machine?
because the real world has sewing machines in it.
Surely, if Jacqui and her sewing machine don't exist, thus leaving the original two-member Smith family, one can still use the concepts of 'concrete' and 'abstract' labour to say something?
yes - as explained above.
Steven
I think what capital volume 1 does very well is explain how labour is the source of value, and how basically capitalism is entirely based on the exploitation of workers, following the violent creation of a dispossessed working class.
Yeah, I agree labour is the source of value, that capitalism is the structural exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, and I know about the clearances and enclosures.
that being the case, I don't see your issue with Marx's concept of value. He demonstrates and evidences this clearly. So I don't understand your Catholicism references and general antipathy. But maybe that's for another thread
What I don't get is Khawaga's explanation that "the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value".
Why can't the simple Smith family model be used to explain the relationship between abstract/concrete labour and value/use value?
I think it can, as I did above. However, a two-person model isn't adequate in order to fully grasp the ramifications for the working class as a whole.
The more people have to add greater complexity to a simple question, the more I'm reminded of the introduction of eccentrics, epicycles and equants into the defence of the Ptolemaic geocentric model.
again I don't get what you mean here. The problem is you seem to have misunderstood something. You state:
So, the value of goods created by the two workers, J&J, was by 15 hours 'concrete labour'.
And... the Smith family created 15 hours of 'abstract labour'.
What you missed was that the concrete labour was not 15 hours concrete labour as such but 10 hours shoemaking, and 5 hours cake making. Or 15 hours abstract labour. Furthermore, the ramifications of the difference between abstract and concrete labour do not become clear until you look at a bigger population.
Steven, I'll leave the rest of your comments to one side, because we both know that the world is more complex than two people, and it does your argument no favour to pretend, for rhetorical purposes, that I don't know that the world has sewing machines in it.
And if you can't see the relevance to this discussion of the Catholic concept of 'grace' (which can't be calculated or evaluated in the real world, and so leaves us at the mercy of experts like priests or CC members) with our present problems with 'value', then I'll leave it alone as an example.
More promisingly,
Steven
What you missed was that the concrete labour was not 15 hours concrete labour as such but 10 hours shoemaking, and 5 hours cake making. Or 15 hours abstract labour.
So, and I didn't know this, we can't calculate, according to the theory you're defending, 'concrete labour' by adding together actual examples of concrete labour, like shoe- and cake-making?
If so, I don't agree. Let's see if I can illustrate what I think you're saying:
To me, this gives us 30 hours 'concrete labour' but only 21 hours of 'abstract labour'.
But, for any individual to know what 'value' they'd created, they would have to consult collectively. That is, the 'extended Smith family' meeting, otherwise known as a Workers' Council.
Thus, 'value' can't be decided by any individual with reference to their own isolated practice. Thus it places 'value' as a category at the social level, and thus re-introduces what I've called in other posts 'Political Economy' (although I'm aware that other posters dislike this term; if for historical reasons it should be called something else, I've no problem) in place of 'Economics'.
Value is a collective, democratic discussion, not an individual decision.
I'm sorry if this seems a bit disjointed, but your last statement triggered off a lot of thoughts.
Steven
Furthermore, the ramifications of the difference between abstract and concrete labour do not become clear until you look at a bigger population.
But surely we can use simpler models to help explain, even if, and I agree, reality is much more complex?
Hi, sorry I think that I'm not going to respond to that post here, as above a poster was asking a question and I don't want to confuse the issue. Hopefully the initial response will satisfy his question, but if you want to discuss value more generally I would suggest starting a new thread. Cheers,
Hi, sorry I think that I'm not going to respond to that post here, as above a poster was asking a question and I don't want to confuse the issue. Hopefully the initial response will satisfy his question
Right, point taken.
Although, I must say that I see this discussion as entirely relevent to yoda's OP.
Perhaps we'll leave it to yoda to decide whether the five-year-old's explanation was sufficient, or whether they'd like us to resume this discussion along the lines it has taken. I have to say, as a self-declared eighteen-month-old, I still don't understand.
I don't much like the explanations above, too "substantialist" for my taste.
Here's my take:
in the act of exchange, various products of concrete labour are reduced to the status of being products of human labour in general. In other words, they are made commensurable. As opposed to various sorts of "mental" abstractions, such as calling dogs, cats, and humans "animals", or pines, lindens, and beeches as "trees", this reduction of various products of concrete labour to abstract human labour is a "real" abstraction, consummated in the act of exchange.
Angelus your take is good, but (probably like mine) too "adult" and "abstract". Makes perfect sense if you've read a ton of Marx, but if I were a first time reader of Capital I would probably reply "WTF?".
I don't want to derail as per Steven's suggestion, but I'll just add this (and Steven if you see it appropriate, why not split it up. I could I guess, but I don't want to take the decision).
LBird
What I don't get is Khawaga's explanation that "the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value".
You've kinda explained it yourself:
Thus, 'value' can't be decided by any individual with reference to their own isolated practice. Thus it places 'value' as a category at the social level, and thus re-introduces what I've called in other posts 'Political Economy
'
The distinction only makes sense socially. If you produce for yourself, e.g. the Smiths making shoes for themselves only use-value, i.e. the concrete activity is of relevance. It's only when something is produced for exchange that something can have value (which is only socially valid). When a capitalist produced s/he is only interested in value really (i.e. abstract labour; which is the condition for exploitation), but the commodities produced must have a use-value for someone.
And yeah, Marx's entire Capital is all about political economy. It is titled A Critique of Political Economy after all.
Angelus, Khawaga, thanks for taking the time to help me with trying to understand this.
Khawaga
Angelus your take is good, but (probably like mine) too "adult" and "abstract". Makes perfect sense if you've read a ton of Marx, but if I were a first time reader of Capital I would probably reply "WTF?".
Yes, unfortunately I'm still not in a position to judge whether (as I would like to be able) Angelus' 'take is good' or not. Clearly, still in a state of 'childhood' on this so far.
Khawaga
The distinction only makes sense socially. If you produce for yourself, e.g. the Smiths making shoes for themselves only use-value, i.e. the concrete activity is of relevance. It's only when something is produced for exchange that something can have value (which is only socially valid).
So, would I be right in suggesting that 'use-value from concrete labour' could be seen as 'individual-value', while 'value from abstract labour' could be seen as 'social-value'?
I have further questions, to help me make sense of the real complexity of which we're all aware, but if I start with the one above and you confirm it so far, at least then I'll know I'm on the right track. I'll move onto capitalists, commodities and exchange-value when I've grasped the basics.
Khawaga
And yeah, Marx's entire Capital is all about political economy. It is titled A Critique of Political Economy after all.
Yeah, I know - it's on my desk in front of me!
But, in comparison with the marginalist revolution (ie. 'Economics'), which really only got going after Marx's death, what are we to call our activity, if not 'Political Economy'? After all, a 'critique' doesn't necessarily mean a rejection, does it? I'm open to your suggestions on this one - but I like to give it a name, as shorthand to contrast it with the 'Economics' with which people have been brainwashed all their lives.
Please bear with me - I really do want to understand - but I'm wary of bullshit, because it's only because of that socially-developed 'bullshit detector' that I've got this far. This is why I've likened 'value' to 'grace'. I'm not going, ever again, to accept a priest's word for anything. If something can't be properly explained by me to others, I'm not going to be able recommend it as explaining anything, am I?
So, would I be right in suggesting that 'use-value from concrete labour' could be seen as 'individual-value', while 'value from abstract labour' could be seen as 'social-value'?
You could, but in order to not be confused when reading Marx you should just have once conception of value, which can only be social. Marx typically refer to use-value as wealth (material wealth; actual things rather than value, which is completely abstract). Because the thing is use-value is also "social"; in the sense that if nobody sees the need for say shoes (so that they would never use them for anything), then the shoes have no use-value. But I think, in order for you to grasp these concepts, it's as good a start as any.
After all, a 'critique' doesn't necessarily mean a rejection, does it? I'm open to your suggestions on this one - but I like to give it a name, as shorthand to contrast it with the 'Economics' with which people have been brainwashed all their lives.
You're right. Marx does not reject e.g. Ricardo. He takes what is useful, discards the crap and argues why certain things are crap with the mainstream pol. ec. of his time. Indeed, Marx would likely be not surprised at all with the marginalist revolution; he more or less saw it coming. So we can call what "we" are doing political economy, or perhaps more correct critical political economy (or Angelus Novus' cumbersome political-economy-in-the-traditon-of-Marx's-Capital).
This is why I've likened 'value' to 'grace'.
I think an important thing to grasp about value is that it is the self-valorization of value (i.e. the compulsion to increase value) that is sort of the hidden puppet master in capitalism. It compels people to act in certain ways; both capitalist and workers. Now, self-valorizing value comes a bit later in capital, so let's not get into it now.
My general suggestion for reading Marx is kinda to just go for the ride. The first three chapters are very hard to get through, but after that it's much much easier. Marx's expository style is very pedagogical. He always reminds the reader of the important argument/concepts when he introduces new concepts and/or arguments.
I'm sure many others hesitate to ask these questions about Marxist economic categories, for fear of looking stupid.
Thanks for having the courage to ask - I'm just as foggy on the difference between concrete and abstract labour. This discussion has been very enlightening. I eagerly await further installments.
Would I be right in saying that concrete labour is to abstract labour as use value is to exchange value?
Abstract labour, then, would be expressed simply as hours worked, regardless of what the labour was producing; concrete labour would be expressed as hours worked producing A or B, and because the units are now different, you can no longer add or subtract these measurements. Is that it?
Would I be right in saying that concrete labour is to abstract labour as use value is to exchange value?
Partly correct: concrete labour maps on to use-value (so you got that right), but abstract labour maps on to value. Exchange value is the ratio in which a quantity of use-values is exchanged for another quantity (but both these quantities have the same value contained in them).
Abstract labour, then, would be expressed simply as hours worked, regardless of what the labour was producing; concrete labour would be expressed as hours worked producing A or B, and because the units are now different, you can no longer add or subtract these measurements. Is that it?
Again, partly correct. The measure of value is labour time, so abstract labour is hours worked. However, with concrete labour you don't really care about the time spent, but rather the actual use-values produced. If you were producing for yourself you'd be more interested in the actual stuff you created, rather than the time you spent on them (unless your Robison Crusoe). If you were to measure concrete labour you'd be more likely to count the items produced, coz in the end that's what matters. So value is all about quantity, whereas use-value is all about quality.
So value is all about quantity, whereas use-value is all about quality.
I disagree, first of all for Marx "use-value.. is... determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively." We have certain socially and historically established standards of measurement which we can use to compare different use-values such as bytes of data or miles per gallon. With regards to exchange-value, Marx states that it "at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation", however, thus considered "exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms." That different items are quantitatively comparable presupposes that they have already been reduced qualitatively to the same standard of human labour in the abstract.
I disagree, first of all for Marx "use-value.. is... determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively."
Sure, if you read my post closely that's actually what I said. But try to bear in mind that I am trying to explain this stuff to folks that haven't read as much Marx as some of us. Thus, quantity/quality is a good shorthand for the contradiction of and value/use-value (until it becomes necessary to complicate it) and also the difference between M-C-M and C-M-C.
What I said was:
If you were to measure concrete labour you'd be more likely to count the items produced, coz in the end that's what matters.
Just the same as saying that "use-value.. is... determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively."
That different items are quantitatively comparable presupposes that they have already been reduced qualitatively to the same standard of human labour in the abstract.
Again I agree, but no need to muddy the waters at this moment. Marx is all about contradiction, but keeping all of them in mind is really, really confusing at first. So baby steps for now.
So, would I be right in suggesting that 'use-value from concrete labour' could be seen as 'individual-value', while 'value from abstract labour' could be seen as 'social-value'?
Khawaga
You could, but in order to not be confused when reading Marx you should just have once conception of value, which can only be social.
Khawaga, I'm confused by your comment here, because in my tentative statement I actually say 'value' is 'social-value' (and contrast it with 'use-value', which is 'individual-value). So, I only have 'one conception of value' in this statement, which is 'social'.
To be clear, I am missing something? Bear in mind that I think you are correct to remind Zanthorus that you are 'trying to explain this stuff'. We are all aware that, eventually, we'll move onto the real, complicated issues involved. Stick with the simple 'stuff' for now, and hopefully later Zanthorus and others will be able to introduce the complexities of Marx's thought.
I'm aware I haven't (yet) discussed 'exchange-value', 'commodities' et al, but its best to be clear on each little 'baby step'.
So, does my statement quoted above stand as I wrote it, or is there something missing which I need to be aware of at this stage of the explanation?
I can't stress enough, I'm not trying to 'catch anyone out'. If I build upon your earlier answers, and with hindsight you realise that you missed something, we can revert to an earlier stage, take on board your later correction, and then move forward again.
Rabbit
Thanks for having the courage to ask - I'm just as foggy on the difference between concrete and abstract labour. This discussion has been very enlightening. I eagerly await further installments.
No, thank you, Rabbit, for letting me know that there are others reading this 'stuff' that are as ignorant as I am about this subject! It makes me feel a bit better about asking these basic questions.
Khawaga, I'm confused by your comment here, because in my tentative statement I actually say 'value' is 'social-value' (and contrast it with 'use-value', which is 'individual-value). So, I only have 'one conception of value' in this statement, which is 'social'.
Sorry, it's just me confusing you. Value is always social. I was just trying to say that rather than using "individual-value" as a term, adopt wealth. It's more "correct" when thinking about use-value as wealth in terms of Marx's own terminology, but...
does my statement quoted above stand as I wrote it, or is there something missing which I need to be aware of at this stage of the explanation?
Nope, so just stick with the terminology that makes sense to you for now.
I can't stress enough, I'm not trying to 'catch anyone out'.
I don't think you are at all. If I did that I wouldn't bother answering and take you for a troll ;)
Btw, I don't think it's ignorance anyone's suffering from. Marx's political economy is tough. God knows how many times I tried to get through the first three chapters before it finally clicked (and only really after the first reading group I participated in). A lot of my understanding has been sharpened by hanging around on libcom; it's a good place to ask questions about Marx. So don't be shy :)
Nope, so just stick with the terminology that makes sense to you for now.
Khawaga, thanks for clarifying that point. I wasn't sure if some subtle point was being made which I hadn't picked up on, and would come back to bite me on the arse later.
First, I would like to return to a post I made earlier, both to keep it in view and for you to consider.
To me, this gives us 30 hours 'concrete labour' but only 21 hours of 'abstract labour'.
But, for any individual to know what 'value' they'd created, they would have to consult collectively. That is, the 'extended Smith family' meeting, otherwise known as a Workers' Council.
Thus, 'value' can't be decided by any individual with reference to their own isolated practice. Thus it places 'value' as a category at the social level, and thus re-introduces what I've called in other posts 'Political Economy' (although I'm aware that other posters dislike this term; if for historical reasons it should be called something else, I've no problem) in place of 'Economics'.
Value is a collective, democratic discussion, not an individual decision.
So, I presume you accept, as far as it goes, this post I made earlier in reply to Steven?
If so, your agreement will allow me to move onto a further question, posed earlier by Rabbit, regarding the 'expression' or measurement of 'value' (ie. from 'social abstract labour').
Rabbit
Abstract labour, then, would be expressed simply as hours worked, regardless of what the labour was producing; concrete labour would be expressed as hours worked producing A or B, and because the units are now different, you can no longer add or subtract these measurements. Is that it?
I am right in saying that to try to measure 'individual concrete labour' is not possible, that it can't be evaluated? This is because measurement requires a comparison, a 'thing' to measure against, and as 'concrete labour' is individual and subjective (it's 'what someone thinks'), there can be no measure, because a measure must be a social 'thing'?
As you go on to say, in reply to Rabbit:
Khawaga
The measure of value is labour time, so abstract labour is hours worked. However, with concrete labour you don't really care about the time spent, but rather the actual use-values produced. If you were producing for yourself you'd be more interested in the actual stuff you created, rather than the time you spent on them (unless your Robison Crusoe). If you were to measure concrete labour you'd be more likely to count the items produced, coz in the end that's what matters. So value is all about quantity, whereas use-value is all about quality.
So to summarise, 'value', the product of 'social abstract labour' can be measured, but only by society, but 'use-value', the product of 'individual concrete labour' cannot be measured (how can we 'measure' a quality like 'love', for example?).
If you agree so far, Khawaga, on my next post I'll reintroduce our Smith family into the discussion, with some more questions.
Once again, thanks for your perserverance.
PS. And I'll adopt your suggestion of 'Critical Political Economy' for our activity.
PPS. If anyone else is trying to follow this discussion, and doesn't follow any of the steps being taken, please post and ask questions before we go any further.
I think an easier starting point would be a historical one.
Concrete labour is people doing work on their environment to achieve stuff, whether it be gathering, catching or growing food, building shelter, making fire, etc.
Concrete labour has been part of being human ever since homo sapiens appeared in the Great African Rift Valley 200,000 years ago.
We live in modern times, in a capitalist society. If we are not careful we tend to assume the things that are ever-present in our daily lives, were also present in people's daily lives in the past, like money and value. But our idea of "value" is a modern idea, it does not apply to the builders of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, or Macchu Picchu.
So it is confusing to say that concrete labour somehow relates to "individual value" as opposed to abstract labour relating to "social value".
If concrete labour has always been with us, and always will be. Abstract labour is a relatively very new thing and is specific to capitalism. Before capitalism there was no abstract labour, and neither will there be any after capitalism.
Abstract labour and the thing it creates - value - should not be confused with money and buying and selling things. Even though the complex and developed economies of the societies that built the Pyramids (~2,500 BC) and Macchu Picchu (~1450 AD) did not use money (in the first case, because it hadn't been invented yet), money and buying and selling things, and people making things not for themselves, but in order to sell them, has been also around a lot longer than abstract labour.
Abstract labour really depends on having the majority of the direct producers of the concrete labour that society requires, doing other stuff than making food. Up until now (and until real communism) this means the majority of the workforce has to sell their labour to get the money to buy the food they need to live - because part of the actual history of how people producing food were turned from a majority of society into less than 1 in 20 (in more developed societies) was of people being separated from the land.
But the whole story of abstract labour, is really worth a book (or at least a pamphlet) and if you're already reading a book (Capital vol 1) on it, the question is, how to best visualise it?
Imagine you are in charge of a disaster relief effort in the wake of a major disaster. As you get word of emergency relief workers coming in, in say squads of 100 at a time, your job is to allocate them to different tasks to best progress the relief effort. If you allocate too many to one particular task, you could be wasting available labour that could be better used elsewhere (in marginalist speak, we could talk about the marginal productivity of labour). The end result is a particular distribution of labour into particular activities - call this a social division of labour. Here you are indifferent to the particular strengths or skills of individual workers, you just have an estimate of how many hundred units (or workers) you need to meet a certain need (setting up tents for a refugee camp for 100,000 people for example) with current techniques, machinery etc. This is roughly like abstract labour. Given a particular division of labour in a mainly wage-earning society, the proportion at which the products produced by the workers in the different branches of industry must exchange with each other, for the social accounts to balance, must be in a similar proportion to the proportions of total available social labour allocated to each branch of industry (There's a Marx quote on this from a letter, possibly quoted in Ron Meek, iirc?).
So abstract labour has this reference to the social distribution of total labour, in a wage-labour society.
But I'm sorry, it is no more possible to explain political economy to a hypothetical 5 year old
than it is to explain brain chemistry or quantum mechanicsm, at least imo.
But I'm sorry, it is no more possible to explain political economy to a hypothetical 5 year old
than it is to explain brain chemistry or quantum mechanicsm, at least imo.
This, then, makes it rather difficult for this self-confessed 18-month-old (with regard to abstract and concrete labour) to even try to appraise your, what appears on the surface, very interesting post.
Before I try to understand what you've written, I think I'll wait and see what comes of Khawaga's very reasonable attempt to try and educate me in the arcane ways of 'Critical Political Economy'.
But I should say that I think your conclusion is not just educationally questionable, but also poor political practice. We should, as Communists, be doing our best to explain our ideas to all workers, even to the dullards at the back of the class, like me.
[throws paper aeroplane at Rabbit, who sniggers and pulls a face behind Mr. Ocelot's back]
Like a lot of other folks i found capital a bit of a struggle.
I've been going through a series of lectures on reading capital that can be found on google vedio by david harvey and I've found it much easier actually having someone explain what he's on about in more straight forward language,
with regards to concrete and exchange value he touches on that in the first lecture which is here --> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5820769496384969148#
I think he starts covering it around the 1:15 mark but if you have the time its worth watching it all, it helped me a lot anyway. I've been thinking recently that it would be really useful to have somewhere on libcom where people could put links to useful videos they find online, like a video library of some kind, this is probably for a different thread though!
Fine, so long as you understand that 'value', like 'grace' is a historically specific category inseparable from a particular set of social relationships, that of capitalism in the first instance (involving the separtion of political and economic authority) and the catholic church in the second (involving the separation of political and religious authority). That is, that abstract labour cannot be 'abstracted' from its historical context. It is not valid for Jack, Jill and the Smiths in any society other than a capitalist one.
In other words, it is not a category that can be discussed or understood sub specie aeternitatis
Ocelot, I know you're trying to be helpful, but to a beginner like me your post assumes too much knowledge. Things have to be explained in terms that the learner understands, not those that the instructor understands.
On a better note, I followed your link, and found:
Joyce Tyldesley
The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that the Great Pyramid was built by 100,000 slaves who 'laboured constantly and were relieved every three months by a fresh gang'. He is, however, wrong.
Isn't it strange that every ruling class sees the past through its own ideas? With Greece being a slave-owning society, it could only imagine that same society in its own past.
Our rulers today do exactly the same thing themselves: they always see the past through their own eyes, which is why they make crap historians.
Joyce Tyldesley
But, in a complete reversal of the story of oppression told by Herodotus, Lehner and Hawass have suggested that the labourers may have been volunteers...
Mark Lehner has gone further, comparing pyramid building to American Amish barn raising, which is done on a volunteer basis. He might equally well have compared it to the staffing of archaeological digs, which tend to be manned by enthusiastic, unpaid volunteers supervised by a few paid professionals.
God save us from bourgeois ideology, eh? From 'slave' labour to 'free' labour. Nothing ideological there, eh, Dr. Joyce!
I am right in saying that to try to measure 'individual concrete labour' is not possible, that it can't be evaluated? This is because measurement requires a comparison, a 'thing' to measure against, and as 'concrete labour' is individual and subjective (it's 'what someone thinks'), there can be no measure, because a measure must be a social 'thing'?
and
So to summarise, 'value', the product of 'social abstract labour' can be measured, but only by society, but 'use-value', the product of 'individual concrete labour' cannot be measured (how can we 'measure' a quality like 'love', for example?).
You could measure concrete labour. After all, you could just count the number of shoes you've produced, how many feet of yarn spun, how many potatoes plucked etc. But the issue is that since these are qualitatively different use-values you can't easily compare them; they're not commensurable. If you need shoes, yarn and potatoes for you, all of these, as use-values, have the same "individual-value" (to use your terminology). The problem comes when exchange enters the picture.
It is only in exchange, however, that value really exists. It's that act that makes value socially valid. And in exchange, there is something in the commodity (a thing made for sale and it's also useful for someone) that makes qualitatively different use-values commensurable; and this something is value. And the exchange is based on the time it took to produce the commodities.
ocelot
Fine, so long as you understand that 'value', like 'grace' is a historically specific category inseparable from a particular set of social relationships, that of capitalism in the first instance (involving the separtion of political and economic authority)
Ocelot raises an extremely important point here. Categories like value and commodity are historically specific to capitalism. So when you write
But, for any individual to know what 'value' they'd created, they would have to consult collectively. That is, the 'extended Smith family' meeting, otherwise known as a Workers' Council.
it wouldn't be a Workers' Council that "measured" the value; it's the law of exchange established in the market place (something that occurs "behind the backs" of individual producers). The political significance of the category of value and the commodity is that as communists we want to get rid of them. It is value and the commodity form that enslaves the working class.
In a workers' council it would be more of a logistical affair, matching use-values* produced with those than need/want them.
*having said that, even use-value could be considered a capitalist category, though Marx seems to think that use-value, like work (known as concrete labour in capitalism) is transhistorical.
I think I might've introduced a few new things here so please let me know if I muddied things for you (though I am sure you would regardless).
You could measure concrete labour. After all, you could just count the number of shoes you've produced, how many feet of yarn spun, how many potatoes plucked etc. But the issue is that since these are qualitatively different use-values you can't easily compare them; they're not commensurable.
Yeah, I think I was groping towards this 'commensurability' with my 'measure by comparison', though you've captured the concept more elegantly:
LBird
am right in saying that to try to measure 'individual concrete labour' is not possible, that it can't be evaluated? This is because measurement requires a comparison...
But, at the moment, something else that you've said (and ocelot) has sidetracked me.
Khawaga
The political significance of the category of value and the commodity is that as communists we want to get rid of them. It is value and the commodity form that enslaves the working class.
Unfortunately, this then takes me back to my real initial problem with the issue of learning about 'value': why bother to learn about it, if it is to be of no use in a future Communist society?
From this perspective, 'value' might as well be 'grace': it's all bollocks, and neither will play any part in a society liberated from capitalism or catholicism.
Do you see my point, and problem? One could be a good Communist revolutionary and want to play an active part in the overthrow of the system and help build Workers' Councils without ever having struggled to understand 'value' (or,indeed, 'grace').
Unless I can overcome this objection, why would I want to understand the various 'values' and 'labours'?
Once more, this is a genuine question. To me, unless it is of some use in the future in explaining things to fellow workers and to help build a Communist sytem, there is no point to the effort to understand (other than just as an interest or hobby, like stamp collecting, which is irrelevant to Communism, just for its own sake).
From this perspective, 'value' might as well be 'grace': it's all bollocks, and neither will play any part in a society liberated from capitalism or catholicism.
Well, the thing is that it's not bollocks unfortunately. Value becomes real in the form of money (this is another level in Marx's argument), and as such it is power incarnate. And going from value to the commodity form, money, wage-labour etc. helps us realize the faultlines of capitalism and perhaps give guidance as to what is revolutionary politics and what is not (e.g. ethical consumption or the notion that mom n' pop stores are better than walmart etc.).
I completely agree with this:
One could be a good Communist revolutionary and want to play an active part in the overthrow of the system and help build Workers' Councils without ever having struggled to understand 'value' (or,indeed, 'grace').
Still, the point is that by having a good analysis of capitalism we will know how to destroy it, and more importantly what NOT to do come communism, e.g. any form of wage, commodities, money etc.
Khawaga has done a good job of trying to clarify the matter in the most understandable terms possible on this thread.
However, my opinion is anyone new to Marx isn't going to gain much by asking somebody to break down individual concepts from _Capital_ into discrete, hermetic categories.
It's an irritating cliche at this point to refer to Marx's "dialectical method", but it really should be stressed that Marx's categories aren't intended to be grasped in isolation from one another, but rather acquire their full meaning only with reference to the categories introduced later in the account.
So the early chapters of _Capital_ might be frustrating to somebody looking to understand what underlies an individual act of exchange, but the concept of abstract labour really first starts to make the most sense when it's understood as a systemic logic that all producers are forced to adhere to, for example, in the chapter on the working day, or the section on the accumulation of capital. The mechanisms of absolute and relative surplus extraction analyzed by Marx, as well as the stuff on concentration, centralisation, reserve army of the unemployed etc., sort of retroactively "explain" the concepts introduced earlier in the book.
So my advice to anybody who has a hard time getting a full grasp of the categories in the first three chapters is to keep plowing along. Things get fleshed out as the book proceeds. This is a more fruitful approach rather than trying to get an airtight grasp on something in isolation from the very phenomena it is linked to.
Abstract Labour is the potential for labour, its not labour in action, it can potentially be anything.
Concrete labour is this potential labour being enacted. It is now no longer 'abstract', 'in general' or 'potential' but is instead in action. i,e actually sowing (rather than the potential to sow etc).
thats how I would explain the distinction in the simplest terms....
It's an irritating cliche at this point to refer to Marx's "dialectical method", but it really should be stressed that Marx's categories aren't intended to be grasped in isolation from one another, but rather acquire their full meaning only with reference to the categories introduced later in the account.
Couldn't agree more, particularly with the advice of just plowing on. For too long I kept re-reading the first three chapters to get the "fundamental" concepts down, when in fact, Marx dialectical exposition throughout Capital explained it all for me in the later chapters. As I mentioned earlier, whenever a new level of abstraction is introduced, Marx always reminds the reader of what we (i.e. Marx + the reader) "already know" by a brief summary/re-statement of arguments and concepts from the earlier chapters.
So yeah, LBird, if you want to go on with this I suggest that stuff like contradiction and forms of appearance/value form is next. Not only will that help you in understanding value/use-value, but also exchange value, exchange, money and commodities.
Abstract Labour is the potential for labour, its not labour in action, it can potentially be anything.
Concrete labour is this potential labour being enacted. It is now no longer 'abstract', 'in general' or 'potential' but is instead in action. i,e actually sowing (rather than the potential to sow etc).
Arbeiten, you're completely confusing abstract labour with labour-power. Labour-power is the potential to (the performance) of labour. And labour-power is simply the potential for any form of labour; you might be a software engineer, but the capitalist might very well have you cleaning the toilets instead. However, abstract labour is the condition for the existence of labour-power as a commodity, which in turn enables the capitalist to extract surplus-labour/value from the labour of the worker (and this labour is both abstract and concrete; the former necessary for the valorization process, the latter for the labour process).
Value becomes real in the form of money (this is another level in Marx's argument), and as such it is power incarnate. And going from value to the commodity form, money, wage-labour etc. helps us realize the faultlines of capitalism and perhaps give guidance as to what is revolutionary politics and what is not (e.g. ethical consumption or the notion that mom n' pop stores are better than walmart etc.)...Still, the point is that by having a good analysis of capitalism we will know how to destroy it, and more importantly what NOT to do come communism, e.g. any form of wage, commodities, money etc.
Perhaps this is part of my mistake: I'm assuming that understanding Marx's economics is of some use in the future, to allow workers to understand how they would run their own economy. You seem to be saying it is only of use in understanding capitalism today, to help politically analyse the beast as a guide to workers' action now.
I can't say that I'm convinced by this argument: surely political discussion and ideas (and consideration of philosophy and ideology) would be of more use for this purpose? There's no doubting, I'm still confused as to the real worth of the apparently immense efforts required to get to grips with 'value', etc.
Khawaga
So yeah, LBird, if you want to go on with this I suggest that stuff like contradiction and forms of appearance/value form is next. Not only will that help you in understanding value/use-value, but also exchange value, exchange, money and commodities.
I really appreciate yours and Angelus' efforts to try to explain this to me, but I have tried before to understand the 'economic stuff'. Someone recommended 'Value, Price and Profit', which I bought, but unless you already understand the concepts being used, how do you get any intellectual purchase on that or Capital? It all appears to be meaningless.
Angelus Novus
So my advice to anybody who has a hard time getting a full grasp of the categories in the first three chapters is to keep plowing along. Things get fleshed out as the book proceeds. This is a more fruitful approach rather than trying to get an airtight grasp on something in isolation from the very phenomena it is linked to.
The problem is, if I don't have 'an airtight grasp' of the basic words, it might as well be written in Martian. How do you keep reading something that has no meaning? Does a 'flash' of inspiration suddenly come down on you from above? Does 'something' suddenly 'click'?
[start edit]
Unless I can use the concepts as I learn them, to explain something I already understand, they remain meaningless words. This is how I would build in more and more complexity, around an initial core of understanding. As it is, I might as well be talking about 'grace' and the power of 'prayer'.
[end edit]
This seems, for me at least, to be an insurmountable problem. I'm not happy about it, not least because of the valiant efforts K & AN have made to explain.
How do others, reading this thread in hope of enlightenment, feel? Has anyone come to grasp anything yet? I suppose I need to know is it just my personal blindspot, or was Bill Shatner, post 12, right?
I can't say that I'm convinced by this argument: surely political discussion and ideas (and consideration of philosophy and ideology) would be of more use for this purpose? There's no doubting, I'm still confused as to the real worth of the apparently immense efforts required to get to grips with 'value', etc.
Well, Capital is all about political discussion and consideration of philosophy and ideology. What Marx sets out to do in Capital is reveal that bourgeois economics is nothing but ideologal and has the instrumental use of supporting capitalism so that it appears like there is no other alternative (they do this by simply assuming that the way in which things are now has always happened and will always happen). After all, Capital is supposed to be a weapon in the hands on the working class.
Someone recommended 'Value, Price and Profit', which I bought, but unless you already understand the concepts being used, how do you get any intellectual purchase on that or Capital?
Actually, that's a very good recommendation. More or less it's Capital stripped down to its bare bones. Well, "Value, Price and Profit" together with "Capital and wage-labour". These texts were lectures that Marx gave to working mens associations back in the day. So please go on and read that text. Btw, how far did you get in Capital? What was your stumbling block?
Does a 'flash' of inspiration suddenly come down on you from above? Does 'something' suddenly 'click'?
I would say so; a lot of the concepts that were unclear for me in the first three chapters suddenly 'clicked' when I started reading about the working day, surplus-value etc. Still, don't get me wrong. Marx is dense and ain't easy, but in my opinion the payoff is huge in the end. Apart from personal experience, it's the book that has influenced me the most politically.
Well, Capital is all about political discussion and consideration of philosophy and ideology. What Marx sets out to do in Capital is reveal that bourgeois economics is nothing but ideologal ...
Well, I'm sure you know that I'm totally convinced philosophically and ideologically, and also politically and historically, but the economics is mystifying.
Khawaga
After all, Capital is supposed to be a weapon in the hands on the working class.
Yeah, this is the worrying bit - the truth is, it seems to be more of a burden than a weapon.
I've got the handbook with both VP&P and W-L&C. I need to try again, I think. As for Capital, all the history stuff is great - my view is, 'pity about the economics - spoils a good read!'. And I've always skipped the first three notorious chapters like the plague.
Khawaga
Still, don't get me wrong. Marx is dense and ain't easy, but in my opinion the payoff is huge in the end.
The problem is the trade off is not reading (and writing about) all the other subjects that I'm fascinated with, while trying to wade through treacle. I suppose I'm doing it through a sense of duty, not real desire.
I need to have a break from this for the time being, and have a re-think about how to approach the problem - perhaps re-read Capital from chapter 4.
Thanks anyway, Khawaga - I'm only sorry that your tremendous efforts haven't (this time) borne much fruit (with me, at least). I'll leave it at that, for now.
argh christ your right, sorry man, didn't read the question properly, school boy error.
On Capital being a weapon or a burden. I think it really depends on how you read it. As it seems you have already discussed, it really depends on how you read it. Of course it is out of date, things have changed etc, but I always like the stress on the inherent structural dynamics of capitalism, this for me at least keeps Capital alive and kicking.
I think abstract labour is general undifferentiated human effort or work or labour.
Thus you go to work, clock in, expend effort doing something, anything, clock out and go home knackered as evidence of your expended labour power and life force etc.
As to it being concrete labour, like making a shoe or a use value, you may not even know what you are doing exactly as it may be a very small part of an overall process.
It is as if, in an analogy, you were driving a treadmill that was operating an invisible machine in another room that may be a handloom one minute or a pumping water another.
It is important in respect of value as it is that effort, as undifferentiated pure or abstract effort that determines value. And that same quantity of effort, as effort alone, can go into one use value or another, which is why one use value has the same value as another, in general.
Looking at it in a somewhat idealised and theoretical way from the other perspective of selling your human effort. If one type of work is less exhausting than another, and just as meaningless to you, but pays the same then you do that instead.
Thus you need a concept of ‘abstract labour’ for the concept of value and to analyse the capitalist process as a whole.
In fact when you ‘take out’ of your working day the specifics and details of what you are doing and its purpose in the greater scheme of things, if they mean anything to you in the first place, all that is left is that you are tired.
[that is having set aside all the complexities of skilled versus unskilled labour and the differentials in the value of labour power and productivity etc etc.]
Concrete labour or different types of labour are therefore subsets or categories of generalised or abstract labour.
You can use an analogy of energy. Thus an object in total can have an ‘abstract’ energy value.
That can exist as concrete energy;
ie heat energy or in other words it may be hot.
Kinetic energy or in other words it might be moving fast and have a momentum etc
Potential energy or in other words a stone on the top of a hill that could roll down.
Chemical energy ie a piece of coal that can burn.
Etc etc
Or in fact it could have a combination of concrete energies ie a hot piece of unburnt coal already rolling half way down a hill.
And just as the total ‘abstract’ energy value of an object can be made up of several ‘concrete energies’, the total economic value of a commodity is the overall summation of the particular types of effort or human ‘energy’ that has gone into it, or what it is.
And just as concrete energy values are exchangeable and in theory, conserved. Or in other words you burn a piece of coal to heat water to drive a steam engine to the top of a hill or whatever.
One type of concrete living labour that has been embodied in a use value is exchangeable for another type of concrete labour embodied in another use value.
Scientist account for energy in systems using a general or abstracted term, the Joule.
In the International System of Units a Joule is defined, for convenience, as the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre.
You could say in capitalism value was in effect ‘defined’ for convenience as the amount of labour expended (or work done) to produce a troy ounce of gold or whatever.
The problem is, if I don't have 'an airtight grasp' of the basic words, it might as well be written in Martian. How do you keep reading something that has no meaning? Does a 'flash' of inspiration suddenly come down on you from above? Does 'something' suddenly 'click'?
This is a problem Marx himself flagged up - I think the first David Harvey lecture someone else mentioned already discusses this a bit. Basically, all the concepts are related to one another, so wherever he started the book, it would appear like he was dropping the concepts on you out of thin air. But as Khawaga says, it gets a lot easier going after chapter 3, and the concepts from the beginning start to sink in as they're applied to analysing aspects of capital, many of which resonate with everyday experience (e.g. the stuff on extending/intensifying the working day). You don't need to read Capital to struggle against capitalism, but as anti-capitalist theory goes it's one of the most worthwhile texts imho, and worth sticking with. When i first read it I had the advantage of being able to talk this stuff over with some people who'd read it a decade earlier, which really helped me get my head around it. Hopefully libcom can play the same role for people without a bunch of Marx nerds for mates!
Would I be right in saying that concrete labour is to abstract labour as use value is to exchange value?
Partly correct: concrete labour maps on to use-value (so you got that right), but abstract labour maps on to value. Exchange value is the ratio in which a quantity of use-values is exchanged for another quantity (but both these quantities have the same value contained in them).
Abstract labour, then, would be expressed simply as hours worked, regardless of what the labour was producing; concrete labour would be expressed as hours worked producing A or B, and because the units are now different, you can no longer add or subtract these measurements. Is that it?
Again, partly correct. The measure of value is labour time, so abstract labour is hours worked. However, with concrete labour you don't really care about the time spent, but rather the actual use-values produced. If you were producing for yourself you'd be more interested in the actual stuff you created, rather than the time you spent on them (unless your Robison Crusoe). If you were to measure concrete labour you'd be more likely to count the items produced, coz in the end that's what matters. So value is all about quantity, whereas use-value is all about quality.
So, abstract labour is expressed in labour-hours, and concrete labour is expressed in the total use-value of the goods produced?
LBird
Khawaga
After all, Capital is supposed to be a weapon in the hands on the working class.
Yeah, this is the worrying bit - the truth is, it seems to be more of a burden than a weapon.
Yeah, it would be a weapon if they understood it. William Blake said "Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed" - all the workers who have been exposed to Marx's ideas but remain supporters of the capitalist system must not understand Marx's analysis.
So, abstract labour is expressed in labour-hours, and concrete labour is expressed in the total use-value of the goods produced?
Yes, but it's more precise to say that abstract labour is expressed in value, which is measured in labour time. And concrete labour is expressed in use-value, which, if it can be counted, is measured in material output.
So, abstract labour is expressed in labour-hours, and concrete labour is expressed in the total use-value of the goods produced?
Yes, but it's more precise to say that abstract labour is expressed in value, which is measured in labour time. And concrete labour is expressed in use-value, which, if it can be counted, is measured in material output.
Having read this thread, and sympathizing with LBird, and whoever else has problems comprehending what abstract labour is, I wrote what follows, as hopefully offering some assistance. I think it is beyond the level of comprehension of the average five year old, but maybe not the average fifteen year old (with the aid of a dictionary for a couple of words). But if it helps just one person ....
ON ABSTRACT LABOUR
Abstract labour -- as per Marx -- is indeed a most difficult concept to grasp. And yet it is absolutely essential to understanding Marx's Capital, his critique of bourgeois political economy, and, not least, what exactly capital and capitalism are. Without understanding what capital and capitalism are, the struggle against them, and the struggle for communism, is blind. For without understanding what exactly capital and capitalism are, the struggle against them may well bring about a state of affairs in which certain non-essential features of capitalism -- features which nonetheless have figured prominently in its historical configuration -- are consciously abolished in the expectation that their abolition will be sufficient to eradicate capitalism, but in which capitalism's essentials remain in force, and so capitalism remains unsurpassed.
Abstract labour is not labour in general, labour stripped of all its specificities. This is a common misunderstanding of first-time readers of Chapter One of Volume One of Capital. It cannot be such, since such undifferentiated labour has existed in history for many thousands of years, far longer than capitalism has -- longer even than any form of human society, surely -- and the abstract labour which Marx claims is historically specific to it. Abstract labour is indeed undifferentiated, general labour, but this is only part of it; the latter is necessary to the former, but it is not sufficient for it.
To really understand abstract labour, we need to go much further than this trans-historical abstraction, and bring in the idea of generalized market exchange. Market exchange involves two separate parties exchanging items (use-values) at a rate, or in a relationship quantitatively, that they both agree on as fair and equal. This means that whatever various items (use-values) might be exchanged in such a manner must be commensurable: they must have a common measure which renders them so commensurable, and this applies not just for this or that exchanging party, but for any and all such parties. It is the market, generalized exchange, mechanism which renders this commensurability possible. There must be something common to all such exchangeable items to allow this to happen in a way that people (parties, exchangers) can rely on whenever they enter the market to participate in such exchange. Everyone vaguely familiar with Marx's Capital knows that for him (as for David Ricardo and various other theorists of bourgeois political economy prior to Marx) it is labour (time) that is this common denominator facilitating such exchange.
But it is not just any labour that serves this function. It is definitely not what Marx refers to as "concrete labour", i.e. this or that or any such particular instance of labour. If it takes me twice as much labour time to make item A than you, that doesn't make my specific A's worth twice as much as yours. And it is, again, not just general, undifferentiated labour (time). It is "socially necessary average labour time" -- this, for Marx, is the real substance of capitalist value. But socially necessary average labour time is something that needs to be established over time and involving a sufficient number of specific items (use-values) being exchanged via the market. Once a sufficient number of such instances occur, an average can be established. It is not established by some sort of impartial investigation or scientific analysis, but by means of repeated negotiation between exchanging parties of the same type of item (use-value) on the market.
It is this average, once established, that sets the standard on the market of the value of the item in question. And it is this average that Marx called "abstract labour", when he posited that value in capitalism is abstract labour, and that abstract labour is the substance of (capitalist) value. Since this process of abstraction occurs in an objective manner, by way of social exchange, in the market, rather than within the minds of humans (as do typical forms of abstraction), Marx refers to it as a process of "real abstraction".
Yes, but it's more precise to say that abstract labour is expressed in value, which is measured in labour time.
...which furthermore can only be expressed as price, in money.
I think this is a very important point, to emphasize the difference between substantialist, "pre-monetary" notions of value, and what I regard (following Backhaus and Heinrich) as Marx's monetary theory of value, of the capitalist mode of production being one in which production is conducted for exchange.
The former conception seems to regard "value" as some transhistorical measure of labour expenditure, upon which money and exchange relations are merely superimposed. A prime example of this is Ernest Mandel's Marxist Economic Theory, which goes out of its way to cite anthropological studies in an effort to prove that labour-time measuring as a basis for the commensurability of acts of labour pre-dates monetary exchange.
Kind of beyond the scope of this thread, but a very important distinction. It's what separates Marx's critique of political economy from the pre-monetary theories of Smith, Ricardo, or Proudhon.
My five-year-old's mind is trying hard to wrap itself around your post, waslax.
waslax
Market exchange involves two separate parties exchanging items (use-values) at a rate, or in a relationship quantitatively, that they both agree on as fair and equal. This means that whatever various items (use-values) might be exchanged in such a manner must be commensurable: they must have a common measure which renders them so commensurable
I understand the first sentence. Could you expand on the second? If I want to exchange a pair of shoes for a loaf of bread, why is it necessary for the two goods to have a common measure?
labour (time)...is this common denominator facilitating such exchange.
What if you're exchanging an object that required zero labour time to produce, like a rock you picked up from the ground? Or would you count the time spent in picking it up?
But socially necessary average labour time is something that needs to be established over time and involving a sufficient number of specific items (use-values) being exchanged via the market.
I understand why it needs to be established over time - the word 'average' suggests it. But why does a determination of socially necessary average labour time require the exchange of goods on the market? And exchange of what goods, exactly?
And it is this average that Marx called "abstract labour"
So the term 'socially necessary average labour time' is interchangeable with the term 'abstract labour'? And both, therefore, are specific to a commodity, a place, and a time?
The former conception seems to regard "value" as some transhistorical measure of labour expenditure, upon which money and exchange relations are merely superimposed. A prime example of this is Ernest Mandel's Marxist Economic Theory, which goes out of its way to cite anthropological studies in an effort to prove that labour-time measuring as a basis for the commensurability of acts of labour pre-dates monetary exchange.
Yeah, I never got why on earth anyone would assume value as transhistorical. You can easily make the claim that use-value is (I think Marx argues this in the Grundrisse if I remember correctly), but value never... Mandel just seems to take Engles at his word that the first few chapters of Capital is historical rather than logical.
Rabbit
But why does a determination of socially necessary average labour time require the exchange of goods on the market? And exchange of what goods, exactly?
Exchange of commodities, i.e. articles produced for the purposes of exchange. Determination of socially necessary labour time is what competition is all about. Angelus indicated this with his comment:
but the concept of abstract labour really first starts to make the most sense when it's understood as a systemic logic that all producers are forced to adhere to
Socially necessary labour time is not really an average, but the least time it takes to produce a particular commodity (which then becomes an average). If you produce 1 shoe in 2 hours, but I can do it in 1 hour (because I have a machine), my commodity could be cheaper on the market. So hypothetically, if there were only two consumers they would buy what I produced simply because it's cheaper and you'd go out of business. You'd be forced to sell your commodity at its social value, the new socially necessary average. For Marx this is what drives competition in capitalism; the difference from bourgeois economics is that this competition does not com from some mystical supply and demand of the market, but from production itself (but it appears as if it happened on the market).
PS: I am half-asleep typing this, so not sure if it makes sense.
My five-year-old's mind is trying hard to wrap itself around your post, waslax.
waslax
Market exchange involves two separate parties exchanging items (use-values) at a rate, or in a relationship quantitatively, that they both agree on as fair and equal. This means that whatever various items (use-values) might be exchanged in such a manner must be commensurable: they must have a common measure which renders them so commensurable
I understand the first sentence. Could you expand on the second? If I want to exchange a pair of shoes for a loaf of bread, why is it necessary for the two goods to have a common measure?
Well, you are planning to make that exchange with someone else, right? What if that person doesn't agree with the rate of exchange you propose? Maybe they want more from you than you are offering. The exchange must be mutually agreeable. So there needs to be some 'neutral' factor common to both items that both parties can agree on.
labour (time)...is this common denominator facilitating such exchange.
What if you're exchanging an object that required zero labour time to produce, like a rock you picked up from the ground? Or would you count the time spent in picking it up?
As with Marx, we are only concerned with exchange of items that are products of labour. Why would someone give up something in exchange for something that required zero labour time to produce? Perhaps because it was very rare? That is different, and its price is all down to supply and demand. It's actual value would still be zero. In a case such as fruit that grows naturally, the value is determined by how much labour is required to bring it to market (I would think). Not much, clearly.
But socially necessary average labour time is something that needs to be established over time and involving a sufficient number of specific items (use-values) being exchanged via the market.
I understand why it needs to be established over time - the word 'average' suggests it. But why does a determination of socially necessary average labour time require the exchange of goods on the market? And exchange of what goods, exactly?
Marx is quite good on this, as I recall. But, in my own words, what better way of comparing the various different amounts of labour-time embodied within the items concerned? Each party to the exchange is assumed to try to maximize the return they receive, and to minimize what it is they exchange. Enough of this will eventually find an average rate. Again, we are talking about any items which are products of human labour, which can be quantified, and specified qualitatively (i.e. as use-values).
And it is this average that Marx called "abstract labour"
So the term 'socially necessary average labour time' is interchangeable with the term 'abstract labour'? And both, therefore, are specific to a commodity, a place, and a time?
Well, as far as Marx is concerned, yes, the two terms are interchangeable. While it's true that socially necessary average labour time is just one particular form of abstract labour, it is the only one that Marx is concerned with. General, undifferentiated labour by itself would count as a form of abstract labour. It is of course labour at its very most abstract. But it doesn't help us understand capitalism and capitalist value.
Your final question I am not fully clear on. It seems ambiguous to me. However, each commodity has its own socially necessary average labour time. Of course, two different commodities can have the same socially necessary average labour time. In terms of place, capitalism did arise at a specific time in specific places, so that early on (in capitalist history) a commodity would have one value in one market (place) and another value in another one. Protectionism between countries (national markets), or even between regions within a country, maintains this difference. Gradually, over time, as protectionism is reduced, a world market develops, and a common value for the whole does too. In terms of time, definitely socially necessary average labour time and value do change. In general, they decline over time, as new labour-saving technology gets invented and implemented. Production which goes in this direction is rewarded with a greater return ("surplus-profit" for Marx), since it creates more output with the same amount of labour-time. This is the direction capitalism moves irresistably in, but it leads ultimately to crisis and collapse. (Not necessarily total collapse, but partial collapse can still be devastating. ;) ) Marx's Capital deals with the specifics of all this brilliantly.
Socially necessary labour time is not really an average, but the least time it takes to produce a particular commodity (which then becomes an average). If you produce 1 shoe in 2 hours, but I can do it in 1 hour (because I have a machine), my commodity could be cheaper on the market. So hypothetically, if there were only two consumers they would buy what I produced simply because it's cheaper and you'd go out of business. You'd be forced to sell your commodity at its social value, the new socially necessary average.
As I understand it, it really is an average, but the more competition develops, the smaller the range of differences in actual labour-time, since, as you note, those who take more time to produce are forced out of business. In your example, the average would be 1.5 hours. It is up to you to either continue selling your product at that rate, and realize a surplus-profit on each item you sell, or to lower your price to try to corner the market, and force your competitor out of business. This decision is of course a gamble. But in competitive capitalism there will soon enough be a producer who will lower their selling price, forcing others to match it, which of course they can only do and make a profit on if they adopt the same production process with the same technology you have (or one equally as or even more productive). A new average is then established. You acknowledged as much yourself, I think. But you are right to emphasize the "necessary" part of the formula, as this refers to the minimum necessary time to produce the thing. Competition, and the technological invention it drives, keeps pushing this minimum lower.
Actually contrary to what seemed to be implied in a earlier post Marx starts off with a trans-historical analysis of the “labour theory of value” or more properly the Law Of Value.
Then with the understanding or theory of it established then applies that Law to capitalism.
And in fact the law of value, of which ‘abstract Labour’ is a part, preceded capitalism, as Engels pointed out in the supplement in Volume III written for those had got the wrong end of the stick.
And far from the law of value being historically specific to capitalism, it actually starts to breakdown under capitalism due to the effect of the average rate of profit ie stuff exchanging for above and below their values due the rate of profit demanded on different amounts of capital etc etc.
Thus;
In a word: the Marxian law of value holds generally, as far as economic laws are valid at all, for the whole period of simple commodity production — that is, up to the time when the latter suffers a modification through the appearance of the capitalist form of production. Up to that time, prices gravitate towards the values fixed according to the Marxian law and oscillate around those values, so that the more fully simple commodity production develops, the more the average prices over long periods uninterrupted by external violent disturbances coincide with values within a negligible margin.
Thus, the Marxian law of value has general economic validity for a period lasting from the beginning of exchange, which transforms products into commodities, down to the 15th century of the present era. But the exchange of commodities dates from a time before all written history — which in Egypt goes back to at least 2500 B.C., and perhaps 5000 B.C., and in Babylon to 4000 B.C., perhaps to 6000 B.C.; thus, the law of value has prevailed during a period of from five to seven thousand years.
and as a synopsis from Engels covering abstract labour we have thus;
Exchange-value presupposes a tertium comparationis by which it is measured; labor, the common social substance of exchange-values, to be precise, the socially necessary labor-time embodied in them.
Just as a commodity is something twofold: use-value and exchange-value, so the labour contained in it is two-fold determined:
on the one hand, as definite productive activity, weaving labour, tailoring labour, etc. — "useful labour";
on the other, as the simple expenditure of human labour-power, precipitated abstract (general) labour.
The former produces use-value, the latter exchange-value; only the latter is quantitatively comparable
So in other general words; work or activity is a compound of two different things, which is dialectics in the sense of looking at ‘one thing’ as a composite of two things.
That is a ‘definite productive activity, weaving labour, tailoring labour, etc. — “useful labour”;’
And
“simple expenditure of human labour-power, precipitated abstract (general) labour.”
And you can ‘abstract’ either out depending upon what you want to do.
The tertium comparationis is useful, apart from being in Latin, as it sums up the logic that Karl uses in the crucial opening pages of Volume One.
It means basically that the third part of a comparison is the quality that two things which are being compared have in common.
So he theorises that as one commodity can be compared with as an equivalent with another, the equivalence must (or could be) the result of another as yet obscure ‘reducible’ quantitative ‘property’ in which they are identical or equal.
That is in fact the bedrock of scientific analysis.
Thus if a litre of water weighs the same as a block of iron it must be because they contain the same amounts of something else.
Which is in this case that they contain the same amount of baryons (for simplicity protons and neutrons).
Water and Iron only differ in their concrete form due to the different arrangement of the ‘abstract’ baryons.
Although scientist will never be content until they can reduce mass to one abstract thing and can say the both contain the same amount of one even more abstract thing, probably gravitons or something
Which is what they are doing with the Hadron collider thing.
Actually contrary to what seemed to be implied in a earlier post Marx starts off with a trans-historical analysis of the “labour theory of value” or more properly the Law Of Value.
Then with the understanding or theory of it established then applies that Law to capitalism.
And in fact the law of value, of which ‘abstract Labour’ is a part, preceded capitalism, as Engels pointed out in the supplement in Volume III written for those had got the wrong end of the stick.
And far from the law of value being historically specific to capitalism, it actually starts to breakdown under capitalism
...than I was with this...
Khawaga
Ocelot raises an extremely important point here. Categories like value and commodity are historically specific to capitalism.
It must be the historian in me, that has difficulty believing that all the detailed thinking behind 'Critical Political Economy' can only be applied to capitalism.
I'm now becoming warier of some of the things that Khawaga and ocelot said earlier. But, if anything, this has re-energised me, to think that there may be some more mileage in some of the things that I outlined earlier (the 'Smith family' model), which were far simpler to comprehend than the esoteric complexities of the main explanations.
This doesn't mean that Khawaga was necessarily wrong (and Khawaga was definitely helpful in keeping me thinking), but that I still think that there must be a far simpler way of teaching the meanings within Capital to other workers.
Of far more serious implication, though, is my next thought - if Dave B is correct, and 'value' (of some sort which I haven't yet isolated in my own thinking) is transhistorical, than why can't it be applied to the future Socialist/Communist society, to help workers organise production efficiently?
LBird, Dave B adopted Engles' interpretation. There's been quite a lot of critique of Engels misinterpretation of those chapters; an interpretation that he offered after editing together Volume 3 (well more than editing; he rewrote huge parts of it; some chapters are completely Engles'). He could not get his head around how values are transformed into prices. His solution was to argue that Capital should be read almost as a linear history rather than a logical argument that progressively introduces new levels of abstraction.
Treating value as transhistorical is silly in my opinion because that is exactly that Marx warns against when he critiques the categories of bourgeois economics. That they're not seen as historical. So paradoxically, a so-called "historical" approach is actually ahistorical.
You Smith family model, btw, can work as an example both for a logical and a historical interpretation of the first few chapters.
I have undertaken a translation of an essay by Ingo Elbe that addresses some of those Engelsian distortions of Marx's work. The English translation remains incomplete but a few key passages are available:
"Use-value" refers only to the utility, the usefulness of the object, product. Consequently "use-value" is more than trans-historical, it can even be independent of human production. Thus Marx refers to nature as being a source of "wealth," in that nature provides objects of utility to human beings independent of the social organization of labor, of production
Concrete labor is the specific labor expended in making an object, and consequently concrete labor is not restricted to the production of commodities. Concrete labor is embodied in shoes created by direct producers for direct consumption, shoes created by direct producers for indirect consumption; a leather belt, milk, cheese, beef stew etc.
Abstract labor refers to labor that is conducted under specific social relations, specific differences, and even conflicts, between labor and the conditions of labor; the conditions of labor under capitalism is the organization of labor as wage-labor for the aggrandizement of surplus labor-time.
Abstract labor refers to the social mediation, the mechanism for measuring labor, converting it into a universal medium for exchange, for accumulation; converting it into value.
"Time is everything. Man is nothing, or at most, time's carcass" wrote Marx. He wasn't kidding.
So Fred didn’t understand the Law of Value then!!!!!!!!!
Ok then where did Marx say that the Law of Value or in other words that the exchange values of commodities was specific to capitalism?
Was Aristotlian Greece and feudal Europe transhistorical to capitalism?
The following quote from Karl is useful I think as it deals with that ‘obscure’, ‘common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house’ that needs to be ‘deciphered’. But was even more obscure for Aristotle than it is in capitalism
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Part I: Commodities and Money Chapter One: Commodities
The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the form of value. I mean Aristotle.
In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value – i.e., of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at random; for he says:
5 beds = 1 house
is not to be distinguished from
5 beds = so much money.
He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to this expression makes it necessary that the house should qualitatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such an equalisation, these two clearly different things could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities. “Exchange,” he says, “cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability"..
Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value. “It is, however, in reality, impossible, that such unlike things can be commensurable” – i.e., qualitatively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their real nature, consequently only “a makeshift for practical purposes.”
Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle.
And why not? Compared with the beds, the house DOES represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is – human labour.
And in feudalism we have Karl applying the law of value to deduce surplus value and surplus labour etc just as in capitalism. In fact as he says it is such an obvious case it hardly merits dwelling on it.
Capital Vol. III Part VI Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent Chapter 47. Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent I. Introductory Remarks
But this identity of surplus-value with unpaid labour of others need not be analysed here because it still exists in its visible, palpable form, since the labour of the direct producer for himself is still separated in space and time from his labour for the landlord and the latter appears directly in the brutal form of enforced labour for a third person. In the same way the "attribute" possessed by the soil to produce rent is here reduced to a tangibly open secret, for the disposition to furnish rent here also includes human labour-power bound to the soil, and the property relation which compels the owner of labour-power to drive it on and activate it beyond such measure as is required to satisfy his own indispensable needs.
Rent consists directly in the appropriation of this surplus expenditure of labour-power by the landlord; for the direct producer pays him no additional rent. Here, where surplus-value and rent are not only identical but where surplus-value has the tangible form of surplus-labour, the natural conditions or limits of rent, being those of surplus-value in general, are plainly clear.
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868 Engels To Marx In London
Dear Moor,
The business with the rate of profit and the value of money is very neat and very clear. The only thing that is unclear to me is how you can assume m/(c+v) as rate of profit, for m does not flow solely into the pockets of the industrialist who produces it, but has to be shared with the merchant, etc.; unless you are taking the whole branch of business together here, therefore disregarding how m is divided up between manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, etc. In general, I am very keen to see your exposition of this point.
Well, you are planning to make that exchange with someone else, right? What if that person doesn't agree with the rate of exchange you propose? Maybe they want more from you than you are offering. The exchange must be mutually agreeable. So there needs to be some 'neutral' factor common to both items that both parties can agree on.
I understand that the exchange rate is negotiated. If the other party doesn't agree with my rate of exchange, we can negotiate further, or break off the deal. And I agree that, by definition of 'commodity', labour time is common to all commodities. What I don't get is, why must labour be the common denominator that the exchange is based on? Why can't use-value be the common denominator?
For instance: I can imagine an exchange between two people in which neither know anything about how the goods were produced (their abstract labour). In order to exchange, theoretically, all they need is the framework "I want what you have, you want what I have." In this case, the goods are made equal in terms of use-value, not abstract labour.
You might say that use-value cannot be the common denominator because one use-value cannot be compared to another. But neither can one instance of concrete labour be compared to another. You can lose the qualitative aspect of labour and by abstracting to 'socially necessary average labour time', but does that make it a better method of comparison? How can you equate 5 hours of work coal mine to 5 hours of filing paper in an office? Besides, the same method of abstraction can be applied to use-value, creating something like 'utility' in mainstream economics, an abstraction to beat all abstractions.
Marx is quite good on this, as I recall. But, in my own words, what better way of comparing the various different amounts of labour-time embodied within the items concerned? Each party to the exchange is assumed to try to maximize the return they receive, and to minimize what it is they exchange. Enough of this will eventually find an average rate. Again, we are talking about any items which are products of human labour, which can be quantified, and specified qualitatively (i.e. as use-values).
Are you saying that, given the socially necessary average labour time of good A, and the market exchange rate between A and B, we can deduce the socially necessary average labour time of good B?
If so, I'm interested in how we can determine the socially necessary average labour time of good A, without reference to any exchange rates. How is this done?
Thanks for clearing up that mess about what 'abstract labour' refers to. I much prefer the term 'socially necessary average labour time' - it has units!
Footnote 19 from that Elbe piece is very interesting for what LBird was asking
LBird
If Dave B is correct, and 'value' (of some sort which I haven't yet isolated in my own thinking) is transhistorical, than why can't it be applied to the future Socialist/Communist society, to help workers organise production efficiently?
The problem if we take value with us as a concept for planning leads us down the road of centralized planning:
Elbe
According to Marxism-Leninism “value functions as an instrument of the planned administration of the socialist processes of production and reproduction, according to the principles of bookkeeping and control of the mass of labor and of consumption. Correspondingly, the relation of value is consciously implemented.” (Eichhorn 1985, p. 1291) Within this framework, socialism consists “merely in the revolutionized way of calculating the same social determination of the products of human labor as exists in the capitalist commodity economy.” (as Grigat (1997, p.20) critically notes.) Thus, allegedly Marxian communism degenerates into a sort of Proudhonian system of labor notes, as Behrens/Hafner also observe: “all hitherto existing conceptions of the transition to socialism resort to models of immediate calculation of labor-value and utility.” (Behrens/Hafner, p. 226)
I wish people would back things up. This is a discussion about Marx’s interpretation of the labour theory of value not a list of other peoples interpretations.
I am paraphrasing what Karl and Engels wrote down, open and welcome to attack.
( I can’t take seriously the attack Engels and thus drop him.)
I will admit however that as regards the labour theory of value that the competitive and international market dimension of capitalism can be seen as giving a stimulus to commodities being sold at their value particularly as regards to the caveat of socially necessary labour.
And abstract labour or labour in general manifests itself more clearly in the fluid division of labour with wage labour being sold and hawked as a commodity etc.
And work just becomes a matter of the time and effort you spend at it irrespective of were it is or what you are doing.
What is going on here is logical scientific reductionism to develop laws and formulae to be applied back to the real world for understanding as with Aristotle in his application of tertium comparationis to exchange value.
Versus sociological whaffle.
tertium comparationis was done on the fourth page of the opening chapter. after having taken out ‘the concrete forms of that labour’.
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Part I: Commodities and Money
Chapter One: Commodities
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight.
Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.
By the way Rabbits points are good ones, as is the stuff on skilled and unskilled labour.
As was the stuff about why a feather doesn’t fall to the ground as fast as a hammer etc.
Buts lets follow and understand the logic and Marx first and then attempt to trash it later, you can’t criticise something until you understand it first, unfortunately.
Arguing that the law of value is "trans-historical" based on Aristotles' incomplete account kind of proves the opposite. Since the Athenian economy was not governed by a fully developed law of value, Aristotle's account was necessarily incomplete. Historical materialism is more powerful than even the greatest intellect.
Secondly, we need to be very careful about Marx's exposition of ground-rent. First and foremost since at all points when Marx is talking about ground-rent he is careful to identify ground-rent as the way in which value in land is realized economically under capitalism. He makes it clear this ground-rent is capitalism's encounter with landed-property, and that rent persists because capital cannot fully overcome the limitations of this landed property, and could not without abolishing private property in its entirety.
All societies do not labor under the law of value. All societies do labor under the need to apportion, distribute, organize, expend, the total socially available labor time in a manner that satisfies the needs of the society to reproduce its relations of production.
That is mightily different than the law of value, which is a specific expression, manifestation of this need based on the class relations of capital.
Marx is very clear in his critique of capital that he is not expounding on universal laws, or relations, common to all societies at all points in time. The laws are not laws like the conservation of energy is a law, or the 2nd law of thermodynamics is a law. The "laws" are nothing other than the necessities, the internal logic, of the modes of production. They are nothing but expressions of the class relationships at the basis of production.
That Greek and Roman societies may have had a proto-proletariat; that the word for capital actually derives from those societies' words for cattle is very interesting in foreshadowing what developed in England after the 16th century, and then in Europe. But it does not mean that Greek and Roman society were organized around a law of value. They could not be, unless they were organized around the production of value; of appropriated wage-labor.
On the book-keeping of value in socialism, it isn’t rocket science.
If we are going to build a bridge in socialism we can do it this way or that way using these materials or those type of materials ie we could build it out of titanium or steel and both methods would produce an equally useful bridge.
So the two plans are put forward and the book-keepers say are but titanium takes longer to make and involves more effort and therefore has more value. And thus the titanium bridge would ‘cost’ more in human effort or would be more ‘expensive’ in terms of ‘expended’ human labour power.
Not exchange value as no one would be buying and selling titanium for steel or whatever.
So;
Capital Vol. III Part VII Revenues and their Sources Chapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of Production
Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.
Dave B, the whole point for Marx is that he "discovered" the dual character of labour, i.e. that labour is both abstract and concrete at the same time, but that this duality exists only in capitalism, that is, when capital makes the commodity form its own and labour-power becomes a commodity.
The real world that you're referring to Dave is the capitalist world for Marx; specifically the imaginary, topsy-turvy world of bourgeois political economists. Your Aristotle example is interesting, but you do not include the observation that Aristotle could not have "discovered" value since ancient Greece was a society in which production was mainly done by slaves. In other words value is a social and historically specific category.
The problem if we take value with us as a concept for planning leads us down the road of centralized planning...
Why would 'planning' be necessarily 'centralised'?
Surely workers will have to make all sorts of plans (transport infrastructure, building hospitals, etc.), and some concept of some sort of 'value' will be required to allow us to make decisions, to allow us to prioritise what we produce and when, and to bring together perishable goods in a timely manner.
And these decisions, for Communism, would necessarily involve democratic decision-making by Workers' Councils, with the decision being made at the appropriate level of Council covering all those involved by the effects of that decision.
Once again, Khawaga, I'm not too sure, yet, of the implications of these political views of what Communism is, for the interpretation of what 'value' is.
But one thing I know already for sure: one's economics, politics and ideology and all intermingled.
'Value' (and interpretation of what Marx 'meant') is as much an ideological question as it is a narrowly economic one.
Anyone trying to get a grip on what Marx is talking about in Capital should notice that there is significant disagreement about fundamental aspects of his theory. This makes it all the more essential to actually read what Marx says in Capital. If you don't read it, you have no basis on which to evaluate all of these contending interpretations. Not that reading it makes everything crystal clear. But, as Marx said in the Preface to the French Edition of Capital, there is no "royal road to science."
That said, the historical specificity of Marx's analysis is of the utmost importance. Marx believed the political economists' treatment of capitalist categories and laws as ahistorical reflected a blind spot of great significance.
See, for example, Marx's words in the first chapter of Capital: Marx
Political economy has indeed analysed value and its magnitude, however incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms. But it has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that particular form, that is to say, why labour is expressed in value, and why the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of the value of the product. These formulas, which bear the unmistakable stamp of belonging to a social formation in which the process of production has mastery over man, instead of the opposite, appear to the political economists’ bourgeois consciousness to be as much a self-evident and nature-imposed necessity as productive labour itself. (Penguin, 173-175)
Briefly, Marx's object of study is the capitalist mode of production, and he begins by analyzing the commodity, the general form of products in a capitalist society. The fact that labour is expressed in "value" is not, as the above passage suggests, a "nature-imposed necessity," or an ahistorical fact. What is ahistorical, or common to all forms of human society, is the production of use-values, or useful articles. So, when Marx analyses the commodity as the basic form of capitalist wealth, and says that the two factors internal to this form as a historical object are use-value and value, it is quite easy to see that the commodity's character as "value" is its historically-specific aspect. Or else we say that "commodities" would be produced even in a communist society, which directly contradicts Marx.
Marx often criticized specific economists for transforming "value" into something absolute or ahistorical (and his whole theory of fetishism makes little sense if a useful good is naturally a bearer of value.) As Marx wrote in Book III of Theories of Surplus Value Marx
As values, commodities are social magnitudes, that is to say, something absolutely different from their ‘properties’ as ‘things’. As values, they constitute only relations of men in their productive activity. Value indeed ‘implies exchanges’, but exchanges are exchanges of things between men, exchanges which in no way affect the things as such. A thing retains the same ‘properties’ whether it be owned by A or by B. In actual fact, the concept ‘value’ presupposes ‘exchanges’ of the products. Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not manifest themselves as ‘values’ of ‘things’. Exchange of products as commodities is a method of exchanging labour, [it demonstrates] the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others [and corresponds to] a certain mode of social labour or social production. . . . Thus he [Bailey], the wiseacre, transforms value into something absolute, ‘a property of things’, instead of seeing in it only something relative, the relation of things to social labour, social labour based on private exchange, in which things are defined not as independent entities, but as mere expressions of social production. (Prometheus, 129-130)
And of course Marx makes much the same point about specific social relations in the first chapter of Capital:
Marx
The product of labor is an object of utility in all states of society; but it is only a historically specific epoch of development which presents the labour expended in the production of a useful article as an ‘objective’ property of that article, i.e., as its value. It is only then that the product of labour becomes transformed into a commodity. (Penguin, 153-154)
And Marx makes the same point again: Marx
This division of the product of labour into a useful thing and a thing possessing value appears in practice only when exchange has already acquired a sufficient extension and importance to allow useful things to be produced for the purpose of being exchanged, so that their character as values has already to be taken into consideration during production. From this moment on, the labour of the individual producer acquires a twofold social character. (Penguin, 166)
As this idea of historical specificity was used by Marx to criticize bourgeois economists, it was of special concern to him. I think that it is plain that Marx does not write about any ahistorical "Law of Value." To do so would be to say that private property and commodity production are entirely natural!
And lastly, regarding Dave B's comment that "...far from the law of value being historically specific to capitalism, it actually starts to breakdown under capitalism....": Marx identified this idea with Adam Smith and specifically singled it out for criticism. For example, writing about Torrens in Book III of Theories of Surplus Value, Marx comments on a remark of his about "that early period of society [before capitalism]," writing, Marx
That is, precisely when exchange-value in general, the product as commodity, is hardly developed at all, and consequently when there is no law of value either…
Marx thus does not see the law of value as ahistorical. He further writes that Torrens follows Adam Smith in supposing that the law of value applies to this early period of society but no longer applies when commodities are products of capital. Marx writes, Marx
On the other hand, the product wholly assumes the form of a commodity only—as a result of the fact that the entire product has to be transformed into exchange-value and that also all the ingredients necessary for its production enter it as commodities—in other words it wholly becomes a commodity only with the development and on the basis of capitalist production.
Marx therefore considers Torrens’ position to be flawed: Marx
Thus the law of value is supposed to be valid for a type of production which produces no commodities (or produces commodities only to a limited extent) and not to be valid for a type of production which is based on the product as a commodity. The law itself, as well as the commodity as the general form of the product, is abstracted from capitalist production and yet it is precisely in respect of capitalist production that the law is held to be invalid. (Prometheus, 73-74)
For those who are interested, Dave B's interpretation of some of this stuff was criticized by Mikus and I on an old thread: http://libcom.org/forums/theory/capital-vol-1-reading-group-chapters-1-2-22092008?page=2
So the two plans are put forward and the book-keepers say are but titanium takes longer to make and involves more effort and therefore has more value. And thus the titanium bridge would ‘cost’ more in human effort or would be more ‘expensive’ in terms of ‘expended’ human labour power.
Aha. So in your example, instead of labour time, the common denominator is labour power, a phrase Marx also uses. How are we to measure expended labour power? Calories burned? Pounds of sweat?
Yeah maybe it is hard to tell, some kind of criteria about who or what requires more work or effort than another.
Time spent or expended would be useful but the intensity of work would have to come into it.
Working in a titanium plant might be a bit cushy with electrolysing ores or whatever as opposed to the manly stuff involved in steel production.
And as to the trans-historical theory of value Karl goes further, which is fine with me as a thought experiment scientist, as regards to trans historical imaginative fiction with Robinson and Crusoe.
At 1719, early ‘capitalism’ and abstract labour value etc on one Island.
But you see I don’t think it was stupid as that; it is what us scientists do all the time as with Einstien’s spook effect thought experiment on electrons, although he lost that one,
Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political economists, let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but different modes of human labour.
Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than another, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all that is essential to the determination of value.
Dave B: From what I've been reading of Marx, I don't think Robinson Crusoe makes for a good example of the theory of labour-value. Since Crusoe doesn't live in a capitalist society, his labour does not produce commodities. He produces food and shelter for himself, but these goods aren't meant for exchange. Thus, they have no exchange value. You can't even draw a fine line between his labour and non-labour.
Well, you are planning to make that exchange with someone else, right? What if that person doesn't agree with the rate of exchange you propose? Maybe they want more from you than you are offering. The exchange must be mutually agreeable. So there needs to be some 'neutral' factor common to both items that both parties can agree on.
I understand that the exchange rate is negotiated. If the other party doesn't agree with my rate of exchange, we can negotiate further, or break off the deal. And I agree that, by definition of 'commodity', labour time is common to all commodities. What I don't get is, why must labour be the common denominator that the exchange is based on? Why can't use-value be the common denominator?
I don't see the point in asking "why must it be so?" The question is, in the actual history of capitalism, is it or is it not so? It clearly explains a lot about how capitalism works, if it is indeed so. How could use-value serve the same purpose? Each different use-value would have to be exchangeable -- and therefore commensurable -- with each other one. How would that work -- without any reference to the labour put into each such? How would it be determined, e.g., how many loaves of bread would be standardly exchanged for a leather coat?
For instance: I can imagine an exchange between two people in which neither know anything about how the goods were produced (their abstract labour). In order to exchange, theoretically, all they need is the framework "I want what you have, you want what I have." In this case, the goods are made equal in terms of use-value, not abstract labour.
Yes, such an exchange can occur -- there is nothing stopping it from occurring. But we aren't really so concerned with this or that exchange, are we? We are concerned, once again, with the actual historical reality of capitalism and its markets. So we are talking about exchanges in general, of which there have been very many over the years, where there is a standard rate of exchange of items exchanged. And we are talking about people, initially, who are trying to get what they need to live and who are engaging in significant durations of labour in order to produce the items they are looking to exchange in order to acquire what they need to live. These people will have some idea about how much labour is required (i.e. the average minimum, i.e. abstract labour) to produce the item. Obviously they will know how much time they have laboured to produce the item. And once they go through the exchange process a few times, and think about how some exchanges perhaps aren't exactly equal or fair, where one party "gets the better" (or "takes advantage") of the other, they will likely begin exchanging closer to whatever the market standard is. Remember that they will learn from others what rate of exchange (for the same item) they have exchanged at, and regular exchanging parties will soon enough be posting their own exchange rates. I'm leaving out here, of course, any reference to money, since that is how we are conceiving of things, even though in actual history money was the medium of such markets and exchanges. When you realize the role money has had in capitalism, value as expressing abstract labour makes a lot more sense; whereas, abstracting from money in analyzing exchange and value in capitalism, makes it easier to see exchange as more like barter, and more difficult to see any 'need' for abstract labour.
You might say that use-value cannot be the common denominator because one use-value cannot be compared to another. But neither can one instance of concrete labour be compared to another. You can lose the qualitative aspect of labour and by abstracting to 'socially necessary average labour time', but does that make it a better method of comparison? How can you equate 5 hours of work coal mine to 5 hours of filing paper in an office? Besides, the same method of abstraction can be applied to use-value, creating something like 'utility' in mainstream economics, an abstraction to beat all abstractions.
An hour of labour equals an hour of labour. They are both labour of an equal duration of time. But obviously some labour is "worth more" than other labour. That's part of the beauty of Marx's theory: labour itself -- actually labour-power -- is a commodity that is sold on the labour market, and factors that make some worth more than others are things like how skilled it is, how much training or education is required to do it, how dangerous it is, etc. As we well know, an hour of a software engineer's labour is worth a lot more than an hour of a janitor's labour. Nevertheless, at whatever the level of value of the labour concerned is, the product's value is still a factor of the amount of labour needed to produce it. So, e.g. other things being equal, if item A requires 5 hours labour worth 4 units per hour, while item B requires 5 hours labour worth only 2 units per hour, item A will have a value twice that of item B. The ratio -- of the different values of the labour involved -- gets taken into account, but labour-time remains the basic determining factor. The market takes all of this into account.
Marx is quite good on this, as I recall. But, in my own words, what better way of comparing the various different amounts of labour-time embodied within the items concerned? Each party to the exchange is assumed to try to maximize the return they receive, and to minimize what it is they exchange. Enough of this will eventually find an average rate. Again, we are talking about any items which are products of human labour, which can be quantified, and specified qualitatively (i.e. as use-values).
Are you saying that, given the socially necessary average labour time of good A, and the market exchange rate between A and B, we can deduce the socially necessary average labour time of good B?
If so, I'm interested in how we can determine the socially necessary average labour time of good A, without reference to any exchange rates. How is this done?
The answer to the first question is yes. I think your latter question here is confused. (Sorry) You ask "how we can determine the socially necessary average labour time of good A, without reference to any exchange rates", when you had begun by saying "given the socially necessary average labour time of good A". So you had started out already assuming that this amount was known. It doesn't make sense to then ask how we can know it. But if we don't make that assumption of knowing the amount beforehand, of course it is only by reference to exchange and exchange rates that we learn it. Repeated exchange eventually establishes an average. There is nothing circular about that, though. Unless you're suggesting that there needs to be an independent way of verifying this. (That would be tantamount to asking for scientific proof of Marx's theory of value; but of course no theory of value, Marx's or any other, is capable of such proof.) In theory, one could look at all the of the various labour processes required to produce a given item, and all of the different ones that there are producing it for a given market, and find the average, without any reference to exchanges of the item in question.
OK, just to clarify a few things. As you can see (hopefully) from the above, there are a number of different interpretations or readings of Marx's work. One of these "readings" we call the 'orthodox Marxist' reading, which is (roughly) what Dave B is defending above.
Amongst other things, this reading (originally concocted by Engels and Karl Kautsky) holds to the somewhat miraculous belief that Marx and Engels were "two bodies, one mind(soul)". That is to say that anything that comes out of Engels' pen, even after Marx's death in 1883 makes him unable to protest, is ultimately part and parcel with "Marxism" and couldn't possibly be in contradiction with Marx's analysis.
There are also other non- or anti-orthodox readings which reject this as arrent nonsense and have repeatedly proferred as evidence, quotes from Marx which they submit are in obvious contradiction to Engels' writings. Especially the notorious "Supplement" to Vol III. And this, I might add not only in post-WWII readings such as the Italian operaisti or the German Neue Marx-Lektüre (New Marx Reading), but going back at least to Rosa Luxemburg who accused Engels and Kautsky of re-writing Marx in the production of Volume III in a way that was tantamount to forgery.
So this is hardly a new idea, and one for which a substantial volume of evidence has been put forward over the last century, hence Dave B's affectation of shock and surprise ("!!!!!!") that anyone would even think of suggesting that Engels' understanding of the law of value was not the same as Marx's, is disingenous.
Back to the question of whether abstract labour and value are categories specific to the historical period where capitalist social relations dominate society, or are some transcendant "eternal laws of history".
The Stalinists had a very clear incentive to say that value was not only a feature of capitalism, but socialism as well. This was because they were attempting to use 'socially necessary labour time' as the numeraire to govern their state-owned monopoly economy (in the absence of price setting via markets). Clearly if they accepted that the law of value was limited to capitalist societies, this gave the lie to their contention that the USSR was socialist.
Given the Trotskyists opposition to Stalinism, you might think that they would have attacked this line of argument. In fact, as far as the orthodox Trotskyists went, Ernst Mandel (mentioned above) being a leading example, they in fact accepted that the USSR was on some economic level, not capitalist, and also accepted that the law of value will continue to apply in socialism, at least in the "lower phase" (according to Marx's notes on the Gotha Programme - a key plank in the orthodox faith). Hence the orthodox Trotskyists insistance that the USSR was a 'degenerated worker's state' rather than some authoritarian statist variant of capitalism.
What united both Trotskyists and Stalinists, despite their political differences, was a loyalty to the schema of orthodox Marxism originally laid out by Kautsky, despite their (again political) criticisms of him. The pre-war ultra-left Marxists critics of Lenin and his successors, whether Stalinist or Trotskyist, also in many ways, clung to the orthodox reading of Marx. This is clearly laid out in the Programme of the GiK (here on this site), which is again committed to continuing to use 'labour accounting' to manage allocation and distribution in a post-revolutionary socialist society.
In the post-ww2 period, the ultra-left position evolved somewhat from the old or paleo-ultra positions, going through a transitional "conseillism autogestionnaire" phase (meso-ultra) in the 50s and 60s which ended in a muddle which led to people either rejecting Marx entirely (Socialisme ou Barbarie's Castoriadis & Lyotard for e.g.) or eventually making the rupture that led to the "neo-ultra" positions of the likes of Dauvé et al, which now aim for 'immediate communisation', rejecting the notion of any "socialist law of value" in any so-called transitional phase.
But there is a historical ground for this fundamental schism that has run through the entire socialist movement from it's inception, which goes back before Marx. In fact the full intent of Marx's work does not make entire sense until you understand the kind of 'socialism' that he was writing against.
The origins of the socialist movement lie in the original Co-operative movement of the 1820s (not to be confused with today's ethical retail and worker-run business co-ops). An argument arose in that movement around the issue of "Labour Notes". This was the idea that because the working class were exploited by being paid by capitalists less than the value of their product, they should arrange to work without masters and exchange their products with each other in proportion to the labour-time embodied in them, using a system of Labour notes (rather than bank notes) at self-run exchanges. (This idea was brought back from the USA by Robert Owen and is pretty much the same as Josiah Warren's ideas). By cutting out the exploiter, the Labour notes advocates hoped to secure "the right to the full product of labour" for the working class.
It was against this "distributist" socialism that Marx set out to provide an analysis to show that "fair exchange" schemes (in our day "LETS", worker cooperatives, local currencies, and other such schemes) will never bring the working class the ability to escape from exploitation, as exploitation does not originate in the sphere of circulation - where it does in fact appear - but in the process of production itself.
Ironically, the "orthodox Marxist" reading of Marx, took Marx's painstaking efforts to untangle the spheres of production and circulation, in order to expose this problem, as meaning that the two sphere were completely separate - therefore, there was no problem with retaining the relations of distribution of capitalism, so long as production was transformed, due to the common ownership of the means of production. This, ultimately, led back to the idea of workers receiving a wage in "I can't believe it's not labour notes"* certificates of hours work, to be exchanged for means of consumption of equivalent 'socially necessary labour time' at the state store. This idea of the separation of the relations of distribution and the relations of production is such an article of faith for the orthodox, that in the Introduction to the Penguin edition of Capital vol. III, Ernst Mandel goes out of his way to point out that when Marx wrote of the relationship between the relations of distribution and the relations of production (in what became ch. 51 of volume 3) that they are inseperable, that this was not to be taken 'literally', falling back, as ever, on the support of the Gothakritik.
So, in summary, the orthodox Marxist reading that value is a trans-historical category, not historically specific to capitalism (despite all the evidence in Marx's writings, a small selection of which Dave C has quoted above), is directly related to their conception of socialism based on labour-value accounting and differential distribution or remuneration based on labour contributed - a.k.a the wage (to each "according to deed", as opposed to "according to need"). The anti-orthodox view is that capitalist relations are embedded not only in the private ownership of the means of production, but also in it's specific and historically unique relations of distribution (exchange, value). That in order to escape from capitalism we need to not only socialise the means of production, but also to abolish value, wages and exchange (and by consequence, the state, which is above all a body of wage-workers, armed or not).
As a post-script, getting back to Ancient Egypt (as mentioned in that truly dumb-ass qoute from Engels about the law of value going back 8000 years). One detail is that as the economy acquired a numeraire (the deben see here and here) and a price list of the official deben prices of various goods and chattels was published. But this is not the law of value, which Marx expressly identifies as being produced by the 'blind operation' of market competition, but the rule of the God-kind, the Pharaoh. This practice of price setting by the reigning political authority in fact continues through most of human history prior to the emergence of capitalism (see Georges Rudé's work on the bread riots of the middle ages, which were aimed - and in fact still are - at getting the political authority to set the official price of bread at a more affordable rate (how effective such a measure actually is in conditions of growing market forces, is another matter)
Ocelot, thanks alot for putting this discussion into some sort of 'ideological' context.
If I've understood you correctly, you seem to be saying the following (but please put me right if I'm mistaken):
Position A (that of Khawaga, ocelot, dave c, for eg.?)
Non-orthodox Marxism (based an Marx alone)
- value is historically specific to capitalism (ie. won't exist under Communism at all)
- Communism has only one phase/stage
- therefore, no need for any sort of 'state'
- based on 'Anarchism' (including Luxembourg)
Position B (that of Dave B, for eg.?)
Orthodox Marxism (based on Marx, but also Engels & Kautsky)
- value is trans-historical (ie. will exist at least in the early part of Communism)
- Communism has a early stage of Socialism
- therefore, a need for some sort of 'Workers' state'
- based on 'Marxism' (including Stalinism, Trotskyism, Left Communism)
Is this a fair summation of what you are saying?
One further question:
ocelot
The Stalinists had a very clear incentive to say that value was not only a feature of capitalism, but socialism as well. This was because they were attempting to use 'socially necessary labour time' as the numeraire to govern their state-owned monopoly economy (in the absence of price setting via markets). Clearly if they accepted that the law of value was limited to capitalist societies, this gave the lie to their contention that the USSR was socialist.
Couldn't it be argued that that problem with the Stalinist USSR was not that they argued 'value is a feature of Socialism' (ie. the early phase of Communism), but that the economy of the Stalinist USSR was not under the democratic control of the proletariat?
In other words, 'value' under proletarian democracy would be entirely different to 'value' under market capitalism or Stalinist dictatorship, and that that was the real problem, ie. a lack of proletarian democracy, not the 'false use of historically-specific value'.
'Value', under prol. dem. would (once again?) become a 'socio-economic' category, rather than a narrowly 'economic' category, as under the impersonal, undemocratic market. The term 'value' under Critical Political Economy would be different to that under Neo-Classical Economics.
This whole post is very tentative, and I would welcome your criticisms, corrections and further explanations and clarifications.
Ocelot, thanks alot for putting this discussion into some sort of 'ideological' context.
If I've understood you correctly, you seem to be saying the following (but please put me right if I'm mistaken):
Position A (that of Khawaga, ocelot, dave c, for eg.?)
Non-orthodox Marxism (based an Marx alone)
- value is historically specific to capitalism (ie. won't exist under Communism at all)
- Communism has only one phase/stage
- therefore, no need for any sort of 'state'
- based on 'Anarchism' (including Luxembourg)
Position B (that of Dave B, for eg.?)
Orthodox Marxism (based on Marx, but also Engels & Kautsky)
- value is trans-historical (ie. will exist at least in the early part of Communism)
- Communism has a early stage of Socialism
- therefore, a need for some sort of 'Workers' state'
- based on 'Marxism' (including Stalinism, Trotskyism, Left Communism)
Is this a fair summation of what you are saying?
Well, close. However there have been Orthodox Marxists like the pre-ww2 council communists, who might have not have been up for a 'Workers' state' (but my knowledge of the early councillists is very limited, I'm sure there are others who can clarify). As for Dave B's actual position, I admit to being somewhat in the dark. The arguments he has advanced in this thread are all of the orthodox type, however he is also a member of the SPGB, who's online texts on 'what is socialism' seem to be very much against the retention of the law of value (or the state) in socialism - at least to my brief readings.
LBird
One further question:
ocelot
The Stalinists had a very clear incentive to say that value was not only a feature of capitalism, but socialism as well. This was because they were attempting to use 'socially necessary labour time' as the numeraire to govern their state-owned monopoly economy (in the absence of price setting via markets). Clearly if they accepted that the law of value was limited to capitalist societies, this gave the lie to their contention that the USSR was socialist.
Couldn't it be argued that that problem with the Stalinist USSR was not that they argued 'value is a feature of Socialism' (ie. the early phase of Communism), but that the economy of the Stalinist USSR was not under the democratic control of the proletariat?
In other words, 'value' under proletarian democracy would be entirely different to 'value' under market capitalism or Stalinist dictatorship, and that that was the real problem, ie. a lack of proletarian democracy, not the 'false use of historically-specific value'.
'Value', under prol. dem. would (once again?) become a 'socio-economic' category, rather than a narrowly 'economic' category, as under the impersonal, undemocratic market. The term 'value' under Critical Political Economy would be different to that under Neo-Classical Economics.
This whole post is very tentative, and I would welcome your criticisms, corrections and further explanations and clarifications.
Not only could that position be argued, but indeed it has been. But you're actually making two propositions here, which don't necessarily have to be connected.
1. The problem with the Stalinist economy was not the economic base of value accounting, but the political problem of the lack of genuine proletarian democracy?
2. Would the term 'value' itself not change meaning in a situation of genuine self-management of social production?
1. is commonly put forward by Trotskyists for e.g. - and equally commonly criticised by their opponents (whether anarchists or ultra-left Marxists) on the grounds that it reproduces the competitive 'dog eat dog' dynamic of capitalism.
2. That is indeed likely and desireable - i.e. that we "value" free time, methods of production that don't destroy our environment, processes that are co-operative rather than competitive, and so on. But here we are reclaiming 'value' as being something founded in subjectivities, brought together in cooperative political processes, rather than something alienated that stands objectified against our own desires and is expressed as a repressive relation of force.
Thanks again, ocelot. I sure you're as aware as I am that 'ideological underpinnings' play a great part in any analysis/ explanation - that's why I'm so keen to expose these, as a basis to further discussion about individual-use-value/concrete labour and social-value/abstract labour.
Indeed, my very characterisation of u-v/c-l as 'individual', and s-v/a-b as 'social', will have, I'm sure, some analytical (and political) consequences.
Two further questions, for now:
1. Why should 'value accounting' (ie. my 'social-value') necessarily reproduce 'dog-eat-dog' competition? Two 'social-values' can be communally compared and a democratic decision made about which is preferred, without either being chosen purely on narrowly 'economic' grounds. That 'keeping dogs' doesn't necessarily mean we'll allow them to eat each other - we'll be in control.
2. you say:
ocelot
But here we are reclaiming 'value' as being something founded in subjectivities, brought together in cooperative political processes...
I don't think I agree with how you are characterising 'value' here as 'subjective' - to me, 'subjective' means individual appreciation, ie. use-value (or the neo-classical 'psychological theory of value').
Again, to me, 'value' is 'social-value', which can only be comprehended/understood at the social level, ie. as a product of democratic discussion (as I posited, all those posts ago, in my early gropings with the 'Smith family' model).
Social-value/abstract labour can only be dealt with at the social level, not the individual. To emphasise, 'value' can't be calculated (for want of a better word) by an individual - it is a 'discussion/dialogue', not a personal feeling or intuition.
I'm not a fan of using models based on 'objective impersonal forces' - we must use 'socio-economics', and class struggle politics.
I'm sure you can see some implications here for one's ideolological basis: that is, 'Individualist Anarchism' versus 'Class Struggle Anarchism/Libertarian Marxism'. For the former, the starting point is the 'individual', whereas for the latter, the unit of analysis is society.
Communism is a 'social' ideology, in my eyes. 'Individualism' is rooted in bourgeois ideology.
Where these thoughts leave my attempt to understand the difference between 'abstract/concrete labour', I'm not sure.
There will no buying and selling in socialism and no state and no money, no exchange value.
It will be still necessary to in my opinion to take into account the amount of time required to produce one thing one way or another ie value, if you are interested in minimising the total or aggregate working days of the workers.
That will be more important than ever under communism because the capitalist market through the money system that performs that function automatically for you will no longer operate.
From 1877, when Karl was still alive;
As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.
So I say again where did Karl say that value and surplus value was specific to capitalism.
In the chapter on the Working Day. Where he writes, among other things
Marx
Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, [7] whether this proprietor be the Athenian caloς cagaqoς [well-to-do man], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus [Roman citizen], Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist. [8] It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver.
Thus surplus-labour has indeed always existed, but for the majority of human history it has been linked to use-value and concrete labour (but at times linked to exchange value). It is only in the capitalist mode of production, in which labour acquires a dual character and the production process becomes a dialectic of a labour process and a valorization process, that surplus-labour becomes (takes the form of?) surplus-value.
OK then to put it in context we are being ‘transported back’ here, to exchange in barter and at the point at which money is just about to be introduced, somewhere around the dawn of recorded history.
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Two: Exchange
In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attaches itself to commodities that are by Nature fitted to perform the social function of a universal equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals.
The truth of the proposition that, “although gold and silver are not by Nature money, money is by Nature gold and silver, is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of these metals for the functions of money.
Up to this point, however, we are acquainted only with one function of money, namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of commodities, or as the material in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed. An adequate form of manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undifferentiated, and therefore equal human labour, that material alone can be whose every sample exhibits the same uniform qualities. On the other hand, since the difference between the magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money commodity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences, must therefore be divisible at will, and equally capable of being reunited. Gold and silver possess these properties by Nature.
But that selection is meaningless without the discussion of the value-form in chapter one. And again you're doing a historical rather than logical reading. And while it's true that "the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the abstract" it only becomes an embodiment of abstract labour in the capitalist mode of production, i.e. when the commodity form is generalized.
Position A (that of Khawaga, ocelot, dave c, for eg.?)
Non-orthodox Marxism (based an Marx alone)
- value is historically specific to capitalism (ie. won't exist under Communism at all)
- Communism has only one phase/stage
- therefore, no need for any sort of 'state'
- based on 'Anarchism' (including Luxembourg)
Position B (that of Dave B, for eg.?)
Orthodox Marxism (based on Marx, but also Engels & Kautsky)
- value is trans-historical (ie. will exist at least in the early part of Communism)
- Communism has a early stage of Socialism
- therefore, a need for some sort of 'Workers' state'
- based on 'Marxism' (including Stalinism, Trotskyism, Left Communism)
I don't mean this as any attack on LBird, as he seems to be contributing in good faith, but this sort of schema is entirely misleading, and one's interpretation of Marx does not directly correlate with a series of political positions. To take a relevant example, Dave B clearly does not align with "Position B," while I do not align with "Position A" (or the "neo-ultra" tendency in general). Ironically, Dave B and I discussed this "first phase of communism" stuff on these forums, and our views were quite the opposite of what you might expect from this schema:
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/dreaded-labour-notes-02042009
I don't mean this as any attack on LBird, as he seems to be contributing in good faith...
No offence taken, dave, I'm only surprised you think your criticism can be seen as an attack - I've got a thick skin (for genuine criticism, at least), and I openly asked for criticisms and more.
dave c
...but this sort of schema is entirely misleading, and one's interpretation of Marx does not directly correlate with a series of political positions.
Well, I wouldn't call it entirely misleading, as I think it's a good starting point for our understanding of the various ideologies involved, but, of course, it needs a bit more detail, as you've provided.
[start edit]
Don't forget, I was just trying to summarise ocelot's longer post, into something more readable and 'shorthand', to prompt further discussion.
[end edit]
I just haven't got a lot of time for 'individualistic' explanations of ideological positions - that is itself ideological (as, indeed, is my dislike). We can fit people into broad categories - I just don't know yet what they are, in relation to the question of abstract/concrete labour.
By all means, if you want to correct or construct anew my tentative 'positions', be my guest. I'm here to learn. As for 'neo-ultra', I'm afraid you'll have to expand on that a bit - how does it fit into our discussion, and what would you see as your position?
Lets not run before we could walk, the abstract labour stuff in bold was just meant to be the cherry on the cake
In an earlier post I said that Karl started analysing the law of value and the nature of value re commodities trans-historically and then having understood its general nature then went onto to analyse it in capitalism to analyse and understand capitalism, or something like that.
So lets test that thesis.
Chapter one opens up with;
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
Note, not commodities in capitalism, but commodities in general, unless I am going to receive another bombshell that you only get commodities in capitalism and that they are specific to capitalism.
Now you could argue ah but he just means commodities in capitalism.
But in chapter one he doesn’t mention capitalist commodities.
Which would be out of character as regards his general style of tedious repetition on what was important
In chapter two he doesn’t mention capitalism at all but discusses barter and the introduction of money to facilitate this process. And that value at this stage is extant.
but at at this point the commodities already have this transhistorical value, the value exists;
and the value of commodities
one function of money, namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of commodities,
as the material in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed
There is an element of subjectivity and objectivity to abstract labour.
So suppose we are in a non-capitalist village or whatever and one bod is herding geese and selling them and the eggs or whatever.
He is a goose herder by nature as was his father and his father and its in his blood and the love of his life etc and he has no concept of goose herding being anything but concrete labour producing use values and gold money upon its sale.
So goose herding and goosey products take a turn for the worse he gets less and less gold money for his weekly work.
But what he notices is that the maker of the recently fashionable blue suede shoes is getting more money for the same amount of effort and or labour time.
Abstract labour or general effort suddenly enters into his consciousness as the other guys general effort is more rewarding than his own.
Envy and resentment is shortly followed by activity and he switches form goose herding to cobbling. And the search for the maximum amount of gold for the least amount of effort and labour time, and that least ‘amount of effort and labour time’, which is all that matters now, is nothing but abstract labour.
To conflate things further whilst he was in the to some extant delusional about the noble, purposeful and useful business of gooseherding and in denial as to his pecuniary motives he was to that extant ‘un-alienated’.
Now he is moves in terms that general effort, abstract labour, in return for money is all that matters.
As a humanist I believe that people do not so readily sell their souls in such a Faustian bargain.
But capitalism certainly energises that process.
Actually there is one great quote for you lot in volume one, although there is context that saves me, on capitalism being necessary to liberate, so to speak the Law of value, and letting it rip.
I was in a buttock clenching position yesterday not looking forward to having tackle that one.
But like Ted Grant on state capitalism and leftwing childishness I can chill out as no one but me has read it.
And oh yes, Dave C and Mikus were great fun and are challenge.
Note, not commodities in capitalism, but commodities in general, unless I am going to receive another bombshell that you only get commodities in capitalism and that they are specific to capitalism.
But look at the quote you've just cited; he's interested in the commodity because it is in that form that the wealth of capitalist societies appear to us. He thus says that logically, not historically, we should start with the commodity because that is the dominant value-form (which he later expands to include money). The whole point of beginning with the commodity form is so that he can arrive at its fetish; to come full circle so to speak. The series of abstractions (away from concrete labour and use-value, exchange value, money) he goes through in chapter 1 leads up to the fetish. It is a logical argument, not a historical one.
I do not, however, disagree that commodities exists only in capitalism. Capitalism is simply a system in which that form has become generalized.
LBird, I'll try to clarify a little what I meant. I don't think the schema is misleading because it doesn't sketch out a place for my very important ideas ;) but because I don't think that there are two coherent political/economic theoretical frameworks to identify here. In other words, I don't think it is a good starting point, if that means a starting point for clearly identifying two such frameworks (which I don't think exist). For starters, "Non-Orthodox Marxism" can mean many different things, both in terms of politics and in terms of interpreting Marx, and one interpretation of Marx does not necessarily lead to one politics, or vise versa. And in a discussion that centers around abstract labour and value in Marx, it seems like that should be what divides the two groups. What you would then notice is that you might have, under your "no value under communism" Group, various views on the state and transition, rendering the whole project of neatly classifying political positions under a side in an interpretative dispute somewhat useless.
That is not to say that some of the historical background that ocelot mentions is useless. But, in the context of this thread, it doesn't justify any classification for a coherent "Non-Orthodox Marxism," much less a grouping of individual participants on this thread. Hopefully that is a bit clearer. When I mentioned a "neo-ultra" tendency, I was just following ocelot, when he was talking about a modern tendency in a broad non-Leninist Marxist tradition (and which you, perhaps unknowingly, were using as a model for "Non-Orthodox Marxism"). It could be identified with Gilles Dauve and others who would share some of these positions with regard to the law of value and transition to communism. This modern tendency diverges from what ocelot called the "paleo-ultra" tradition of council communism. I don't really want to go on about it, but, within this tradition, I sympathize more with the "paleo-ultras," am closer to Marx's political views than those of the "neo-ultras," and think the "neo-ultra" critique of the "paleo-ultras" is very weak.
Dave B, I like your story about the goose herder. I note that your conceptualization of abstract labour includes both labour time and effort, and if we generalize further we could probably include aspects like 'difficult to make tools' and 'difficult to acquire skills' within 'effort'. Can you think of a passage in Marx where he talks about this?
Also, why do you not think that your goose herder is, in fact, living in a capitalist village? We observe a division of labour, a currency based on gold, and a profit-oriented mindset.
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
Note, not commodities in capitalism, but commodities in general, unless I am going to receive another bombshell that you only get commodities in capitalism and that they are specific to capitalism.
Well, besides the fact that you are ignoring the opening sentence, no, commodities are not specific to capitalism, but the regulation of production by, for, and through the accumulation of value... i.e. the organization of labor as a commodity is indeed unique to capitalism, and that is Marx's subject.
But in chapter one he doesn’t mention capitalist commodities.
Uh.... yes he does, right there "the wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production..."
Now you could argue ah but he just means commodities in capitalism.
But in chapter one he doesn’t mention capitalist commodities.
Except for that first sentence. And after that... Marx isn't concerned with the commodity per se, he is concerned with the commodity as the manifestation, expression of value,. And the existence of a universe of commodities as expressions of value, with the myriad of exchanges is only possible under capitalism. It is only possible under capitalism because the social expression of labor is as a commodity.
Which would be out of character as regards his general style of tedious repetition on what was important
Given that this is a translation, and from the 4th edition I think, and that Marx had considerably edited the first chapters on value after the publication of the first edition, we are probably better off not speculating about what fits, and doesn't fit, his general style.
In chapter two he doesn’t mention capitalism at all but discusses barter and the introduction of money to facilitate this process. And that value at this stage is extant.
Again, the question is not if value exists in barter, simple exchange, etc. The question is not if money represents the universal equivalent of value, standing for and apart from all commodities at one and the same time. The issue is if production is regulated by the law of value; if the social organization of labor is as a commodity, as a value producing activity.
Such an organization requires a very specific set of social conditions-- where the actual condition for labor opposes the laborers themselves. Those relations of production specific to capital are, besides making capital capital, make the law of value the regulating principle.
This is why surplus product takes the form of surplus value under capitalism and does not take that form in feudalism.
If the law of value regulated feudal economies, they would be capitalist not feudal.... not to put too fine a point on it.
Marx is the introduction to the first edition of volume 1 remarks how the human mind has struggled for 2000 years to understand the value-form. Does that mean the law of value regulated production in 33 BC? Obviously, not given that the production that predominated was slave production.
LBird, I'll try to clarify a little what I meant. I don't think the schema is misleading because it doesn't sketch out a place for my very important ideas but because I don't think that there are two coherent political/economic theoretical frameworks to identify here. In other words, I don't think it is a good starting point, if that means a starting point for clearly identifying two such frameworks (which I don't think exist).
No, it doesn't mean 'a starting point for clearly identifying two such frameworks' - I'm more inclined to see it as a 'good starting point' because there are more than two incoherent 'political/economic theoretical frameworks to identify here', which need at least discussing!
To be clear, I think 'frameworks' (or ideological positions) do shape one's views of economics/politics, which is why I'm keen to examine some of the beliefs behind the various views of 'abstract/concrete labour'.
dave c
And in a discussion that centers around abstract labour and value in Marx, it seems like that should be what divides the two groups. What you would then notice is that you might have, under your "no value under communism" Group, various views on the state and transition, rendering the whole project of neatly classifying political positions under a side in an interpretative dispute somewhat useless.
I'm prepared to accept there might be more than two positions, and there might be overlaps/lack of clarity/misunderstandings between all three, four, etc., but I don't believe they are simply individual positions which should be taken at face value.
So, again, I don't think "an interpretative dispute [is] somewhat useless". In fact, I think interpretation is at the heart of the matter.
Of course, I don't have the answer yet (and I probably never will), but the underlying interpretation of 'abstract/concrete labour' is as up for debate as there is no 'objective truth'. I'm interested in trying to understand all the points of view - which can only help me to choose between them.
A simple exegesis of Marx's words is not enough - all the 'counter-quoting' in the world won't settle the issue. We're not religious fanatics, quoting the relevant section of the bible as authoritative, are we? We are (or should be) Critical Communists.
That attempt to link particular interpretations of value-form theory to certain political leanings is ridiculous.
FWIW, I don't feel any affinity for any "anarchist" tradition, think the adjective "libertarian" as applied to various strands of Marxism is just a decontextualized attempt to apply anarchist criteria to intra-Marxist debates, and would argue that Rosa Luxemburg is outside any anarchist heritage (most anarchists would agree). I mean, DIE LINKE in Germany even has their non-profit foundation named after Rosa Luxemburg.
By the same token, presumably anarchists who have any intellectual affinity for Proudhon also adopt Proudhon's substantialist, pre-monetary value theory.
So a Left-Ricardian/Engelsian/Proudhonian substantialist value theory is perfectly compatible with "libertarian" politics.
And a non-substantialist/value-critical/monetary value theory is also perfectly compatible with "reformist" politics (as can been seen by the countless left academics in Germany who attempt a synthesis between form-analytical readings of Capital with a state theory in the tradtion of Poulantzas and Gramsci).
If one wished to produce in order to buy a window, then one would have to produce commodities with the same price as a window. However, this labour could be expended upon commodities as different as cars and headphones, insofar as either could be exchanged for the window, while in either case the result would still be the same amount of wealth on the market. The physical act of producing different commodities is highly different, but on the market they do not count for you as specific physical things, but rather as salable goods, which find their use precisely in their ability to exchange. As salable goods, they would be equivalent insofar as they can sell for the same amount, and therefore they are equated qualitatively; one can sell commodities vastly different in physical form and receive the same amount, hence making them equivalent on the market, where they would be differentiated not in terms of their physical form, but rather only quantitatively, in one being able to sell for more than the other.
As such, the labour expended upon these commodities, insofar as it is production for exchange rather than for use as such, is equally undifferentiated qualitatively. As one is not using the product qua physical object, it becomes labour "expended without regard to the [physical] form of its expenditure." After all, the physical act of labour is determined by the physical product to be produced, and depends upon this; Homer did not write the Iliad by tap dancing. Conversely, in commodity production the various physical objects are equated insofar as they are commodities, and as such the various different physical acts leading up to and determined by this product in fact become qualitatively equated along with their products. I may spend some time producing cars, or spend some time producing doors, but if both are equal on the market, where it is only a quantitative matter with different commodities representing different levels of homogeneous market wealth, then the two forms of labour are also equated qualitatively qua homogeneous wealth-producing labour. They both give me the same amount on the market, and hence are equal as salable commodities, and my production, insofar as it is production for exchange, or production of salable commodities, is equated. At most they may be quantitatively different, with one taking more time than the other, and in this case I may choose to take the one which takes less time. Nonetheless, I could not do this if I were producing products for my own consumption, in which case it would not be simply a matter of quantity of time.
As such, we have abstract labour, which is not merely a mental abstraction from particular physical forms of labour (of course all labour is labour, as well as being a particular type of labour, and has a certain length, but that is not the point), but an abstraction made in actual practice in the market. As a product of abstract labour, production for exchange, the commodity is a value (this is a definition). A value is simply a product of abstract labour, in the sense above discussed. As such, the product as a value is simply the product looked at only in its aspect as a product of abstract labour, in which it is undifferentiated from all other commodities qualitatively. The product can be said to both 'be a value' ("as crystals of this social substance, which is common to them all, they are values - commodity values") and 'have a value' ("A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it") in the same way that an object both is a mass and has a mass. Likewise, just as mass has a certain magnitude, expressed in grams, pounds and so on, in which the product is treated only as a mass and hence as qualitatively equal with all other masses, value also has a magnitude; as we have seen, as values commodities are differentiated only quantitatively, and hence their magnitude is determined by the length of the qualitatively equivalent labour.
This determination is, for Marx, precisely how production is distributed according to social need in commodity production; I won't elaborate too much here, although Engels' notes on the subject here are fairly straightforward. In society, labour-time must be distributed among specific products in certain proportions. If one were stranded in a jungle and spent all of one's time producing swords rather than food, one may well starve, and that would be inconvenient. The same applies to society. The general conundrum here is that the individual producers produce for themselves, but not physical products for their consumption, and they carry out their labour as abstract labour for themselves, but this abstract labour must be distributed among specific types of physical labour. Production is not regulated on a social level, but carried out by individuals who do not need their products, but nonetheless it must be regulated, and this may only, ultimately, be done through private incentives, as production is carried out privately, and hence the distribution of social labour may only take the form of private incentives. This is done precisely through the fact of quantitative differentiation in the qualitatively equal abstract labour. The product is a product of a specific amount of abstract labour, but exchanges with others which may have different magnitudes of value, and this is precisely what is accomplished through the alteration of supply and demand, wherein products which have had excessive labour applied to their production exchange for less than the abstract labour represented by them, while conversely the opposite occurs when too little is produced of a product.
This takes the form of alterations in price, by which the product is manifested as a product of abstract labour, independent of the will of the producer, and hence of an independent law governing an ungoverned society. The law takes the form by which products are 'undervalued' and 'overvalued' on the market through price relative to their labour, so that a certain amount of labour in one sphere is more remunerative than the same amount in another, and hence production declines in one and increases in another. This 'undervaluation and overvaluation' as a means of distributing social labour-time may only take place due to the determination of value by labour-time. This law is, ultimately, simply the determination of value by labour-time, by which different forms of labour become qualitatively equal, allowing for transfer between them according to social need, and hence products may be undervalued or overvalued so that the producers are spurred to produce more or less in terms of labour-time, or to migrate between spheres of production, which is only possible because value is quantitatively differentiated in terms of labour-time. If not for this determination, then there is no way to thus spur the producers to migrate precisely because their product could not be overvalued or undervalued, and hence social labour could not be distributed. In other words, because value is in terms of labour-time, abstract labour may be socially distributed amongst particular forms in terms of labour-time; deviations of price from value are therefore simply how this law of value, namely the determination of value by labour-time, functions. The possibility of such divergence is, of course, inherent in the market, and it takes place simply as a means of distributing social labour-time.
As such, as soon as the product of labour becomes a commodity, "the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour." Likewise, "As values, [commodities] constitute only relations of men in their productive activity. Value indeed “implies exchanges”, but exchanges are exchanges of things between men, exchanges which in no way affect the things as such. A thing retains the same “properties” whether it be owned by A or by B. In actual fact, the concept “value” presupposes “exchanges” of the products. Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not manifest themselves as “values” of “things”. Exchange of products as commodities is a method of exchanging labour, [it demonstrates] the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others [and corresponds to] a certain mode of social labour or social production." The second quote could perhaps do with some elaboration, but I think that I've written enough for now. In any case, it should make it fairly clear that value only exists in commodity production, that is, not trans-historically.
Down with labour notes and Deleonist
I'm certainly down with labour notes and De Leonism.
That attempt to link particular interpretations of value-form theory to certain political leanings is ridiculous.
So, I presume you think that 'particular interpretations of value-form theory' are free from 'political leanings'?
We live in a class society, are dominated by competing political ideologies, are social beings, and are all influenced by what we read and discuss, and we here are all self-avowed Communists, and yet you seem to think that there is no link between economics and politics?
and yet you seem to think that there is no link between economics and politics?
Are you trolling? I never said that. I said there is no necessary correspondence between particular interpretations of Marx's value-form analysis and a specific set of political positions.
Amongst people advocating the non-substantialist value theory that Khawaga and I are arguing for on this forum, you will find in Germany people who are indeed some species of Left Communist or anarchist, others who are classical Marxists of one of the 57 varieties of Bolshevism, others who are dyed-in-the-wool social democratic reformists, others who are politically abstentionist academics, others who are hardcore Zionists or anti-socialist liberals (i.e. the various Post-Anti-Germans).
These are largely questions of Marx exegesis and philology, not burning questions of immediate political intervention (though of course I think most activists would benefit from reading _Capital_. That's not the same as saying a correct reading of _Capital_ guarantees correct political positions).
Why is it that you can be dismissive by calling someone's opinions 'ridiculous', but then you get upset when someone ridicules your ideas?
Either develop a thick skin, or put your (often justified) criticisms in better words and tone. I've been nothing but open about my ignorance of these issues, and I expect a fellow Communist to treat my questions, and attempts to formulate answers to various issues, with respect. If you (and others) think I'm wrong, fine. I welcome criticism - but I won't accept sneering dismissal by a self-selected 'authority'.
Now, to the serious stuff.
Angelus Novus
Amongst people advocating the non-substantialist value theory that Khawaga and I are arguing for on this forum...
If there is such a position as 'non-substantialist', why didn't you or Khawaga say so, and that you two embrace it, and outline what it means, in contrast to a 'substantialist' view of 'abstract/concrete labour'? I didn't know this, and I'll hazard a guess that there are others who don't, either. It must be obvious that this underpinning idea to your analysis is precisely what I'm trying to uncover.
Furthermore, it does your case no good that it wasn't mentioned earlier, when you seemed to be saying that your interpretation was the only one, and was correct, rather than putting it in context for others to judge; that is, that it was an interpretation.
Who said, 'Information is power'?
Angelus Novus
These are largely questions of Marx exegesis and philology, not burning questions of immediate political intervention...
This, perhaps, is a key point of disagreement between us. I think it is, if not immediate, then at least very important, that workers can understand Capital.
And in the context of this thread, where the OP asked for an explanation fit for a five-year-old, and I pleaded for one fit for an eighteen-month-old, is it really the time and place for philology and 'quote-mongering' between the cognescenti?
Angelus Novus
...though of course I think most activists would benefit from reading _Capital...
Well, we're on the same hymn-sheet, now, mate!
If only we could understand what we're reading, and that those who do actually have some understanding would help, rather than obfuscate!
So, again, I don't think "an interpretative dispute [is] somewhat useless". In fact, I think interpretation is at the heart of the matter.
Just wanted to point out, this is not what I said at all, just take a look again at my post. I said that the attempt to classify political positions under the heading of the "no value in communism" Group is somewhat useless. For example, Angelus is identifying with a "non-substantialist" interpretation. He is well aware that I don't identify with this interpretive tendency, and we have discussed this on here (I'll spare you the link). Yet we are clearly on the same side in terms of classifying the law of value as historically specific. Furthermore, Angelus points out that even within this subgroup of people who think that the law of value is historically specific, you have all manner of political positions represented.
It just seems odd to me that you would want to undertake some sort of elaborate charting-out of all these political tendencies (which, as Angelus and I have both argued, have no necessary correspondence with various interpretations of Marx). And I think this is odd because it takes you further afield, into a forest of other questions that simply will not help you better understand Marx. I think the source of a certain mutual incomprehension might be that you think there is some Platonic "value" somewhere out there, and we are all trying to describe the same thing, and only incidentally (and rather annoyingly, rather religiously) using Marx to justify our ideas. I think that the question of the historical specificity of "value" on here is a discussion about Marx's work, and most assume that when you ask about abstract labour and value, you are asking about Marx's work. But if we shouldn't appeal to Marx's writings, but rather to how attractive our politics are in discussing these points... then I think that is ridiculous.
I think that the question of the historical specificity of "value" on here is a discussion about Marx's work, and most assume that when you ask about abstract labour and value, you are asking about Marx's work.
Well, the OP was about 'abstract/concrete labour', no mention specifically about 'Marx'.
Of course, we both know that Marx's ideas on this are a central part, but not the only part.
The OP and I both asked for a simple explanation, but we were given complex explanations, in terms which we don't understand, and since then it looks like the OP has given up entirely.
In fact, as I've said, the thread has been hijacked by 'experts' who just want to quote 'the master's words' at each other (yet again), rather than actually have some success in explaining labour, value, etc. to those who keep asking for simpler explanations.
And funnily enough, I do think there's something rather 'religious' about this philological approach of what Jesus really meant.
When Dave B posted, it was the first time I realised just how much disagreement there was, and also how, at first glance, I preferred his take on some things. That doesn't mean he is right, or that my initial impressions were right. I'm not sure, but there doesn't seem to be much help about to help me clarify.
And perhaps my 'political' classification was wrong/unwise/ill-informed, but it was an attempt to get to what has actually come out during the strained discussion.
Now, we all know there are substantialists, non-subs., historically-specific and transhistoric - no doubt, if this tedious, uninformative debate carries on, some more 'labels' will come out of the woodwork.
dave c
But if we shouldn't appeal to Marx's writings, but rather to how attractive our politics are in discussing these points... then I think that is ridiculous.
Sigh! Where did I say that 'attractiveness in politics' should play a part? If you mean 'try to uncover political assumptions and see how they match my assumptions', then you're closer to the truth. But then, I might just abandon my assumptions, given more information. Whether it is 'attractive' or not is not the issue.
'Ridiculous'? There's that word again. Can't you and Angelus play nice, for a change? With me, at least.
Wow, I'm really behind in this thread. Still I don't want to ignore direct questions, even if the current debate has moved on a bit. So.
LBird
Two further questions, for now:
1. Why should 'value accounting' (ie. my 'social-value') necessarily reproduce 'dog-eat-dog' competition? Two 'social-values' can be communally compared and a democratic decision made about which is preferred, without either being chosen purely on narrowly 'economic' grounds. That 'keeping dogs' doesn't necessarily mean we'll allow them to eat each other - we'll be in control.
Well, that's a big one. Debate has been going backwards and forwards between advocates of market socialism (and a good number of folk who don't like the label, but have pretty similar ideas in practice) and value-abolitionists (for want of a better name) for a long time now.
What I'm specifically referring to here is not just taking account of labour time for production, but specifically, the distribution of unequal shares of the social product in proportion to the measured contribution of labour contributed. It's this 'wage' relation that transforms 'socially necessary labour time' from a hypothetical socially-neutral metric into a relation of force and source of competition between producers. "Who measures?" becomes the crux of the matter. Did I really work as hard an 8 hour day producing widgets as you just have making doohickeys? Maybe I've just figured our a neat trick how to make widgets in half the time and have just spent the last 4 hours of my day arguing about abstract labour on teh internetz, rather than doing any real work? I won't belabour the point, but you get the idea.
LBird
2. you say:
ocelot
But here we are reclaiming 'value' as being something founded in subjectivities, brought together in cooperative political processes...
I don't think I agree with how you are characterising 'value' here as 'subjective' - to me, 'subjective' means individual appreciation, ie. use-value (or the neo-classical 'psychological theory of value').
Again, to me, 'value' is 'social-value', which can only be comprehended/understood at the social level, ie. as a product of democratic discussion (as I posited, all those posts ago, in my early gropings with the 'Smith family' model).[...]
No, I totally agree, as far as 'product of democratic discussion' goes, that's what I was trying to talk about with 'co-operative political processes', although, on reflection, 'political' is also misleading here, as the intention would be to have transcended capitalist separation of the political and the economic... I guess my use of 'subjectivities' here was misleading. Certainly I have no truck with bourgeois individualism. I wouldn't perhaps go quite as far as the anti-humanism of Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari (tho I have time for all 3), but I do think that we produce each other, and meaning, socially.
Angelus Novus' intervention made me look back on that schematic. I originally missed this bit "- based on 'Anarchism' (including Luxembourg) ". I'd have to agree that there's no such thing as an "anarchist" reading of Marx (and Luxemburg sure was no Anarchist, just look at the start of her argument in the Mass Strike, that the general strike is not necessarily only an anarchist tactic). I've certainly met anarchists who were still, other than their committment to the goal of abolishing the state via libertarian methods, still very wedded to an impeccably orthodox reading of Marx.
There is not a direct one-to-one (isometric) mapping of readings of Marx onto political affiliation. To me, to use a slightly sideways analogy, it's rather like the relationship between Madhab (school of law/fiqh) and Aqidah (creed) in Islam. The two are not directly connected in every case, but every Wahhabi follows the Hanbali madhab, and all Ja'faris are Shia (but not all Shia are Twelvers, and not all Twelvers are Usulis - Bahraini Shias, for instance are Akhbaris, but I digress...). That's a total sidetrack, but see here for anyone interested in that sort of stuff.
The problem is the thread is centred on the problem of abstract labour and, since, the subordinate but related question, of whether abstract labour is a category of capitalism only, or a transhistorical category. I brought in the question of different readings of Marx and the perspective of orthodox Marxism, but this question alone does not really define the full collection of beliefs that define orthodoxy.
There's kind of a bigger problem as well, which a number of people have already alluded to. It's difficult to work through Marx using a "waterfall method" or a Euclidian style of exposition. That is to go through each stage and not move on to the next until you have completely understood the definitions given in the preceeding stage, expecting each successive stage to build on the definitions of the one before. Marx's concepts, like the components of an engine or machine, rely on each other to make sense collectively. Unlike a machine, however, Marx's method of exposition starts at a very high level of abstraction and then gradually moves down towards the complexity of reality. At each change of level of abstraction, the categories previously investigated at the more abstract level need to be revisited to see how they are modified by the complexity added by the increasingly concrete stages. (Or at least that's how Rosdolsky's reading sees it :) . No idea how to make that simple for a 5 year old, except to find a real-world analogy somehow. But anyway. Basically, you sort of need to read the whole lot to see how it all fits together, rather than going through the waterfall, step-by-step process.
On the non ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ question and of course if all commodities are ‘capitalistically produced’ then ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ is a tautology.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital
To the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further, into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production change into the laws of capitalist appropriation.
Capital Volume II Part I: The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuits Chapter 1: The Circuit of Money Capital
On the other hand, the same conditions which give rise to the basic condition of capitalist production, the existence of a class of wage-workers, facilitate the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity production.
And I know Engels is now discredited but feel free without fear of contradiction to accuse me of understanding commodity production in the same way as Fred.
1) Roman Law is the consummation of the law of simple, i.e. of precapitalist, commodity production, though the latter also embodies much of the legal system of the capitalist period. Exactly, that is, what our burghers needed at the time of their rise and, in accordance with local common law, did not get.
The issue of surplus value etc as regards feudal peasants has already been given in the explicit and palpably unequivocal quote from volume III.
And to return to the not so stupid ‘village idiot’ who keeps on making the most interesting points, and I don’t flatter you because you flatter me, and beware the wisdom of ‘fools’.
On the why isn’t the goose herder in a capitalist village etc. Well to keep it simple he and his fellow villagers have not been dispossessed of their own means of production and do not as yet have sell their labour power as a commodity to a capitalist.
The handloom weavers and fellow Proudhonist artisans and goose herding peasants were not originally capitalists, all they wanted to do was produce their own commodities and sell them without exploiting or employing others.
And prevent the opportunity for the accumulation and monopolisation of the means of production, capital, in individual hands and forcing others to work for them.
But within this notion of commodity production lies the seed of capitalism itself.
The unsuccessful goose herding peasants would slowly sell their egg laying geese to make ends meet and would end up dis-appropriated of his self sustaining means of commodity production.
And end up having to sell all that he had left, his labour power.
The same was happening in Russia as regards the ‘lazy’ peasants versus the industrious, efficient hard working ones.
[ there was some interesting stuff from Lenin on this, and I mean it in the best possible sense, as regards the even left SR’s insistence of the right of peasants to sell their allocated land and it was as regards to the at that point corrrupted Mir system]
The handloom weavers were more caught out by the ignoble advance of technology and the diminution of the value of their concrete labour, and vented their economic fury on that.
There is in my opinion a sort of flaw in the ‘labour theory of value’ which however is compensated for in the theory in terms of the equalisation in the value of abstract or general labour.
That is in the predicate that goes back page 4, that the exchange value of a commodity has nothing to do with its use value.
In the fast moving environment of technology some products and the specific types labour power required to produce them are temporally more useful than others, and that is reflected in the exchange value as opposed just the abstract labour or general effort required.
this debate is getting to cluutered for me and these 'Captcha's' are too hard.
Debate has been going backwards and forwards between advocates of market socialism (and a good number of folk who don't like the label, but have pretty similar ideas in practice) and value-abolitionists (for want of a better name) for a long time now.
Well, I think the market should be smashed in its entirety. But, to be replaced with what? I'm not sure of a straight jump to Communism (I suppose I've been influenced by Marx in the Gotha stuff), but I'm certainly sympathetic to all those on this board who think it can be done. But we need to discuss how this could happen, given that "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living."
ocelot
"Who measures?" becomes the crux of the matter. Did I really work as hard an 8 hour day producing widgets as you just have making doohickeys? Maybe I've just figured our a neat trick how to make widgets in half the time and have just spent the last 4 hours of my day arguing about abstract labour on teh internetz, rather than doing any real work?
The obvious answer to this is: 'the collective', not the individual. It can't be beyond our wits to formulate a way measuring 'abstract labour' (as I tried to show in my simplistic 'Smith family' model). Since we will be working together in communities, how could an individual just hide a 'neat trick'? We could elect delegates from one industry to work temporarily in another, if there were any serious questions about 'slacking' within an entire factory/office. And we must assume that, if we've actually got to Socialism/Communism, that most of the selfish bastards will already have been identified and have had the errors of their ways pointed out. Further, a new generation growing up under Soc/Com would be socialised entirely differently to the individualist, selfish, money- and fame-hungry people we produce today. We don't need to have any ahistoric ideas about 'goodness' of human nature to see that its possible to have a society that brings out the best in humans, rather than the worst, as capitalism does.
ocelot
No, I totally agree, as far as 'product of democratic discussion' goes, that's what I was trying to talk about with 'co-operative political processes'... the intention would be to have transcended capitalist separation of the political and the economic... Certainly I have no truck with bourgeois individualism.
It seems we agree on many things.
ocelot
I wouldn't perhaps go quite as far as the anti-humanism of Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari (tho I have time for all 3), but I do think that we produce each other, and meaning, socially.
I agree with the latter (socially-produced individuals), but I only know a little about Foucault, and he seems to be a Neitzschean, so I have no time for him.
I'll leave the 'schematic' stuff alone - I seem to have smoked out some information, which was my purpose.
ocelot
There's kind of a bigger problem as well, which a number of people have already alluded to. It's difficult to work through Marx using a "waterfall method" or a Euclidian style of exposition. That is to go through each stage and not move on to the next until you have completely understood the definitions given in the preceeding stage, expecting each successive stage to build on the definitions of the one before.
This, I suspect, is a big problem for a lot of people - it certainly is for me. I'm not sure how to overcome it, or if it is even possible to do so.
ocelot
Basically, you sort of need to read the whole lot to see how it all fits together, rather than going through the waterfall, step-by-step process.
To me, though you obviously mean well, this is like being advised to learn Russian by just reading Russian - no dictionary, grammar, advice, initial teaching - just isolated reading, and have faith that 'it'll come to you, one day'.
I'm sure that after twenty years I still wouldn't have made sense of the alphabet, never mind anything deeper like meaning. I'd need a Russian teacher who uses a 'step-by-step' approach.
Although, I'm prepared eventually to accept that it's 'just me', and others can learn by this wholistic method. But I don't want to give up just yet.
At least now I know 'use-value' comes from 'concrete labour', and 'value' from 'abstract labour'...
It just doesn't seem much for all the posts, both mine and everyone else's.
LBird, I am curious where you think the "concrete labour"/"abstract labour" distinction exists in non-Marxist economics, or if you were just distinguishing between Marx's theories and the different theories of Marxists. Maybe you know of Marxists who explicitly distance themselves from Marx's use of these terms? This may be where we are talking past each other. At least up until Marx's time, the concrete and abstract labour distinction didn't exist, to my knowledge. In Capital, Marx writes, "I was the first to point out and examine critically this twofold nature of the labour contained in commodities." (Penguin, 132) As for trying to understand these categories, I naturally suggested to read the first part of Capital. Do you think this is bad advice? Also, Zeronowhere gave a pretty clear and brief exposition of this stuff in his own words. Capital is difficult, but as I said before, it makes no sense to make your mind up about someone's interpretation of Marx without actually reading Capital.
On the non ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ question and of course if all commodities are ‘capitalistically produced’ then ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ is a tautology.
Who here has claimed that only capitalism produces commodities?
To the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further, into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production change into the laws of capitalist appropriation.
Ummm.... case closed, kind of, no? The property laws of commodity production CHANGE into the laws of capitalist appropriation. I think that pretty much means they change into the law of value; the law of the rate of profit; the law of production prices... actually all those things derived from the law of value.
First. It produces its products as commodities. The fact that it produces commodities does not differentiate it from other modes of production;…
the product as a commodity, or of the commodity as a capitalistically produced commodity
a capitalistically produced commodity is one that is produced by labor organized as wage-labor, for the appropriation of surplus value and the accumulation of value. A capitalistically produced commodity is one that exists, circulates, gives up it specific utility to a universal equivalent representing..... value. A capitalistically produced commodity is one that is not produced for the consumption of the producers, that has no use in fact to the producers. A capitalistically produced commodity is one that is produced by abstract labor-- labor in general, social labor made accessible through its measurement by time. A capitalistically produced commodity is actually a representative of the social relations of production that create the law of value.
On the other hand, the same conditions which give rise to the basic condition of capitalist production, the existence of a class of wage-workers, facilitate the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity production.
Ummm.... yeah again... without a class of wage-laborers there is no production governed by the law of value.
On the non ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ question and of course if all commodities are ‘capitalistically produced’ then ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ is a tautology.
To my knowledge no one on this thread has said that commodity production is specific to capitalism. In fact Khawaga for e.g. has specifically said the opposite. Not sure what the point of this post is then. Unless you think that commodity production necessarily implies abstract labour.
LBird, I am curious where you think the "concrete labour"/"abstract labour" distinction exists in non-Marxist economics, or if you were just distinguishing between Marx's theories and the different theories of Marxists.
I'm not sure - partially a Marx/Marxists clash, and for 'value', LTV, etc. some earlier non-Marxist economists. Although I consider myself a Marxist, I don't hang on Marx's every word - he had an arsehole, just like me and you. He talks bollocks sometimes, just like everybody, including me. And he was completely shite at explaining his ideas, hence the years and decades of arguments about what he 'really' meant, starting with Fred.
dave c
As for trying to understand these categories, I naturally suggested to read the first part of Capital. Do you think this is bad advice? ... Capital is difficult, but as I said before, it makes no sense to make your mind up about someone's interpretation of Marx without actually reading Capital.
I've tried reading Capital; the historical stuff? - fine.
Reading the economics?
It's like blah someone pong keeps peep mixing nurt words wonk that imm don't mean ping whizz ying tong yiddle I poe much quark arf at all bzzzzzt. Will it really make sense if only I persevere?
Basically, you sort of need to read the whole lot to see how it all fits together, rather than going through the waterfall, step-by-step process.
To me, though you obviously mean well, this is like being advised to learn Russian by just reading Russian - no dictionary, grammar, advice, initial teaching - just isolated reading, and have faith that 'it'll come to you, one day'.
I'm sure that after twenty years I still wouldn't have made sense of the alphabet, never mind anything deeper like meaning. I'd need a Russian teacher who uses a 'step-by-step' approach.
Although, I'm prepared eventually to accept that it's 'just me', and others can learn by this wholistic method. But I don't want to give up just yet.
At least now I know 'use-value' comes from 'concrete labour', and 'value' from 'abstract labour'...
It just doesn't seem much for all the posts, both mine and everyone else's.
Yeah, but to be fair, it could just be that we're rubbish teachers. I mean breaking down complex systems of thought into easy to digest chunks is definitely a skill that a few people are really good at, but most of us aren't - I know I'm not. The only think I ever successfully taught was martial arts, but that's about physical movement, not ideas. Another pointless digression...
LBird, I am still not understanding. Earlier, you said: LBird
Well, the OP was about 'abstract/concrete labour', no mention specifically about 'Marx'.
It seems to me that someone who brings up this distinction is clearly talking about Marxist economic categories. And I showed that Marx thought that he was the first to make this distinction. Maybe you didn't see this as a specifically Marxian question, but it certainly seemed like you did when in your first post you refer to these “Marxist economic categories." In your next post you wonder if you are "wrong about Marx." I don't get it. If someone is asking about concrete and abstract labour and mentions having trouble with Marx's economic work, what else could they be asking for except some help in understanding Marx? I just don't know what you want help understanding any more.
Earlier, you said about Capital: LBird
And I've always skipped the first three notorious chapters like the plague.
So, I thought to myself... you are trying to ask other people to explain something you have not bothered to read, since the first chapter is where Marx very carefully explains these things. Sure it is difficult. Maybe you have been put off by his style. But then when you say you like Dave B's interpretation, at least initially, I don't know what you mean. If we are not just talking about Marx, do you mean that the way he describes "value" is close to how you want to use the word "value" in some not-necessarily-Marxian theory? Or do you mean that it is a convincing interpretation of Marx? In which case, I don't know on what basis you think this, and I still suggest reading the first chapter, so that you can see what explanations make sense of the text. I'm not trying to be unhelpful. I'm participating in a Capital reading group currently, with some people who have little familiarity with Marx. And I couldn't imagine just telling them my reading of it, without encouraging them to read it for themselves.
I just don't know what you want help understanding any more.
So, after all the posts I've made, saying I don't understand about value, labour, etc., you don't offer some easy-to-understand definitions, but say that you don't understand.
This thread is going nowhere.
dave c
So, I thought to myself... you are trying to ask other people to explain something you have not bothered to read, since the first chapter is where Marx very carefully explains these things. Sure it is difficult. Maybe you have been put off by his style.
Look, dave, it's fuckin' obvious that I've tried to read this impenetrable shit, clearly when I said I 'always skip it', I mean because I've tried it in the past and have thus learned that it is meaningless, so now I 'always skip it'.
Surely you can tell that I've tried... Do you really think...
dave c
I'm not trying to be unhelpful.
I know this is true, mate, of you and all the others who've posted, but I could cry at its implications.
ill help with anything u dont understand, i like to think of myself as someone who can "break things down". and if i cant, all the better, then at least i know about what i dont know ;)
ill help with anything u dont understand, i like to think of myself as someone who can "break things down". and if i cant, all the better, then at least i know about what i dont know
Am I a glutton for punishment, or what? Well, here goes...
Thanks, yourmum, that's a very kind offer! I think I might take you up on it!
Firstly, can you have a look at this post of mine, and see if you agree or not with it, as it is the last post I made in which I think I was making any progress with this seemingly intractable problem.
To me, this gives us 30 hours 'concrete labour' but only 21 hours of 'abstract labour'.
But, for any individual to know what 'value' they'd created, they would have to consult collectively. That is, the 'extended Smith family' meeting, otherwise known as a Workers' Council.
Thus, 'value' can't be decided by any individual with reference to their own isolated practice. Thus it places 'value' as a category at the social level, and thus re-introduces what I've called in other posts 'Political Economy' (although I'm aware that other posters dislike this term; if for historical reasons it should be called something else, I've no problem) in place of 'Economics'.
Value is a collective, democratic discussion, not an individual decision.
By 'best-practice', I was meaning shorthand for 'socially necessary labour'. And the 'use-value' created was 30 hours' worth, and the 'value' created was 21 hours' worth.
And, to be specific, Janet created 10 hours' worth of 'use-value' for herself, but this was only 1 hour's worth of 'value' for society.
[edit - and I've accepted Khawaga's suggestion of 'Critical Political Economy' since that post]
Though, having had a quick look at the link you provided, I think we at least have to engage with the issue raised by ocelot that 'use-value' is not just subjective. I think, at the moment, that ocelot is wrong, but I'd like to discuss that with you, ocelot and anyone else who wants to stay away from any other concepts (just for now, please), and doesn't just want to post quotes to 'prove' what Marx 'meant'.
So, to summarise, are you happy with what I wrote? If so, is 'use-value' only subjective or not?
If I type 'ssss' in 2 seconds, then this was the time necessary for me to type this. We may call the type necessary to produce something the necessary labour-time. The time is not 'necessary' in the sense of 'minimum possible', rather in the sense that if I wish to type it, it will of necessity take some time, and 2 seconds happens to have been the time which was necessary to type it in this case. The necessary labour-time is determined by productivity, intensity and skill of labour; to go back to the analogy, this time could be increased or decreased by using a keyboard which is easier or harder to press the keys on, by putting in more or less effort, or through practicing and becoming skilled at typing the letter 's' on a keyboard.
However, the various 's'es may have taken different times to type, in which case they would have different individual necessary labour-times. For example, one may have taken 0.6 seconds, another 0.3 seconds, and so on. However, as the total time expended was 2 seconds upon 4 letters, these individual labour-times average out to 2/4 = 0.5 seconds. This may be called the average necessary labour-time. The socially necessary labour-time is simply the average necessary labour-time for society as a whole, and hence will be determined by the variations in productivity, intensity and skill among the various producers in this society. Ultimately, it will be determined not only by the highest and lowest of these, but ultimately by the average, and hence it expresses the necessary labour-time under average conditions of production.
The socially necessary labour-time for 1 shoe would be 20/11 = 1.818 hours. There is no question yet of value, as there is no production for exchange.
On the market, all commodities of a certain kind feature only as samples of their kind. If I were to sell an 's' from the above 'ssss', then it would not matter which one I sold, as each counts only as an 's'. In the market, then, the various commodities of the same kind become interchangeable.
In their aspect as products of abstract labour, commodities appear simply as vessels by which producers, or productive enterprises, receive the fruits of the social labour set into motion by them. As their labour is private labour, labour carried out to produce products for private consumption, but their actual products are meant for social consumption, therefore they cannot simply give their product away, but must retain it in its value-form. If they did not retain the product of their labour in some form, then it is not private labour; as they do not retain it in its physical form, they must retain it elsewise, and this only takes place through this labour, as private labour, becoming incarnated in another product, which in fact enters into the private ownership of the capitalist.
This only takes place through its becoming a social product, and passing into the ownership of another. To become a private product, it must also be a social product. This in fact takes the form of surrender of the product to the market and to market forces, where it appears separated from the private producer, who faces society abstractly as an external force in the form of supply and demand and such. However, as products of a certain kind feature only as average samples of their kind on the market, they are also equated as average vessels of private labour; or, to put it another way, as vessels of private labour, they are interchangeable equivalents. In order for the product to be realized by the producer as a private product, it must be represented upon the market as an average sample of the total social product, and counts only as such; the necessary corollary of this is that for the producer's labour to be realized as private labour (which involves precisely the product becoming a private product), it must take its place in the market as a sample of the total social labour on products of its kind, and is counted only insofar as it is average labour. To put it in another way, in surrendering their products to the market, the various producers must posit them as simply average samples of their kind (which is equivalent, as we said, with putting them on the market); as such, in producing for the market, which is prior to but inseparable from putting them on the market, their labour counts only insofar as it is average labour, precisely because their intention is to place their product in the form of an average social product. In making their products vessels of private labour, they make them equivalent with all others of the kind in the market, and hence their labour counts as private, the creation of vessels of private labour, only insofar as it is in accordance with the social average; if it is less productive than this, then it counts as less private, abstract labour, precisely because in putting their product on the market the producer equates its character as product of private labour to that of all other products of their same kind, and hence as vessels of less private labour than they have performed.
This ultimately simply expresses the fact that the social aspect of the market appears as the temporary surrender of the private nature of the product to social forces, and hence the product appears completely separated from the individual producer as simply a sample of the social product. As much labour-time as the individual producer may have spent, they must posit their product as simply an average product of its kind in order to realize it on the market. All of their labour counts in determining abstract labour, but only the abstract labour represented by the total social product, of which each commodity features only as a sample. As such, the total magnitude of abstract labour cannot differ from the total amount of concrete labour-time performed on production of market goods, but the abstract labour represented by a single commodity may differ from its concrete individual necessary labour-time.
As such, a producer who produced for the market at very low intensity (ie. lazily), would not produce more value, as their products, as values, are only samples of the total social product, and hence the total social production. In producing for the market, they posit their products as samples of the total social product (for their products, to become private, must become social), and hence as a social product. The expression of value, and hence the magnitude of abstract labour, in terms of socially necessary labour-time is simply an expression of the wider contradiction between private and social labour in commodity production.
Zeronowhere, thanks for your generous attempt to explain things to me.
Unfortunately, for the purposes of my 'scenario', you lost me with 'exchange', 'market', 'commodities', 'value-form', etc.
If you remember, I said:
LBird
...I'd like to discuss that with you, ocelot and anyone else who wants to stay away from any other concepts (just for now, please)...
... so to help my learning, I'd like to stick to my simplistic outline, at least initially. I'm very aware that the issues are much more complex, but to aid my learning I'd like to try what ocelot called the 'waterfall' method. It might not work, but the other 'in the deepend' method definitely won't work.
Thanks again, and I'll hopefully return to your post in the future when I have a better grasp of the basics.
First, I've got to give yourmum a chance, as they think of themself 'as someone who can "break things down"'. Boy, do I need things breaking down.
In an earlier post I said that Karl started analysing the law of value and the nature of value re commodities trans-historically and then having understood its general nature then went onto to analyse it in capitalism to analyse and understand capitalism, or something like that.
Which was contested.
Capital Vol. III Preface
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure, Fireman positively fails to see this.
And that fits in with Fred’s interpretation in the supplement to volume III
Which is why, as commodities are so obviously general to other forms of production (which I wanted to nail down first), he said the following;
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of the capitalistically produced (or modified) commodity.
So the question is then;
1) is Fred stupid and didn’t understand what Karl was on about, like me
Commodity and law of value; not the same thing at all. While there were commodities prior to capitalism because use-values were produced for exchange it is only in capitalism that the commodity becomes a form of value. And as others have pointed out, it hugely significant when production is done by alienated wage-labour rather than say, tenant farmers, who did not produce based on value and neither was value extracted from their labour, but rather part of the surplus product.
With regards to your question:
1). He wasn't stupid, just had a poor interpretation. Please bear in mind that Freddy came up with his reading of Marx after editing/writing Vol. 3. He had huge difficulties with the so-called transformation problem (i.e. value into prices). Rather than viewing production prices as another abstraction, he could only get to grips with the problem by going back to Vol. 1 and reading it historically and linearly.
Could you elaborate on the following I am really not quite certain what you mean I don’t want to go on a wild goose chase guessing;
it is only in capitalism that the commodity becomes a form of value.
And can you back it up with a clear as opposed to opaque quotation from Marx.
you will have a better chance digging around in the pre circa 1863 stuff.
And ;
Please bear in mind that Freddy came up with his reading of Marx after editing/writing Vol. 3
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1867 Marx To Engels In Manchester
[London,] 27 June 1867
To show you how closely I have followed your advice in my treatment of the appendix, I'll now copy out for you the divisions, sections, headings, etc., of same appendix.
Appendix to Chapter I, 1
The Form of Value
I. Simple Form of Value
§ 1. The two poles of the expression of value: relative form and equivalent form of value.
a. Inseparability of the two forms.
b. Polarity of the two forms.
c. Relative value and equivalent, both being but forms of value.
§ 2. The relative form of value.
a. The relation of equality.
b. Value-relations.
c. Qualitative content of the relative form of value implied in value-relations.
d. Quantitative determination of the relative form of value implied in value-relations.
e. The relative form of value considered as a whole.
§ 3. The equivalent form.
a. The form of direct exchangeability.
b. Quantitative determination not contained in the equivalent form.
c. The peculiarities of the equivalent form.
a. First peculiarity: use-value becomes the form of appearance of its opposite, value.
b. Second peculiarity: concrete labour becomes the form of appearance of its opposite, abstract human labour.
c. Third peculiarity: private labour takes the form of its opposite, namely, labour in its directly social form.
d. Fourth peculiarity: the fetishism of the commodity-form more striking in the equivalent form than in the relative value-form.
§ 4. The form of value or independent manifestation of value = exchange value.
§ 5. Simple form of value of the commodity-- simple manifestation of the contradictions it contains within itself between use-value and value.
§ 6. Simple form of value of the commodity =simple form of an object as commodity.
§ 7. Relationship between commodity-form and money-form.
§ 8. Simple relative form of value and individual equivalent form.
§ 9. Transition of the simple into the expanded form of value.
II. Total or Expanded Form of Value
§ 1. The endless series -of relative expressions of value.
§ 2. Sequential determination implied in the expanded relative form of value.
§ 3. Defects of the expanded relative form of value.
§ 4. Expanded relative form of value and specific equivalent form.
§ 5. Transition to the general form of value.
III. The General Form of Value
§ 1. Altered character of the relative form of value.
§ 2. Altered character of the equivalent form.
§ 3. Concurrent development of relative form of value and equivalent form.
§ 4. Development of the polarity between relative form of value and equivalent form.
§ 5. Transition from the general form of value to the money-form.
IV. The Money-Form
(The following on the money-form is simply for the sake of continuity — perhaps barely half a page.)
§ 1. How the transition from the general form of value to the money-form differs from the previous transitions in the development.
§ 2. Transformation of the relative form of value into the price form.
§ 3. The simple form of commodity is the secret of the money-form.
You may sprinkle sand on this!
Your
K. Moro
Introduction by the Translators, Mike Roth and W. Suchting
The first edition of the first volume of Capital contains an appendix (Anhang) entitled The Value-Form (Die Wertform). This was dropped in the second edition, most of the material being worked into the rewritten version of Chapter 1. [1]
The origins and nature of this appendix are elucidated in the Marx-Engels correspondence. During June 1867, Engels was reading the page proofs of the first volume of Capital. On 16 June 1867 he wrote to Marx saying, amongst other things:
“The second sheet especially bears rather strong marks of your carbuncles, but that cannot be altered now and I do not think you should do anything more about it in an addendum, for, after all, the philistine is not accustomed to this sort of abstract thought and certainly will not cudgel his brains for the sake of the form of value.” (Marx and Engels Collected Works, 1987, vol. 42, p.381) [a]
He later goes on:
“In these more abstract developments you have committed the great mistake of not making the sequence of thought clear by a larger number of small sections and separate headings. You ought to have dealt with this part in the manner of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia, with short paragraphs, every dialectical transition marked by a special heading and so far as possible all excurses and mere illustrations printed in a special type. The thing would have looked rather like a schoolbook, but it would have been made much more comprehensible to a very large class of readers. For the people, even the learned section, are no longer at all accustomed to this kind of thinking and one must facilitate it for them in every possible way.” (Marx and Engels Collected Works, 1987, vol. 42, p.382)
On 22 June, Marx replied to Engels. He began by expressing the hope that “the bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles all the rest of their lives,” and continues later in the letter as follows:
“As to the development of the value-form I have and have not followed your advice, in order to behave dialectically in this respect as well; i.e. I have: 1. written an appendix in which I present the same thing as simply and pedagogically as possible, and 2. followed your advice and divided each step in the development into §§, etc. with separate headings. In the preface I then tell the ‘non-dialectical’ reader that he should skip pages x-y and read the appendix instead. Here not merely philistines are concerned but youth eager for knowledge, etc. Besides, the matter is too decisive for the whole book. (Marx and Engels Collected Works, 1987, vol. 42, p.385)
The following translation of Marx’s Value-Form appendix to volume I of Capital was made in 1976. After its completion and submission for publication there appeared the first English published version of it in a volume entitled Value: Studies by Karl Marx, edited by Albert Dragstedt [b]. An examination of this published version however showed that it was neither a very readable nor an adequate rendering of Marx’s text. (It may suffice to point out that twenty-six lines of Marx’s text, most of them quite crucial, are omitted without notice [2]). So we have considered it appropriate to present the following translation to the public.
Dave B, nothing of what you've cited deals with anything about a historical vs. logical reading of Capital. It's just the contents of the appendix to the very first edition of Capital. If you noticed what I wrote;
Please bear in mind that Freddy came up with his reading of Marx after editing/writing Vol. 3. He had huge difficulties with the so-called transformation problem (i.e. value into prices). Rather than viewing production prices as another abstraction, he could only get to grips with the problem by going back to Vol. 1 and reading it historically and linearly.
Now I shouldn't have written "after reading", but while editing/writing Vol. 3. That's when he ran into the so-called transformation problem. And, if Marxologists are anything to go by, it is then that he came up with what is now the orthodox reading of Capital as a linear-historical narrative rather than a dialectical one in which the narrative progresses through levels of abstraction. Now I am not saying, and never have, that Engles did not know Marx used dialectics; after all, it was him that told Marx to revise the first chapter because a reader not versed in Hegelian dialectics would have a hard time. Still that is not evidence for the fact that Engels later in his life, after Marx died, had problems interpreting the text dialectically. Interestingly, it is from the previously unpublished first edition of the German version of capital that it becomes much clearer that Capital should be read logically (cf. Neue-Marx Lekture).
And can you back it up with a clear as opposed to opaque quotation from Marx.
Are you trolling?!!?? The "quotation" is chapter 1. When it comes to the value form you can't just cherry pick quotations, like some analytical Marxist. The entire chapter is a meditation on the value form as it is under the capitalist mode of production.
And btw, I don't get what it is you're arguing anymore. You're just quoting random stuff, not explaining why you think it's important (in your own words). It seems that you believe the scripture is enough, when clearly what we are having a discussion over is an issue of interpretation of how to read Marx.
I guess this is as good as any moment to throw in Mattick's review of Rubin:
Like the work of Reichelt, Rubin's interpretation of value-theory is based on to the aforementioned letter from Marx to Kugelmann, in which the indispensableness of the proportionality of social labor is highlighted. Value-theory thus appears as a theory of social equilibrium and is different from the bourgeois equilibrium theory only in that instead of subjective price relations it speaks of objective value ratios. That is why Rubin bases himself not only on the cursory remarks of Marx, but to a much greater extent on the ideas of Rudolf Hilferding, for which the law of value was only another expression for the materialist conception of history, that alludes to the bondage of society to labor and its rational allocation.
"As Marx started from human labor," he shows, according to Rubin, "that in a commodity-producing society, the labor necessarily leads to the value form of commodity production." Certainly, the capitalist and worker are ordered to each other by production relations. Nevertheless, "they conclude contracts with each other as formally equal commodity producers". Rubin seems to overlook that the worker "exchanges" against capital not a commodity but his labor-power, which itself, as accumulated surplus value, is his own product. In other words, that in reality there is no exchange here, but only the semblance of such, by the capitalist control of the means of production. In developing the concept of value Rubin refers thus also to the for the time being so-called non-existing "simple commodity production", which is then contrasted with the capitalist commodity production. But the by means of the law of value resulting economic balance remains for him also in existence in capitalist commodity production, though with the "difference that the objective balance in the distribution of social labor results from competition", i.e., by the prices of production, not the values. Thus for Rubin it remains that "the balance and distribution of labor is the basis for value and its changes, both in simple commodity production as well as in capitalist society. This is the meaning of Marx's labor theory of value. "
On the other hand, Rubin however points out, that "Marx never tired of repeating that value is a social phenomenon, that the objectivity of value is 'purely social' and not an atom of nature goes into it." So the value-creating, abstract labor for Rubin can be understood as a social category in which every material element is missing. If that's so, it is not comprehensible how the law of value brings with it, Rubin's emphasized and on real labor relations based, equilibrium. However abstractly, labor-time expresses itself in production, and the total production must correspond to the capitalist-specific social division of labor. The objectification of value implies production, so that the value of natural products and labor cannot lack, even if value itself is neither the one nor the other. What Rubin is trying to say is that goods in commodity production first must take on value-character to be realized as commodities, that this however is not a necessity of production, but a peculiarity that arises solely from commodity-production. In that sense, value is a purely social phenomenon, as it would disappear under other social conditions, without thereby abolishing the "economy of time" to handle social needs.
The theoretical development of Marx's concept of value is equated by Rubin with the in the capitalist system currently dominating law of value. If Marx, with reference to the historical materialism assumed "human labor" as well, with regards to capitalism he meant capitalist wage labor. And if Marx derived the value from the exchange ratios and made this clear for an imaginary "pure commodity production", these cannot be separated from the actual capitalist relations of production. But Rubin's adherence to value exclusively given by the exchange, is explained by his view of the law of value as a balance mechanism. "In the unplanned production of commodities," he writes, the by abstract labor determined law of value plays "the role that socially equated labor plays in a deliberate planned socialist economy." Thus the law of value for Rubin is an unconscious regulation of the economy which, while under socialism comes to an end, is replaced by a plan which makes conscious what is taking place unconsciously in commodity-production.
yeah. individuals dont have the means to measure the value they produce as they dont see how productive others are, they can only measure their concrete labour. however characterizing the process of objectifying the value as a "democratic discussion" seems way off the mark to me. marx referred to it in terms of "behind their back", meaning its not object of conscious discussion but it comes to you in form of a law that if u dont acknowledge will lead to your fail at making business. soooo while the "discussion" part may hold true in a sense when you look at an exchange, you have to make some consent, the democratic part on the other hand i cant follow at all. mind explaining what you are thinking of when u write that?
If there is any need to bring the use value into this dicussion we will see about it, for now id like to keep that topic in the other thread.
about your example... its a bit misleading, because it seems like both are making handmade shoes but someone needs 10 times longer.. why is that? because there could be a reason you also pay for, not just inability. theres plenty people who want top pay for handwork, for a unique shoe or stuff.. same value is of course for same use values. look at art for example. there the use value becomes directly the exchange value and no average production costs play a role because the use value consist in the uniqueness of the artpiece. so shoes can be art too and thus in the light of your example it would be necessary to say that they produce the SAME shoes, not just shoes.
Thanks, yourmum, for engaging in this at my level. First rule of teaching, eh, talk to the pupil in a language they understand, and let them set the pace of the discussion. Anyway, to take your points in a reverse order, as I think this will help:
yourmum
about your example... its a bit misleading, because it seems like both are making handmade shoes but someone needs 10 times longer.. why is that?
No, I said Janet is hand-making the shoes, and spent 10 hours making 1 pair; whereas Jacqui is using best-practice (ie. socially necessary labour (using a machine or whatever, I didn't specify, and it doesn't matter for the purposes of this)) and spent 10 making 10 pairs of shoes.
This, to me, gives 11 pairs of shoes, which took 20 hours of concrete labour, but took only 11 hours of abstract labour (ie. socially necessary labour time).
Is my understanding correct, as far as this simple example goes?
yourmum
yeah. individuals dont have the means to measure the value they produce as they dont see how productive others are, they can only measure their concrete labour. however characterizing the process of objectifying the value as a "democratic discussion" seems way off the mark to me. marx referred to it in terms of "behind their back", meaning its not object of conscious discussion but it comes to you in form of a law that if u dont acknowledge will lead to your fail at making business. soooo while the "discussion" part may hold true in a sense when you look at an exchange, you have to make some consent, the democratic part on the other hand i cant follow at all. mind explaining what you are thinking of when u write that?
Again, to me this is the key point. As you say, "Individuals don't have the means to measure the value they produce as they dont see how productive others are, they can only measure their [own] concrete labour" [my insert of 'own', to clarify]
The measurement can only take place at the social level. It requires Janet, John and Jacqui to meet and discuss what counts as 'socially necessary labour'. Only society can determine this, not isolated individuals, by comparing methods, techniques, etc. to find the 'best-practice'. Of course, to jump ahead a little, this 'comparison' in our system is done by the impersonal, undemocratic market, whereas for Communists it will be found in democratic methods, by discussion and voting.
As you say, the market comes at us ""behind their back", meaning its not object of conscious discussion but it comes to you in form of a law that if u dont acknowledge will lead to your fail at making business."
Communism is the democratic control of the economy. Thus, we must build these democratic structures into our explanation of 'labour', 'value', etc. After all, we are engaging in Critical Political Economy, not neo-classical economics or considerations of 'failing at business'.
Have I outlined my thinking to your satisfaction on this issue of the connection between 'abstract labour' and democracy? The 11 hours of abstract labour by the Smith family can only be identified, for us, by democratic means, by society, not the individual.
The worth of Janet's pair of shoes can only be decided by Janet, John and Jacqui in conjunction with each other, not by the three separately by themselves.
I want to leave exchange value, etc. till after you follow my reasoning on this issue, or show me where I've gone wrong, on this issue. Thanks.
you are saying we, as communists, must figure out the value of stuff and therefor engange in democratic control and whatever.. but why should we want to figure out the value? Is there any purpose you need exchange value for as a communist except for dealing with capitalists? Pray tell which one?
imho yes u got the difference, if they produce the same use value shoe thats correct, so if it was the same to people if they buy janets shoes or jacuis. that was the point im trying to make with the art-use values. for the exchange value to split from the use value u need to have a continual production and trading of the same thing.
now im trying to wrap my brain around Zero's post. maybe more later..
Thanks for the confirmation, yourmum. Now, having comprehended concrete labour (creates use-value) and abstract labour (creates value), I can move on with my learning, to some other concepts.
yourmum
you are saying we, as communists, must figure out the value of stuff and therefor engange in democratic control and whatever.. but why should we want to figure out the value?
Well, I personally think that in Communist society (or, at least its early stages) we'll have to have some way of organising production, to satisfy as many wants of as many people as is possible. That will require us to make informed decisions, hence my linking of democratic politics with economic production.
But I'd rather not take that line of thought any further on this particular thread, because I recognise that it will cause unnecessary arguments in regard to what I'm trying to learn. As I say, that line is better kept for a thread on why we learn this stuff!
I'll post again later, with some more questions about some more concepts. Thanks again.
Capitalist Commodity Production Without Wages Then?
Responding to Khawaga post 115 Apr 13 2011 23:18
I thought the point of making the quotes was clear.
However, it was that both Karl and Fred were working together and consulting each other in the formulation of the opening chapter of capital Volume one.
Are we being asked to believe that Fred hadn’t realised that Karl was only talking about commodities in capitalism?
Or that Fred was ‘lying’, or at the very least ‘misrepresenting’ Karl, when he said;
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds (my insert-the present stage of our investigation) from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity
I am of course not just restricting this to an interpretation of the opening chapter according to Engels or not, and a debate about his integrity etc.
I have sited the example of value of commodities in Aristotelian Greece and even earlier at the dawn of recorded history and the introduction of ‘money’.
So from a footnote from chapter one;
15. ……….. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.
If the law of value operated "trans-historically" does anyone care to give us a bit of the old razzle-dazzle and show us how the law of value governed agriculture in pre-Columbian Mexico, or in the Ottoman Empire, or perhaps China in the 15th, 16th, 17, 18th centuries?
I'd like to see the "regulatory role" of the law of value in a concrete "pre-capitalist" mode of production, so please..show us the value.
Marx’s footnote 15 (in full) in the first chapter of Capital, v.1:
“The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.”
Dave asks:
“So is it capitalist commodity production without wages that is being discussed then?
Marx is discussing the commodity generally, not capitalist commodity production at this point. He is, at this very early point in his presentation, abstracting the commodity from production, and the production process, as much as he can. He is also abstracting, therefore, from the question of the wages paid to the labourer.
"... a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation" is not a reference to historical priority, but to priority in his investigation/analysis/presentation. That is, it is a matter of conceptual, rather than historical, priority.
So is it capitalist commodity production without wages that is being discussed then?
Dave B: what Wasalax said
wasalax
"... a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation" is not a reference to historical priority, but to priority in his investigation/analysis/presentation. That is, it is a matter of conceptual, rather than historical, priority.
I have undertaken a translation of an essay by Ingo Elbe that addresses some of those Engelsian distortions of Marx's work. The English translation remains incomplete but a few key passages are available:
http://communism.blogsport.eu
BTW, enjoyed this. I hope you persevere with the rest of the introduction. Maybe some day Elbe's book will get an english translation, sadly my German isn't up to reading the original.
Keep going Lbird you are plodding along at a merry old pace
‘Plodding’? I thought it was a canter, or at least a fast trot!
Anyway, on with the plod.
LBird
Janet: 10 hours handmade shoes (= 1 pair);
John: 10 hours best-practice cakes (= 5 cakes);
Jacqui: 10 hours best-practice shoes(= 10 pairs).
To me, this gives us 30 hours 'concrete labour' but only 21 hours of 'abstract labour'.
Some further details:
If Janet hasn’t made her shoes to exchange them, but to wear herself, then she has created a ‘product’.
But Jacqui has made all her shoes to exchange them, so she has created ‘commodities’, as has John with his cakes.
So, the Smith family has used 30 hours of ‘concrete labour’, which produced 21 hours of ‘abstract labour’, but only the equivalent of 20 hours of ‘abstract labour’ is going to be used for exchange.
The Smith family has 20 hours’ worth of ‘commodities’ for exchange and one pair of shoes for Janet’s use. They have the ‘use-value’ of 11 pairs of shoes, but only the ‘exchange-value’ of 10 pairs of shoes (since Janet’s pair were made for immediate use) and 5 cakes.
Is this all OK, so far, anyone who's still interested in my 'plodding' progress? If so, I'll move on properly to a consideration of 'exchange-value', within my scenario.
Janet: 10 hours handmade shoes (= 1 pair);
John: 10 hours best-practice cakes (= 5 cakes);
Jacqui: 10 hours best-practice shoes(= 10 pairs).
To me, this gives us 30 hours 'concrete labour' but only 21 hours of 'abstract labour'.
Some further details:
If Janet hasn’t made her shoes to exchange them, but to wear herself, then she has created a ‘product’.
But Jacqui has made all her shoes to exchange them, so she has created ‘commodities’, as has John with his cakes.
So, the Smith family has used 30 hours of ‘concrete labour’, which produced 21 hours of ‘abstract labour’, but only the equivalent of 20 hours of ‘abstract labour’ is going to be used for exchange.
The Smith family has 20 hours’ worth of ‘commodities’ for exchange and one pair of shoes for Janet’s use. They have the ‘use-value’ of 11 pairs of shoes, but only the ‘exchange-value’ of 10 pairs of shoes (since Janet’s pair were made for immediate use) and 5 cakes.
Is this all OK, so far, anyone who's still interested in my 'plodding' progress? If so, I'll move on properly to a consideration of 'exchange-value', within my scenario.
Within the Marxian scheme, abstract labour is only 'realised' in the act of exchange. Now some people (perhaps those with a 'substance' idea of value) may see 'realisation' as being the exchange of already-existing value in a product for its monetary equivalent. However, it is alternatively (more commonly?) understood by 'realisation' that the value only really appears at that stage. By 'appear' I don't mean 'seems', but comes into actual existence - is 'actualised'.
That is, that a load of hours (even at socially average rates of productivity) invested in products that are in the end never sold, in fact produces no value at all - NB this also makes sense at the level of aggregate accounting of total social production. (I can't be bothered to seek out the particular Marx quotes, but I'm pretty sure others can throw them in, if necessary).
Also, concrete labour is a process of carrying out successive tasks or actions, it is not relevant to quantify it in time. If it takes an amateur all day to build a garden wall that a qualified brickie can get up in two hours, that makes no difference to the concrete labour, which is the construction of the wall, whether you do it in an hour, a day, or bit by bit in your spare time over a month.
So, at the moment, the Smiths have produced no abstract value at all, until they sell the products they have made for sale. Assuming that they sell the cakes and Jacqui's shoes, they will realise 20 hours value. Unless, for some reason, before they have chance to sell the cakes and shoes, there is a revolution in the productivity in the shoemaking industry (say), such that the value of each pair is halved, then they will only realise 15 hours value when they sell at the new lowered prices, even though, at the time they invested the effort in production, they invested 20 hours at the-then socially average rate of productivity. Capitalism's a bitch...
But this is the thing, you cannot have value without exchange value, because the act of exchange is where value appears, even though it originates in production. (Hence commodity fetishism and vulgar economics.)
So, at the moment, the Smiths have produced no abstract value at all, until they sell the products they have made for sale.
Ocelot, I know you're trying to be helpful, and I'm sure what you're saying will come in very useful later, when I have a grasp of the relevant concepts, but can't you see that taking things step-by-step is a useful learning strategy?
This isn't to accept that there aren't further complications, but that for a learner new to any subject, it's better to have a tenuous grasp which can be corrected, than no grasp at all because the concepts are meaningless.
No matter how many times I've stressed this method on this thread, it seems that most posters are trying to throw me in the deep end, which I've persistently explained hasn't worked in the past, and isn't working now.
So, having said that, is what I've outlined in my previous post correct as far as it goes?
I know it's more complex, and with your help, and the help of others, I'll hopefully get there (one day). But for now, humour me - I know it's working in some sense, because now I can actually ask questions, whereas before this thread, I didn't have a clue.
Waslax, quoting Marx,
"... a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation"
Note, the present stage, not forever.
I'm really not sure why this idea of a learner taking things slowly is causing such a problem on this board - does anybody know why this should apparently be so for Communists? Why should learning Marx have to use a big-bang, in-the-deep-end, everything or nothing, approach?
I know it's not on purpose, but why should the teaching of Marx's Critical Political Economy be so poor? And it clearly is so, because so few people understand it.
The easy answer is that it's 'too complex' - but I disagree. It's always too easy to blame 'poor learners'.
If the law of value operated "trans-historically" does anyone care to give us a bit of the old razzle-dazzle and show us how the law of value governed agriculture in pre-Columbian Mexico, or in the Ottoman Empire, or perhaps China in the 15th, 16th, 17, 18th centuries?
I'd like to see the "regulatory role" of the law of value in a concrete "pre-capitalist" mode of production, so please..show us the value.
Well perhaps I can’t deal with that exactly, but would the following be of any use?
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Two: Exchange
But such a state of reciprocal independence has no existence in a primitive society based on property in common, whether such a society takes the form of a patriarchal family, an ancient Indian community, or a Peruvian Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points of contact with other similar communities, or with members of the latter. So soon, however, as products once become commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse.
The proportions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a matter of chance. What makes them exchangeable is the mutual desire of their owners to alienate them. Meantime the need for foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself. The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social act. In the course of time, therefore, some portion at least of the products of labour must be produced with a special view to exchange. From that moment the distinction becomes firmly established between the utility of an object for the purposes of consumption, and its utility for the purposes of exchange. Its use-value becomes distinguished from its exchange-value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion in which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent on their production itself. Custom stamps them as values with definite magnitudes.
Presumably primitive societies or communities beginning to barter with others etc for ‘foreign objects’ and the constant repetition thereof, like isn’t wage labour or capitalism.
As to the concept of value as substance, we haven’t got to the really difficult out of the box stuff yet.
That takes time, the record so far in my experience at 20 minutes was a female maths graduate and computer programmer, might have expected that if I had thought about it.
Incidentally the introduction of feudalism, and to a certain extant slave societies, does in fact complicate things somewhat as the owners of the surplus product, surplus labour and ‘surplus value’ are to a lesser extant under an economic pressure to exchange it with each other at its value.
Incidentally the introduction of feudalism, and to a certain extant slave societies, does in fact complicate things somewhat as the owners of the surplus product, surplus labour and ‘surplus value’ are to a lesser extant under an economic pressure to exchange it with each other at its value.
If Janet hasn’t made her shoes to exchange them, but to wear herself, then she has created a ‘product’.
But Jacqui has made all her shoes to exchange them, so she has created ‘commodities’, as has John with his cakes.
Check.
So, the Smith family has used 30 hours of ‘concrete labour’, which produced 21 hours of ‘abstract labour’, but only the equivalent of 20 hours of ‘abstract labour’ is going to be used for exchange
No. What has happened is that Janet has spent ten hours making shoes, Jacqui 10 hours of shoes (so 20 hours of shoe-making) and John ten hours of cakes. When it comes to concrete labour a bucket is a bucket so to speak. What you do when you say 30 hours of concrete labour is to eliminate the difference between shoe making and cake making. And that is what abstract labour is; human labour expended in general. The whole idea behind concrete labour is that you do take into account the particular content of labour (in your case, shoe-making and cake-making). In other words, what you have done is to confuse concrete with absolute labour and the reason why you have done this is because you try to quantify concrete labour in terms of labour-time rather than in the actual products produced. Labour-time is only the measure of abstract labour; it cannot be for both abstract and concrete labour. This is why I tried earlier to argue that a good short-hand for concrete labour/use-value is always to think in terms of quality and qualitative differences, whereas for abstract labour/value quantity and quantitative difference.
However, you're right that the socially necessary labour time (or abstract labour or value) is 21 hours (and in fact; that's the "trickier" part to understand in my experience of reading Capital with newbies).
Well that's very helpful, but helpful to the historical and logical analysis immanent to Marx's critique of capital that the law of value does not achieve its expression as a law until, unless, without etc. the dominant mode of production being the capitalst mode of production, where labor itself is organized as a [surplus]value-yielding commodity.
This is the part that should be emphasized for purposes of this discussion:
On the other hand, the quantitative proportion in which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent on their production itself.
The exchange, the extent to which exchange grows, or dominates depends on their production. Historically and logically pre-capitalist economic formations cannot remain pre-capitalist and achieve that quantitative proportion of production for exchange that embodies the mechanism, the mediation, the law of value. And why is that? Again, because labor itself is not dispossessed, is not detached, is not composed and represented as a value in exchange for the means of subsistence.
And that's why there was very little evidence for "incipient capitalism" in China during those centures [Mao to the contrary not withstanding]; there was no development of "organic capitalism" from Spanish agriculture [except in Catalonia] etc etc. The law of value did not function; did not dominate because labor was not organized as a value in exchange.
When it comes to concrete labour a bucket is a bucket so to speak. What you do when you say 30 hours of concrete labour is to eliminate the difference between shoe making and cake making. And that is what abstract labour is; human labour expended in general. The whole idea behind concrete labour is that you do take into account the particular content of labour (in your case, shoe-making and cake-making). In other words, what you have done is to confuse concrete with absolute labour and the reason why you have done this is because you try to quantify concrete labour in terms of labour-time rather than in the actual products produced. Labour-time is only the measure of abstract labour; it cannot be for both abstract and concrete labour.
Yeah, point taken, Khawaga, about 'concrete labour' being, well, 'concrete'. And I do understand that SNLT is only for 'abstract labour'.
But, to understand the concepts, it's very helpful (if not indispensable) to be able to contrast the 'work-hours' used (ie. 30) with the actual hours of SNLT (ie. 21) - this allows the new learner to get their teeth into something that can be quantified and compared. Later the need to think about 'concrete-labour' in terms of time (rather than, as you say, shoe- and cake-making) disappears with familiarity.
Khawaga
However, you're right that the socially necessary labour time (or abstract labour or value) is 21 hours (and in fact; that's the "trickier" part to understand in my experience of reading Capital with newbies).
The fact that now, after this 'simplifying' process, I seem to understand the 'trickier part' seems, to me, to bear out what I've been saying.
And I think you agree, given my simple scenario, that the Smith family are now in the position to exchange 20 hours' worth of commodities (as Janet has kept 1 hour SNLT embodied in her hand-made shoes for herself - which wasn't SNLT anyway really (it was just 10 hours of her 'concrete-labour'), because she never intended production for the market, but treating it as such, temporarily, allows the learner to quantify, compare and contrast all these unfamiliar terms).
I'll move on next to 'exchange' - but only a simplified version. Please bear with me. Thanks again.
Khawaga's insistence that concrete labour cannot be quantified is mistaken. The labor of workers in capitalist production is abstract as well as concrete; i.e., it has a dual character. But its designation as abstract labor refers to its social character, and it is not its social character that allows it to be quantified. One reason this confusion arises is due to the fact that, as abstract or value-producing labor, the concrete labor counts only quantitatively. But this abstraction can only be made from a given amount of concrete labor. Another reason this confusion arises is that socially necessary labour is not taken to be some average of useful labors, but is treated as some ineffable quality of abstract human labor. (An average of concretely useful labor hours, this quantum is simultaneously a measure of abstract labor.) Labor's character as socially necessary concerns only the magnitude of value, and is defined by Marx as the average amount of time required to produce any use-value. So, while socially necessary labor is not identical with useful or concrete labor, it can only be determined as a social average with regard to concrete labor times. Khawaga thus renders socially necessary labor time a meaningless concept. And this is no great loss for those who view value as only coming into existence in the act of exchange, but it might be of some importance for someone trying to understand Marx. Nonetheless, if our understanding of these terms is taken to be some sort of empirical question--if, for example, I could be wrong about use-value being objective in the sense that I have failed to accurately describe some aspect of the economy--then my argument can perhaps be interpreted as a mere argument from authority.
Of course concrete labor can be quantified: 10 pairs of shoes, 7 shirts, 24 brooms, 10 microprocessors. However what cannot be done when products and production are privately owned, when the purpose of production is not, and cannot yet be, directly social, consciously organized for the satisfaction of human needs, is the exchange of 1 to10 pairs of shoes for 1 or more microprocessors or 7 or less shirts.
When the means of production are private property, then the products must in their social circuits reproduce the very social relations of the classes at the heart of that production.
That means the reproduction of the relations where the owners of the MOP have no use for the product they "produce," save their use in exchange, their use as a vehicle for accumulation.
And it means the reproduction of that relation where labor has no value to the laborers save its value in exchange for the means of subsistence or some equivalent.
Abstract labor is not just labor in general, or labor measured by time, it's labor that is made abstract, is distilled, through its aggrandizement and expropriation. Value is the expression of that abstraction of labor through the aggrandizement of its time.
This become a bit more clear if we look at Marx's comments on the Gotha Program, where he says:
Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of thes products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component of the total labour.
And Marx then talks about the transition period as that cooperative society emerges from capitalism, bearing all the marks of that birth:
For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual labour hours; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social labour day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such an amount of labour....
Here obviously the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values.......so much labour in one form is exchange for an equal amount of labour in another form
And the "so much" the "amount," the quantity is measured through time. It is not measured through the concrete nature of the objects produced. Eight hours operating a switching locomotive spotting 50 cars of produce at supermarkets is equal to the 8 hours absorbed from the crew operating a 200 car coal train from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to North Platte, Nebraska.
I think this debate revolves around whether we are understanding the opening chapters as follows, and I quote it because it is my unprejudiced position.
Capital Vol. III Preface
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity.
And the other ‘argument’ that is being put forward that, ‘no it isn’t’.
That is obviously critical to how we interpret the whole content and that we are actually disputing the meaning of the opening sentence.
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
We are all agreed that it is obvious that commodities are not specific to capitalism.
If the investigation was going to be about capitalist commodities it would have read;
Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of this commodity.
Now on its own this isn’t very much but that opening sentence is certainly no evidence, as the only evidence cited, that the investigation is about the capitalist commodity rather than commodities in general beginning with the value of the simple commodity.
In fact if Karl had mentioned the capitalist produced commodity more than once or even once in the opening chapters then that wouldn’t be evidence against it being a investigation into the values of commodities in general.
But he doesn’t even do that, because as Fred says it ‘proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form’.
And we therefore get a succession of examples of value in simple commodity production, evidence of which I have provided myself.
But I appreciate that the fraternity of sociologists and philosophers have never been much interested in and pay scant attention to evidence and facts.
I read capital without prejudice from a cold start in 2004, if I had any prejudice it was that it was going to be a load of bollocks because I didn’t believe the proposition that feudal peasants didn’t produce surplus value.
All this is on the record on Forums elsewhere.
And I hadn’t read Fred’s interpretation in the Preface to volume III before I adopted it.
No, that's not what the debate revolves around. The debate is about the assertion that the law of value operates trans-historically.
The law of value is not a natural law of the physical universe. It is the product, and regulator, of specific social relations of production. If it could exist in all its miserable glory, and glorious misery, prior to those social relations of production, then you need to explain exactly why those prior modes of production did not, and could not, develop the practical basis for the abolition of the law of value.
For the others there is a passable analysis from the other Karl below
Karl Kautsky The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I.
COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL
Chapter I. COMMODITIES (1) The Character of Commodity Production
Which includes the quote;
Let us again take the example of an Indian communistic village community. It employs two smiths for the manufacture of agricultural implements. An invention raises the productivity of labour to such an extent that only one smith is needed to manufacture the required agricultural implements within a given time. Two smiths are no longer entrusted with this work, but only one; the second smith is perhaps employed in the forging of weapons or the making of ornaments. On the other hand, the productivity of field labour remains the same. As much labour-time as formerly must be expended in order to satisfy the requirements of the community upon the same scale.
Under these circumstances, every member of the community receives the same share of foodstuffs as before, but a distinction now arises. The productivity of the smith’s labour has doubled; only one share of foodstuffs, instead of two, is now assigned for the manufacture of agricultural implements. The change in the relation between the various types of labour is here a very simple and transparent one. It assumes a mystic character as soon as smith’s labour and field labour cease to co-operate directly and are only brought into relation with each other through their products. The change in the productivity of smith’s labour then appears as a change in the exchange-relation of the product of smith’s labour with other products, as an alteration in its value.
And later in his proceedural analysis he almost lifts the chapter one footnote quote from Karl
So far we have been presupposing simple commodity production and simple commodity exchange, and labour-power as a commodity does not yet exist for us.
Kautsky misses more than one point in his "just-so" story: 1) that the communistic village is not organized around exchange for the purpose of accumulating value [another mere technicality, I'm sure] 2) in the village, there is no private exchange going on; there is social distribution based upon the social overseeing of production [another mere technicality I'm sure].
Now if that commune were to dictate that a third smith be trained to produce either agricultural implements or weapons for exchange with other villages, cities, for say magazines, or sunglasses... then we have the beginnings of the transformation of production into production for value, but only the beginnings. We do not yet have a trans-historical law of value in operation.
"Simple," isolated commodity production is not based on dispossession of the producers from the means of production, therefore it cannot be regulated by the law of value.
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity.
is just flat out wrong. Marx is working backward in capital from the full developed law of value, from fully developed mass commodity production. This full development allows him to "see" through the veil obscuring the historical origins of commodity production.
Marx cannot proceed from the simple commodity because he is not living in a simple commodity production society; and also, no simple commodity production society yields up, on its own, a law of value. Look at the background to the writing of Capital. Hell, look at the title: A Critique of Political Economy. Marx is grappling not with the simple commodity, but expanded commodity production as presented by the political economists, most importantly Ricardo.
This is exactly parallel to what happens with Marx's analysis of abstract labor. It is only because Marx begins, in his critique from the vantage point of England, where abstract labor has been most concretely expressed that he can articulate the links, the interpenetration of abstract and concrete labor in the "simple" commodity.
Would I be on relatively the right track if I were to say this:
Concrete labor is done by a specific person, in a specific occupation, creating a specific commodity; while abstract labor is done by a hypothetical worker of average productivity?
What I would offer is that it is essential to understand that concrete labor and abstract labor are not two different types of work taking place in different time periods or different parts of the economy. To put it simply, there is only the labor of the wage-worker, which is important in two different ways. It is important that the worker labors in a specific manner to produce a specific use-value. But this is not what counts in terms of capital accumulation. What happens is that the same labor process is viewed only quantitatively with regard to the expansion of value, as some quantity of mere exertion, performed without regard to its particular social utility. This abstract labor is performed by workers whose labor is not directly social, and we abstract from the concrete character of that labor in comparing it to the labor expended on completely different use-values. Thus "abstract labor" refers to the social form of this private, not directly social, labor. This labor is objectified as the value of things.
Not exactly. The point is that under specific social relations of production the labor is both concrete and abstract, yielding both use-values and value. Marx likes to use the examples of weavers and spinners. Both engage in concrete labor, the spinner spinning the wool or cotton or silk into thread; the weaver weaving the thread into a shirt or coat. Both engage in abstract labor in that the labor of each and all is organized as a commodity, thus yielding value, a sort of aqua regia that dissolves all the distinguishing characteristics of each commodity into a uniform medium so the commodities can be exchanged.
Well, value is the abstract form of wealth in a commodity-producing society. As products produced for exchange by private producers, these products are values. So value is, as a social objectivity attaching to useful things, an objectification of labor expended without regard to the form of its expenditure, or abstract labor. After Marx defines commodities as values insofar as they represent congealed quantities of abstract labor, he writes that the magnitude of a commodity's value is determined by the labor-time socially necessary to produce it. However, this amount of labor time is not, in itself, value. In other forms of society, the social character of labor would not be expressed in the value of things, but there would nonetheless exist some average social productivity. This social average, would not, however, present itself as a regulative norm operating behind the backs of the producers, precisely because labor would not be divided among private commodity producers.
Well, my quick answer to your last question would be: the terms are not equivalent, although you may be on the right track. I would say to look at Zeronowhere's post #108 if you'd prefer a different style. In that post, Zeronowhere talks about socially necessary labor before talking about value. In Capital, Marx derives "value" after discussing exchange-values, and only later talks about socially necessary labor time as a determinant of value.
Khawaga's insistence that concrete labour cannot be quantified is mistaken.
I've not insisted that at all; several places I've said that you can count the hours or the products no problem. And of course concrete labour must be counted to figure out the productivity. LBird's problem was that he reduced two different kinds of labour into the one measure of labour-time, thus reducing shoe-making and cake-making to labour in general.
And also bear in mind that I am also trying to explain something to LBird. Hence my use of words like "good shorthand" to thing of CL in terms of quality and AL in terms of quantity. LBird seems to want to keep Marx's categories analytically separate in order to understand them; of course when they're considered dialectically it's a completely different thing. Then it doesn't matter to uphold a strict division between quantity and quality; they operate at the same time because labour has a dual character and the production process is both a labour process and a valorization process. But LBird is nowhere close this kind of argument.
Would I be on relatively the right track if I were to say this:
Concrete labor is done by a specific person, in a specific occupation, creating a specific commodity; while abstract labor is done by a hypothetical worker of average productivity?
It is better to think of abstract labour as the human effort (or the amount of free time you give up) that everyone expends performing any particular type of concrete labour.
From page 4
Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.
So I, as a non-hypothetical factory worker, performed abstract labour last week and will again the next.
You can start tagging onto it sociological social relational stuff if you want at this stage, to muddy the water.
This is of course a generalisation and reductionism, but it needs to be understood first before we deal with the flies in the ointment like skilled and unskilled labour etc.
When the basic principles are established the problems are dealt with by feeding them back, as with Galileo, he wasn’t phased by hammers and feathers falling to the ground on earth (as opposed to the moon) at different rates.
Much of Dave B.'s position can be summed up in this part of Engels's preface to Volume III:
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity.
Marx does not proceed from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise. He starts with the analysis of the commodity, the "full-blown" capitalist commodity as the embodiment of value, as the vehicle for accumulation, capable of expressing relative and equivalent value, of universal exchange. From there he shows how those facets, that "life" of the commodity is at core a social relation governing the labor process.
It isn’t much of Dave B’s argument it is Dave B’s argument and I provided that quote thank you very much along with supporting evidence my opponents are just saying no it isn’t backing it up with nothing. This is turning pythonesque.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
A: Yes it is!
M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
A: No it isn't.
Evidence has been provided. Take some time and read Marx's economic manuscripts in vols 33 and 34 of the collected works.
Your argument relies on a misinterpretation of yours [and Engels] that says Marx started from simple commodity production. No he did not start from simple commodity production. He started with a critique of Hegel's philosophy of right, and then moved to the critique of political economy-- political economy being the bourgeoisie's attempt to understand their own organization of production.
Get that? He moved on directly to political economy, to the critique of political economy.
He did not derive that critique from simple commodity production [I don't believe Marx ever used that phrase]. He derived the immanentcritique of capital from capital. He uses the commodity to analyze the "genetic material" of value and shows how that material is a social relation of production; a historically specific organization of labor. He says as much numerous times in his critique of political economy and economists who regard the "market" "exchange" "private ownership of the means of production" as a "natural" and eternal arrangement.
That historically specific organization of labor is the organization of labor as a commodity.... as wage-labor. It is that specific relation that gives the law of value its regulatory authority.
Engels a liar? No. Engels wrong? Yes. He had been wrong before. He was wrong in this.
Want me to cite the sources? Poverty of Philosophy, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy] Capital, vol 1-3Theories of Surplus ValueEconomic Manuscripts 1857-1864
No, it has been noted several times that no one is saying that, but still you persist with this, as if your opponents here are slandering this Great Man. It really shouldn't be that surprising that Engels, in the 1890s, in his 70s, didn't fully comprehend the whole of Marx's value theory and its significance. Maybe he never did. Maybe he had earlier on, and then lost some of the 'niceties' of it, as the vulgar interpretation proliferated, and as he had then many other less esoteric things to contend with. It shouldn't be so surprising that he never fully got it, given that likely only a handful, at most, of people really fully understood the theory and the significance of commodity fetishism within it in the 19th century. In any case, it was Marx's theory and Marx's work -- all of the 'critique of political economy' from the Grundrisse on -- not Marx's and Engels', so it just isn't adequate to cite something Engels wrote as evidence that that was what Marx meant in this realm of his work. Other stuff that they worked on together, yes, but not here.
He did not derive that critique from simple commodity production [I don't believe Marx ever used that phrase].
A little help from the search engines
[quote=Marx]Just as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when modern bourgeois society was in its infancy, nations and princes were driven by a general desire for money to embark on crusades to distant lands in quest of the golden grail, so the first interpreters of the modern world, the originators of the Monetary System – the Mercantile System is merely a variant of it – declared that gold and silver, i.e., money, alone constitutes wealth. They quite correctly stated that the vocation of bourgeois society was the making of money, and hence, from the standpoint of simple commodity production, the formation of permanent hoards which neither moths nor rust could destroy. It is no refutation of the Monetary System to point out that a ton of iron whose price is £3 has the same value as £3 in gold. The point at issue is not the magnitude of the exchange-value, but its adequate form. With regard to the special attention paid by the Monetary and Mercantile systems to international trade and to individual branches of national labour that lead directly to international trade, which are regarded by them as the only real source of wealth or of money, one has to remember that in those times national production was for the most part still carried on within the framework of feudal forms and served as the immediate source of subsistence for the producers themselves. Most products did not become commodities; they were accordingly neither converted into money nor entered at all into the general process of the social metabolism; hence they did not appear as materialisation of universal abstract labour and did not indeed constitute bourgeois wealth. Money as the end and object of circulation represents exchange-value or abstract wealth, not any physical element of wealth, as the determining purpose and driving motive of production. It was consistent with the rudimentary stage of bourgeois production that those misunderstood prophets should have clung to the solid, palpable and glittering form of exchange-value, to exchange-value in the form of the universal commodity as distinct from all particular commodities. The sphere of commodity circulation was the strictly bourgeois economic sphere at that time. They therefore analysed the whole complex process of bourgeois production from the standpoint of that basic sphere and confused money with capital. The unceasing fight of modern economists against the Monetary and Mercantile systems is mainly provoked by the fact that the secret of bourgeois production, i.e., that it is dominated by exchange-value, is divulged in a naively brutal way by these systems. [/quote]
and
[quote=Marx]In order to prove that capitalist production cannot lead to general crises, all its conditions and distinct forms, all its principles and specific features—in short capitalist production itself—are denied. In fact it is demonstrated that if the capitalist mode of production had not developed in a specific way and become a unique form of social production, but were a mode of production dating back to the most rudimentary stages, then its peculiar contradictions and conflicts and hence also their eruption in crises would not exist.
Following Say, Ricardo writes: “Productions are always bought by productions, or by services; money is only the medium by which the exchange is effected” (l.c., p. 341).
Here, therefore, firstly commodity, in which the contradiction between exchange-value and use-value exists, becomes mere product (use-value) and therefore the exchange of commodities is transformed into mere barter of products, of simple use-values. This is a return not only to the time before capitalist production, but even to the time before there was simple commodity production; and the most complicated phenomenon of capitalist production—the world market crisis—is flatly denied, by denying the first condition of capitalist production, namely, that the product must be a commodity and therefore express itself as money and undergo the process of metamorphosis.[/quote]
or finally in Vol. 3
[quote=Marx]This reduction of the total quantity of labour going into a commodity seems, accordingly, to be the essential criterion of increased productivity of labour, no matter under what social conditions production is carried on. Productivity of labour, indeed, would always be measured by this standard in a society, in which producers regulate their production according to a preconceived plan, or even under simple commodity-production. But how does the matter stand under capitalist production?[/quote]
Engels mentions it also:
[quote=Engels to Kautsky]The moment you say means of production, you say society and a society determined by, amongst other things, those means of production. Means of production as such, extraneous to society and without influence over it, exist no more than does capital as such.
But how the means of production, which, at earlier periods, including that of simple commodity production, exercised only a very mild domination compared with now, came to exercise their present despotic domination, is something that calls for proof and yours strikes me as inadequate, since it fails to mention one pole, namely the creation of a class which no longer had any means of production of its own, or, therefore, any means of subsistence, and hence was compelled to sell itself piecemeal.[/quote]
I don't know which side in the dispute these quotes prove right here. Safest to assume that everybody is wrong.
edit;
This is unrelated, but I wonder if anyone has a review of Kautsky's Labour revolution:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/index.htm
Dave, maybe you know if the SPGB has done this? It's a major work and I love to read a critique/appraisal of it, but I don't know if anybody has done it.
I'll check the other sources later, however, this:
Noa Rodman
[quote=Marx][...] They quite correctly stated that the vocation of bourgeois society was the making of money, and hence, from the standpoint of simple commodity production
[/quote]
...is just a bald-faced mistranslation. "Simple commodity production" is "einfache Warenproduktion" in German. In the original text, however, we find the phrase "einfachen Warenzirkulation", or "simple commodity circulation":
This is just another sterling example of how unreliable MECW translations often are, and why serious Marx scholars in Germany prefer the Fowkes/Fernbach/Nicolaus translations in the Penguin editions of Capital and the Grundrisse.
Sorry for the thread interruption, I'll let SPGB-Dave get back to arguing that Marx was merely a minor Left-Ricardian.
Yes and the second quote in German is 'bloße Warenproduktion'.
It's not only the SPGB who argue this though, also the ABC (of communism):
The mere existence of a commodity economy does not alone suffice to constitute capitalism. A commodity economy can exist although there are no capitalists; for instance, the economy in which the only producers are independent artisans. They produce for the market, they sell their products; thus these products are undoubtedly commodities, and the whole production is commodity production. Nevertheless, this is not capitalist production; it is nothing more than simple commodity production. In order that a simple commodity economy can be transformed into capitalist production, it is necessary, on the one hand, that the means of production (tools, machinery, buildings, land, etc.) should become the private property of a comparatively limited class of wealthy capitalists; and, on the other, that there should ensue the ruin of most of the independent artisans and peasants and their conversion into wage workers.
We have already seen that a simple commodity economy contains within itself the germs that will lead to the impoverishment of some and the enrichment of others. This is what has actually occurred. In all countries alike, most of the independent artisans and small masters have been ruined. The poorest were forced in the end to sell their tools; from 'masters' they became 'men' whose sole possession was a pair of hands. Those on the other hand who were richer, grew more wealthy still; they rebuilt their workshops on a more extensive scale, installed new machinery, began to employ more workpeople, became factory owners.
Yes and the second quote in German is 'bloße Warenproduktion'.
which would translate to "mere commodity production", something far different from a historical epoch of simple commodity production.
It's not only the SPGB who argue this though, also the [url=http://marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/01.htm#006]ABC (of communism)
Sorry, but arguments from the authority of old Bolsheviks are not persuasive to me, even one with such an impeccable moral record as Bukharin. Might as well just argue from Engels' authority, in that case.
P.S. Noa, since you read German, Nadja Rakowitz devoted her doctoral thesis to disproving the existence of a notion of a historical epoch of "simple commodity production" in Marx's work:
On a much less exalted level than considerations of translating Capital from German, this weekend I've actually read and understood the first two sections of chapter one!
Next, section three, 'The Value-Form, or Exchange-Value'.
I'd like to thank all those who've contributed to me getting this far, especially (though I think we have our differences in translating the English, never mind the German) Khawaga.
But as far as Marx's writing style goes, I can't help being reminded of Alphonso X of Spain's supposed retort, when he'd had the extremely complex Ptolemaic model of the Solar System explained to him:
Alphonso X
"If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking on creation thus, I should have recommended something simpler."
I'd give much the same recommendation to Charlie about Capital.
Here I'm not arguing anything with you Angelus, but Rakowitz writes 'Die Konstruktion des einfachen Produktentauschs und der einfachen Warenproduktion ist die “(n)ormative Voraussetzung der Smithschen Vorstellung über Gesellschaft und Ökonomie...' so she considers simple commodity-production and -circulation belong together. And I think Nadja would fully agree with this excerpt from the above passage from Marx:
Wie es der Vorstufe der bürgerlichen Produktion entsprach, hielten jene verkannten Propheten an der gediegenen, handgreiflichen und glänzenden Form des Tauschwerts fest, an seiner Form als allgemeine Ware im Gegensatz zu allen besondern Waren. Die eigentlich bürgerlich ökonomische Sphäre der damaligen Zeit war die Sphäre der Warenzirkulation. Vom Gesichtspunkt dieser elementarischen Sphäre aus beurteilten sie daher den ganzen verwickelten Prozeß der bürgerlichen Produktion und verwechselten Geld mit Kapital.
'Vorstufe' could be translated as pre-stage or rudimentary stage.
In the second quote Marx considers bloße Warenproduktion as something in time prior to capitalist production, so if not exactly an epoch, it must imply existence. I think it's difficult to interpret his mention of simple commodity production as a chronologically prior level of abstraction.
In the third quote Marx (from chapter 15 Vol.3, so this was actually from Marx, right?) uses the words 'einfache Warenproduktion' in contrast to capitalist production, though this doesn't have to imply historical existence.
My worry is that if simple commodity production didn't exist (if only as a small short stage - not an entire historical epoch), and instead was just a logical level of abstraction, as Rubin does (not followed therein by Mattick afaik], you separate method from object. At what chapter does Marx begin to speak of the existing capitalist production then, or does he never quit his methodological realm of abstraction?
this weekend I've actually read and understood the first two sections of chapter one!
Excellent and good for you. Hopefully at least some of the discussion here has helped, even though it got horribly side tracked and at times theological ;)
I'd like to thank all those who've contributed to me getting this far, especially (though I think we have our differences in translating the English, never mind the German) Khawaga.
Thank you as well; I always learn something when I have to explain stuff in terms that I normally wouldn't use.
Next, section three, 'The Value-Form, or Exchange-Value'.
If you want to discuss this section as well I think a new thread is required (and one that is heavily policed so that it won't get as side-tracked as this one).
This is starting to get complicated as these thing tend to do and now we several things in the air.
The first point is the SPGB thing, and I did not mention the SPGB first. It has not been the SPGB position that the law of value is trans-historical, there was a bloodbath of a debate on this on our forum circa 2005.
The “question 59” debate.
I am a communist and don’t believe in a state, money, exchange value and all the rest and I can not see why a law of value acting trans-historically changes any of that, or the same criticism I had of capitalism as before.
As I said before I think, about digging around in the pre 1863 stuff, I do think that Karl changed his position on this kind of thing but it is a bit nuanced and best left alone I think.
The second point is Engels position and mine, I hope it is clear now that I did not approach this from a party position.
I read volume one and came to exactly Engels interpretation. We are being asked to believe that they did not understand each other when they worked together on the opening chapters, or Fred forgot about it?
On Fred’s supplement to volume III, which is ‘consistent’ with the stuff in the preface on the law of value going back to the beginning recorded history etc I think that was exaggeration to illustrate a point or hyperbole and he goes a little bit too far therefore for me.
In fact objections to that go back to when it was written and the first criticism comes from our old friend Parvus via Bernstien of all people. And as I mentioned earlier I have some sympathy with it re the owners of surplus labour not being obliged to sell it at its value.
Eduard Bernstein Evolutionary Socialism Chapter II The Economic Development if Modern Society (a) On the Meaning of the Marxist Theory of Value
As is known, Friedrich Engels in an essay left behind him which was published in the Neue Zeit of the year 1895-96, pointed out a solution of the problem through the historical consideration of the process. Accordingly the law of value was of a directly determining power, it directly governed the exchange of commodities in the period of exchange and barter of commodities preceding the capitalist order of society.
Engels seeks to prove this in connection with a passage in the third volume of Capital by a short description of the historic evolution of economics. But although he presents the rise and development of the rate of profit so brilliantly, the essay fails in convincing strength of proof just where it deals with the question of value. According to Engels’ representation the Marxist law of value ruled generally as an economic law from five to seven thousand years, from the beginning of exchanging products as commodities (in Babylon, Egypt, etc.) up to the beginning of the era of capitalist production. Parvus, in a number of Neue Zeit of the same year, made good some conclusive objections to this view by pointing to a series of facts (feudal relations, undifferentiated agriculture, monopolies of guilds, etc.) which hindered the conception of a general exchange value founded on the labour time of the producers
Whilst not of course agreeing with where Edward goes with this, he has a valid point, eg as one point, when you have a monopoly as in the guild system you can exchange at whatever you think you can get away with.
But despite the general objection it does not appear to challenge the preface argument or Fred's ‘interpretation’, Kautsky’s as well, of the opening chapter.
So then we have, which is good;
At what chapter does Marx begin to speak of the existing capitalist production then, or does he never quit his methodological realm of abstraction?
Well probably chapter 4, in chapter 3 we are still getting the basic law of value stuff for all commodities, and we start to get that “immanent” thing as he drives home the bigger point;
Chapter Three: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities
The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money.
It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time.
The expression of the value of a commodity in gold — x commodity A = y money-commodity — is its money-form or price. A single equation, such as 1 ton of iron = 2 ounces of gold, now suffices to express the value of the iron in a socially valid manner. There is no longer any need for this equation to figure as a link in the chain of equations that express the values of all other commodities, because the equivalent commodity, gold, now has the character of money. The general form of relative value has resumed its original shape of simple or isolated relative value. On the other hand, the expanded expression of relative value, the endless series of equations, has now become the form peculiar to the relative value of the money-commodity. The series itself, too, is now given, and has social recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We have only to read the quotations of a price-list backwards, to find the magnitude of the value of money expressed in all sorts of commodities. But money itself has no price. In order to put it on an equal footing with all other commodities in this respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own equivalent.
And then he goes on to the perplexing problem of having two universal standards of value ie silver and gold. The point being that the actual value of gold and silver is the amount of labour time required to produce them. And as that can change in time and the amount of labour time required to produce silver goes down say relative to gold or the other way round it screws stuff up a bit.
The historical context is “from the reign of Edward III”, you could argue that merchant capitalism and usury or using money as capital to extract ‘surplus labour’ from others is starting to kick in then if you want. As in the case of the ‘small Roman peasants’ a bit earlier.
If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and silver, are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities have two prices — one a gold-price, the other a silver-price. These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of The value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15:1. Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities, and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value is inconsistent with the functions of a standard. [4]
These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of The value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15:1. Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities, and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value is inconsistent with the functions of a standard.
A historical example of a 'change' which 'disturbed the ratio' was the penetration of the Tokugawa Japanese Tributary Mode economy by the capitalist West after Perry's 1853 expedition.
In 1858, Japan concluded a treaty of commerce and navigation with the United States, setting the exchange rate at 1 US Dollar = 0.75 Ryo. Since the gold-silver ration was much lower in Japan (1-5 or 1-10) than in the rest of the world (1-15), gold was drained from Japan, and foreign silver coins imported into Japan
http://www.daggarjon.com/Currency_Japan.php
In China, buy 15 pieces of silver (where 15 pieces of silver buy 1 piece of gold);
Ship silver to Japan, buy gold at 5 to 1; (ie. now have 3 pieces of gold);
Take 3 pieces of gold to China, buy 45 pieces of silver;
Ship silver to Japan, buy gold at 5 to 1; (ie. now have 9 pieces of gold);
...9 gold...135 silver
...27 gold...405 silver
...81 gold...1,215 silver
...243 gold...3,645 silver
...729 gold...10,935 silver
etc. - few trips, riches for life.
This trend eventually 'disturbed' the entire Tokugawa regime.
My worry is that if simple commodity production didn't exist (if only as a small short stage - not an entire historical epoch), and instead was just a logical level of abstraction, as Rubin does (not followed therein by Mattick afaik], you separate method from object.
Is anyone here saying that simple commodity production didn't exist? That would be silly. If 'simple commodity production' = pre-capitalist commodity production, i.e. commodity production without wage labour, then obviously it did. That would be commodities produced by (the labour of) those who own the means of production involved in their production, and thus who also own and bring to market those commodities. Capitalism didn't just arise sui generis. Those are historical facts. But they are not relevant to Marx's methodology of investigation in the early chapters of Capital, v.1. The object of investigation is capital.
At what chapter does Marx begin to speak of the existing capitalist production then, or does he never quit his methodological realm of abstraction?
Rather than "speak of", if we are concerned with where Marx begins to investigate or analyze existing capitalist production, it would seem to me to be chapter seven, entitled "The labour process and the valorization process".
Quotes? You want quotes? "Harry, turn on the blue light. The guy wants a blue suit," as they used to say on Orchard St.
1. From the author's preface to the first edition of Capital, vol 1 Charles H. Kerr edition, 1906:
And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement--and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.....
2. From the author's preface [actually afterword] to the 2nd edition, where he approvingly quotes part of the review from the Europrean Messenger of St. Petersburg:
...But it will be said the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own...As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws..... Nay, one and the same phenomenom falls under quite different laws in consequence of different structures... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development and death a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that in point of fact, Marx's book has.
And what's Marx's response to this reviewer? Does he suggest the reviewer is wrong? That the reviewer doesn't understand the "trans-historical" functioning of the law of value? That the reviewer needs to talk to F. Engels to truly understand Marx's task and topic? Nope. Not a word of that.
Marx says this:
Whilst the writer pictures what he take to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method.
Engels, in arguing that Marx is providing a "historical analysis" or "historical record" of the functioning of the law of value is actually stripping Marx's critique of that law and that value of its historical specificity. Engels is making the law of value ahistorical, independent of the social relations of production.
3. More? More on the specificity of the law of value? How about the fact that the law of value cannot govern under all conditions of labor? "Harry, turn up the blue lights. I've found a tie to go with that suit."
From A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1970, New World Publishers, p. 31-32
From the analysis of exchange-value it follows that the conditions of labor which creates exchange-value are social categories of labour or categories of social labour, social however not in the general sense but in the particular sense, denoting a specific type of society
bold added.
Marx continues:
Uniform simple labour implies first of all that labour of different individuals is equal and that their labour is treated as equal by being in fact reduced to homogeneous labor. The labor of every individual in so far as it manifests itself in exchange values possesses this social character of equality, and it manifest itself in exchange-value only in so far as it is equate with the labor of all individuals.
Get that, comrades? The conditions of labor that create exchange value require a specific social organization of labor that distills all particular labor into a common medium. Those social conditions can only exist when labor itself is organized as a commodity as wage-labor. "Simple commodity production" does not homogenize labor to a general character, to a socially undifferentiated measure called time. Simple commodity production is simply too simple, isolated, peripheral, marginal, to establish such relations on the scale necessary to.... necessary to reproduce accumulation which is in fact the law of value in operation.
See, without abstract labor, no social production of value. Without social production of value, no law of value. Without the law of value no accumulation.
[quote:Waslax]Is anyone here saying that simple commodity production didn't exist? That would be silly. If 'simple commodity production' = pre-capitalist commodity production, i.e. commodity production without wage labour, then obviously it did. That would be commodities produced by (the labour of) those who own the means of production involved in their production, and thus who also own and bring to market those commodities. Capitalism didn't just arise sui generis. Those are historical facts.[/quote]
No, I don't think anyone denied it existed. Dave B thinks it began with Edward the third, but also earlier in Rome. I already started haggling with Angelus about the duration of simple commodity production:
1 it is just a short pre-stage, i.e. 16-17th century
2 it is the rudimentary phase of capitalism itself
3 it spans all pre-capitalist commodity production
4 who bids higher/lower?
But they are not relevant to Marx's methodology of investigation in the early chapters of Capital, v.1. The object of investigation is capital.
I think bid no.2 allows the historical interpretation of these chapters.
if we are concerned with where Marx begins to investigate or analyze existing capitalist production, it would seem to me to be chapter seven, entitled "The labour process and the valorization process".
It was a trick question: the correct answer is from the first page.
Artesian
Engels is making the law of value ahistorical, independent of the social relations of production.
Dave already stated he thinks Engels was bending the stick a little. However, to be fair to Engels, he seems to make your point in a criticism of Kautsky:
Engels
But how the means of production, which, at earlier periods, including that of simple commodity production, exercised only a very mild domination compared with now, came to exercise their present despotic domination, is something that calls for proof and yours strikes me as inadequate, since it fails to mention one pole, namely the creation of a class which no longer had any means of production of its own, or, therefore, any means of subsistence, and hence was compelled to sell itself piecemeal.
So can we from this conclude that Engels believed the law of value was operative in earlier periods, but only very very mildly? Back to haggling.
Given what, as someone who was ignorant of the meaning of the categories of Capital, I've learned during this discussion and what I've read in the first two sections of chapter one, I'd like to offer some small advice to anyone intending to try the same.
That is, everywhere where the text mentions 'value' write above it in pencil 'social', so that it now reads 'social-value'.
For example, the heading of chapter one, section one, reads:
'The two factors of the commodity: use-value and value (substance of value, magnitude of value)'
Amend this to read:
'The two factors of the commodity: use-value and social-value (substance of social-value, magnitude of social-value)'
If this is done throughout the text, it helps to keep it in mind that when Marx refers to 'value', he's not meaning the everyday usage of the term; ie. 'value'.
He's meaning something in comparison to 'use-value' (which itself is individual and concrete), something which is not 'value' as we ordinarily understand it, but 'social-value'. It is an abstraction, not something that you can touch or use as an individual.
To me, this amendment signifies the importance of recognising that it's all too easy to read Marx's term 'value' as the common-or-garden, day-to-day word 'value' that we all already know, and so to lose sight of the special significance he gives to his concept.
I hope this little piece of advice helps - it has me.
[quote:Waslax]Is anyone here saying that simple commodity production didn't exist? That would be silly. If 'simple commodity production' = pre-capitalist commodity production, i.e. commodity production without wage labour, then obviously it did. That would be commodities produced by (the labour of) those who own the means of production involved in their production, and thus who also own and bring to market those commodities. Capitalism didn't just arise sui generis. Those are historical facts.
No, I don't think anyone denied it existed. Dave B thinks it began with Edward the third, but also earlier in Rome. I already started haggling with Angelus about the duration of simple commodity production:
1 it is just a short pre-stage, i.e. 16-17th century
2 it is the rudimentary phase of capitalism itself
3 it spans all pre-capitalist commodity production
4 who bids higher/lower?
[/quote]
Can we bid sideways? I mean, we can all agree that fishing is an activity that predates capitalism, that doesn't make fishing a historical mode of production, with a unique set of social relations and laws of motion specific to it, or even - and here is the argument - a law of motion otherwise thought to be specific to the capitalist mode of production - i.e. the law of value.
As an economic activity, artisanal commodity production of course goes back through the city-dwellers of history, from the Ming through Ancient Greece and Rome, and so on. But does a given economic activity determine the overall social relations of a society? And if the "commercialisation model" - that capitalism developed organically out of the simple commodity production of artisans and guild masters in trade-centre cities - is correct, then why did capitalism not arise much earlier? You can't say the Ming didn't have the technology. The orthodox 'Marxist' model of history may (just) have been defensible from within the limits of the ignorant, self-obessessed historiography of late 19th century Western Europe, but it's no longer reconcileable with 21st century historical knowledge.
S. Artesian
Marx says this:
Whilst the writer pictures what he take to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method.
Engels, in arguing that Marx is providing a "historical analysis" or "historical record" of the functioning of the law of value is actually stripping Marx's critique of that law and that value of its historical specificity. Engels is making the law of value ahistorical, independent of the social relations of production.
One thing's for sure, it can't be assimilated to a "logical scientific reductionism" reading. You don't necessarily have to wrestle with 19th century German Idealist philosophy (Hegel? Nein danke...) now that we have systems and complexity theory, but the one thing the analysis cannot be grasped with, is naive reductionism.
One thing's for sure, it can't be assimilated to a "logical scientific reductionism" reading. You don't necessarily have to wrestle with 19th century German Idealist philosophy (Hegel? Nein danke...) now that we have systems and complexity theory, but the one thing the analysis cannot be grasped with, is naive reductionism.
I agree. And nope, you don't have to wrestle with Hegel, although I have-- 2 out of 3, no biting, gouging, or kicking-- and I wouldn't wish it on anybody, more or less. Science of Logic had me near tears until I started think of it as a very long soliloquy] from Hamlet.
But you do have to wrestle with Marx, and his transposition of Hegel's dialectic from "consciousness" to the social labor process.
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure, Fireman positively fails to see this.
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure, Fireman positively fails to see this.
Is this a lie? Or does he just 'reinterpret' it, after a failure to recollect, like Blair and Rumsfeld interpreted the WMD evidence.
That's already been answered. How about he's just wrong? Marx does NOT begin from the simple production of commodities. He begins from the commodity as the expression of value, and the commodity that expresses that value must fully is the capitalistically produced commodity.
Engels is mistaken. And not for the first time. Why is that so hard for you to grasp? Engels did not write the opening chapters of Capital did he?
Read the chapters yourself and tell he where Marx analyzes "simple commodity production."
Finish reading that section on Aristotle and value, and what do you get? This:
The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This however is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities.
bold added.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the law of value is that dominant relation between man and man being that of owners of commodities.
"Simple commodity production" does not exhibit that "simple dominant relation" because labor itself is not organized as a commodity.
Finally the thread is ruined which allows me to ask
@Angelus, could you verify if the following article of Isaak Rubin was translated: On the question of social and abstract labour (Response to S. Shabs' critique), 1928, 3.
I suspect it hasn't been translated (if you could check, maybe it was published in Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, 1925-1936).
Also, in Abstract Labour and Value in Marx’s System footnote 3 says the translators can't trace the passages Rubin quotes from himself and I think that's because these are from the last chapter 'Response to critiques', which probably was included only in some Russian edition(s).
Furthermore, I don't even know if these are two texts or one and the same.(edit; these are two different texts)
If not, this just goes to show how a key debate between top Russian marxists on abstract labour, value, etc. is simply unknown to us.
@Dave B or anyone else, how about finding any review of Kautsky's major work The Labour Revolution (1924)?
LBird: Could you elaborate on your "everyday"-value-term? I dont get it. When people talk about what stuff is worth, they talk about value. when they talk about what stuff is worth to them, they talk about use value. I dont see why Marx shouldnt fit with those concepts.
LBird: Could you elaborate on your "everyday"-value-term? I dont get it. When people talk about what stuff is worth, they talk about value. when they talk about what stuff is worth to them, they talk about use value. I dont see why Marx shouldnt fit with those concepts.
Yeah, in everyday usage 'value' means the same as 'worth'. Further, in everyday usage only the individual can say what something is 'worth' to that individual. In both cases, everyday usage clashes with Marx.
I think you're wrong on 'use-value': I've never had a day-to-day conversation in the pub when anyone has described 'what stuff is worth to them' as 'use-value'. They say stuff is valuable to them or it's worth something, and that they themself are the arbiter of 'value' to themself.
The only people who use the term 'use-value' are people who've read Marx, and are now Communists.
Given that my advice is aimed at new readers of Capital, I think that it's worth stressing that Marx isn't talking about 'value' (a word they'll have met before and have preconceptions about), but is talking about an entirely different term 'social-value'.
This usage both captures the difference compared to everyday 'value' and stresses the 'social' aspect that can only be determined by the collective, not the individual.
Unless Communists make some attempt to explain Marx's concepts to workers new to his ideas, and don't just keep repeating 'Read Marx', then his ideas will never gain the widespread understanding that both they deserve in themselves and we require for the future.
Anyone who thinks that the advice 'Just read Marx' is good advice, is deluding themselves.
"when anyone has described 'what stuff is worth to them' as 'use-value'."
yeah but my point is you have someone describing use-value as "what stuff is worth TO THEM". in comparison to "what stuff is worth" without further reference when they talk about the exchange value.
[quote=Mises (1923)]Auch die marxistischen Parteiliteraten können die Beschäftigung mit dem Problem der Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen nicht mehr länger ablehnen.
Schon ein halbes Jahr nach dem Erscheinen meiner Abhandlung »Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen« behandelten der Moskauer Nationalökonom Tschajanow, die Bolschewiken Strumilin, Bucharin, Varga und andere das Problem in einer Reihe von Aufsätzen in der »Ekonomitscheskaja Shiznj«, einem Amtsblatte der Sowjetregierung.(22) Das Ergebnis dieser Erörterung war kläglich. Tschajanow kam nicht über den mißglückten Versuch hinaus, Verhältnisziffern für die Aufstellung einer Naturalwirtschaftsrechnung einzelner Produktionszweige willkürlich zu konstruieren. Strumilin verwarf den Lösungsvorschlag Tschajanows und versuchte es mit einem System der Konstituierung des Arbeitswerts. Seine Ausführungen über die Beziehungen des Arbeitswertes zur Nützlichkeit werden in dem uns vorliegenden Auszuge nur kurz erwähnt. Varga befaßt sich nur mit der Arbeitszeitrechnung, ohne auf die Schwierigkeiten, die ihrer Anwendung entgegenstehen, näher einzugehen.
Ganz besonders leicht macht sich Kautsky die Lösung des Problems. Daß es mit der Arbeitszeitrechnung nicht gehen kann, sieht er nun endlich ein. »Statt sich an die hoffnungslose Arbeit zu machen, fließendes Wasser mit einem Sieb zu messen – und dieser Art wäre die Konstituierung des Wertes –, wird sich das proletarische Regime für die Zirkulation der Waren an das halten, was es greifbar vorfindet: ihre historisch gewordenen Preise, die heute in Gold gemessen werden, was selbst die weitestgehende Inflation nur verschleiern und verzerren, nicht aber aufheben kann. Was selbst der ungeheuerste und vollkommenste statistische Apparat nicht zu leisten vermöchte, die Schätzung der Waren nach der in ihnen enthaltenen Arbeit, das finden wir in den überkommenen Preisen als Ergebnis eines langen historischen Prozesses gegeben vor, unvollkommen und ungenau, aber als einzig mögliche Grundlage für möglichst glattes und leichtes Weiterfunktionieren des ökonomischen Zirkulationsprozesses«.(23) An diesen überkommenen Preisen wird zunächst nichts geändert. Doch, »wenn das gesellschaftliche Interesse es erheischt«, können »die Ziffern der Produktion und der Preise einzelner Waren« (497) auch »abweichend von den aus der kapitalistischen Zeit überkommenen festgesetzt werden«. Das, meint Kautsky, »ist, von Fall zu Fall vorgenommen, eine weit einfachere Operation als das Berechnen der Arbeitswerte aller Waren zur Einführung des Arbeitsgeldes. Natürlich wird man dabei nicht willkürlich verfahren können«.(24) Doch bedauerlicherweise unterläßt es Kautsky, zu zeigen. wie das anders als willkürlich geschehen könnte. Und wenn er die Beibehaltung des kapitalistischen Geldsystems empfiehlt, erklärt er, sich auf Andeutungen beschränken zu müssen und keine Geldtheorie geben zu wollen.(25)
Man wird Kautsky nicht Unrecht tun, wenn man feststellt, daß die von ihm vorgeschlagene Lösung keiner weiteren. Erörterung wert ist. Daß man auf die Dauer mit den überkommenen. Preisen das Auslangen nicht finden kann, gibt er selbst zu. Er weiß jedoch nicht anzugeben, wie man die erforderlichen Korrekturen vorzunehmen hätte.[/quote]
yeah but my point is you have someone describing use-value as "what stuff is worth TO THEM". in comparison to "what stuff is worth" without further reference when they talk about the exchange value.
I'm not quite sure what point you're making here, yourmum.
My advice was aimed at anyone reading the first two sections of chapter one of Capital for the first time.
I've not mentioned 'exchange-value', yet - and certainly no-one in the pub uses a term like 'exchange-value'.
Perhaps you frequent a better class of pub than the ones I do. There, the only 'value' they're interested in is the 'ABV' of the Real Ale. And that's satisfyingly 'concrete', not theoretically 'abstract'.
So on use-value and value etc as a thought experiment.
When I decorated my house myself, once I completed it was a use value to myself, which in anticipation of, was the reason I did it.
However I could and did whilst looking at it consider the amount of effort that I put into doing it.
And that would be its value, I could have theoretically, and I did consider it, fund it by putting in overtime and paying somebody else to do it.
And thus my ‘abstract’ labour overtime or human effort at work would have been equivalent to the ‘abstract’ work I did myself on the house, to achieve the same use-value.
And then I could have looked at my decorated house and seen it as the amount abstract effort and time I expended as a concrete chemist as opposed to an amateur concrete painter and decorator.
Actually the working class who are engaged in tangible useful work, like factory workers, are not so daft as people make out and they can see more clearly than intellectuals that a load of non concrete ‘work has gone into that’.
In fact I believe it is part of our culture, my parents, both factory workers (the guy’s in the pub) used to instil in me, as a feckless youngster, the value of stuff in terms of how much effort, for someone, had gone into making it as opposed to its exchange value or price.
As I kind of moral perspective admittedly.
Workerist snob but why not, it is true.
Whilst the epigram about knowing the ‘price (exchange value) of everything and the value of nothing’ admittedly can be viewed as the use-value it can also be understood as Marxist ‘value’.
Acute only to those who do tangible useful work
Scientific laws are generally the formalisation of empirically and experimentally observed facts or if you like spotting correlation’s or patterns.
The law of value, as it evolved was such, people observed that expensive stuff or stuff that had a high exchange value tended to involve more time its manufacture.
And that obvious truism underpins the credibility of the law even to the not so stupid guy’s in the pub.
As it did to that scientist Benjamin Franklin who was certainly one of the originators of the theory.
Once any ‘scientific’ law is ‘established’ however as Feuerbach, Karl’s mentor, astutely noticed the scientific law becomes the object of scientific investigation itself.
Or in other words why does the law work.
And that leads onto further understanding.
What underpins the law of value or in other words what is ‘natural’, ‘eternal’ or materialistic about it is that all that does matter or is of value is the amount free time of our lives that we have to give up to obtain useful things.
I think what Karl was doing in the opening chapters of das capital was interesting for me as a scientist, as he was pretty much ‘thought experimenting’ which became a standard scientific technique later.
I wouldn’t want to credit him with originating the idea but it is certainly for me a fascinating early example of it.
Much of the content of the early material is slightly surreal for those unfamiliar with that method, in the sense that linen weavers never did barter their product for bibles or whatever it was.
(and you will have more success teaching chemistry to a budgerigar than that scientific method to a sociologist)
But then again as in the quantum mechanics versus Einstien debate, that Einstien lost for the moment, both sides of the argument appreciated the ‘surreal’ logical implications of it.Eg
[I think Einstien is going to be proved right in the end when we understand the interaction of ‘random’ invisible neutrinos on quantum effects.]
Some people seem to think that the law of value necessarily has something to do with accumulation and capitalism.
Proudhon, and I am no fan, even recognised before Marx the basic problem, and thought of the solution in terms of creating a situation were commodities did exchange at their value.
Scientific laws are generally the formalisation of empirically and experimentally observed facts or if you like spotting correlation’s or patterns.
Yipes. Could I interest you in some Kuhn or, better, Lakatos?
Dave B
What underpins the law of value or in other words what is ‘natural’, ‘eternal’ or materialistic about it is [...]
This point has been made before, by different contributors to the thread, but it's worth repeating one more time.
The law of value is a social law. Not a law of physics such as those that began operating seconds after the big bang and will continue to operate until the heat death of the universe. To the degree that Marx wanted to rescue the critique of political economy from the various ethical or 'true' socialists that mixed moral judgements into slipshod muddling with economic categories, he aimed to raise it to the level of a social science. But not a physical science, whose laws are "natural, eternal [&] materialistic".
Seeing as we've reached the point of rambling posts with little connection to the OP, I'll throw this in from something I was working on last week. It's actually from something on world monetary systems (Gold standard, Bretton Woods, etc.), but it seems apposite:
Law of Value and Rule of Money
The law of value is not a scientific law like the second law of thermodynamics - i.e. one that exists extrinsically to social production as part of the fabric of reality. The law of value is a social law, one that is neither universal nor eternal but tied to a particular historical set of social relations, and which must be actively produced by an apparatus of rule. The rule of money.
An apparatus of rule consists of two articulated components, a coding authority and an enforcement system. In capitalism, the principle of force that makes the rule of money operate is competition. The authoritative principle that anchors and channels that force, is the system of codes that makes up the global monetary system. It may be tempting to see these two principles as the active and passive principles in the apparatus of rule, but this would be misleading.[...]
The mechanism of force delivery, the competitive process, must be understood in its historical specificity, as a form of competition peculiar to capitalist relations of production and distribution. Although forms of competition, from the playful through to life and death struggles, have been part of all historical human societies, the particular form of economic competition found in capitalism is unique to its historic era. [...]
I should add that in pre-capitalist formations, the coding authority is the king, god-emperor, grand negus or whatever, who is also the commander-in-chief, and the enforcement system is the military force - that is that the apparatus of monetary rule is not distinct from that of political rule. This is radically different in capitalism, particularly in the pole of force delivery which appears for the first time as "an inner law, a blind natural force vis-a-vis the individual agents".
"The only good laws aren't enforced" as the intro to a particular song went, and the law of value is not one of those laws.
I'm not quite sure what point you're making here, yourmum.
The point I think he's trying to make is that in the topsy-turvy world of capitalism, people come to view exchange-value as the 'individual value' of things rather than the actual use they can get from something.
LBird: Could you elaborate on your "everyday"-value-term? I dont get it. When people talk about what stuff is worth, they talk about value. when they talk about what stuff is worth to them, they talk about use value. I dont see why Marx shouldnt fit with those concepts.
Yeah, in everyday usage 'value' means the same as 'worth'. Further, in everyday usage only the individual can say what something is 'worth' to that individual. In both cases, everyday usage clashes with Marx.
I think you are simplifying things here too much. The everyday usage of the word "value" has a number of different meanings. Check the dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th ed.) lists nine different meanings for "value". The meaning that you provide is one of those, and yes, it is listed first, and so is probably the most common one. However, the third meaning COD provides is:
purchasing power, power of a commodity to purchase others, amount of money or (Econ.) other commodities for which thing can be exchanged in open market
This is one of the "everyday" meanings of the word "value". This usage does not make value or 'worthiness' dependent on particular individuals' valuations or attitudes. It is clearly a social conception of value. As a social conception of value, it is confined to a specific realm of life. And that realm is the economic realm. So we can say that this is the 'economic meaning' of "value".
Now, to bring it back to understanding the opening chapters of Marx's Capital, v.1. This book is subtitled "a critique of political economy". And it begins by considering the nature of the commodity, as the basic unit of the capitalist mode of production. As a result, can we not assume that the typical (first-time) reader of Capital will be able to figure out fairly quickly that it is this economic meaning of the word "value" that Marx is concerned with?
I apologise for rambling and it is unforgivable especially as I criticise others for doing it.
If you consider that evaluating things according to the amount of labour time that goes into them in order to minimise your working day and maximise the material use value benefits of your labour as social then so be it.
And that 'law' can obviously operate in different social or economic environments.
I gave the example the goose herder switching to cobbling in the situation of simple commodity production where the commodity producers own their own means of production and where wage labour does not exist.
Where he changes his concrete labour to obtain the maximum amount for his abstract labour or general expenditure of human effort and time that is only thing quantifiably common to all labour.
That kind of thing also goes on in capitalism as regards wage labour where lorry drivers become computer programmer’s etc.
And Karl never included stuff in his book without a purpose for those with eyes to see, although he was obviously too clever for his own good and as a result I believe people have understandably missed the point.
I believe in his passage on Robinson Crusoe on value in the non-social society of one he was in fact making the very point that I am making.
At the end of the day I can appreciate and follow Kautsky’s take on Das Capital as below even if I have reservations about it here and there ie in .
Kautsky The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I. COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL Karl
And obviously I follow Engels take on it, as I did whilst a read it and obviously not prejudiced by any party position, and you will have to take my word for it that I did not read the preface to volume III before volume I.
I think it is as clear as it can be that they Karl and Fred did work together on the opening chapters of volume one.
It is also worth bearing in mind that Fred taught Karl economics and was well ahead of him in say 1843 when Fred was writing some pretty good stuff on it whilst Karl was puzzling of the meaning of foraging for firewood.
Incidentally for the interest perhaps of S Artisan as a Leninist, Lenin made a rare foray into this kind of thing and appears to be drawing from the Kautsky article cited above. But I get the impression that Vlad was not really comfortable on this ground and sensible chap that he was tended to stay away from it.
Incidentally if the law of value does not operate in simple commodity production, if you believe such a thing exists, on what basis do non capitalist commodities exchange?
Incidentally if the law of value does not operate in simple commodity production, if you believe such a thing exists, on what basis do non capitalist commodities exchange?
That can be reduced to the difference between C-M-C and M-C-M. Quite simple, really.
Now, to bring it back to understanding the opening chapters of Marx's Capital, v.1. This book is subtitled "a critique of political economy". And it begins by considering the nature of the commodity, as the basic unit of the capitalist mode of production. As a result, can we not assume that the typical (first-time) reader of Capital will be able to figure out fairly quickly that it is this economic meaning of the word "value" that Marx is concerned with?
Well, this is the $64,000 question. Can "the typical (first-time) reader of Capital... figure out fairly quickly that it is this economic meaning of the word "value" that Marx is concerned with"?
I don't think it is obvious that the term 'value' means 'social-value'. It's only become clear to me through this discussion, and with the help from other posters, including you.
But perhaps I'm just a bit thick, and slow on the uptake.
It needs other posters new to Capital to say whether:
a) they read the first two sections through and 'figured it out fairly quickly' by themselves;
b) they've benefited from this discussion, and only now does it make some sense (my position);
c) it was bollocks both before and after this discussion, and they're still none the wiser.
I fear c) will be the more prevalent answer, and that the responsibility for that lies with both Marx and later Communists, including us, for not explaining the concepts better.
Frankly, I hope that I'm wrong, and that 'a)' is the most common answer, and that if I'm put in the corner facing the wall and forced to wear a pointy hat with a big 'D' on it, the problem will be solved.
It needs other posters new to Capital to say whether:
a) they read the first two sections through and 'figured it out fairly quickly' by themselves;
b) they've benefited from this discussion, and only now does it make some sense (my position);
c) it was bollocks both before and after this discussion, and they're still none the wiser.
I fear c) will be the more prevalent answer, and that the responsibility for that lies with both Marx and later Communists, including us, for not explaining the concepts better.
When I wrote "figure out fairly quickly" I of course meant that they figure out what meaning of the word "value" Marx was concerned with in the early chapters of Capital, not that they figure out fairly quickly the full significance of Marx's theorization there. I fully concur that that theorization is not easily grasped, even by the brightest of us.
Incidentally if the law of value does not operate in simple commodity production, if you believe such a thing exists, on what basis do non capitalist commodities exchange?
That can be reduced to the difference between C-M-C and M-C-M. Quite simple, really.
Well it is a bit of a quibble but that is not “exactly” true, and you have obviously just lifted that from Lenin, never a good idea, in the link I gave you.
It should be as far as the capitalist is concerned M-C-M', not that I ever like that Hegelian expression, and it led to the mistake of leaving out un-consumed fixed capital that originated in volume one, because it just returned.
Anyway;
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part II: The Transformation of Money into Capital
Chapter Four: The General Formula for Capital
The exact form of this process is therefore M-C-M', where M' = M + D M = the original sum advanced, plus an increment. This increment or excess over the original value I call “surplus-value.” The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circulation, but adds to itself a surplus-value or expands itself. It is this movement that converts it into capital.
Capital Vol. III Part I The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit Chapter 2. The Rate of Profit
The general formula of capital is M-C-M'. In other words, a sum of value is thrown into circulation to extract a larger sum out of it.
Well it is a bit of a quibble but that is not “exactly” true, and you have obviously just lifted that from Lenin, never a good idea, in the link I gave you.
Didn't bother reading the link you posted (and I don't bother reading much of Lenin in any case); don't understand most of the points you're trying to make (there doesn't seem to ever be one) and my response was purely based on Vol. 1.
And I still think that you don't seem to catch that historically there is a difference between surplus labour and surplus value, but that in the capitalist mode of production the two becomes the same.
And seriously, the last maybe 6-7 posts from you Dave B, I don't get what point(s) you're trying to make. To me you just seem to be rambling and stringing together a series of quotes (and my reaction to them is typically: "so what?"). So, in the spirit of this thread, can you please explain in very simple language what point you're trying to make? Or are you still arguing for a historical reading of Capital?
Well the point is that Engels is accused of re-interpreting the opening chapters of Das Capital with his
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure, Fireman positively fails to see this.
What I am putting forward is that apparently Kautsky, in his synopsis of Karl’s Capital appears to make the same 'mistake'.
And 2/3 of the way down into his article after discussing the evolution of pre capitalist simple commodity production and that these commodities have value. He says as if it wasn’t already obvious that;
So far we have been presupposing simple commodity production and simple commodity exchange (with their value), and labour-power as a commodity does not yet exist for us.
Commodity production is a historical category if you like in the sense that it hasn’t always existed, but that is not at issue.
And I think we all agreed that commodity production occurs in pre capitalist and capitalist production.
Again Kautsky says;
Value is a historical category, which is valid only for the period of commodity production
In other words, making a reasonable paraphrase, that;
Value is a historical category, which is valid for the period of simple commodity exchange or production (Given that that is all that Kautsky has presupposed at that point.)
What I would like to know is who first challenged this interpretation when, where and how.
I have accepted that Engels supplement quote was challenged and I gave an early example of it with a linked quote.
Not that I have any respect for Lenin on this, but he certainly didn’t challenge Kautskys article in fact he praised it.
On Marx's economic doctrine, the outstanding books are the following: Karl Kautsky, The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/KM14.html
And it would be safe to say I think that your argument is not directly addressed by Kautsky because it did “not yet exist”.
I think you're now conflating "the law of value" with the simple existence of value. Conceptually and logically pre-capitalist commodities would have to have value. However, the point is that social production and exchange was never ever subject to the law of value. This can occur only when the commodity form is generalized, i.e. when labour-power is commodified. So I can agree with Kautsky that\
Value is a historical category, which is valid only for the period of commodity production
But as I've said, this simple claim has got nothing to do with the law of value being transhistorical. And this is the reason why I previously (and very shortly) argued that the basis of non-capitalist commodities being exchange is C-M-C. This is perfectly in line with Marx's logical argument as well with the historical existence of commodities prior to the capitalist mode of production. It is when exchange is regulated by M - C - M' that the law of value comes into effect because M - C - M' requires the existence of capitalist social relations (thus the formula M - C (LP+MP)...P...C' - M' describes capital much better).
And it would be safe to say I think that your argument is not directly addressed by Kautsky because it did “not yet exist”.
That's fer sure. As far as I know it only came into existence in the 60s with the Neue Marx Lekture (whose main inspirations were the original first chapter of the German edition of capital, I. I. Rubin and Pashukanis), though for all I know there might be people that have challenged Engles' and the second international's orthodoxy before that.
I think you're now conflating "the law of value" with the simple existence of value. Conceptually and logically pre-capitalist commodities would have to have value.[...]
But not necessarily in the General Form of value which is associated with the positive emergence of abstract labour itself and the heightening of the antagonism between the equivalent and relative forms. Depending on your reading of Ch 1, Section 3 The Value-Form, c The General Form of Value, 1) The changed character of the form of value. See also note 26 in the following section on the development of the relative and equivalent forms:
26. It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and universal exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one [Fowkes: an antagonistic form], and as intimately connected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct exchangeability, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can simultaneously have this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imagined that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly desirable in the eyes of the petit bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the nec plus ultra of human freedom and individual independence, that the inconveniences resulting from this character of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be removed. Proudhon’s socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality. Long before his time, the task was attempted with much better success by Gray, Bray, and others.
Which is not just a side-swipe at Proudhon, but all vulgar economics that skips straight from the accidental or elementary form to the money form while trying to pretend that the latter is just a convenience, with no real transformation of social relations from those of barter.
Yeah, the first time I read ch 1, (a few years after my first attempt in my late teens, which I gave up in disgust), once I'd sorta got my head around abstract labour being the basis of value and exchange value (not that I really noticed the difference at that stage) I couldn't figure out why he was banging on about the different forms and I just thought it was some 19th century German Idealist perverse way of making a simple thing complicated. That is, I kinda assumed all the different forms were more or less equivalent logical developments of the same thing. It wasn't until many years later that I realised that they weren't the same thing at all, and the shift between form B and form C above all, is a significant transformation. Even though Marx isn't writing a historical account and is trying to focus specifically on value in isolation from other capitalist relations (e.g. wage labour), he does nonetheless leave enough breadcrumbs to signal that the change between form B and form C implies a modification in social relations.
[Chapter III] Adam Smith
[1. Smith’s Two Different Definitions of Value; the Determination of Value by the Quantity of Labour Expended Which Is Contained in a Commodity, and Its Determination by the Quantity of Living Labour Which Can Be Bought in Exchange for This Commodity]
It is Adam Smith’s great merit that it is just in the chapters of Book I (chapters VI, VII, VIII) where he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour, to the consideration of profit and rent in general—in short, to the origin of surplus-value—that he feels some flaw has emerged.
He senses that somehow—whatever the cause may be, and he does not grasp what it is—in the actual result the law is suspended: more labour is exchanged for less labour (from the labourer’s standpoint), less labour is exchanged for more labour (from the capitalist’s standpoint).
His merit is that he emphasises—and it obviously perplexes him—that with the accumulation of capital and the appearance of property in land—that is, when the conditions of labour assume an independent existence over against labour itself—something new occurs, apparently (and actually, in the result) the law of value changes into its opposite.
It is his theoretical strength that he feels and stresses this contradiction, just as it is his theoretical weakness that the contradiction shakes his confidence in the general law, even for simple commodity exchange; that he does not perceive how this contradiction arises, through labour-power itself becoming a commodity, and that in the case of this specific commodity its use-value—which therefore has nothing to do with its exchange-value—is precisely the energy which creates exchange-value.
Ricardo is ahead of Adam Smith in that these apparent contradictions—in their result real contradictions—do not confuse him. But he is behind Adam Smith in that he does not even suspect that this presents a problem, and therefore the specific development which the law of value undergoes with the formation of capital does not for a moment puzzle him or even attract his attention. We shall see later how what was a stroke of genius with Adam Smith becomes reactionary with Malthus as against Ricardo’s standpoint.
So if the Law of value, ie that commodities exchange according to the amount of labour required to produce them or whatever, does not operate in pre capitalist simple commodity production.
Then on what basis do they exchange or is it just “makeshift for practical purposes”?
For balance and the ‘other view’; I will provide some ‘content’ as my opponents have deferred.
Engels’ Edition of the Third Volume of Capital and Marx’s Original Manuscript
MICHAEL HEINRICH
c. Commodity production and capitalist production. Engels attained a considerable influence over the interpretation of Capital as a result of his chapter “Law of Value and Rate of Profit” in the Supplement to Volume III. There he claimed the existence of simple commodity production for several millennia before the emergence of capitalist commodity production, in which commodities were exchanged according to the labor-time necessary for their production. He cites an incidental remark made by Marx to prove that this was also Marx’s opinion (“it is quite appropriate to regard the values of commodities as not only theoretically but also historically prius to the prices of production”; Capital, III, 896).
It may be a question for economic historians, whether such a “simple commodity production” ever existed or not, but Engels’ conclusion from this claim is meaningful for the interpretation of Capital. the first part of the first volume of Capital is seen as presenting the laws of this (precapitalist) commodity production (Capital, Vol. III, 899). Engels thus fostered a historical reading of Capital which could already be found in Kautsky’s (1887) widespread popularization of Capital. Commodity and money as they are presented at the beginning of the first volume of Capital are thus turned into categories of precapitalist conditions and the (theoretical) problem of the transformation of values into production prizes is turned into a historical succession. However, as the Introduction of 1857 shows with the example of the term “labor,” Marx was aware of the problem that seemingly simple categories mean different things in different production relations
Incidentally it has been reported that Engels edited and amended what became the standard Dummies Guide to Das Capital; Kautskys ‘The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx’ of 1887
Which contains the ‘trans-historical’ analysis; so Fred’s reinterpretation after “writing” volume III that moved to a whilst really needs to be changed to a before.
I realise that this was posted a while ago and I've been away for a bit, but I should probably respond since this thread is still near the top of the page.
Khawaga
Sure, if you read my post closely that's actually what I said. But try to bear in mind that I am trying to explain this stuff to folks that haven't read as much Marx as some of us. Thus, quantity/quality is a good shorthand for the contradiction of and value/use-value (until it becomes necessary to complicate it) and also the difference between M-C-M and C-M-C.
My point was that I think that explaining the use-value/value distinction by referring it to a distinction between quality and quantity is entirely misleading. They (Use-value and Value) are both qualitative aspects of the commodity, and these different qualities can be determined quantitatively in different ways. A better way of viewing it in my opinion would be as a distinction between the physical properties of the commoditiy and it's social properties.
1. How did I become a Leninist? Last time I checked, I didn't buy into vanguard party-ism, Lenin's theory of imperialism, the "right of 'nations' to self-determination," etc. I do support "All power to the soviets" but that, IIRC, has bit broader base than Lenin.
Maybe I'm a Leninist because I think the Russian Revolution was a proletarian revolution? Or because I can't conceive of a capitalism without a capitalist class?
Or is it because it's clear to me that the Bolshevik seizure of power was supported, even demanded by the Russian working class?
If that's the case, sure I'm a Leninist.
2. No, I don't accept Kautsky's rendition of "Marxist economics."
3. In TSV, Marx is referring to Smith's "model" of simple commodity exchange, which breaks down in that there is no basis for accumulation. What is that basis? It's surplus value, it's labor organized as wage-labor, which is what makes the law of value the abstract embodiment of the concrete social relation regulating production.
4. If the law of value isn't dominant how does exchange occur under "primitive conditions," DB wants to know. First and foremost, Marx writes that it occurs at the fringes of societies, where such societies come in contact with each other. A simple examination of the history of such exchange will show that the exchange is hardly dominant, and that production is not organized based on the incidents or principles of such exchange. Secondly, accumulation does not occur in those areas of exchange-- no accumulation of private wealth commanding social labor. That's the difference between individual exchange, petty producer barter, and the exchange of commodities as representatives of capital.
5. And finally, for the nth time, Marx does not begin with the analysis of simple commodity production. Read the first chapters of Capital again. He starts out with the commodity as the embodiment of value, and he proceeds to analyze value-- the product, goal, alpha and omega of capitalist commodity production.
In TSV, Marx is referring to Smith's "model" of simple commodity exchange, which breaks down in that there is no basis for accumulation.
It breaks down yes, but only in capitalism; the Smithian/Ricardian law of value is valid for simple commodity production (and according to your reading, Marx does imagine a simple commodity production in the first chapters, albeit a non-existing one, see Rubin). With the advent of capitalism Marx says the law of value changes, even becomes suspended. Marx's law of value indeed differs from the Ricardian; but they are both valid. How can this be? They are about the (non-)operation of the law of value in different historical eras.
First of all we need to make clear again what the argument is; I am saying that the law of value operates, or more accurately develops from, pre-capitalist production where producers are not wage slaves.
So from the second chapter of volume one where Karl never mentions or even hints at capitalism or wage labour etc he says that;
The exchange of commodities, therefore, first begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points of contact with other similar communities, or with members of the latter. So soon, however, as products once become commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse. The proportions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a matter of chance.
At this point because ‘The proportions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a matter of chance’ the law of value does not operate, only exchange of commodities.
Then he goes on in the next page after briefly discussing the idea of money first being used to improve upon this barter process, and introduced by nomads with cattle and slaves being used as the universal money commodity etc.
Ie the displacement of barter, as means of exchange, by ‘money’ or a universal equivalent of ‘value’, then;
In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attaches itself to commodities that are by Nature fitted to perform the social function of a universal equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals.
And in the next paragraph, on the pre-capitalist historical introduction of money as the ‘manifestation of the value of commodities’;
Up to this point, however, we are acquainted only with one function of money, namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of commodities, or as the material in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed. An adequate form of manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undifferentiated, and therefore equal human labour
Although we need to go back a few pages to understand this as regards independent producers, even if the guy in the pub or wage slave understands it equally well.
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he desires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective of whether his own commodity has or has not any use-value for the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange is for him a social transaction of a general character.
What that means is that I am not going to exchange something that took 10 hours of my labour for something that costs 5 hours of somebody else’s, if I can help it.
[Although that can occur with the simply commodity production of modern un-waged non feudal peasants who are forced to sell their products at below its value which can be one source of the surplus value of the modern merchants.]
Unless you are going to say that the surplus value of the merchants ‘originates’ from the merchants variable capital.
All that changes with capitalism, as in the theories of surplus value quote I provided, is that labour power becomes a commodity.
I still don’t know where this alternative interpretation of Kautsky’s and Engels originated from, apart from Germany in the 1960’s
In TSV, Marx is referring to Smith's "model" of simple commodity exchange, which breaks down in that there is no basis for accumulation.
It breaks down yes, but only in capitalism; the Smithian/Ricardian law of value is valid for simple commodity production (and according to your reading, Marx does imagine a simple commodity production in the first chapters, albeit a non-existing one, see Rubin). With the advent of capitalism Marx says the law of value changes, even becomes suspended. Marx's law of value indeed differs from the Ricardian; but they are both valid. How can this be? They are about the (non-)operation of the law of value in different historical eras.
Marx imagines a simple commodity production.... of course he does, he imagines also schemes of simple reproduction. He does not however begin his analysis nor derive the law of value from examinations of systems of "simple commodity production."
He is examining the commodity as the embodiment, the expression of value, and this manifestation only achieves its "acuity" under the conditions of labor that define industrial capitalism, i.e. wage-labor.
I'm not sure what you mean, or where you derive the notion, when you write "Marx says the law of value changes, even becomes suspended." A reference might help here. I'm not quite so sure that the law of value itself changes.
Marx doesn't offer a different version of the law of value, a law of value 2 so to speak. And he most certainly is not analyzing, in Capital and his other economic manuscripts an historical era different than that analyzed by Ricardo. On the contrary, it is precisely the same development of capitalism in England that he is examining which is what gives his explication of the critique "immanent" to capital such power, and such force in "abolishing" political economy.
As for the non-operation of the law of value-- Marx goes to great lengths to show that he can explain the operation of this law even in areas where Ricardo cannot-- i.e. differential and absolute ground rent; cost price, prices of production, average rates of profit, etc.
I thought the argument was the claim by Engels [and Kautsky] that Marx in Capital is providing a historical "allegory" in a sense, of the law of value. I thought you were, at one point, arguing that because commodities existed prior to industrial capitalism, the law of value must have been the regulator of the societies producing those commodities prior to industrial capitalism.
IMO, that view mistakes Marx's analysis of the single commodity produced under the social conditions of industrial capitalism with "simple commodity production." In truth, I'd be a little hard pressed to name a system that was organized around "simple commodity production." I honestly don't think such a thing as "simple commodity production" has existed historically, or can exist historically. It reads to me like some mixture, and myth, of equal parts Jefferson and Proudhon where all the individual producers, employing their own labor, get together in a sort of town hall/school board/PTA meeting and exchange their wares for.... exactly for what? Since simple commodity production necessarily requires the same commodity producers to be capable of supporting their own subsistence..., exactly what, how, and WHY are commodities being exchanged? For purposes of accumulation? Obviously not.
Anyway that's what I thought the argument was, and I'll say it again, Marx's analysis of the commodity presupposes not simple commodity production, but industrial capitalism, expanded reproduction. Only on that scale, a scale driven by world markets does the expression of value expand beyond the mask of value to reveal itself to be nothing other than the social conditions of labor.
PS Where did the "Leninist" come from? Not that I feel insulted. I've been called worse things, believe me. But usually by people who know me.
In truth, I'd be a little hard pressed to name a system that was organized around "simple commodity production." I honestly don't think such a thing as "simple commodity production" has existed historically, or can exist historically. .
Capital Volume II Part I: The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuits, Chapter 1: The Circuit of Money Capital
On the other hand, the same conditions which give rise to the basic condition of capitalist production, the existence of a class of wage-workers, facilitate the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity production. As capitalist production develops, it has a disintegrating, resolvent effect on all older forms of production, which, designed mostly to meet the direct needs of the producer, transform only the excess produced into commodities.
Capitalist production makes the sale of products the main interest, at first apparently without affecting the mode of production itself. Such was for instance the first effect of capitalist world commerce on such nations as the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, etc. But, secondly, wherever it takes root capitalist production destroys all forms of commodity production which are based either on the self-employment of the producers, or merely on the sale of the excess product as commodities. Capitalist production first makes the production of commodities general and then, by degrees, transforms all commodity production into capitalist commodity production.
You see I knew 20 posts ago the that the goal posts would move and that despite the howls of indignation, and don’t call us stupid, when I suggested that there was such a thing as pre capitalist (or simple commodity production).
Same one. No, they are not stopping you, according to the mods/admin. There's something wrong, they think, with the settings on your browser or something. I forget.
And yes, I'm aware of that quote... but where in history is there an example of a society organized around "simple commodity production." The "same condition" that makes the transition possible, a class of dispossessed laborers whose only use for their labor is as a means of exchange doesn't come out of "simple commodity production."
The disintegrating impact is on older societies that only transform excesses into commodities. That is not a society organized on the basis of "simple commodity production." That is a society organized, as Marx states, to meet the direct needs of the producers. In short subsistence. And in short-- no accumulation.
So where are these societies of simple commodity production where the law of value regulates production? Nowhere.
The "simple commodity production" society is not even an abstraction. It's a misnomer and a misunderstanding of what Marx is doing in his examination of the commodity.
Anyway, I didn't think I was a Leninist on Revleft, but at my age, I'll have to go back and check.
Yeah, there are worse things than being called a Leninist, but again, I am not a Leninist, if you mean by that agreeing with the usual Leninist check-list of "dos" and "donts"
No, we all agree that there was pre-capitalist commodity production. We have never agreed that Marx's analysis of the commodity is based on pre-capitalist societies where the law of value regulated social production of commodities; where the law of value was the dominant organizing principle of labor and property.
Incidents, moments, of commodity production existed. Social organization of labor for the production of commodities depends on the dispossession of the producers from the conditions of production. And that is organization we call capitalism.
I still don’t know where this alternative interpretation of Kautsky’s and Engels originated from, apart from Germany in the 1960’s
It was a Menshevik, in early 1923. Unfortunately Rubin didn't give names or sources when relating to the reception to Engels' article from 1895:
[quote=Rubin]Engels' article found ardent supporters, but just as ardent opponents, some of them Marxists. Opponents pointed out that exchange did not encompass the entire social economy before the appearance of capitalism, that it spread first to surpluses which existed after the satisfaction of the requirements of the self-sufficient, natural economic unit, that the mechanism of general equalization of different individual labor expenditures in separate economic units on the market did not exist, and that consequently it was not appropriate to speak of abstract and socially-necessary labor which is the basis of the theory of value.[/quote]
Marx imagines a simple commodity production.... of course he does, he imagines also schemes of simple reproduction. He does not however begin his analysis nor derive the law of value from examinations of systems of "simple commodity production."
.
Rubin
Thus the labor theory of value and the theory of production price are not theories of two different types of economy, but theories of one and the same capitalist economy taken on two different levels of scientific abstraction. The labor theory of value is a theory of simple commodity economy, not in the sense that it explains the type of economy that preceded the capitalist economy, but in the sense that it describes only one aspect of the capitalist economy, namely production relations among commodity producers which are characteristic for every commodity economy.
I just don't see a reason for Rubin's excluding that it explains 'the type of economy that preceded the capitalist economy'. >has cake and eat its.
Artesian
I'm not sure what you mean, or where you derive the notion, when you write "Marx says the law of value changes, even becomes suspended." A reference might help here. I'm not quite so sure that the law of value itself changes.
It was firstly in reference to Dave's previous post quoting TSV, but suspended is too strong, so I withdraw that.
My other reference (basis also for Mattick), if you read German, is toGrossmann:
Die Werte behalten trotz der Realität der Produktionspreise ihre zentrale Bedeutung für den Kapitalismus, und zwar, wie Marx betont, in doppelter Hinsicht:
1. Sie sind einmal das historische Prius, gültig für die Epoche der einfachen, d.h. vorkapitalistischen Warenproduktion der selbständigen Produzenten – Handwerker, Bauern – „solange die in jedem Produktionszweig festgesetzten Produktionsmittel nur mit Schwierigkeit aus der einen Sphäre in die andere übertragbar sind“ (Kapital, III 1, S.156), d.h. solange für die Kapitalwanderungen rechtliche oder faktische Hindernisse bestehen, welche die Bildung der allgemeinen Profitrate verhindern (Kapital, III 1, S.292). Nur in dieser Periode der einfachen Warenproduktion ist der Austausch der Waren zu ihren (Markt-)Werten keine bloß theoretische Annahme, sondern ein tatsächlicher Vorgang in dem Sinne, daß die täglichen Schwankungen der Märktpreise sich um die Werte als Gravitationszentrum drehen (Kapital, III 1, S.157).
2. In der kapitalistischen Warenproduktion dagegen modifiziert sich die bisherige Funktion der Werte im Austausch: die Waren tauschen sich nun zu Produktionspreisen aus, die von den Werten quantitativ verschieden sind, wobei die Werte nur noch die Funktion des theoretischen Prius für die Ableitung der Produktionspreise erfüllen.
...
Wir sehen, der Verkauf der Waren zu ihren Werten gilt nicht für die kapitalistische Wirklichkeit. „Der Austausch von Waren zu ihren Werten . . .“ sagt Marx, „erfordert also eine viel niedrigere Stufe als der Austausch zu Produktionspreisen, wozu eine bestimmte Höhe kapitalistischer Entwicklung nötig ist“ (Kapital, III 1, S.156).
on what basis is the "the excess produced into commodities" exchanged between these 'older' subsistance economies?
Honestly, and not to be flip about it, it doesn't matter. It's not important. The law of value is not regulating social production.
That products are exchanged, and that these products carry or represent human labor can be said about any number of societies at any point in history. So what?
The law of value to be expressed as a "law" requires a specific social condition of labor.
on what basis is the "the excess produced into commodities" exchanged between these 'older' subsistance economies?
On the basis of accidental value. That's what accidental value means - proportions in which different products exchange for each other, in the absence of generalised commodity production, and the subordination of relations of production to market forces of competition and its law of value - which presupposes the commoditisation of labour power, as wage-labour.
I will try another tack then and go back to the main thrust of the argument that Karl opens up his discussion on the law of value operating on commodities that are not produced capitalistically.
Here he clearly discusses I think the law of value operating in the sphere of ‘private labour’.
Chapter One: Commodities SECTION 4 THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES AND THE SECRET THEREOF
On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract.
The twofold social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condition, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically different articles that are the products of labour. have one common quality, viz., that of having value.
The question then is; what is this ‘private labour’? Is it the independent production of the ‘self employed’ and people who own and work with their own means of production and without wages which perhaps ‘ as a category in this present stage of the investigation has as yet no existance’.
Or in other words simple commodity production.
And that the ‘cardinal fact of capitalist production’ is the antithesis of ‘private labour and the means of production being the private property of the immediate labourers’, as in;
1) Concentration of means of production in few hands, whereby they cease to appear as the property of the immediate labourers ………….the capitalist mode of production abolishes private property and private labour.
And also where is “Adam Smith’s great merit” and “deep insight” when “he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour”; if it is a load of bollocks?
IE
It is Adam Smith’s great merit that it is just in the chapters of Book I (chapters VI, VII, VIII) where he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour, to the consideration of profit and rent in general—in short, to the origin of surplus-value—that he feels some flaw has emerged. He senses that somehow—whatever the cause may be, and he does not grasp what it is—in the actual result the law is suspended: more labour is exchanged for less labour (from the labourer’s standpoint), less labour is exchanged for more labour (from the capitalist’s standpoint). His merit is that he emphasises—and it obviously perplexes him—that with the accumulation of capital and the appearance of property in land—that is, when the conditions of labour assume an independent existence over against labour itself—something new occurs, apparently (and actually, in the result) the law of value changes into its opposite. It is his theoretical strength that he feels and stresses this contradiction, just as it is his theoretical weakness that the contradiction shakes his confidence in the general law, even for simple commodity exchange; that he does not perceive how this contradiction arises, through labour-power itself becoming a commodity, and that in the case of this specific commodity its use-value—which therefore has nothing to do with its exchange-value—is precisely the energy which creates exchange-value.
Ricardo is ahead of Adam Smith in that these apparent contradictions—in their result real contradictions—do not confuse him. But he is behind Adam Smith in that he does not even suspect that this presents a problem, and therefore the specific development which the law of value undergoes with the formation of capital does not for a moment puzzle him or even attract his attention. We shall see later how what was a stroke of genius with Adam Smith becomes reactionary with Malthus as against Ricardo’s standpoint.
Naturally, however, it is at the same time this deep insight of Adam Smith’s that makes him irresolute and uncertain, cuts the firm ground from under his feet, and prevents him—in contrast to Ricardo—from reaching a consistent and comprehensive theoretical view of the abstract, general foundations of the bourgeois system.
On the other hand; if there is ‘great merit’ in recognising the development of the law of value as it passes from simple commodity exchange (private labour?) to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour.
Where the means of production is no longer the ‘property of the immediate labourers’.
Then would there not be merit in considering the former case as it developed into the latter?
The reason why the law of value operates in simple commodity production of the private labour is as stated;
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he desires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into any other suitable commodity of equal value
And that is the gravitational force that restores accidental exchange values to the ‘natural prices’ or according to the amount of labour time required to produce them.
Because, in the midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations between the products, the labour time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about our ears. The determination of the magnitude of value by labour time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentality from the determination of the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination takes place.
I thought someone was going to complete the apostasy with marginal utility or something.
All this requires a market of course but markets existed in ‘pre-capitalist’ medieval times apparently;
Markets and Fairs
Weekly markets and fairs were the main way in which medieval people bought and sold goods. Farmers and craftsmen from the countryside would take their goods into the towns to sell at the markets. Shop keepers in the towns had to shut their own shops on market days and sell from the stalls. Villagers from outside the towns would go to the markets and fairs to buy goods that could not get locally.
Once or twice a year huge fairs were held in the bigger towns. These fairs could last for days and even weeks. The range of goods available was much larger than the local markets and included goods from other countries. Due to the Crusades there was much more interest in foreign goods and merchants from the East were welcomed to sell fine clothes, wines, spices and lace. One of the largest fairs in England was the Stourbridge fair held near Cambridge after the September harvest and could last for five weeks.
The guild system that was responsible for much non agricultural production admittedly operated a monopoly and cartel system in western Europe (not in Russia apparently).
And therefore those products would not sell at their value, but cartels are not unique to simply commodity production either.
This is getting worse, not better. This issue that was posed originally was the claim that the law of value operated "transhistorically," that it regulated social production, NOT just the production of those articles exchanged as commodities, but the general social production... which is to say, the general social reproduction, which is to say, not putting too fine a Marxist point on it, the reproduction of the social relations of production themselves, which is to say the conditions of labor.
That's what it come down to, really, because when we are discussing value we are discussing nothing other than relations of production which are the conditions of labor.
So for the law of value to operate "transhistorically"--as the regulator, the DNA and messenger RNA of the society-- it would have had to create those social relations of capitalism, wage-laborer and owner of the means of production in a pre-capitalist capitalism, you should pardon the awkwardness of the construction.
We can look at any number of abstractions Marx made, abstractions of others regarding "simple commodity exchange" or even "simple commodities" and try to make them the concrete substance of Marx's critique, but that won't change the fact that they are simply abstractions, suppositions, theoretical models, distillations of method and exposition, designed to illuminated the basic condition of capitalist commodity production, and as such abstractions, their "simplicity" is possible only because of the "complexity," the completeness of the operation of the law of value "untrans-historically."
Have to agreed with S. Artesian, this really is getting worse rather than better...
Dave B
The question then is; what is this ‘private labour’? Is it the independent production of the ‘self employed’ and people who own and work with their own means of production and without wages which perhaps ‘ as a category in this present stage of the investigation has as yet no existance’.
Or in other words simple commodity production.
Fishing. Remember fishing? Once more, with feeling. An economic activity does not a mode of production make. Just because there were people who earned their living by fishing in Ancient Rome, does not mean that it was a Fishingist social system. Still less than, because there were artisans engaging in simple commodity production, does not mean that Ancient Rome was a society dominated by commodity production, or the law of value.
Dave B
The reason why the law of value operates in simple commodity production of the private labour is as stated;
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he desires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into any other suitable commodity of equal value
And that is the gravitational force that restores accidental exchange values to the ‘natural prices’ or according to the amount of labour time required to produce them.
Because, in the midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange relations between the products, the labour time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about our ears. The determination of the magnitude of value by labour time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentality from the determination of the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination takes place.
Once again you are quoting Marx investigating capitalist relations of production at a high level of abstraction. This has nothing to do with pre-capitalist economic relations. The coincidence of the word "accidental" here (in relation to the fluctuation of prices in capitalism, around value - or, later, prices of production) has nothing to do with accidental value as delineated in Chapter 1, where, (despite the fact that as previously stated ch. 1. is primarily a logical and not an historical account), there is a clear nod in passing that the transition from the accidental form, even in its expanded form, to the general form, presupposes major transformation in the social relations of production, and in fact transforms the relation of value as a whole.
It is the whole point of Marx's exposition that the contradictions to (of) the law of value that Smith sees as somehow historically external to an apriori "law of value" corresponding to the bouregois myth of "pre-capitalist capitalism", are internal to the law itself - that's the whole point. That is, you didn't have a well-formed law of value before capitalism came along and perverted it - the law of value is created by capitalism "perverted" from the outset - the contradictions are immanent to it and inseparable from it - hence his swipe at Proudhon in the footnote to Ch1 I referred to above.
Dave B
I thought someone was going to complete the apostasy with marginal utility or something.
The "apostasy"? Seriously? Dude... you're the one trying to not only justify a Proudhonist reading of Marx, but further, to say that Marx was truely a Proudhonist all along. Catch yourself on.
Dave B
All this requires a market of course but markets existed in ‘pre-capitalist’ medieval times apparently;
Markets and Fairs
Weekly markets and fairs were the main way in which medieval people bought and sold goods. Farmers and craftsmen from the countryside would take their goods into the towns to sell at the markets. [...]
Really. This is just von Mises type stuff. There's no difference between "the market" in capitalism and mediaeval markets, cos they're called by the same name and people do buying and selling there. Bourgeois economic relations are eternal... And this in the name of Marxism? Good grief Charlie Brown!
And I have to agree with everything in Ocelot's post.
The whole point is the immanent contradictions of the law of value in capitalist commodity production.
The immanent contradiction is determined by the contradiction between labor and the conditions of labor.
This does not, cannot, exist "trans-historically" as the determinant of pre-capitalist commodity production because labor is not yet organized, socially, as wage-labor, value and surplus-value yielding labor.
Engels, and Kautsky's, transhistorical theory of the law of value in the preface to volume III; as opposed to the intellectual gibberish and revisionism of German 1970’s bourgeois intelligentsia and academia
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from simple commodity production----- ( ‘private labour’ of individual producers "where the economic category of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time as yet, has no existence") --------as the (trans)historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity (produced by the private labour of individual producers eg eg handloom weavers) instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity. To be sure,
So the question is when Karl was talking in chapter one of volume one (in collaboration with the ‘absent’ minded Engels in 1867) of the embodied labour and value/exchange value of linen etc etc.
Was the linen being produced by unwaged ‘private labour’ (simple commodity production) ?
Eg
For precisely this reason the private labour contained in linen also counts as labour which is immediately in general social form or in the form of equality with all other labours. If a commodity thus possesses the general equivalent-form or functions as general equivalent, its natural or bodily form counts as the visible incarnation, the general social chrysalis of all human labour.
Or is Jura going to tell us that Karl and Fred started their analysis of the “capitalist” law of value by analysing the value of commodities produced by unwaged non captitalist ‘private labour' (simple commodity production)within capitalism.
And are we going to be told again by Jura that these little Proudhonist (albeit potential capitalist) who employ and exploit no one or 'thieve' surplus value through the ownership of ‘property’ or capital were capitalists?
For the others, if there are any, we haven’t got onto the passage in chapter one on private labour yet but Jura has demonstrated that he can work the search engine unless he has an impressive recollection of Grundisse.
By the way S Artisan can you get those quotes on ‘necessary product’ for me. Many thanks in anticipation.
So the question is when Karl was talking in chapter one of volume one (in collaboration with the ‘absent’ minded Engels in 1867) of the embodied labour and value/exchange value of linen etc etc.
Was the linen being produced by unwaged ‘private labour’ (simple commodity production) ?
If David Harvey is to be believed Marx was talking about the free market utopia set forth by political economists and poked holes in it. I'm not enough of a Marx nerd to come up with a concrete quote where Marx explicitly stated that though.
But as Hagendorf showed here, the labor theory of value is valid in a market under perfect competition, which would be perfectly compatible with "simple commodity production" not as a transhistoric theory but as a theory of capitalist utopia. Now the question is whether the law of value is still valid under non-perfect competition, a question raised when looking at the transformation problem but I guess that's a different question.
I'm not exactly sure what the problem here is though. That Marx went against his own beliefs regarding historical materialism?
Speaking very loosely you could argue that the free market utopia argument was the one being put forward by the “syndicalist” Duhring, and to a certain extent Proudhon.
Although Proudhon, once a simple commodity producing peasant always a peasant , to his credit, factored in conditions and criteria to prevent exploitation by the accumulation of the means of production or capital by individuals.
And thus avoiding resetting the clock, clearing the board and starting a new game of Monopoly (or capitalism)
Proudhon was a champion of simple commodity production of private individual (sic anarchist) producers.
Dave, you fail to see that the "simple circulation" (which, unlike "simple commodity production" is a term which Marx actually used) of the first three, four chapters of Capital is a theoretical abstraction from capitalism, and not a description of a pre-capitalist epoch. This abstraction is necessary to develop the more concrete bourgeois form of wealth "capital" from the more abstract bourgeois forms of wealth "commodity" and "money" (do you think that the functions described in the chapter of money, i.e., world money, apply to anything else but capitalism?). As such this procedure is the application of the methodological program set out in the method chapter of Grundrisse.
In other words, the first sentence of Capital about societies in which the bourgeois mode of production prevails explains precisely with what Marx is dealing with from start to end. Commodity as a universal form of the product is a specifically capitalist phenomenon.
And Railyon is, of course, correct: simple circulation as a "necessary abstraction" in the sense outlined above is also a tool of Marx's immanent critique. Because he goes from simple circulation to capitalist production, it allows him to do this:
Marx
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. [...] On leaving this sphere of simple circulation[i.e., not pre-capitalist commodity production, but a sphere of bourgeois society] or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the “Free-trader Vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.
And then, much later on:
Marx
it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself but a portion of the product of others’ labour appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between capitalist and labourer becomes a mere semblance appertaining to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real nature of the transaction, and only mystifying it. The ever repeated purchase and sale of labour-power is now the mere form; what really takes place is this — the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously materialised labour of others, and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living labour.
What this does is to show that the presuppositions of classical political economy – freedom, equality, property, Bentham – are necessarily inverted in the very society championed by classical political economy as conforming to these ideals.
This makes clear, of course, why in the beginning of his first book Marx proceeds from simple commodity production
Except of course, Marx does not proceed from simple commodity production in the first chapters of vol 1. He starts with the discussion of the commodity, with the commodity as a totality of the facets of value.
More than a mere technicality.
Will try to find those references to "necessary product"-- but right now I'm in Cairo on business. Back in NYC 26/5.
In Hegelian simple = abstract, complex = concrete. Thus when Marx refers to simple circulation, it is, as Jura says,
a theoretical abstraction from capitalism, and not a description of a pre-capitalist epoch. This abstraction is necessary to develop the more concrete bourgeois form of wealth "capital" from the more abstract bourgeois forms of wealth "commodity" and "money"
On this Parvus (in the Neue Zeit, though I don't find it) was the first to object to Engels and Bernstein ran with it. I should look for a response from Kautsky, but apparently he didn't think Engels was mistaken.
In the appendix of Rubin's Essays on value he allows for abstract labour to exist in the phase of simple commodity production, but not "fully". iirc he even sees a third scenario (typical him) operating in Marx's analysis, besides theoretical abstraction of capitalism and pre-capitalist historical period.
What upsets me Jura, and I speak honestly and from the heart, is what I perceive as, real or imaginary, elitist intellectualism.
Which can appear to me as individuals attempting to set themselves up as a witch doctor priest-class within the domain of ‘Marxist’ theory.
Justified with deliberate esoteric mumbo-jumbo, the more unintelligible the better.
As can be established from archived posts when I first approached and read Marx. I did it to debunk it as a load of intellectualised shamanic crap.
Starting from an extremely sceptical position, after reading the original material I realised that it was sort of OK; but my basic intuitive starting thesis is I think still correct.
I often ask myself what does it matter if people don’t understand Das Capital ‘properly’ or not?
Arrogating to myself that I do, it hasn’t changed my political outlook one jot.
Some people do want to understand it however for completely different reasons to the ones that motivated me to look at it.
And it is painful to watch them struggle with it through and being misdirected and confused by intellectuals that clearly don’t.
Even if it has no consequence other than them wasting their time on a comparatively pointless intellectual exercise.
What I ‘want’ is for ordinary people to understand it properly so I can bail out and leave it to them, so I can get on with the more interesting pursuits and topics of interest.
So then back to the tedious topic.
"simple commodity production"; ‘a term that Karl never used’.
I tried to make this debate simple by suggesting that the term "simple commodity production" was in fact the same thing and idea as the ‘term’; ‘private labour’ which Karl did use.
Kautsky defines "simple commodity production" as;
……. where every worker has possession of his means of production, and as peasant or handicraftsman disposes of his product. Here we leave out of account any complicated conditions of exploitation
So I ask the question, yet again, is "simple commodity production" as a concept or reality just another expression for what Marx mean by ‘private labour’?
Or does;
"simple commodity production" = ‘private labour’
like, as a in string of words ;
‘Mehr verte ’ = surplus value
You would think I was mad if I said that Marx never used the term surplus value as he only used ‘Mehr verte’ or whatever,
I don’t know or care whether he wrote that kind of stuff in English or not.
But lets slow things down, we know, thanks to Kautsky, what "simple commodity production" is as he defines it in 'simple' terms.
I like Kautsky, in as much as he was not as much as an arrogant intellectual elitist bastard as he could have been.
And ‘ethically’ attempted and wished to express himself in terms that ‘workers’ could have a hope of understanding.
And he does it here with his; well so much for the fluffy intellectualised philosophical abstract definition; what does "simple commodity production" look like when it is home.
It is the self employed ‘peasant or handicraftsman’, the handloom weaver like ‘Silas Marner’.
It was probably clearer a hundred years ago than now what a ‘peasant or handicraftsman’ was then than it is now, so there is no modern shame for others in going over that again.
I think the term ‘private labour’ is a philosophical wanky term although I can appreciate it.
Private labour is ‘my’ labour that hasn’t been sold to someone else as a something they can use.
As something I am doing it is under my own control and possession, as is the product that results from it, a bit like sex, unless you are sex worker.
The origin of the substitution of the term of "simple commodity production" for ‘private labour’ would be interesting.
Engels drops it into the preface as if he assumed that the substitution is already a given and an acccepted ‘colloquialism’, which had been already originated from elsewhere.
I am speculating on Kautksy himself
In that Engels doesn’t feel it necessary to define it, you have to assume that the meaning is already a given.
Again you have lost me; are you saying that ‘world money’ assumes or somehow automatically proves or ‘presupposes’ the existence of capitalism?
But back to the simple question before we can move on,is;
I already answered that question: no, they're not the same thing. I won't bother banging my head against your walls of text and Kautsky quotes anymore, though, because the whole thing was explained and argued for very clearly by others on this very thread over a year ago. Fair enough if your opinion was not changed by that, but I cannot do more than S. Artesian, ocelot and others have done above. The important thing to me is that you're about the only person around who still sticks to the traditional interpretation.
BTW the "I'm a working-class autodidact" schtick is kinda cheap.
……. where every worker has possession of his means of production, and as peasant or handicraftsman disposes of his product. Here we leave out of account any complicated conditions of exploitation
Ah yes, the pastoral utopia, where we are all peasants, or artisans, living our bucolic lives. Except, just as Marx dos not begin Capitalwith the history of the commodity, with a history of commodity production, but rather with the nature, the "powers" the expressions of the commodity in the current mode of production, industrial capitalism, this supposed identity between private labor and "small producer Eden," doesn't exist anywhere in Marx.
As a matter of fact, it is one of the insights of Marx that no such substantive"equality" of producers be maintained where commodity production and the law of value are dominant.
We might want to look at the difference between the way markets function in non-capitalist, but commodity exchanging actions in an economy as opposed to how the markets function, and what they achieve in capitalist commodity production.
And the difference is simply this: in the non-capitalist commodity exchanges, ONLY those goods that are surplus, AFTER the producer has reserved or consumed the product necessary to his/her own needs of reproduction, are brought to market for exchange.
In the capitalist market exchanges, the producers have NO way of satisfying their needs of reproduction other than through offering for exchange ALL the product of his/her labor.
It is this crucial social distinction that in fact is both product and producer of the law of value.
I think Karl in chapter one deals with the matter of ‘mere barter of products, of simple use-values’ as something that immediately precedes the actual exchange of ‘commodities’ or products as values and the manifestation or practical ‘stamping' of exchange value, as value and embodied labour blah blah.
Starting to sound like Jura now.
I have spent the last two days re-reading the bloody thing!
And I have been busy at work and going out and stuff. Moan, moan and sad bastard.
I also have a vague recollection that I am now more happy to mention that one of the many other economic theorists had used it as well.
I have not read them all obviously who has?
I might respond to your post latter S Artisan, it is interesting enough, and clearer than your usual material; just a bit knackered at the moment.
It would be helpful if ‘we’ could reach some kind of agreement on what ‘private labour’ is first even just as a 'hypothetical, idealised or abstract concept'.
I am fairly OK with the MIA glossary definition, and I think Mandel for what he is worth had a similar take on it.
I still remember when I first read the private labour section, it was one of those where I had to stop and re-read it a couple of times
Still waiting for the 'necessary product' thing. I have done enough heavy lifting for the time being without dragging my sorry arse through economic and political manuscripts as well.
Flash back, a bottle of wine loosens the mind, Jesus what crap I have read!
Rosa Luxemburg The Accumulation of Capital (1913)
While realisation of the surplus value requires only the general spreading of commodity production, its capitalisation demands the progressive supercession of simple commodity production by capitalist economy,
That production for exchange and simple commodity production are evolving into capitalism is another phenomenon con firmed by millions and millions of daily economic observations in every village, in every trade, and in every handicraft.
They way simple commodity production of say tayloring interfaces with the capitalist production of trousers when the two exist side by side is another SNLT matter but I am tooled up on that one now thanks re-reading volume IV.
Stop making an ass of yourself Dave B. In the German original of the Theories of Surplus-Value, it reads "bloße Warenproduktion" ("mere production of commodities"), not "einfache Warenproduktion" (Engels's term for "simple commodity production"). You would have known this if you had read the article by Chris Arthur I've linked to.
Again, the issue is not whether commodity production existed before capitalist production. Noone disputes that, and the bit from the TSV only confirms that neither did Marx. But that's not the problem here at all.
Apart from this thread (or the other where this discussion started), I offered an explication of "private labor" here: http://libcom.org/forums/theory/capital-vol-1-reading-group-chapters-1-2-22092008?page=4#comment-437805
We've been over this before. Look at the thread title-- abstract labor vs. concrete labor. What is it that distinguishes human labor under capitalism? What characteristic is it of labor under capitalism that endows with the "aqua regia" that dissolves all the distinct characteristics of any product into one big pool of exchange>
Abstract labor-- labor as time.
All economy is the economy of time, Marx wrote.
That doesn't mean all economy is the economy of the capitalist organization of time.
Under capitalism "Time is everything,man is nothing; or at most time's carcass."
Marx iterates and reiterates this, saying that it's not that one man's hour is equal to another man's hour, but rather than one man during an hour is equal to another man during an hour.
None of these insights are "realizable" until the social organization of labor is for the reproduction of value, for the reproduction of itself as value.
The law of value cannot dominate a society where production is not for value, get it? "Simple commodity production" or whatever [mistaken] term you want to use was/is not production for value. You yourself acknowledge that when you talk about every producer owning his/her own tools/land. Under those conditions, production cannot be for the reproduction of value.
What does what "look like"? It looks like use-values, maybe? It looks like commodities, maybe. Depends on the actual social relations of production doesn't it?
The handicraft utopia, where everybody is a little crafts person with his or her own leather working kits, doesn't exist, can't exist, never existed. That's the point. There's no force, again social relation, organizing a division of labor in this little never-neverland of talking giraffes, little Willie Wonkas, and salt of the earth tillers of the land.
The handicraft utopia, where everybody is a little crafts person with his or her own leather working kits, doesn't exist, can't exist, never existed.
That's true, but I'm going to stand up for 'simple commodity production’ as a sometimes useful conceptual tool for looking at certain forms of commodity production on the margins of the capitalist system. While ‘simple commodity production’ is a terrible way of looking at how pre-/non-capitalist societies and value systems operated in their own terms, it does give a sense of how they appear from the standpoint of capital, especially as it expands into non-capitalist spheres of activity. C-M-C describes the way the capitalist market appears to be from the 'inside', but it is also how non-capitalist commodity production appears from the standpoint of the M-C-M circuit of capital, which is part of how capital is able to interpose itself into these markets and subordinate them to its own logic of accumulation (keeping in mind that other value systems can also resist this process--hence the frequent need for state violence to ensure proper property relations are imposed through dispossession and enclosure).
The fact, that in the particular form of production with which we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific social character of private labour carried on independently, consists in the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes in the product the form of value
Even if we take an alternative view to Marx's use of "private labour" to that advanced by Jura above (i.e. that private labour is a category historically specific to capitalism, whereby it is social labour in the mode of its sociality being denied), and read Marx's usage as compatible with a less specific interpretation - i.e. productive labour carried out in isolation (as counter-posed to collective labour, for e.g.), that still doesn't make it synonymous with "simple" commodity production.
If "private labour" were to be merely labour carried out independently, then the non-commodified, subsistence production of the pre-capitalist peasantry could be considered as "private labour". But nothing to do with commodities here.
As regards the "bloße Warenproduktion" of artisans in pre-capitalist society, such as Spinoza grinding his lenses, clearly they are engaging both in "private labour" and at the same time producing items not for direct consumption, but for sale to obtain the money to buy the means of subsistence (C-M-C). But this does not make them part of a "simple commodity production" mode of production governed by the law of value. This last point is the crucial one. There is a clear rupture between the productive relations of pre-capitalist society, in which a small amount of "mere" commodity production is going on, and capitalism itself. In the latter case, the commodification of labour - the establishment of a value of labour power - is the ground on which the law of value is constructed. Without a price for labour power, there is no anchor in relation to which all other production prices are calculated/commensurated.
I agree with ocelot, but I am more wary of viewing medieval artisans in general as "private producers". They were subject to all kinds of regulation and coordination and I'm not sure they were autonomous in deciding what they will produce, how much, for whom, how etc.
Absolutely. If we were to backwards-project the kind of market relations of contemporary commodity production onto mediaeval artisanry, we would completely mis-represent the real economic relations of that time. Both "vertically", in that whether ranging from a condition of outright retainership (where the artisan producer was effectively an extension of a particular exploiter-class household) to more intermediate relations of patronage - the idea of the artisan mainly producing goods for unknown buyers in an anonymous market, would be incorrect. On a "horizontal" level, we have the relations of mutuality between the different practicioners of the same trade, whether formalised in guilds, or spatialised in a given trade all occupying the same street or urban quarter - as you still find in Istanbul or some of the old Italian mediaeval cities. Your fellow tradesmen were often your collaborators, as much as your competitors. In general, operating in a society dominated by a mode of production where personal and economic ties were intertwined, the economic relations between artisans and the purchasers of their products was quite different than that of today.
Incidentally, I discovered this letter in my trawls, which I hadn't come across before. In which Karl, writing to Fred in '67, gives him a bullet point summary of Ch 1. Kinda cool...
§ 3. The equivalent form.
a. The form of direct exchangeability.
b. Quantitative determination not contained in the equivalent form.
c. The peculiarities of the equivalent form.
a. First peculiarity: use-value becomes the form of appearance of its opposite, value.
b. Second peculiarity: concrete labour becomes the form of appearance of its opposite, abstract human labour.
c. Third peculiarity: private labour takes the form of its opposite, namely, labour in its directly social form.
edit: whoops, the last 3 points are actually alpha, beta and gamma in the orig. to show them as sub-points to c. the peculiarities of the equivalent form. Greek letters not in the code page for comment boxes, I guess.
I knew we would return back again to ‘simple’ or ‘mere’ (more on that later) Narodnik commodity production never existed, despite the fact that Engels, Kautsky, Rosa and Lenin said it did.
Nobody ever suggested it was idealised or worked in an unadulterated manner anymore than capitalism ever did, as with Adam Smith in his day.
Anyway to start;
So far we have been presupposing simple commodity production and simple commodity exchange, and labour-power as a commodity does not yet exist for us. [As with Adam Bede and Silas Marner]
these were the preliminary conditions which, after the fifteenth century in Western Europe, combined to transform the whole of production more and more into commodity production, and simple commodity production into capitalist production. The scattered small businesses of the peasants and handicraftsmen were henceforth gradually destroyed and supplanted by large scale capitalist concerns. [As with Adam Bede and Silas Marner]
This is no longer the case with simple commodity production, where every worker has possession of his means of production, and as peasant or handicraftsman disposes of his product. Here we leave out of account any complicated conditions of exploitation.
But from simple commodity production there developed capitalist commodity production
In the same manner the production for customers constitutes only one of the forms of simple commodity production. Even if we want to limit it to city economy (although commodity exchange appears long before the formation of cities, at the stadium of nomadic economy), urban commodity production is impossible without simultaneous commodity production in the countryside.
However, the peasant bringing cattle, corn, wool, flax and similar products for exchange to the city, often does not exchange them directly with the consumers. He exchanges his cattle with the butcher, who then sells the meat to the consumer, his corn with the baker, or perhaps first with the miller, from whom the baker buys the flour, with which he then produces bread for the consumers. And it is surely not those who wish to wear a coat that buy the wool, but the wool-traders or cloth-makers. In the city itself there are numerous manual labourers who also produce for the traders or for other producers, and not directly for the consumers.
But if we find already under simple commodity production a whole series of wares, which ‘must pass through a series of economic factors, before reaching consumption’, then it is plainly erroneous to make this property the distinguishing feature of the next stage, the ‘political economy’, which Bücher himself once called ‘capitalist economy’. But indeed which other distinguishing feature can one devise in order to distinguish it from simple commodity production if, like Bücher, one refers for the characterization of the different modes of production, not to the totality of the process of production, but only to a small aspect of it, namely the circulation of the finished products?
The social role of the worker in the production process, his social claim to the means of production and products, appear unimportant in Bücher’s characterization of the different modes of production. He is only interested in this question: how do the finished products reach the hands of the consumers? It is characteristic that the contemporary bourgeois theory of economic development, like the bourgeois theory of value, the marginal utility theory [Grenznutzentheorie], avoids dealing with the process of production and by ‘economy’ understands only the circulation of finished goods.
So simple commodity production is quite simple; if a commodity is being produced for sale (a tautology admittedly) without wage labour* it is by definition ‘simple commodity production’.
Is a commodity being produced for sale?
If yes go to.
Does it involve wage labour.
If No.
Then it is ‘simple commodity production’.
Did Silas Marner produce his priavately produced weaved linen for sale in Das capital?
Yes.
Does it involve wage labour. No.
Then Silas Marner is a simple commodity producer.
But pure simple commodity production never did exist, well for long at least.
Almost as fast as it was evolving out of one system it was evolving into another, capitalism.
Theoretically simple commodity production evolved out of the communities of primitive communism.
With the pernicious evolution of petty bourgeois Proudhonists notions of to each according to work done supplanting from each according to ability and social obligations of ‘duty’ etc in all its daft forms; it was progressively supplanted.
Even during the medieval epoch of 'simple commodity production' in Europe the exploitation, protectionism and Mafia like extortion system was superimposed on it and thus the feudal peasants produced surplus value like Karl said they did.
The feudal simple commodity producing peasant worked two days a week making stuff he consumed himself, one day a week making stuff that he didn’t to sell in the market on Saturday.
And another 3 days a week being exploited producing surplus products for the local Don.
And we could go on; with the later effects of inter penetration of advanced capitalism, developed internationally elsewhere in places were it hadn’t etc.
Call it capitalist imperialism if you like
And the economic shock of the effects of the power loom on India were probably no less palpable than heathens turning up with guns.
Now it can be said by social ‘scientists’ that this model is idealised but that is because they are not scientists and can’t begin to comprehend the scientific method of the "model".
The 'ideal gas law' wasn’t called 'ideal' for nothing, it didn’t work most of the time.
Nor did the idea of a falcon feather falling to the ground as fast as a hammer.
But social scientist have never made a constructive contribution to the material world and remain to this day a dead weight of pointless intellectual sophistry.
But just to show that I can do it I will jump into their own vat of tripe and on their ground; ‘mere’ versus ‘simple’.
In fact both words can in fact mean the same thing under certain circumstances, the context is of course crucial
And then for simple in one of its specific contexts as in sheer;
a : unmixed simple honesty b : free of secondary complications a simple vitamin deficiency: having only one main clause and no subordinate clauses a simple sentence (2) of a subject or predicate : having no modifiers, complements, or objects d : constituting a basic element : fundamental e : not made up of many like units a simple eye.
So ‘mere commodity production’ is unmitigated, unmixed and unadulterated by the complexities of wage labour and the rate of profit.
Complexities which pre-occupied not only Ricardo and Smith but Karl as well.
‘Mere commodity production’ was the pure and simple situation; a bod produced a commodity with his own labour and sold it, like you do with commodities.
And just as you can have a ‘simple’ vitamin deficiency you can have a ‘mere’ vitamin deficiency.
I still haven’t been given any idea from others what ‘private labour’ is.
This is crucial as the linen in chapter one was produced by ‘private labour’.
Is it some in-palpable metaphysical woolly concept that only whirls around in the heads of non materialist social scientists?
SECTION 4 THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES
AND THE SECRET THEREOF
As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange.
In other words, the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers.
To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things. It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their character as values has therefore to be taken into account, beforehand, during production.
From this moment the labour of the individual producer acquires socially a twofold character. On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a social division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously.
On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract.
The twofold social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condition, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically different articles that are the products of labour. have one common quality, viz., that of having value.
*Un-waged slaves could produce commodities and it was mainly in mining in 'Roman' times but was agricultural products in the new world a phenomena which was in fact in part a consequence of peasant ‘simple commodity production’ going head to head with capitalism and winning.
Karl discussed it in volume one.
At first the wage workers in the new world, what there was of them, were itinerant ne’er do wells.
But as soon as they learned the game went they AWOL and set up on their own. Which wasn’t that difficult as the ‘means of production’ was aboriginal land and there was plenty of that.
Kidnapping workers from Africa was the prefect economic solution for the capitalists when there was money to be made.
Further North the less greedy European peasants emigrating to the US took to simple commodity production in Nebraska and Minnesota like ducks to water.
The Scandinavian peasants settled in places like Minnesota because it was nice and cold and snowed in winter and reminded them of home.
Well that is what and very old American communist told me about his grandfather.
Others like the Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, now there is some good old fashioned simple commodity production and private labour for you, went elsewhere.
As was the racist Abraham Lincoln.
The American civil was undoubtedly a result of a compound of issues and an alliance of common interests between the modern capitalists in the North and their historical friends, when their economic fields of interest didn’t clash, the simple commodity producers.
But both respected private property in the means of production.
One of the triggers apparently was slave owning capitalist agricultural producers encroaching into the economic sphere of the simple commodity producers.
And tensions were the highest as you might expect on Missouri-Kansas border area.
The capitalist class were also a pissed off at having to rent slaves off slave owners to work in their factories in the south admittedly.
Turning them into free wage workers would cut out the middle man.
One of the triggers apparently was slave owning capitalist agricultural producers encroaching into the economic sphere of the simple commodity producers.
And tensions were the highest as you might expect on Missouri-Kansas border area.
The capitalist class were also a pissed off at having to rent slaves off slave owners to work in their factories in the south admittedly.
Turning them into free wage workers would cut out the middle man.
Above is complete nonsense, and displays a truly calamitous ignorance of US history.
It's not even smart enough to qualify for "The US Civil War For Dummies."
Tell me which Northern capitalists, which capitalist class, was renting slaves for its factories in the South, and.......complaining about it?
The free soil farmers who were mobilized against the South were not "simple commodity producers." They were free-soil capitalistfarmers.
The "tensions" in the Missouri-Kansas border were a result of the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854[?]which effectively abolished the Missouri Compromise, and allowing territories to "self-determine" the existence of slavery.
The slaveholders did not encroach into Kansas, creating plantations, etc., they simply launched a war against the free-soil element who were in the vast majority, using Missouri as a base of operations.
I knew we would return back again to ‘simple’ or ‘mere’ (more on that later) Narodnik commodity production never existed, despite the fact that Engels, Kautsky, Rosa and Lenin said it did.
They were wrong. Get over it.
As for the rest of your post, what can I say? I'm in awe, basically. Point after point, every one of them wrong. If there was a medal for wrongness - the Revolutionary Order of the Invisible Sun, say - then your persistent, epic and heroic services to wrongness should be officially recognised by such.
I suppose I should pick out 3 or 4 examples of particularly egregious wrongness for dissection, but it's just so hard to choose a select few out of such a vast array. Maybe later.
I thought for instance it was in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
I appreciate it is a fictional account but a fairly accurate one as that.
It appears elsewhere, certainly slaves working and being rented out to ‘other capitalists’ anyway.
I think it as part of the plot involved at least two characters one of whom may have been Uncle Tom’s wife.
It is a long time since I read it
Not suggesting it was widespread as industrial capitalism was not particularly dominant in the South.
There is a story that a slave invented the cotton gin or cotton engine and that character was included anecdotally in Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well 'I think'.
I suppose it is a bit of a fuzzy area in between when agricultural production morphs into industrial ‘capitalist’ production.
Karl said somewhere in Volume III that the slave owners in the South had a capitalist outlook.
There is the hazard with this of deflecting the debate and that occurred to me when I wrote it.
The implications of my opponents position is really quite serious I think as far as they are concerned.
If they are correct then Marxism and Das capital is a load of bollocks and a massive intellectual fraud.
If the person who co-wrote the book, and at least chapter one which is the issue, ie Engels and the generally recognised authority on Marxist theory after him Kautsky, a contemporary of Marx.
Either didn’t understand it, which is absurd to the ridiculous, then the only other conclusion is that they were revisionist frauds and pathological liars.
Not only that but the entire early twentieth century intellectual Marxist community were frauds or dupes including Lenin and Rosa.
It would probably eclipse Freudianism as academic intellectual gibberish; although I read that before Karl and never fell for that.
I have asked the question before several times as to the origin of this counter argument and have been told that it originated from German professors in the 1970’s.
I can go along with that; but would be really more than happy to be better informed.
I am totally non partisan on this and had no idea whatsoever of the trans-historical debate before I read it.
I kicked off with it with my party comrades on it when I was half way through volume two I think.
As I am sure ALB at least remembers that to this day.
The southern slave owners intellectuals kicked off immediately to discredit Beechers book in anyway possible, so you would be in excellent company if you followed suit.
I am not saying there is not any fanciful stuff in it , and she did write some rubbish not only in it but elsewhere.
There was an excellent radio four series a few years ago on America over that period. I was quite impressed with it as it took a distinctly Marxist economic or historical materialist analysis.
I really, really don’t want a debate on the American civil war, you are free to have the last word on it.
I think Bernstein using Parvus' objections to Engels was the first: On the Meaning of the Marxist Theory of Value, Dave. Kautsky's reply (which isn't in English online I fear) is here, where he writes that it rests on a mistaken belief that value is determined by wages, so he asks, is the value of labor-power determined by the wage?
Yes slaves were rented out... to other slave owners in both cities and countryside. Slaves worked in mines, workshops, etc. but Northern industrial capitalists were not renting slaves in the South and certainly not bitching about the cost of renting slaves, no more than US Steel, the owner of Tennessee Iron and Coal bitched about paying the rent to the local and state prison officials for the use of prison labor in the first half of the 20th century.
There's no fraud going on with Marx's analysis-- the material basis that facilitates Marx's penetration of the veils of value is the actual organization of labor that capitalism achieves, and reproduces, that is to say abstract labor, abstract labor as the social determinant of value.
Yes, commodities exist before industrial capitalism; yes value exists-- a genius like Aristotle was almost able to tease out the threads of value, but the emphasis is on the "almost."
The law of value does not dominate, does not organize production, is not both product and producer of a specific social relationship of production unless and until labor has been dispossessed of its specific, useful, characteristics to its individual owners, and only has a use in exchange for the means of its reproduction, or their equivalent. That's the whole point of Marx's discussion of value.
Less Beecher Stowe and Little Houses on the Prairie. MoreGrundrisse and Economic Manuscripts 1857-1864.
Well we are really making progress now after much flip flopping.
We seem to agree that there is a model, I hope.
First we have primitive communism; as perhaps in the ‘Indian village’, the Russian Mir and, heading west, the Scottish Clan system.
There was division of concrete labour with these communities as there was in the communist Shaker communes. But everybody threw into the social pot, or Gerald Winstanley’s common store, all the products of their individual concrete labour to be taken back out again on the basis of to each according to need.
Into this society appeared petty bougiouse renegade Proudhonists, labour voucher theorists and their ilk and the beginning of retrospective Gotha programme ‘bourgeois limitations’.
And the idea of to each according to work done and, in this case moving forwards, the dividing up of the not so significant and as yet ‘limited means of production’ into the private property of individuals.
No wage labour as each individual would still be a producer or labourer and work only with their own means of production.
Or in other words, private labour, private production with the exchange of private products of the self-employed, simple or mere commodity production without the complications of wage labour, exploitation or the theft as profit based on the ownership of property or capital.
Looking backwards; an “older form of production”.
As somebody elsewhere queried my identification of Marxist private labour and private production etc with Proudhonism I provide the following just because it rolls it all up in one sentence.
In these two chapters the Proudhonist socialism now fashionable in France — which wants to retain private production while organising the exchange of private products, to have commodities
And then this simple and mere (without wages etc) commodity production evolves into capitalism.
To re-use the quote from Karl that we have had before;
On the other hand, the same conditions which give rise to the basic condition of capitalist production, the existence of a class of wage-workers, facilitate the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity production. As capitalist production develops, it has a disintegrating, resolvent effect on all older forms of production, which, designed mostly to meet the direct needs of the producer, transform only the excess produced into commodities. ……………..
But, secondly, wherever it takes root capitalist production destroys all forms of commodity production which are based either on the self-employment of the producers, OR merely on the sale of the excess product as commodities. Capitalist production first makes the production of commodities general and then, by degrees, transforms all commodity production into capitalist commodity production
It is worth noting that it is even possible even for all three systems to co-exist alongside each other. And it is certainly true that simple (mere) commodity production or private production with its private labour can or does still co-exists with capitalism.
It depends on what spheres of production capitalism ‘takes root’ into first and what it leaves alone to penetrate later. Simple commodity production in agriculture ‘tended’ to be the last. In fact even today in Europe it is not extinguished completely and we still have small farmers or economic peasants.
In fact we have one in the SPGB and one of my friends relatives in India are still almost model, if not in fact, simple commodity producing peasants.
Still even producing products for their own consumption.
Given that simple commodity production evolved into capitalist commodity production in dealing with subject of commodities; you would have to be a complete chump not to start with that as its historical premise, in the opening chapter or two.
Or in other words to
Proceed[s] from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form — from an already capitalistically modified commodity
As S Artisan doesn’t want to tell us what private labour is, if it isn’t already obvious from the expression itself. Karl tells us
……… private labour which are self-sufficient and independent of one another confront one another as commodities. …………….which are carried on independently of one another as the private businesses of self-sufficient producers ……
So if private labour is not what peasants and artisans do in simple and mere commodity production what is it?
We have already established from the appendix to chapter one that the all-important value bearing linen, or was it the coat, is produced with ‘private labour’.
And in the first chapter of the first German edition of Capital.
What kind of arsehole seamlessly switches from a peasant family producing a coat or linen in simple commodity production to acapitalistically modified commodity on the same page?
Actually, all use-values are only commodities because they are products of private labours which are independent of one another private labours which, however, depend materially upon one another as particular members (even though rendered self-sufficient) of the primordial system of division of labour. In this fashion, they hang together socially precisely through their differentiation, their particular usefulness. That is exactly the reason why they produce qualitatively differing use-values.
If they did not, then these use-values would not become commodities for one another. On the other hand, this differing useful quality does not yet make products into commodities. If a peasant family produces coat, linen and wheat for its own consumption, then these things confront the family as differing products of their family labour, but do not confront one another reciprocally as commodities.
If the commodity were immediately social (i.e., common) labour, then the products would acquire the immediately social character of a common product for its producers, but not the character of commodities for one another.
Nevertheless, we do not have far to seek, in this case, for that in which the social form of the private labours consists, which are contained in the commodities and are independent of one another. It already yielded itself out of the analysis of the commodity.
The commodities’ social form is their relationship to one another as equal labour; hence – since the equality of toto coelo [utterly] different labours can only consist in an abstraction from their inequality their relationship to one another as human labour in general: expenditures of human labour-power, which is what all human labours – whatever their content and their mode of operation – actually are. In each social form of labour, the labours of different individuals are related to one another as human labours too, but in this case this relating itself counts as the specifically social form of the labours. Now none of these private labours in its natural form possesses this specifically social form of abstract human labour, just as little as the commodity in its natural form possesses the social form of mere coagulation of labour, or value.
However, through the fact that the natural form of a commodity (linen, in this case) becomes a universal Equivalent-form because all other commodities relate themselves to this natural form as the appearance-form of their own value, hence linen-weaving also turns into a universal form of realization of abstract human labour or into labour of immediately social form.
The standard of ‘socialness’ must be borrowed from the nature of those relationships which are proper to each mode of production, and not from conceptions which are foreign to it. Just as we demonstrated earlier that the commodity naturally excludes the immediate form of universal exchange-ability and that the universal Equivalent-form consequently can only develop in a contradictory way, so the same thing holds for the private labours lurking in the commodities.
Since they are not-immediately social labour, in the first place the social form is a form which differs from the natural forms of the real, useful labours and is foreign to them and abstract; and in the second place, all kinds of private labour obtain their social character only In a contradictory way, by all being equated to one exclusive kind of private labour (linen-weaving, in this case). This latter thereby becomes the immediate and universal form of appearance of abstract human labour and thereby labour in immediately social form. It manifests itself consequently also in a product which is socially valid and universally exchangeable.
I can understand why our Bolshevik ruling priest class don’t like clear examples like Silas Marner and the Ingalls; as clarity is not what they are interested in.
They would rather randomly throw their spellbinding words on a page like the witch doctors with their magic sticks and bones.
For information only there is stuff below on the renting out and "living out," of slaves;
Slaves were very valuable property. According to an advertisement in the Sun of Baltimore, the reward for the return of an apprentice was six and a half cents; for a runaway slave, $200. A Richmond dealer listed among his expenses "25" for "Arresting runaway."
Nevertheless, as agriculture in the Upper South declined or changed its character, demand for farm labor decreased. Owners found it increasingly difficult to make a profit employing their slaves on farms and plantations.
They had three choices: (1) they could migrate to the newly opened territory along the Mississippi River or in Texas, carrying their slaves with them; (2) they could sell off their surplus property to willing dealers and make trading in slaves a profitable business; or (3) they could rent their unneeded slaves in places such as the District.
Some southerners followed the first alternative; one traveler encountered whole families, children, in-laws, and many slaves, on the move from the Old South to the New South. Historian James Oakes has shown the importance of the westward and southern movement of slave owners who hoped for a fresh start in a new region. Family migration probably accounted for about 30 percent of slaves traveling from the Upper to the Lower South. The third alternative, slave rental, appealed to Virginians and Marylanders who did not want to leave the area but needed additional income.
The practice of hiring out unneeded slaves demonstrated the flexibility of the institution: it survived in areas where it should have died out because it was otherwise unprofitable. An owner, while retaining title to a slave, rented out the bondman or bondwoman and received payment for the enslaved person's labor. By deriving a profit from property they could not directly use, owners managed to perpetuate the institution of human bondage.
In the neighboring Virginia county of Fairfax, owners unable to find gainful employment at home for increasing numbers of the enslaved could sell them or, while retaining title, rent them out for a profit. Virginians did both, and though the District was the closest and most convenient place for renting, historians of the county have found evidence of the hiring out of Fairfax slaves as far south as Mississippi.
Hiring out took two forms. The master could negotiate a contract whereby a worker would be leased for a designated period in return for a set amount of money and other terms such as housing and food. For the fifteen years before the Civil War the average annual hire for an unskilled male slave was $85 to $175. Alternatively, the slave himself carried on negotiations with an employer and arranged the amount he paid his owner. In either case the slave was outside the direct control of his master, and in many instances he could find his own housing, often with free blacks and working-class whites. Historian Ira Berlin sees hiring out as so popular that by 1850 "few slaves in the Upper South escaped being hired at one time or another, and some lived apart from their owners for most of their lives."
According to another estimate, by the late 1840s one out of six slave households was "living out," often without any white supervision. By providing profit through rental, these semifree bondmen made it possible for their owners to continue to hold property they might otherwise have lost; thus they helped the institution of slavery to survive. But their ability to live on their own made a mockery of claims that presumably childlike slaves required close direction in order to survive. The frequent use of middlemen and the introduction of contracts significantly altered master-slave relationships.
For the most part, hired slaves ignored the District's strict regulations about where they could live; in other words, they were not enforced. The same was true in Richmond, 100 miles to the south, where, in spite of the mayor's best efforts, he was unable to separate free blacks from slaves and to limit the mobility of hired slaves.
Frederick Law Olmsted thought that most of the slaves in the District were brought into the city to work for people who had rented them. E. S. Abdy, an Englishman, said that his waiter at Gadsby's in Washington was the property of someone living in Alexandria; the same was true for many of the hotel staff. Gadsby rented out his own slaves when business was slow in his hotel; at least one Washingtonian found that they made excellent house servants. Tavern keepers also hired slaves, paying a monthly fee to the owners and providing food for the workers but not clothing; that was the responsibility of the slaves. No wonder they were shabbily dressed.
Rented slaves provided much of the labor during the construction of a canal on the Potomac River. One contractor reported hiring "a gang of sixty or seventy slaves, paying for each at the rate of seventy-five dollars a year." He claimed that he fed them well, never flogged them, and in return received good work; the men, it seems, were reluctant to return to their owners. The contractor believed that most slaves were "half-starved" and that if they stole, it was because they were always hungry.
Many of those aboard the Pearl had been rented out. All of the children of Daniel Bell were sent out to work as soon as they were old enough and provided their owner, Mrs. Armstead, with almost her only income. Six members of the Edmondson family who fled aboard the Pearl were hired in the city, though born and raised in Maryland. After the capture of the Pearl, there was a delay in handing over some of the fugitives to their owners because they did not live near the jail.
The Washington Navy Yard was a favorite place to rent out slaves, especially skilled artisans. Visitors such as Emmeline Stuart Wortley reported seeing "coloured people acting as artisans" and "making chains, anchors, &c., for the United States navy." Charles Ball, hired out to the Navy Yard, was made ship's cook on a frigate, where he enjoyed plenty of food and money and wore clothes given him by the ship's officers. On Sunday afternoons he was free to wander through the city, where he saw other slaves walking around. Historian Herbert Aptheker claimed that southerners worried about the reliability of the army and the navy in case of servile revolt. That is probably why Abel P. Upshur, secretary of the navy, said in 1842 that there were no slaves in the navy; he was mistaken.
Slaves performed such menial tasks as cleaning the Capitol, but they also worked on public projects. Opponents of slavery lamented that "a great portion of the labor on the different public works in this city is performed by slaves" whom the owners had rented out.
This is where there is no point to the discussion. Dave B blithely ignores the fact that his great historical examples are in fact works of fiction, literally; that his understanding of the conflict between slave-owners and capitalists in the US was not based on the "rent" extracted by the slaveowners... etc. etc. etc and simply carries on with his nonsense interpretation of history, citing... as some hotbed of conflict... Washington, DC!
Hey Dave, here's a news flash. DC was a Southern town, a slaveholding town. The US capital was moved to DC to assure the Southern slaveholders that they would always be able to exert a disproportionate influence over the national government.
No "simple commodity production" did not just "evolve" into capitalist commodity production.
"Private labor" is NOT, as been shown before, "simple commodity production." The social conditions you and Kautsky are so taken with for simple commodity production did not exist. Commodity production existed, but commodity production did not exist as the dominant mode of production, organizing labor in its own image, as value.
"Simple commodity production" can NEVER be the dominant organizing principle of an economy.
On the flip side, you can, as others have done and written, write a whole book claiming the Louisiana sugar plantation owners were capitalists, because, after all, they kept accounts, they ran their operations for a profit, they utilized technology, they depended on market returns for their commodities-- EXCEPT they were not capitalists--- they did not reproduce labor in the image of capital, as "alienable," "exchangeable" as a cost to be expelled from the production process, to be reduced relatively in order to relatively expand the value aggrandized by its engagement.
That's kind of why the South grows so much more slowly; why the means of communication and transportation are not intensively developed.
On both sides of this coin is the question of the conditions of labor, the social conditions under which labor is performed, aggrandized, circulated.
Kautsky did add that simply commodity production was mostly found in the colonies with large free space, but I agree with what Waslax wrote a year ago on this thread, that it's silly to deny that petty commodity production existed (and still exists).
Rosa Luxembourg Anti-Critique Chapter 1; The Questions At Issue
But Marx’s assumption is only a theoretical premise in order to simplify investigation. In reality, capitalist production is not the sole and completely dominant form of production, as everyone knows, and as Marx himself stresses in Capital. In reality, there are in all capitalist countries, even in those with the most developed large-scale industry, numerous artisan and peasant enterprises which are engaged in simple commodity production.
In reality, alongside the old capitalist countries there are still those even in Europe where peasant and artisan production is still strongly predominant, like Russia, the Balkans, Scandinavia and Spain. And finally, there are huge continents besides capitalist Europe and North America, where capitalist production has only scattered roots, and apart from that the people of these continents have all sorts of economic systems, from the primitive Communist to the feudal, peasantry and artisan.
Not only do all these social and productive forms co-exist, and co-exist locally with capitalism, but there is a lively intercourse of a specific kind. Capitalist production as proper mass production depends on consumers from peasant and artisan strata in the old countries, and consumers from all countries; but for technical reasons, it cannot exist without the products of these strata and countries.
So there must develop right from the start an exchange relationship between capitalist production and the non-capitalist milieu, where capital not only finds the possibility of realizing surplus value in hard cash for further capitalization, but also receives various commodities to extend production, and finally wins new proletarianized labour forces by disintegrating the non-capitalist forms of production.
This is only the bare economic content of the relationship. Its concrete design in reality forms the historic process of the development of capitalism on the world stage in all its colourful and moving variety.
Even Lenin supports you Dave, how will you cope with this?
consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.
Let us enumerate these elements:
(1)patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;
(2)small commodity production (this includcs the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);
(3)private capitalism;
(4)state capitalism;
(5)socialism.
Russia is so vast and so varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific feature of the situation.
The question arises: What elements predominate? Clearly, in a small-peasant country, the petty-bourgeois element predominates and it must predominate, for the great majority—those working the land—are small commodity producers.
In the meantime, Marx uses the term "necessary product" in the Grundrisse: Notebook VI
We could not speak of cheapness or dearness of labour, since no wage labour existed, and hence
an hour of immediate labour would always command an hour of objectified labour, which would
naturally not prevent one hour from being more productive than another. But still, to the extent that we
distinguish the part of labour necessary for subsistence from the part that is surplus labour -- and if any
hours of the day are at all worked as surplus time, then it is the same as if every fractional part of labour
time consisted of a part necessary and a part surplus labour -- done by the immediate labourers, it could
still not be said that the value of labour, i.e. wages (the part of the product exchanged for necessary
labour, or the part of the total labour which is employed for the necessary product), are constant.
The closest I got from Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, was
That is to say, we are concerned here not with the labour time necessary to create a value reducible to the sum of the products necessary to the worker for his existence;
Well, thanks for all that. As long as we're classifying Marxists, let's include you-- a real idiot. Nothing personal of course. This is just my political-economic evaluation of your missives.
The exchange of commodities at their values, or approximately at their values, thus requires a much lower stage than their exchange at their prices of production, which requires a definite level of capitalist development.... Apart from the domination of prices and price movement by the law of value, it is quite appropriate to regard the values of commodities as not only theoretically but also historically antecedent (prius) to the prices of production. This applies to conditions in which the laborer owns his own means of production, and this is the condition of the land-owning working farmer and the craftsman, in the ancient as well as in the modern world. This agrees also with the view we expressed previously, that the evolution of products into commodities arises through exchange between different communities, not between the members of the same community. It holds not only for this primitive condition, but also for subsequent conditions, based on slavery and serfdom, and for the guild organization of handicrafts, so long as the means of production involved in each branch of production can be transferred from one sphere to another only with difficulty and therefore the various spheres of production are related to one another, within certain limits, as foreign countries or communist communities."
Noa, I wonder if this is actually in Marx's original manuscript (published in 1992 IIRC). Other than that, it justifies neither the interpretation of the first three chapters as being about simple commodity production, nor Engels's views from the supplement (conscious carrying out of the law of value by the producers themselves, without any fetishism whatsoever).
Well capitalist commodity production is a particular case of commodity production, so it's a false dichotomy. The passage to "full" capitalist production occurs I think from accidental/elementary to expanded form of value;
It therefore follows that the elementary value form is also the primitive form under which a product of labour appears historically as a commodity, and that the gradual transformation of such products into commodities, proceeds pari passu with the development of the value form.
OK, now you're just trolling with a historical reading of the secion on the value-form :).
How "full" capitalist production could do without a general equivalent is also beyond my understanding...
Much more interesting, I think, are the conundrums of Engels's Supplement:
Engels
Not only was the labor-time spent on these products the only suitable measure for the quantitative determination of the values to be exchanged: no other way was at all possible. Or is it believed that the peasant and the artisan were so stupid as to give up the product of 10 hours' labor of one person for that of a single hours' labor of another?
Fetishism, abstract labor, socially necessary labor time, "behind the backs of producers", huh... Edit: In other words, if Engels is right, why is the section on fetishism a part of the first chapter?
I think he didn't want to give the impression that value is just an abstract hypothesis (since the law of value doesn't operate in capitalism; commodities are sold at production price); it would be similar to concepts like utility. I don't think he wrote that exchange value existed prior to capitalism.
Well we are really making progress now after much flip flopping.
We seem to agree that there is a model, I hope.
That's just a blatent untruth. You know very well no-one agrees with the nonsense you're putting out.
But let's cut to the chase...
Dave B
As S Artisan doesn’t want to tell us what private labour is, if it isn’t already obvious from the expression itself. Karl tells us
……… private labour which are self-sufficient and independent of one another confront one another as commodities. …………….which are carried on independently of one another as the private businesses of self-sufficient producers ……
Now, compare and contrast the original from which the above, highly-selective quote comes from:
In the totality of various use-values or commodity-incarnations, there appears a totality of varying deployments of useful labour – just as manifold and differing in genus, species, family, subspecies, variety: a social division of labour. This is the precondition for the existence of commodity production, and it is not the case that commodity production is the precondition for the existence of the social division of labour. In the community of ancient India, labour is socially divided without the products becoming commodities. Or a more immediate example, in every factory labour is systematically divided, but this division is not thereby mediated by the fact that the workers exchange their individual products. Only products of those deployments of private labour which are self-sufficient and independent of one another confront one another as commodities. So we have observed the following – that a particular purposefully productive activity or useful labour lurks in the use-value of every commodity. Use-values cannot confront one another as commodities unless deployments of qualitatively different useful labour lurk in them. In a society whose products generally assume the form of commodity (i.e., in a society of commodity producers) this qualitative difference in the deployments of useful labour which are carried on independently of one another as the private businesses of self-sufficient producersdevelops into a multi-faceted system – to a social division of labour.
[italicised: selective quotations from Dave B; bold: qualifiers that make it clear that the full passage conveys entirely different sense than the selectivity implies]
Meaning what? Well it answer the question of stupidity or malignant mendacity clearly in favour of the latter.
Dave B
I am no Luxemburgist by the way, but she didn’t talk complete twaddle all the time, few do, that takes real genius.
For some reason was under the impression that there were some on this forum.
There is one. And it's you. But S. Artesian is wrong, this heroic and consistent wrongness is not a case of some "idiot savant", but clearly a case of deliberate attempt to deceive. In service of some obscure agenda I neither know nor care about. Stupidity is a human frailty that deserves our consideration and aid. Mendacity is a crime which no amount of "understanding" can change. I call troll.
Again the argument isn't whether or not commodity production exists prior to industrial capitalism, the argument is whether such production is governed, organized, and reproduces the law of value.
Clearly, it does not, it did not. There can be no penetration of value without the organization of production according to value; there can be no organization of production according to value without organizing labor in the image of value, without the "liquidation" of all the peculiarities of useful labor by and into the aqua regia of [i]time[/i, without abstract labor.
In the totality of various use-values or commodity-incarnations, there appears a totality of varying deployments of useful labour – just as manifold and differing in genus, species, family, subspecies, variety: a social division of labour.
Translation; there are lots of different types of commoditites that can be classified by what they are for or useful for eg linen, coats and horseshoes. Each require different ‘deployments’ of ‘useful labour’ eg weaving, tailoring and blacksmithing
This is the precondition for the existence of commodity production, and it is not the case that commodity production is the precondition for the existence of the social division of labour.
Translation; you need to have different ‘deployments’ of ‘useful labour’ or social division of labour eg weaving, tailoring and blacksmithing for there to be commodity production.
[If we only lived by bread alone and that is all anybody made, then you wouldn’t be selling bread to buy someone else’s bread, that would be daft; it hardly needed saying]
But it is not the case that just because you have weaving, tailoring and blacksmithing or 'division of concrete labour' then you have commodity production.
Eg in primitive communism and shaker communes etc.
Thus
In the community of ancient India, labour is socially divided without the products becoming commodities.
Or a more immediate example, in every factory labour is systematically divided, but this division is not thereby mediated by the fact that the workers exchange their individual products.
Translation; the labour within a factory is divided but not on the basis that I sell my chemical analytical work to the canteen workers. This was before the introduction in some places now out of fashion however of the idea of internal markets within large enterprises.
Only products of those deployments of private labour which are self-sufficient and independent of one another confront one another as commodities.
Translation; Eg a peasant and a moonlighting part time weaver exchanging their linen with a peasant and a moonlighting part time taylor or coat maker. Specialisation and practice makes perfect and a jack of all trades is master of none etc etc.
So we have observed the following – that a particular purposefully productive activity or useful labour lurks in the use-value of every commodity.
Translation; purposeful productive linen weaving makes, or ‘lurks’! in the commodity of useful linen
Use-values cannot confront one another as commodities unless deployments of qualitatively different useful labour lurk in them.
Translation; you can’t exchange.. oh forget it.
In a society whose products generally assume the form of commodity (i.e., in a society of commodity producers) this qualitative difference in the deployments of useful labour which are carried on independently of one another as the private businesses of self-sufficient producers develops into a multi-faceted system – to a social division of labours
Translation; in a peasant society for example where each peasant for part of his working week independently specialises, part time, develops into a multi-faceted system of producing either linen, coats, goose eggs or what not which get sold and bought at Stourbridge market.
This is a model.
To go further with stamping of values and producers "equatng" their labour time with other etc everybody in this feudal village and beyond keep an eye on each other.
If the guy making the blue suede shoes manages to get by as well as everyone else on 10 hour labour a week because the product of his labour time sell s at a higher exchange value than everybody else’s labour time or embodied labour then envy kicks in.
Lets say that goose eggs are oversupplied just as blue suede shoes are under supplied and that is reflected in their relative exchange value of their products etc.
Then the goose herder decides to sell up and turn to blue suede shoe production.
Prices equilibrate to their ‘natural price’ or value according to Smiths supply and demand in exactly the same way as Karl described that in capitalism in his muppets guide of ‘wages price and profit’.
The ease and simplicity of peasants moving from one type of labour or productive activity to another is facilitated by the relatively low level ‘private property’ required at this technologically low level of production otherwise conceived as anachronistically organic composition of “capital” etc etc.
This also happens in the labour market. Thus when computer programmers where earning £50 per hour contracting or £100 in London; lorry drivers or their male lovers of said computer programmers trained as computer programmers. And successfully entered the market with forged CV’s .
Eventually just as with feudal blue suede shoes and goose eggs things tend to equilibrate.
These same computer programmers are really down on their luck now and are slumming it with the rest of the not so ‘disguised employees’ workers[UK-IR45 British Labour party and marxist theory] and are taking permanent work at less than 40K per annum.
I told them so and how they laughed.
But it is still better and a long way from the private peasant labour of helping your mother roll up buffalo dung to dry in the sun for cooking fuel.
And is a long way from sequel server data base analysis and C++ programming and all that gibberish they go on about.
I am just trying to get across the basic idea and attempting to respond as was requested in the spirit of the opening post.
I found Parvus's critique of Engels. It's a 3 page footnote in Der Weltmarkt und die Agrarkrisis (1896, with also criticism on another of Engels's comments in Volume 3 about groundrent). As it appeared in Kautsky's Neue Zeit without comment, Kautsky perhaps agreed with the critique (in his reply later to renegade Bernstein, he doesn't respond to this point exactly).
Also Lenin reviewed the work by Parvus in 1899, full of praise and he didn't raise an objection to Parvus's critique.
Only products of those deployments of private labour which are self-sufficient and independent of one another confront one another as commodities.
Translation; Eg a peasant and a moonlighting part time weaver exchanging their linen with a peasant and a moonlighting part time taylor or coat maker. Specialisation and practice makes perfect and a jack of all trades is master of none etc etc.
Waffle. real translation: other deployments of private labour that are neither self-sufficient nor independent (nor, by extension and textual context, take place within the framework of generalised commodity production - i.e. the specifically capitalist system of production relations) do not produce commodities. That is, "private labour" is not a synonym of "commodity production" (of any type, whether the mere commodity production that occurs in a pre-capitalist framework, or the commodity production within the framework of generalised commodity production - the locus of the analysis of chapter 1).
Further, Engles' phantasy of a "nine thousand year reich" of the law of value, in the guise of a "simple commodity production" mode of production, is in complete contradiction to the analysis of the historical specificity of the law of value to the capitalist mode of production given by Marx in Capital. By extension, all those who seek to advance a political project of overcoming capitalism while retaining the law of value (mutualism, market socialism, etc) are objectively defenders of capitalist social relations, however "socialist" they may consider themselves to be.
all those who seek to advance a political project of overcoming capitalism while retaining the law of value (mutualism, market socialism, etc) are objectively defenders of capitalist social relations, however "socialist" they may consider themselves to be
all those who seek to advance a political project of overcoming capitalism while retaining the law of value (mutualism, market socialism, etc) are objectively defenders of capitalist social relations, however "socialist" they may consider themselves to be
Did somebody say Cockshott?
Don't engage him. It is bad enough having JR drop in every now and again.
lol. His friend Klaus Hagendorf is an interesting one, I consider him a decent economist (mainly because of his contribution towards a rigid application of the labor theory of value (not necessarily Marx's but makes use of his categories) in microeconomic theory that makes all the neo-Ricardian BS fly right out the window - there's obviously loads of problems associated with this but Hagendorf explicitly points out that in his model the "law of value" only operates in a perfect market and that's not the situation under capitalism at all1
) but his politics of "crowding out capitalism" (an economist stage-ist view, founded on much the same elements as Mutualism) is pretty stupid and he seems to see the USSR and the PRC as genuinely socialist so I dunno...
I assume that other convincing charlatan Mandel picked it up from Trotsky.
I really don’t think Lenin had read Das Capital either but he could get by on it I think, just.
Rosa in fact was one of the better ones as was Otto Ruhle and of course Holferding and Anton Pannekoek.
I was going to let this rest and move on to more interesting things until I remembered that I had done a disservice to Bukharin by leaving him out.
And some of his stuff is really quite good.
So for the left Bolshevik community
§ 7 Monopolization of the means of production by the capitalist class
The mere existence of a commodity economy does not alone suffice to constitute capitalism. A commodity economy can exist although there are no capitalists; for instance, the economy in which the only producers are independent artisans. They produce for the market, they sell their products; thus these products are undoubtedly commodities, and the whole production is commodity production.
Nevertheless, this is not capitalist production; it is nothing more than simple commodity production. In order that a simple commodity economy can be transformed into capitalist production, it is necessary, on the one hand, that the means of production (tools, machinery, buildings, land, etc.) should become the private property of a comparatively limited class of wealthy capitalists; and, on the other, that there should ensue the ruin of most of the independent artisans and peasants and their conversion into wage workers
We have already seen that a simple commodity economy contains within itself the germs that will lead to the impoverishment of some and the enrichment of others. This is what has actually occurred. In all countries alike, most of the independent artisans and small masters have been ruined. The poorest were forced in the end to sell their tools; from 'masters' they became 'men' whose sole possession was a pair of hands. Those on the other hand who were richer, grew more wealthy still; they rebuilt their workshops on a more extensive scale, installed new machinery, began to employ more workpeople, became factory owners.
Little by little there passed into the hands of these wealthy persons all that was necessary for production: factory buildings, machinery, raw materials, warehouses and shops, dwelling houses, workshops, mines, railways, steamships, the land - in a word, all the means of production. All these means of production became the exclusive property of the capitalist class; they became, as the phrase runs, a 'monopoly' of the capitalist class.
THE SMALL GROUP OF THE WEALTHY OWNS EVERYTHING; THE HUGE MASSES OF THE POOR OWN NOTHING BUT THE HANDS WITH WHICH THEY WORK. THIS MONOPOLY OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION BY THE CAPITALIST CLASS IS THE SECOND LEADING CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.
A commodity economy necessarily implies private ownership. The independent artisan who produces commodities owns his workshop and his tools; the factory owner or workshop owner owns the factory or the workshop, with all the buildings, machinery, etc. Now, wherever private ownership and commodity production exist, there is a struggle for buyers, or competition among sellers.
Even in the days before there were factory owners, workshop owners, and great capitalists, when there were only independent artisans, these artisans struggled one with another for buyers. The strongest and most acquisitive among them, the one who had the best tools and was the cleverest, especially the one who put by money, was always the one who came to the top, attracted custom, and ruined his rivals.
Thus the system of petty ownership and the commodity economy that was based upon it, contained the germs of large-scale ownership and implied the ruin of many.
WE SEE, THEREFORE, THAT THE PRIMARY CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS A COMMODITY ECONOMY; THAT IS, AN ECONOMY WHICH PRODUCES FOR THE MARKET.
Actually I was criticised earlier on for proposing this exact same ‘simple’ model of competition between simple commodity producers leading to capitalism. The actual process is in fact more complex and the influx and effects of accumulated merchant and usury capital need to be considered also.
………………
WE SEE, THEN, THAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY AND THE SIMPLE COMMODITY ECONOMY CONSISTS IN THIS, THAT IN THE CAPITALIST ECONOMY LABOUR POWER ITSELF BECOMES A COMMODITY. THUS, THE THIRD CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS THE EXISTENCE OF WAGE LABOUR.
In simple commodity-economy price fluctuates around value as its centre. If too much of a given commodity is produced the price falls, a redistribution of labour power takes place in this production. If a small amount is produced the opposite takes place. Prices rise, labour power pours in and thus another redistribution of joint labour time takes place. In capitalist society the mechanism of fluctuation is more complex.
Here prices fluctuate around the "cost of production", and not directly around value
( ..as in a simple commodity-economy..) .
The social interdependence of the different fractional parts of the socially divided labour, the objective connection between the subjectively independent commodity producers is fixed behind their back.
In simple commodity economy value is a "law of movement" directly apparent in prices.
In capitalist society fluctuations of prices occur around "production prices", and from this point of view the law of value is converted into the law of the prices of production, which appears as the historical development of the law of value and can only be understood on the basis of the latter.
Marx showed that, as a result of this, prices in those sections of industry with a high composition of capital diverge above, and those with a low composition, below the value, and that prices do not fluctuate directly around value but around so-called production prices (the costs of production plus the average profit).
Thus the law is here much more complex than in simple commodity economy. The superficial and directly empirical fact of the market price is explained by the prices of production, the latter by the average profit and the average profit by the organic composition of capital, which, in its turn, is explained by the whole sum of surplus value and the whole sum of capital.14)
The process of the production of capital is clearly nothing other than the process of capitalist production; in other words, of the production of commodities under conditions of capitalist production, not under conditions of simple commodity production. The production of capital is, therefore, a production of capitalistically produced commodities.
On the BBC TV today in the programme 'country tracks' on the history of the Derbyshire Peak District they briefly discussed the simple commodity production of lead mining, pretty much as described below elsewhere;
Lead was mined throughout medieval times on a small scale mainly by farmers and their families who mined their own land.
It was mostly surface mining with underground workings rarely more than 75 –100ft deep, the different levels being reached by a series of vertical wooden ladders leading down to horizontal hand-cut tunnels at various depths - the miners simply located the ore where it outcropped on or near the surface and followed the veins of galena in whichever direction they led.
Many of the old lead rakes and hillocks which exist today are the result of small scale mineral extraction which took place throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, mostly high in the hills in open, exposed countryside, and with no protection from the
It was this guy I was thinking of before Rosa popped into my head.
I. I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value Chapter Eight BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF MARX'S THEORY OF VALUE
For the time being we are concerned only with one basic type of production relation among people in a commodity economy, namely the relation among people as commodity producers who are separate and formally independent from each other. We know only that the cloth is produced by the commodity producers and is taken to the market to be exchanged or sold to other commodity producers. We are dealing with a society of commodity producers, with a so-called "simple commodity economy" as opposed to a more complex capitalist economy.
In conditions of a simple commodity economy the average prices of products are proportional to their labor value. In other words, value represents that average level around which market prices fluctuate and with which the prices would coincide if social labor were proportionally distributed among the various branches of production. Thus a state of equilibrium would be established among the branches of production.
The exchange of two different commodities according to their values corresponds to the state of equilibrium among two given branches of production. In this equilibrium, all transfer of labor from one branch to another comes to an end. But if this happens, then it is obvious that the exchange of two commodities according to their values equalizes the advantages for the commodity producers in both branches of production, and removes the motives for transfer from one branch to another.
In the simple commodity economy, such an equalization of conditions of production in the various branches means that a determined quantity of labor used up by commodity producers in different spheres of the national economy furnishes each with a product of equal value. The value of commodities is directly proportional to the quantity of labor necessary for their production.
However, S. Frank does not ask what the content of the production expenditure is for the simple commodity producer, if it is not the labor spent on the production. For the simple commodity producer, the difference in the conditions of production in two different branches appear as different conditions for the engagement of labor in them.
In a simple commodity economy, the exchange of 10 hours of labor in one branch of production, for example shoemaking, for the product of 8 hours of labor in another branch, for example clothing production, necessarily leads (if the shoemaker and clothesmaker are equally qualified) to different advantages of production in the two branches, and to the transfer of labor from shoemaking to clothing production.
(or with goose eggs and blue suede shoes)
Assuming complete mobility of labor in the commodity economy, every more or less significant difference in the advantage of production generates a tendency for the transfer of labor from the less advantageous branch of production to the more advantageous. This tendency remains until the less advantageous branch is confronted by a direct threat of economic collapse and finds it impossible to continue production because of unfavorable conditions for the sale of its products on the market.
In conditions of simple commodity production, equal advantage of production in different branches presupposes an exchange of commodities which is proportional to the quantities of labor expended on their production.
this whole chain of phenomena, which was not adequately examined by Marx's critics and was elucidated by Marx's theory of value, refers equally to a simple commodity economy and to a capitalist economy. But the quantitative side of value also interested Marx, if it was related to the function of value as regulator of the distribution of labor. The quantitative proportions in which things exchange are expressions of the law of proportional distribution of social labor.
Labor value and price of production are different manifestations of the same law of distribution of labor in conditions of simple commodity production and in the capitalist society. [9] The equilibrium and the allocation of labor are the basis of value and its changes both in the simple commodity economy and in the capitalist economy. This is the meaning of Marx's theory of "labor" value.
However, Marx's analytical path was just the opposite. In the theory of value, when he explains the value of commodities produced by qualified labor, Marx analyzes the relations among people as commodity producers, or the simple commodity economy;
This point is still better than the preceding one. From the somnolent banality of exposition every now and then rockets of audacious ignorance explode. Does the peasant, that is, simple commodity economy, develop according to the laws of capitalist economy? No, our theoretician replies in terror. It is clear: the Village does not live according to Marx.
This matter must be corrected. Stalin attempts, in his report, to reject the petty bourgeois theories on the stability of peasant economy. However, becoming entangled in the net of Marxian formulae, he gives this theory a most generalized expression. In reality, the theory of extended reproduction, according to the idea of Marx, embraces capitalist economy as a whole, not only industry but agriculture as well, only in its pure form, that is, without its pre-capitalist remnants.
But Stalin, leaving aside, for some reason, handicraft and guild occupations, poses the question: “Can it be said that our small peasant holdings develop according to the principle (!) of extended reproduction?” “No,” he replies, “it cannot be said.”
In other words, Stalin, in the most generalized form, repeats the assertions of the bourgeois economists that agriculture does not develop according to the “principle” of the Marxian theory of capitalist production. Wouldn’t it be better, after this, to keep still? After all, the Marxian agronomists kept still listening to his shameful abuse of the teachings of Marx. Yet, the softest of answers should have sounded thus: Get off the tribune immediately, and do not dare to deliberate on problems about which you know nothing!
So in one corner we have the ‘Idiot Savants’; Engels, Kautsky, Rosa, Dave B(still living), Thalheimer, Bukharin, Rubin, Pannekoek, Preobrazhensky, Paul Mattick, Lenin, et al.
And in the other the notable sages; S Artisan and Ocelot, German professors from the 1970’s, and ‘nearly everybody else’.
So in one corner we have the ‘Idiot Savants’; Engels, Kautsky, Rosa, Dave B(still living), Thalheimer, Bukharin, Rubin, Pannekoek, Preobrazhensky, Paul Mattick, Lenin, et al.
And in the other the notable sages; S Artisan and Ocelot, German professors from the 1970’s, and ‘nearly everybody else’.
So in other words, you're not interested in correct arguments, but in citing the proper authorities.
The "argument from authority" is one of the first fallacies a philosophy professor would beat out of your head in an introductory course.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, by mentioning philosophy courses, I assume I've offended your proletarian authenticity, you righteous autodidactic son of the toiling masses!
1. Marx never used the term "simple commodity production." Marx's name is missing from Dave B's list of notables.
2. "simple commodity production" was production governed, organized around, and reproducing, the law of value.
3. "simple commodity production" was itself the result of "abstract labor."
Dave B, disingenuous/dishonest/self-serving to a degree I haven't encountered since listening to Trump announce his candidacy for the US presidency, will produce mountains of fog about everything except these three issues in order to obscure the molehill of his actual evidence.
My father was an electrician (and shop steward) in a factory making tin cans and my mother was a machine operator in a spark plug factory.
I am a factory worker myself; who is going to educate the educators if it isn’t the working class?
As to S Artisan I thought the whole argument was whether or not the law of value operated in a pre-capitalist, un-waged simple commodity production economy.
Is S Artisan objecting to or now accepting;
2. "simple commodity production" was production governed, organized around, and reproducing, the law of value.
3. "simple commodity production" was itself the result of "abstract labor."
I don’t like they way he has expressed either point but if he means what I think he does I can go along with both.
On;
1. Marx never used the term "simple commodity production." Marx's name is missing from Dave B's list of notables.
Well I have done that before as regards ‘mere commodity production’ and ‘simple commodity exchange’; both of which were clearly given in the clear context of un-waged commodity production.
And if un-waged commodity production isn’t what was later clearly referred to as simple commodity production or simple commodity economy etc then what was it.
How many types of un-waged commodity production are there?
[Apart from slave labour]
I have argued that ‘private labour’, as used by Karl in chapter one, was simple commodity production and that the linen was produced by the simple commodity economy of un-waged ‘peasant’ labour and that he ‘proceeded’ from that first to the capitalistically modified commodity.
Which was why he said “wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation”.
But I can only do so much as there are non so blind as those who will not see.
Yeah that was your claim; that the law of value organized production in pre-capitalist, "simply commodity" societies.
You've provided no evidence-- absolutely none, rather you've lined up a bunch of quotes about "simple commodity production" which have absolutely no bearing on that central issue.
Private labor is not simple commodity production; or not always simple commodity production.
And you don't have a clue what Marx is analyzing in chapter 1, vol 1. His analysis has nothing to do with "simple commodity production."
But we've been down this road so many times before...
I have argued that ‘private labour’, as used by Karl in chapter one, was simple commodity production and that the linen was produced by the simple commodity economy of un-waged ‘peasant’ labour and that he ‘proceeded’ from that first to the capitalistically modified commodity.
simple is a logical category, not historical. Whenever any Hegelian or Marxist uses the word simple or complex, one should always remember that simple=abstract and complex=concrete. So "simple commodity production" can only mean the most abstract functioning of the law of value, but since the law of value only exists in the capitalist mode of production the sentence can only refer to an idealized presentation of commodity production. Now Marx never used the term in the first three chapters of Capital, but he did use simple commodity circulation. In any case, when Rubin refers to Marx describing "simple commodity production" he is not referring to anything historical (and the quotes you selected above there is no reference to actual history), but to Marx's logical presentation of the workings of value.
Rubin uses the term "simple commodity production" but he is very clear that he means this as an abstraction of capitalist economy, not as an historical epoch.
See www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch18.htm#h5 for a discussion on this.
I. I. Rubin
Confusing the theoretical and the historical setting of the theory of value is not only pointless, as we have shown, but also harmful. Such a treatment puts the proportions of exchange into the foreground, and ignores the social form and the social function of value as the regulator of the distribution of labor, a function which value performs to a great extent only in a developed commodity economy, i.e., a capitalist economy. If the analyst finds that primitive tribes, who live in conditions of a natural economy and rarely resort to exchange, are guided by labor expenditures when they establish exchange proportions, he is prone to find here the category of value. Value is transformed into a supra-historical category, into labor expenditures independent of the social form of the organization of labor.[15] The "historical" setting of the problem thus leads to ignoring the historical character of the category value. Other theorists, assuming that "the emergence of exchange value must be sought in a natural economy which developed into a money economy," finally determine value not in terms of the labor which the producer spends on his production, but by the labor which the producer would have to spend in the absence of exchange and of the necessity to make the product by his own labor.
The labor theory of value and the theory of production price differ from each other, not as different theories which function in different historical periods, but as an abstract theory and a concrete fact, as two degrees of abstraction of the same theory of the capitalist economy.
I think when looking at what Rubin and others were saying post volume III it is necessary to see the context; which was the criticism of Karl’s theory.
[Which as far as Rubin was concerned at the time was that of Böhm-Bawerk.]
Some of which can also be seen in Engel’s response to it elsewhere in his much-maligned supplement to volume III.
It is difficult to summarise and roll out all the criticisms into one post but the essence of it was thus;
Karl starts off ‘logically’, or abstractly if you like, rather than empirically as things were in reality (capitalism), with the idea that commodities exchange at their labour time value.
Then ends up concluding that; through his own deductive reasoning that commodities don’t exchange at their value at all and the law of value is ‘defunct’.
And that the exchange value of commodities in capitalism as a new historical stage is dependent on the rate of profit.(amongst other things, there were several different lines of criticism).
This was why Engels emphasised in the supplement, using hyperbole, that they were fully aware that the law of value ie that commodities exchange at their labour time value, ‘broke down’ in capitalism and only operated up until capitalism.
In fact a criticism was that there were not aware of the problem at the time of writing volume one which is not true as can be seen from the letters and it was mentioned in volume one eg
This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted,
The point was; was there an essential and fundamental truth in the labour theory of value that could be used to explain exchange relations in capitalism or prices of production etc or did it no longer operate or have any reality at all.
Could the labour theory of value explain and even predict or anticipate its own ‘negation’?
There is a parallel in science with the ideal gas laws, which only work within a narrow area of pressures and temperatures (and gases).
Do you abandon it because it only appears to operate as perhaps a peculiar and coincidentally neat set of correlation’s and relations within a physical ‘epoch’?
Just as well they didn’t as by sticking to it it led to the kinetic theory of gases, van der Waals forces, the unravelling of the Sudoku puzzle of the periodic table of elements and chemistry itself.
And why the ideal gas laws didn’t operate perfectly outside certain conditions and its own ‘negation’
The fundamental and essential truths, as well the kinetic theory of gases, are that.
All products are labour (time) or contain work. WE as members of the productive working class still say a ‘load of work has gone into that’.
And the amount of our life force and human effort, that time we spend outside the realm of freedom (or leisure time) has value, albeit deducted.
Because it is a sacrificed or possibly enforced loss of free or leisure time
---------------------------
The realm of freedom is enhanced by the use values produced outside of it which is why ‘all’ humanity works.
I am convinced that the ordinary members of the productive industrial proletariat understand this better than most.
That is not to say the best things in life necessarily come from outside the realm of freedom.
I am pleased to hear that one of our Crypto-Fascist Bolsheviks, Angelus Novus, advocating German ‘professors of philosophy’ beating ‘truths’ into the heads of autodidactic members of the working class.
No doubt I am struggling to break out of a limited ‘trade union consciousness’ and need some ‘physical’ help from the ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’.
I am doing all the real work both here and in my necessary labour + surplus labour time; as usual.
So don’t attack me have a pop at dizzy Rosa for instance;
In reality, capitalist production is not the sole and completely dominant form of production, as everyone knows, and as Marx himself stresses in Capital. In reality, there are in all capitalist countries, even in those with the most developed large-scale industry, numerous artisan and peasant enterprises which are engaged in simple commodity production.
In reality, alongside the old capitalist countries there are still those even in Europe where peasant and artisan production is still strongly predominant, like Russia, the Balkans, Scandinavia and Spain.
And finally, there are huge continents besides capitalist Europe and North America, where capitalist production has only scattered roots, and apart from that the people of these continents have all sorts of economic systems, from the primitive Communist to the feudal, peasantry and artisan. Not only do all these social and productive forms co-exist, and co-exist locally with capitalism, but there is a lively intercourse of a specific kind.
I am pleased to hear that one of our Crypto-Fascist Bolsheviks, Angelus Novus, advocating German ‘professors of philosophy’ beating ‘truths’ into the heads of autodidactic members of the working class.
2 things.
1) The only person here quoting Bolsheviks to support his (orthodox Marxist) position is you. Everybody else is arguing for the rejection of the Bolshevik reading of Marx.
2) "Crypto-fascist". Quite apart from the violation of anti-flaming posting guidlines, I fail to see on what grounds you apply this label to AN. I can speculate as to your reasons, but none of them are even remotely acceptable.
Nothing is more hilarious and pathetic than Dave B's misrepresentation of the relations, the reciprocity, the manifestations of the law of value and the exchange of commodities at their production prices; of the relations, reciprocity, the manifestations of the law of value in production prices.
What is that connection, that mediator? Why capital's exchanges themselves where the general or average rate of profit is established, and capitals of equal size, because the totality of their commodities contain equal amounts of labor, dead and living, garner or appropriate equal profits.
What Dave B distorts, misrepresents is the very expression of abstract labor, and the law of value by industrial capitalism.
So after being called an idiot by you and S Artisan I think, not that that actually bothered me much at the time.
I was then treated to the arrogant condescension of a professor of philosophy who said I needed things beating into my head.
Well that was a red rag to a bull so I called him a crypto- Fascist, which I am quite happy to justify, and now we are having a good cry about it are we?
At least you know what buttons to press now.
I have nothing against Germans and obviously have met loads of them; and generally like most of them.
I am doing all the real work both here and in my necessary labour + surplus labour time; as usual.
So don’t attack me have a pop at dizzy Rosa for instance;
Rosa
In reality, capitalist production is not the sole and completely dominant form of production, as everyone knows, and as Marx himself stresses in Capital. In reality, there are in all capitalist countries, even in those with the most developed large-scale industry, numerous artisan and peasant enterprises which are engaged in simple commodity production.
In reality, alongside the old capitalist countries there are still those even in Europe where peasant and artisan production is still strongly predominant, like Russia, the Balkans, Scandinavia and Spain.
And finally, there are huge continents besides capitalist Europe and North America, where capitalist production has only scattered roots, and apart from that the people of these continents have all sorts of economic systems, from the primitive Communist to the feudal, peasantry and artisan. Not only do all these social and productive forms co-exist, and co-exist locally with capitalism, but there is a lively intercourse of a specific kind.
Felix and Noa have gone a little beyond the ‘no it isn’t’ line of argument.
And escaping and hiding behind the fog of the anything but concrete witchdoctor mumbo jumbo of ‘abstract labour’.
What has that Luxembourg quote got anything to with what I wrote? Nothing. It's about something completely else. In that quote she doesn't say that the law of value functioned prior to the capitalist mode of production. What she is saying is that even with commodity production being close to generalized, there are pockets of non-capitalist production and exchange, which is a pretty unproblematic statement.
And the mumbo-jumbo you refer to Marx saw as his greatest discovery. Abstract labour is central to Marx (shouldn't be lost on you since you're fond of citing Rubin), without that category there is no capitalism.
And what you're doing is rather unnecessary labour btw. Stringing together a series of quotes without understanding what they actually mean. It takes more effort to actually read something critically than using ctrl+C.
All products are labour (time) or contain work. WE as members of the productive working class still say a ‘load of work has gone into that’.
And the amount of our life force and human effort, that time we spend outside the realm of freedom (or leisure time) has value, albeit deducted.
Because it is a sacrificed or possibly enforced loss of free or leisure time
The main issue here seems to be that you don't accept the distinction between concrete and abstract labour.
You are of course free to think that abstract labour is a load of "witchdoctor mumbo jumbo", but you should be aware that Marx thought of this distinction as one of his greatest theoretical achievements, so this fits rather badly into your claims to represent the authentic Marx...
I think you missed my point, which is fair enough, I wasn’t disputing the existence of abstract labour as a concept.
What I was trying to get across is the habit of opening the pages of das capital randomly picking out a few phrases and stitching them together to produce some impressive sounding gibberish.
Abstract labour being a favourite.
What is
the amount of our life force and human effort, that time we spend outside the realm of freedom
If it isn’t abstract labour or what work means to everyone once its specific nature ie linen weaving or computer programming is taken out of it?
What I was trying to get across is the habit of opening the pages of das capital randomly picking out a few phrases and stitching them together to produce some impressive sounding gibberish.
You just described your own method there.
If it isn’t abstract labour or what work means to everyone once its specific nature ie linen weaving or computer programming is taken out of it?
It's not what it "means to everyone", but the function it has in the self-valorization of value.
Holy shit. You really don't get it do you? For some reason you assume, just because I use Marx's terminology, that I assault workers with such language. You do realize that we were having a philological discussion, right? If you want a discussion about how to talk to workers about Marx, then please start another thread. But in a thread called "abstract vs. concrete labour" it is decidedly on-topic to refer to abstract labour and the self-valorization of value.
Edit: and your discussion between the two workers is how they experience capitalist social relations, not a direct phenomenological experience of abstract labour, which is impossible. You're right that the closest thing a worker will come to this is the issue of the working day, but still it's is impossible to directly experience abstract labour.
concrete labour refers to the
concrete labour refers to the use-value that is made. so the concrete labour of shoe-making makes a use-value in the form of a shoe. general/abstract labour is labour in general, i.e. labour without reference the concrete activity of labour (now I am sure others can give a better and more detailed version). the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value. without abstract labour there would be no capital.
Khawaga wrote: concrete
Khawaga
Booya.
yoda's walking stick
yoda's walking stick
Khawaga
If yoda understands Khawaga's simple explanation for five year olds, I obviously need the eighteen-month-old, barely-off-the-teat version.
I'd prefer one that uses Janet and John, say, like:
Janet spends 10 hours making a pair of shoes. John spends 5 hours making a box of cakes.
Is the 'concrete labour' 15 hours? Or is it an average like 7.5 hours?
And what is the 'abstract labour'? Or does that require a third character, like Jeremy the Boss, to explain an exploitative relationship?
I know this sounds like a piss-take, but I'm deadly serious. I'm sure many others hesitate to ask these questions about Marxist economic categories, for fear of looking stupid.
Well, I'm fearless. But stupid, nevertheless. I, for one, need your educational efforts.
In that example Janet and
In that example Janet and John are both expending concrete labour- a specific type of labour of a specific person.
The concept of abstract labour requires a third character: the entire working class. I.e. the abstract labour of the working class as a whole creates everything. With the amount of abstract socially necessary labour time corresponding to the value of goods created.
You see what we mean?
Steven wrote: The concept of
Steven
Right, so to continue the 'Janet & John' theme, if we let J&J stand for the entire working class, and give J&J the surname 'Smith', then 'abstract labour' relates to 'the Smiths', not J&J as individuals.
Steven
So, the value of goods created by the two workers, J&J, was by 15 hours 'concrete labour'.
And... the Smith family created 15 hours of 'abstract labour'.
Hmmm.... I am missing something? It doesn't seem too profound to me.
I think you know personally, Steven, from other threads, that I am serious about this problem. If you remember, I likened 'value' in Marx's ideas to 'grace' in the Catholic church.
I want to be wrong about Marx, and I'm even prepared to accept that I have a particular blindspot about this issue, but I'm still keen to seek the 'revealed truth'!
LBird wrote: Steven
LBird
exactly, and not just to the labour of shoemaking in particular but any labour.
yes, you are missing something. Because of course Janet and John are not the entire working class.
If Janet spends 10 hours making a pair of shoes, they do not have 10 hours of value in them necessarily. The value they embody is the amount of abstract socially necessary labour which makes them up. So if most shoes are made using machines, only requiring in total 30 min of average labour time, they embody the value of 30 min labour, not 10 hours.
You dig?
yeah, I think you misunderstand a couple of aspects.
I think what capital volume 1 does very well is explain how labour is the source of value, and how basically capitalism is entirely based on the exploitation of workers, following the violent creation of a dispossessed working class.
Steven wrote: yes, you are
Steven
But for the purposes of this explanation, why can't the concept of 'the Smiths' represent the collectivity of the proletariat?
Steven
No, I understand that if someone else, say Janet's cousin Jacqui, has a sewing machine, then Janet's 10 hours do not produce 10 hours of value. But, for the purposes of this discussion, why introduce the complexity of a sewing machine?
Surely, if Jacqui and her sewing machine don't exist, thus leaving the original two-member Smith family, one can still use the concepts of 'concrete' and 'abstract' labour to say something?
I'm still digless, I'm afraid.
Steven
Yeah, I agree labour is the source of value, that capitalism is the structural exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, and I know about the clearances and enclosures.
What I don't get is Khawaga's explanation that "the important bit is that abstract labour is to value what concrete labour is to use-value".
Why can't the simple Smith family model be used to explain the relationship between abstract/concrete labour and value/use value?
The more people have to add greater complexity to a simple question, the more I'm reminded of the introduction of eccentrics, epicycles and equants into the defence of the Ptolemaic geocentric model.
LBird wrote: Steven
LBird
unfortunately the real world is more complicated than the workings of two people.
However, if you want to shoehorn this discussion into these two people then you have to use the example of say Janet making shoes by hand in 10 hours, and John making one with a machine in an hour- both would embody the same value, as value is determined by socially necessary labour time.
because the real world has sewing machines in it.
yes - as explained above.
that being the case, I don't see your issue with Marx's concept of value. He demonstrates and evidences this clearly. So I don't understand your Catholicism references and general antipathy. But maybe that's for another thread
I think it can, as I did above. However, a two-person model isn't adequate in order to fully grasp the ramifications for the working class as a whole.
again I don't get what you mean here. The problem is you seem to have misunderstood something. You state:
What you missed was that the concrete labour was not 15 hours concrete labour as such but 10 hours shoemaking, and 5 hours cake making. Or 15 hours abstract labour. Furthermore, the ramifications of the difference between abstract and concrete labour do not become clear until you look at a bigger population.
Steven, I'll leave the rest
Steven, I'll leave the rest of your comments to one side, because we both know that the world is more complex than two people, and it does your argument no favour to pretend, for rhetorical purposes, that I don't know that the world has sewing machines in it.
And if you can't see the relevance to this discussion of the Catholic concept of 'grace' (which can't be calculated or evaluated in the real world, and so leaves us at the mercy of experts like priests or CC members) with our present problems with 'value', then I'll leave it alone as an example.
More promisingly,
Steven
So, and I didn't know this, we can't calculate, according to the theory you're defending, 'concrete labour' by adding together actual examples of concrete labour, like shoe- and cake-making?
If so, I don't agree. Let's see if I can illustrate what I think you're saying:
Janet: 10 hours handmade shoes (= 1 pair);
John: 10 hours best-pratice cakes;
Jacqui: 10 hours best-practice shoes(=10 pairs).
To me, this gives us 30 hours 'concrete labour' but only 21 hours of 'abstract labour'.
But, for any individual to know what 'value' they'd created, they would have to consult collectively. That is, the 'extended Smith family' meeting, otherwise known as a Workers' Council.
Thus, 'value' can't be decided by any individual with reference to their own isolated practice. Thus it places 'value' as a category at the social level, and thus re-introduces what I've called in other posts 'Political Economy' (although I'm aware that other posters dislike this term; if for historical reasons it should be called something else, I've no problem) in place of 'Economics'.
Value is a collective, democratic discussion, not an individual decision.
I'm sorry if this seems a bit disjointed, but your last statement triggered off a lot of thoughts.
Steven
But surely we can use simpler models to help explain, even if, and I agree, reality is much more complex?
Hi, sorry I think that I'm
Hi, sorry I think that I'm not going to respond to that post here, as above a poster was asking a question and I don't want to confuse the issue. Hopefully the initial response will satisfy his question, but if you want to discuss value more generally I would suggest starting a new thread. Cheers,
Steven wrote: Hi, sorry I
Steven
Right, point taken.
Although, I must say that I see this discussion as entirely relevent to yoda's OP.
Perhaps we'll leave it to yoda to decide whether the five-year-old's explanation was sufficient, or whether they'd like us to resume this discussion along the lines it has taken. I have to say, as a self-declared eighteen-month-old, I still don't understand.
Thanks anyway, Steven.
yoda's walking stick
yoda's walking stick
Sure mate:
Blah, blah, blah meets blah, blah, blah......
And that's how I ended my thesis at UCL.
Best fucking bit of the whole 500 page lot I say.
Your best option is to throw all that bollocks away and start over. But this time with LIBERTY in mind.
I don't much like the
I don't much like the explanations above, too "substantialist" for my taste.
Here's my take:
in the act of exchange, various products of concrete labour are reduced to the status of being products of human labour in general. In other words, they are made commensurable. As opposed to various sorts of "mental" abstractions, such as calling dogs, cats, and humans "animals", or pines, lindens, and beeches as "trees", this reduction of various products of concrete labour to abstract human labour is a "real" abstraction, consummated in the act of exchange.
Angelus your take is good,
Angelus your take is good, but (probably like mine) too "adult" and "abstract". Makes perfect sense if you've read a ton of Marx, but if I were a first time reader of Capital I would probably reply "WTF?".
I don't want to derail as per Steven's suggestion, but I'll just add this (and Steven if you see it appropriate, why not split it up. I could I guess, but I don't want to take the decision).
LBird
You've kinda explained it yourself:
'
The distinction only makes sense socially. If you produce for yourself, e.g. the Smiths making shoes for themselves only use-value, i.e. the concrete activity is of relevance. It's only when something is produced for exchange that something can have value (which is only socially valid). When a capitalist produced s/he is only interested in value really (i.e. abstract labour; which is the condition for exploitation), but the commodities produced must have a use-value for someone.
And yeah, Marx's entire Capital is all about political economy. It is titled A Critique of Political Economy after all.
Angelus, Khawaga, thanks for
Angelus, Khawaga, thanks for taking the time to help me with trying to understand this.
Khawaga
Yes, unfortunately I'm still not in a position to judge whether (as I would like to be able) Angelus' 'take is good' or not. Clearly, still in a state of 'childhood' on this so far.
Khawaga
So, would I be right in suggesting that 'use-value from concrete labour' could be seen as 'individual-value', while 'value from abstract labour' could be seen as 'social-value'?
I have further questions, to help me make sense of the real complexity of which we're all aware, but if I start with the one above and you confirm it so far, at least then I'll know I'm on the right track. I'll move onto capitalists, commodities and exchange-value when I've grasped the basics.
Khawaga
Yeah, I know - it's on my desk in front of me!
But, in comparison with the marginalist revolution (ie. 'Economics'), which really only got going after Marx's death, what are we to call our activity, if not 'Political Economy'? After all, a 'critique' doesn't necessarily mean a rejection, does it? I'm open to your suggestions on this one - but I like to give it a name, as shorthand to contrast it with the 'Economics' with which people have been brainwashed all their lives.
Please bear with me - I really do want to understand - but I'm wary of bullshit, because it's only because of that socially-developed 'bullshit detector' that I've got this far. This is why I've likened 'value' to 'grace'. I'm not going, ever again, to accept a priest's word for anything. If something can't be properly explained by me to others, I'm not going to be able recommend it as explaining anything, am I?
LBird wrote: So, would I be
LBird
You could, but in order to not be confused when reading Marx you should just have once conception of value, which can only be social. Marx typically refer to use-value as wealth (material wealth; actual things rather than value, which is completely abstract). Because the thing is use-value is also "social"; in the sense that if nobody sees the need for say shoes (so that they would never use them for anything), then the shoes have no use-value. But I think, in order for you to grasp these concepts, it's as good a start as any.
You're right. Marx does not reject e.g. Ricardo. He takes what is useful, discards the crap and argues why certain things are crap with the mainstream pol. ec. of his time. Indeed, Marx would likely be not surprised at all with the marginalist revolution; he more or less saw it coming. So we can call what "we" are doing political economy, or perhaps more correct critical political economy (or Angelus Novus' cumbersome political-economy-in-the-traditon-of-Marx's-Capital).
I think an important thing to grasp about value is that it is the self-valorization of value (i.e. the compulsion to increase value) that is sort of the hidden puppet master in capitalism. It compels people to act in certain ways; both capitalist and workers. Now, self-valorizing value comes a bit later in capital, so let's not get into it now.
My general suggestion for reading Marx is kinda to just go for the ride. The first three chapters are very hard to get through, but after that it's much much easier. Marx's expository style is very pedagogical. He always reminds the reader of the important argument/concepts when he introduces new concepts and/or arguments.
LBird wrote: I'm sure many
LBird
Thanks for having the courage to ask - I'm just as foggy on the difference between concrete and abstract labour. This discussion has been very enlightening. I eagerly await further installments.
Would I be right in saying that concrete labour is to abstract labour as use value is to exchange value?
Abstract labour, then, would be expressed simply as hours worked, regardless of what the labour was producing; concrete labour would be expressed as hours worked producing A or B, and because the units are now different, you can no longer add or subtract these measurements. Is that it?
Rabbit wrote: Would I be
Rabbit
Partly correct: concrete labour maps on to use-value (so you got that right), but abstract labour maps on to value. Exchange value is the ratio in which a quantity of use-values is exchanged for another quantity (but both these quantities have the same value contained in them).
Again, partly correct. The measure of value is labour time, so abstract labour is hours worked. However, with concrete labour you don't really care about the time spent, but rather the actual use-values produced. If you were producing for yourself you'd be more interested in the actual stuff you created, rather than the time you spent on them (unless your Robison Crusoe). If you were to measure concrete labour you'd be more likely to count the items produced, coz in the end that's what matters. So value is all about quantity, whereas use-value is all about quality.
Khawaga wrote: So value is
Khawaga
I disagree, first of all for Marx "use-value.. is... determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively." We have certain socially and historically established standards of measurement which we can use to compare different use-values such as bytes of data or miles per gallon. With regards to exchange-value, Marx states that it "at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation", however, thus considered "exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms." That different items are quantitatively comparable presupposes that they have already been reduced qualitatively to the same standard of human labour in the abstract.
Quote: I disagree, first of
Sure, if you read my post closely that's actually what I said. But try to bear in mind that I am trying to explain this stuff to folks that haven't read as much Marx as some of us. Thus, quantity/quality is a good shorthand for the contradiction of and value/use-value (until it becomes necessary to complicate it) and also the difference between M-C-M and C-M-C.
What I said was:
Just the same as saying that "use-value.. is... determined not only qualitatively but also quantitatively."
Again I agree, but no need to muddy the waters at this moment. Marx is all about contradiction, but keeping all of them in mind is really, really confusing at first. So baby steps for now.
LBird wrote: So, would I be
LBird
Khawaga
Khawaga, I'm confused by your comment here, because in my tentative statement I actually say 'value' is 'social-value' (and contrast it with 'use-value', which is 'individual-value). So, I only have 'one conception of value' in this statement, which is 'social'.
To be clear, I am missing something? Bear in mind that I think you are correct to remind Zanthorus that you are 'trying to explain this stuff'. We are all aware that, eventually, we'll move onto the real, complicated issues involved. Stick with the simple 'stuff' for now, and hopefully later Zanthorus and others will be able to introduce the complexities of Marx's thought.
I'm aware I haven't (yet) discussed 'exchange-value', 'commodities' et al, but its best to be clear on each little 'baby step'.
So, does my statement quoted above stand as I wrote it, or is there something missing which I need to be aware of at this stage of the explanation?
I can't stress enough, I'm not trying to 'catch anyone out'. If I build upon your earlier answers, and with hindsight you realise that you missed something, we can revert to an earlier stage, take on board your later correction, and then move forward again.
Rabbit
No, thank you, Rabbit, for letting me know that there are others reading this 'stuff' that are as ignorant as I am about this subject! It makes me feel a bit better about asking these basic questions.
Quote: Khawaga, I'm confused
Sorry, it's just me confusing you. Value is always social. I was just trying to say that rather than using "individual-value" as a term, adopt wealth. It's more "correct" when thinking about use-value as wealth in terms of Marx's own terminology, but...
Nope, so just stick with the terminology that makes sense to you for now.
I don't think you are at all. If I did that I wouldn't bother answering and take you for a troll ;)
Btw, I don't think it's ignorance anyone's suffering from. Marx's political economy is tough. God knows how many times I tried to get through the first three chapters before it finally clicked (and only really after the first reading group I participated in). A lot of my understanding has been sharpened by hanging around on libcom; it's a good place to ask questions about Marx. So don't be shy :)
Khawaga wrote: Nope, so just
Khawaga
Khawaga, thanks for clarifying that point. I wasn't sure if some subtle point was being made which I hadn't picked up on, and would come back to bite me on the arse later.
First, I would like to return to a post I made earlier, both to keep it in view and for you to consider.
LBird, post #9
So, I presume you accept, as far as it goes, this post I made earlier in reply to Steven?
If so, your agreement will allow me to move onto a further question, posed earlier by Rabbit, regarding the 'expression' or measurement of 'value' (ie. from 'social abstract labour').
Rabbit
I am right in saying that to try to measure 'individual concrete labour' is not possible, that it can't be evaluated? This is because measurement requires a comparison, a 'thing' to measure against, and as 'concrete labour' is individual and subjective (it's 'what someone thinks'), there can be no measure, because a measure must be a social 'thing'?
As you go on to say, in reply to Rabbit:
Khawaga
So to summarise, 'value', the product of 'social abstract labour' can be measured, but only by society, but 'use-value', the product of 'individual concrete labour' cannot be measured (how can we 'measure' a quality like 'love', for example?).
If you agree so far, Khawaga, on my next post I'll reintroduce our Smith family into the discussion, with some more questions.
Once again, thanks for your perserverance.
PS. And I'll adopt your suggestion of 'Critical Political Economy' for our activity.
PPS. If anyone else is trying to follow this discussion, and doesn't follow any of the steps being taken, please post and ask questions before we go any further.
I think an easier starting
I think an easier starting point would be a historical one.
Concrete labour is people doing work on their environment to achieve stuff, whether it be gathering, catching or growing food, building shelter, making fire, etc.
Concrete labour has been part of being human ever since homo sapiens appeared in the Great African Rift Valley 200,000 years ago.
We live in modern times, in a capitalist society. If we are not careful we tend to assume the things that are ever-present in our daily lives, were also present in people's daily lives in the past, like money and value. But our idea of "value" is a modern idea, it does not apply to the builders of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, or Macchu Picchu.
So it is confusing to say that concrete labour somehow relates to "individual value" as opposed to abstract labour relating to "social value".
If concrete labour has always been with us, and always will be. Abstract labour is a relatively very new thing and is specific to capitalism. Before capitalism there was no abstract labour, and neither will there be any after capitalism.
Abstract labour and the thing it creates - value - should not be confused with money and buying and selling things. Even though the complex and developed economies of the societies that built the Pyramids (~2,500 BC) and Macchu Picchu (~1450 AD) did not use money (in the first case, because it hadn't been invented yet), money and buying and selling things, and people making things not for themselves, but in order to sell them, has been also around a lot longer than abstract labour.
Abstract labour really depends on having the majority of the direct producers of the concrete labour that society requires, doing other stuff than making food. Up until now (and until real communism) this means the majority of the workforce has to sell their labour to get the money to buy the food they need to live - because part of the actual history of how people producing food were turned from a majority of society into less than 1 in 20 (in more developed societies) was of people being separated from the land.
But the whole story of abstract labour, is really worth a book (or at least a pamphlet) and if you're already reading a book (Capital vol 1) on it, the question is, how to best visualise it?
Imagine you are in charge of a disaster relief effort in the wake of a major disaster. As you get word of emergency relief workers coming in, in say squads of 100 at a time, your job is to allocate them to different tasks to best progress the relief effort. If you allocate too many to one particular task, you could be wasting available labour that could be better used elsewhere (in marginalist speak, we could talk about the marginal productivity of labour). The end result is a particular distribution of labour into particular activities - call this a social division of labour. Here you are indifferent to the particular strengths or skills of individual workers, you just have an estimate of how many hundred units (or workers) you need to meet a certain need (setting up tents for a refugee camp for 100,000 people for example) with current techniques, machinery etc. This is roughly like abstract labour. Given a particular division of labour in a mainly wage-earning society, the proportion at which the products produced by the workers in the different branches of industry must exchange with each other, for the social accounts to balance, must be in a similar proportion to the proportions of total available social labour allocated to each branch of industry (There's a Marx quote on this from a letter, possibly quoted in Ron Meek, iirc?).
So abstract labour has this reference to the social distribution of total labour, in a wage-labour society.
But I'm sorry, it is no more possible to explain political economy to a hypothetical 5 year old
than it is to explain brain chemistry or quantum mechanicsm, at least imo.
edit: Cool article on how pyramid builders were organised and paid, in the absence of money.
ocelot wrote: But I'm sorry,
ocelot
This, then, makes it rather difficult for this self-confessed 18-month-old (with regard to abstract and concrete labour) to even try to appraise your, what appears on the surface, very interesting post.
Before I try to understand what you've written, I think I'll wait and see what comes of Khawaga's very reasonable attempt to try and educate me in the arcane ways of 'Critical Political Economy'.
But I should say that I think your conclusion is not just educationally questionable, but also poor political practice. We should, as Communists, be doing our best to explain our ideas to all workers, even to the dullards at the back of the class, like me.
[throws paper aeroplane at Rabbit, who sniggers and pulls a face behind Mr. Ocelot's back]
Like a lot of other folks i
Like a lot of other folks i found capital a bit of a struggle.
I've been going through a series of lectures on reading capital that can be found on google vedio by david harvey and I've found it much easier actually having someone explain what he's on about in more straight forward language,
with regards to concrete and exchange value he touches on that in the first lecture which is here --> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5820769496384969148#
I think he starts covering it around the 1:15 mark but if you have the time its worth watching it all, it helped me a lot anyway. I've been thinking recently that it would be really useful to have somewhere on libcom where people could put links to useful videos they find online, like a video library of some kind, this is probably for a different thread though!
Fine, so long as you
Fine, so long as you understand that 'value', like 'grace' is a historically specific category inseparable from a particular set of social relationships, that of capitalism in the first instance (involving the separtion of political and economic authority) and the catholic church in the second (involving the separation of political and religious authority). That is, that abstract labour cannot be 'abstracted' from its historical context. It is not valid for Jack, Jill and the Smiths in any society other than a capitalist one.
In other words, it is not a category that can be discussed or understood sub specie aeternitatis
Ocelot, I know you're trying
Ocelot, I know you're trying to be helpful, but to a beginner like me your post assumes too much knowledge. Things have to be explained in terms that the learner understands, not those that the instructor understands.
On a better note, I followed your link, and found:
Joyce Tyldesley
Isn't it strange that every ruling class sees the past through its own ideas? With Greece being a slave-owning society, it could only imagine that same society in its own past.
Our rulers today do exactly the same thing themselves: they always see the past through their own eyes, which is why they make crap historians.
Joyce Tyldesley
God save us from bourgeois ideology, eh? From 'slave' labour to 'free' labour. Nothing ideological there, eh, Dr. Joyce!
Thanks for the link (and laugh), ocelot.
ocelot wrote: In other words,
ocelot
No, I agree, it must be understood from the perspective of the proletariat, that of Communism.
Quote: I am right in saying
and
You could measure concrete labour. After all, you could just count the number of shoes you've produced, how many feet of yarn spun, how many potatoes plucked etc. But the issue is that since these are qualitatively different use-values you can't easily compare them; they're not commensurable. If you need shoes, yarn and potatoes for you, all of these, as use-values, have the same "individual-value" (to use your terminology). The problem comes when exchange enters the picture.
It is only in exchange, however, that value really exists. It's that act that makes value socially valid. And in exchange, there is something in the commodity (a thing made for sale and it's also useful for someone) that makes qualitatively different use-values commensurable; and this something is value. And the exchange is based on the time it took to produce the commodities.
ocelot
Ocelot raises an extremely important point here. Categories like value and commodity are historically specific to capitalism. So when you write
it wouldn't be a Workers' Council that "measured" the value; it's the law of exchange established in the market place (something that occurs "behind the backs" of individual producers). The political significance of the category of value and the commodity is that as communists we want to get rid of them. It is value and the commodity form that enslaves the working class.
In a workers' council it would be more of a logistical affair, matching use-values* produced with those than need/want them.
*having said that, even use-value could be considered a capitalist category, though Marx seems to think that use-value, like work (known as concrete labour in capitalism) is transhistorical.
I think I might've introduced a few new things here so please let me know if I muddied things for you (though I am sure you would regardless).
Khawaga wrote: You could
Khawaga
Yeah, I think I was groping towards this 'commensurability' with my 'measure by comparison', though you've captured the concept more elegantly:
LBird
But, at the moment, something else that you've said (and ocelot) has sidetracked me.
Khawaga
Unfortunately, this then takes me back to my real initial problem with the issue of learning about 'value': why bother to learn about it, if it is to be of no use in a future Communist society?
From this perspective, 'value' might as well be 'grace': it's all bollocks, and neither will play any part in a society liberated from capitalism or catholicism.
Do you see my point, and problem? One could be a good Communist revolutionary and want to play an active part in the overthrow of the system and help build Workers' Councils without ever having struggled to understand 'value' (or,indeed, 'grace').
Unless I can overcome this objection, why would I want to understand the various 'values' and 'labours'?
Once more, this is a genuine question. To me, unless it is of some use in the future in explaining things to fellow workers and to help build a Communist sytem, there is no point to the effort to understand (other than just as an interest or hobby, like stamp collecting, which is irrelevant to Communism, just for its own sake).
In a nutshell, what's the point?
Quote: From this perspective,
Well, the thing is that it's not bollocks unfortunately. Value becomes real in the form of money (this is another level in Marx's argument), and as such it is power incarnate. And going from value to the commodity form, money, wage-labour etc. helps us realize the faultlines of capitalism and perhaps give guidance as to what is revolutionary politics and what is not (e.g. ethical consumption or the notion that mom n' pop stores are better than walmart etc.).
I completely agree with this:
Still, the point is that by having a good analysis of capitalism we will know how to destroy it, and more importantly what NOT to do come communism, e.g. any form of wage, commodities, money etc.
Khawaga has done a good job
Khawaga has done a good job of trying to clarify the matter in the most understandable terms possible on this thread.
However, my opinion is anyone new to Marx isn't going to gain much by asking somebody to break down individual concepts from _Capital_ into discrete, hermetic categories.
It's an irritating cliche at this point to refer to Marx's "dialectical method", but it really should be stressed that Marx's categories aren't intended to be grasped in isolation from one another, but rather acquire their full meaning only with reference to the categories introduced later in the account.
So the early chapters of _Capital_ might be frustrating to somebody looking to understand what underlies an individual act of exchange, but the concept of abstract labour really first starts to make the most sense when it's understood as a systemic logic that all producers are forced to adhere to, for example, in the chapter on the working day, or the section on the accumulation of capital. The mechanisms of absolute and relative surplus extraction analyzed by Marx, as well as the stuff on concentration, centralisation, reserve army of the unemployed etc., sort of retroactively "explain" the concepts introduced earlier in the book.
So my advice to anybody who has a hard time getting a full grasp of the categories in the first three chapters is to keep plowing along. Things get fleshed out as the book proceeds. This is a more fruitful approach rather than trying to get an airtight grasp on something in isolation from the very phenomena it is linked to.
Abstract Labour is the
Abstract Labour is the potential for labour, its not labour in action, it can potentially be anything.
Concrete labour is this potential labour being enacted. It is now no longer 'abstract', 'in general' or 'potential' but is instead in action. i,e actually sowing (rather than the potential to sow etc).
thats how I would explain the distinction in the simplest terms....
Angelus wrote: It's an
Angelus
Couldn't agree more, particularly with the advice of just plowing on. For too long I kept re-reading the first three chapters to get the "fundamental" concepts down, when in fact, Marx dialectical exposition throughout Capital explained it all for me in the later chapters. As I mentioned earlier, whenever a new level of abstraction is introduced, Marx always reminds the reader of what we (i.e. Marx + the reader) "already know" by a brief summary/re-statement of arguments and concepts from the earlier chapters.
So yeah, LBird, if you want to go on with this I suggest that stuff like contradiction and forms of appearance/value form is next. Not only will that help you in understanding value/use-value, but also exchange value, exchange, money and commodities.
Arbeiten wrote: Abstract
Arbeiten
Arbeiten, you're completely confusing abstract labour with labour-power. Labour-power is the potential to (the performance) of labour. And labour-power is simply the potential for any form of labour; you might be a software engineer, but the capitalist might very well have you cleaning the toilets instead. However, abstract labour is the condition for the existence of labour-power as a commodity, which in turn enables the capitalist to extract surplus-labour/value from the labour of the worker (and this labour is both abstract and concrete; the former necessary for the valorization process, the latter for the labour process).
Khawaga wrote: Value becomes
Khawaga
Perhaps this is part of my mistake: I'm assuming that understanding Marx's economics is of some use in the future, to allow workers to understand how they would run their own economy. You seem to be saying it is only of use in understanding capitalism today, to help politically analyse the beast as a guide to workers' action now.
I can't say that I'm convinced by this argument: surely political discussion and ideas (and consideration of philosophy and ideology) would be of more use for this purpose? There's no doubting, I'm still confused as to the real worth of the apparently immense efforts required to get to grips with 'value', etc.
Khawaga
I really appreciate yours and Angelus' efforts to try to explain this to me, but I have tried before to understand the 'economic stuff'. Someone recommended 'Value, Price and Profit', which I bought, but unless you already understand the concepts being used, how do you get any intellectual purchase on that or Capital? It all appears to be meaningless.
Angelus Novus
The problem is, if I don't have 'an airtight grasp' of the basic words, it might as well be written in Martian. How do you keep reading something that has no meaning? Does a 'flash' of inspiration suddenly come down on you from above? Does 'something' suddenly 'click'?
[start edit]
Unless I can use the concepts as I learn them, to explain something I already understand, they remain meaningless words. This is how I would build in more and more complexity, around an initial core of understanding. As it is, I might as well be talking about 'grace' and the power of 'prayer'.
[end edit]
This seems, for me at least, to be an insurmountable problem. I'm not happy about it, not least because of the valiant efforts K & AN have made to explain.
How do others, reading this thread in hope of enlightenment, feel? Has anyone come to grasp anything yet? I suppose I need to know is it just my personal blindspot, or was Bill Shatner, post 12, right?
LBird wrote: I can't say that
LBird
Well, Capital is all about political discussion and consideration of philosophy and ideology. What Marx sets out to do in Capital is reveal that bourgeois economics is nothing but ideologal and has the instrumental use of supporting capitalism so that it appears like there is no other alternative (they do this by simply assuming that the way in which things are now has always happened and will always happen). After all, Capital is supposed to be a weapon in the hands on the working class.
Actually, that's a very good recommendation. More or less it's Capital stripped down to its bare bones. Well, "Value, Price and Profit" together with "Capital and wage-labour". These texts were lectures that Marx gave to working mens associations back in the day. So please go on and read that text. Btw, how far did you get in Capital? What was your stumbling block?
I would say so; a lot of the concepts that were unclear for me in the first three chapters suddenly 'clicked' when I started reading about the working day, surplus-value etc. Still, don't get me wrong. Marx is dense and ain't easy, but in my opinion the payoff is huge in the end. Apart from personal experience, it's the book that has influenced me the most politically.
Khawaga wrote: Well, Capital
Khawaga
Well, I'm sure you know that I'm totally convinced philosophically and ideologically, and also politically and historically, but the economics is mystifying.
Khawaga
Yeah, this is the worrying bit - the truth is, it seems to be more of a burden than a weapon.
I've got the handbook with both VP&P and W-L&C. I need to try again, I think. As for Capital, all the history stuff is great - my view is, 'pity about the economics - spoils a good read!'. And I've always skipped the first three notorious chapters like the plague.
Khawaga
The problem is the trade off is not reading (and writing about) all the other subjects that I'm fascinated with, while trying to wade through treacle. I suppose I'm doing it through a sense of duty, not real desire.
I need to have a break from this for the time being, and have a re-think about how to approach the problem - perhaps re-read Capital from chapter 4.
Thanks anyway, Khawaga - I'm only sorry that your tremendous efforts haven't (this time) borne much fruit (with me, at least). I'll leave it at that, for now.
Well, my final suggestion
Well, my final suggestion then is to not skip the first three chapters. Just try, see how it goes.
argh christ your right, sorry
argh christ your right, sorry man, didn't read the question properly, school boy error.
On Capital being a weapon or a burden. I think it really depends on how you read it. As it seems you have already discussed, it really depends on how you read it. Of course it is out of date, things have changed etc, but I always like the stress on the inherent structural dynamics of capitalism, this for me at least keeps Capital alive and kicking.
I think abstract labour is
I think abstract labour is general undifferentiated human effort or work or labour.
Thus you go to work, clock in, expend effort doing something, anything, clock out and go home knackered as evidence of your expended labour power and life force etc.
As to it being concrete labour, like making a shoe or a use value, you may not even know what you are doing exactly as it may be a very small part of an overall process.
It is as if, in an analogy, you were driving a treadmill that was operating an invisible machine in another room that may be a handloom one minute or a pumping water another.
It is important in respect of value as it is that effort, as undifferentiated pure or abstract effort that determines value. And that same quantity of effort, as effort alone, can go into one use value or another, which is why one use value has the same value as another, in general.
Looking at it in a somewhat idealised and theoretical way from the other perspective of selling your human effort. If one type of work is less exhausting than another, and just as meaningless to you, but pays the same then you do that instead.
Thus you need a concept of ‘abstract labour’ for the concept of value and to analyse the capitalist process as a whole.
In fact when you ‘take out’ of your working day the specifics and details of what you are doing and its purpose in the greater scheme of things, if they mean anything to you in the first place, all that is left is that you are tired.
[that is having set aside all the complexities of skilled versus unskilled labour and the differentials in the value of labour power and productivity etc etc.]
Concrete labour or different types of labour are therefore subsets or categories of generalised or abstract labour.
You can use an analogy of energy. Thus an object in total can have an ‘abstract’ energy value.
That can exist as concrete energy;
ie heat energy or in other words it may be hot.
Kinetic energy or in other words it might be moving fast and have a momentum etc
Potential energy or in other words a stone on the top of a hill that could roll down.
Chemical energy ie a piece of coal that can burn.
Etc etc
Or in fact it could have a combination of concrete energies ie a hot piece of unburnt coal already rolling half way down a hill.
And just as the total ‘abstract’ energy value of an object can be made up of several ‘concrete energies’, the total economic value of a commodity is the overall summation of the particular types of effort or human ‘energy’ that has gone into it, or what it is.
And just as concrete energy values are exchangeable and in theory, conserved. Or in other words you burn a piece of coal to heat water to drive a steam engine to the top of a hill or whatever.
One type of concrete living labour that has been embodied in a use value is exchangeable for another type of concrete labour embodied in another use value.
Scientist account for energy in systems using a general or abstracted term, the Joule.
In the International System of Units a Joule is defined, for convenience, as the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre.
You could say in capitalism value was in effect ‘defined’ for convenience as the amount of labour expended (or work done) to produce a troy ounce of gold or whatever.
LBird wrote: The problem is,
LBird
This is a problem Marx himself flagged up - I think the first David Harvey lecture someone else mentioned already discusses this a bit. Basically, all the concepts are related to one another, so wherever he started the book, it would appear like he was dropping the concepts on you out of thin air. But as Khawaga says, it gets a lot easier going after chapter 3, and the concepts from the beginning start to sink in as they're applied to analysing aspects of capital, many of which resonate with everyday experience (e.g. the stuff on extending/intensifying the working day). You don't need to read Capital to struggle against capitalism, but as anti-capitalist theory goes it's one of the most worthwhile texts imho, and worth sticking with. When i first read it I had the advantage of being able to talk this stuff over with some people who'd read it a decade earlier, which really helped me get my head around it. Hopefully libcom can play the same role for people without a bunch of Marx nerds for mates!
Khawaga wrote: Rabbit
Khawaga
So, abstract labour is expressed in labour-hours, and concrete labour is expressed in the total use-value of the goods produced?
LBird
Yeah, it would be a weapon if they understood it. William Blake said "Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed" - all the workers who have been exposed to Marx's ideas but remain supporters of the capitalist system must not understand Marx's analysis.
Rabbit wrote: So, abstract
Rabbit
Yes, but it's more precise to say that abstract labour is expressed in value, which is measured in labour time. And concrete labour is expressed in use-value, which, if it can be counted, is measured in material output.
Khawaga wrote: Rabbit
Khawaga
Ok, then I think I've got this. Thanks.
Having read this thread, and
Having read this thread, and sympathizing with LBird, and whoever else has problems comprehending what abstract labour is, I wrote what follows, as hopefully offering some assistance. I think it is beyond the level of comprehension of the average five year old, but maybe not the average fifteen year old (with the aid of a dictionary for a couple of words). But if it helps just one person ....
ON ABSTRACT LABOUR
Abstract labour -- as per Marx -- is indeed a most difficult concept to grasp. And yet it is absolutely essential to understanding Marx's Capital, his critique of bourgeois political economy, and, not least, what exactly capital and capitalism are. Without understanding what capital and capitalism are, the struggle against them, and the struggle for communism, is blind. For without understanding what exactly capital and capitalism are, the struggle against them may well bring about a state of affairs in which certain non-essential features of capitalism -- features which nonetheless have figured prominently in its historical configuration -- are consciously abolished in the expectation that their abolition will be sufficient to eradicate capitalism, but in which capitalism's essentials remain in force, and so capitalism remains unsurpassed.
Abstract labour is not labour in general, labour stripped of all its specificities. This is a common misunderstanding of first-time readers of Chapter One of Volume One of Capital. It cannot be such, since such undifferentiated labour has existed in history for many thousands of years, far longer than capitalism has -- longer even than any form of human society, surely -- and the abstract labour which Marx claims is historically specific to it. Abstract labour is indeed undifferentiated, general labour, but this is only part of it; the latter is necessary to the former, but it is not sufficient for it.
To really understand abstract labour, we need to go much further than this trans-historical abstraction, and bring in the idea of generalized market exchange. Market exchange involves two separate parties exchanging items (use-values) at a rate, or in a relationship quantitatively, that they both agree on as fair and equal. This means that whatever various items (use-values) might be exchanged in such a manner must be commensurable: they must have a common measure which renders them so commensurable, and this applies not just for this or that exchanging party, but for any and all such parties. It is the market, generalized exchange, mechanism which renders this commensurability possible. There must be something common to all such exchangeable items to allow this to happen in a way that people (parties, exchangers) can rely on whenever they enter the market to participate in such exchange. Everyone vaguely familiar with Marx's Capital knows that for him (as for David Ricardo and various other theorists of bourgeois political economy prior to Marx) it is labour (time) that is this common denominator facilitating such exchange.
But it is not just any labour that serves this function. It is definitely not what Marx refers to as "concrete labour", i.e. this or that or any such particular instance of labour. If it takes me twice as much labour time to make item A than you, that doesn't make my specific A's worth twice as much as yours. And it is, again, not just general, undifferentiated labour (time). It is "socially necessary average labour time" -- this, for Marx, is the real substance of capitalist value. But socially necessary average labour time is something that needs to be established over time and involving a sufficient number of specific items (use-values) being exchanged via the market. Once a sufficient number of such instances occur, an average can be established. It is not established by some sort of impartial investigation or scientific analysis, but by means of repeated negotiation between exchanging parties of the same type of item (use-value) on the market.
It is this average, once established, that sets the standard on the market of the value of the item in question. And it is this average that Marx called "abstract labour", when he posited that value in capitalism is abstract labour, and that abstract labour is the substance of (capitalist) value. Since this process of abstraction occurs in an objective manner, by way of social exchange, in the market, rather than within the minds of humans (as do typical forms of abstraction), Marx refers to it as a process of "real abstraction".
Khawaga wrote: Yes, but it's
Khawaga
...which furthermore can only be expressed as price, in money.
I think this is a very important point, to emphasize the difference between substantialist, "pre-monetary" notions of value, and what I regard (following Backhaus and Heinrich) as Marx's monetary theory of value, of the capitalist mode of production being one in which production is conducted for exchange.
The former conception seems to regard "value" as some transhistorical measure of labour expenditure, upon which money and exchange relations are merely superimposed. A prime example of this is Ernest Mandel's Marxist Economic Theory, which goes out of its way to cite anthropological studies in an effort to prove that labour-time measuring as a basis for the commensurability of acts of labour pre-dates monetary exchange.
Kind of beyond the scope of this thread, but a very important distinction. It's what separates Marx's critique of political economy from the pre-monetary theories of Smith, Ricardo, or Proudhon.
My five-year-old's mind is
My five-year-old's mind is trying hard to wrap itself around your post, waslax.
waslax
I understand the first sentence. Could you expand on the second? If I want to exchange a pair of shoes for a loaf of bread, why is it necessary for the two goods to have a common measure?
What if you're exchanging an object that required zero labour time to produce, like a rock you picked up from the ground? Or would you count the time spent in picking it up?
I understand why it needs to be established over time - the word 'average' suggests it. But why does a determination of socially necessary average labour time require the exchange of goods on the market? And exchange of what goods, exactly?
So the term 'socially necessary average labour time' is interchangeable with the term 'abstract labour'? And both, therefore, are specific to a commodity, a place, and a time?
Angelus wrote: The former
Angelus
Yeah, I never got why on earth anyone would assume value as transhistorical. You can easily make the claim that use-value is (I think Marx argues this in the Grundrisse if I remember correctly), but value never... Mandel just seems to take Engles at his word that the first few chapters of Capital is historical rather than logical.
Rabbit
Exchange of commodities, i.e. articles produced for the purposes of exchange. Determination of socially necessary labour time is what competition is all about. Angelus indicated this with his comment:
Socially necessary labour time is not really an average, but the least time it takes to produce a particular commodity (which then becomes an average). If you produce 1 shoe in 2 hours, but I can do it in 1 hour (because I have a machine), my commodity could be cheaper on the market. So hypothetically, if there were only two consumers they would buy what I produced simply because it's cheaper and you'd go out of business. You'd be forced to sell your commodity at its social value, the new socially necessary average. For Marx this is what drives competition in capitalism; the difference from bourgeois economics is that this competition does not com from some mystical supply and demand of the market, but from production itself (but it appears as if it happened on the market).
PS: I am half-asleep typing this, so not sure if it makes sense.
Rabbit wrote: My
Rabbit
Well, you are planning to make that exchange with someone else, right? What if that person doesn't agree with the rate of exchange you propose? Maybe they want more from you than you are offering. The exchange must be mutually agreeable. So there needs to be some 'neutral' factor common to both items that both parties can agree on.
As with Marx, we are only concerned with exchange of items that are products of labour. Why would someone give up something in exchange for something that required zero labour time to produce? Perhaps because it was very rare? That is different, and its price is all down to supply and demand. It's actual value would still be zero. In a case such as fruit that grows naturally, the value is determined by how much labour is required to bring it to market (I would think). Not much, clearly.
Marx is quite good on this, as I recall. But, in my own words, what better way of comparing the various different amounts of labour-time embodied within the items concerned? Each party to the exchange is assumed to try to maximize the return they receive, and to minimize what it is they exchange. Enough of this will eventually find an average rate. Again, we are talking about any items which are products of human labour, which can be quantified, and specified qualitatively (i.e. as use-values).
Well, as far as Marx is concerned, yes, the two terms are interchangeable. While it's true that socially necessary average labour time is just one particular form of abstract labour, it is the only one that Marx is concerned with. General, undifferentiated labour by itself would count as a form of abstract labour. It is of course labour at its very most abstract. But it doesn't help us understand capitalism and capitalist value.
Your final question I am not fully clear on. It seems ambiguous to me. However, each commodity has its own socially necessary average labour time. Of course, two different commodities can have the same socially necessary average labour time. In terms of place, capitalism did arise at a specific time in specific places, so that early on (in capitalist history) a commodity would have one value in one market (place) and another value in another one. Protectionism between countries (national markets), or even between regions within a country, maintains this difference. Gradually, over time, as protectionism is reduced, a world market develops, and a common value for the whole does too. In terms of time, definitely socially necessary average labour time and value do change. In general, they decline over time, as new labour-saving technology gets invented and implemented. Production which goes in this direction is rewarded with a greater return ("surplus-profit" for Marx), since it creates more output with the same amount of labour-time. This is the direction capitalism moves irresistably in, but it leads ultimately to crisis and collapse. (Not necessarily total collapse, but partial collapse can still be devastating. ;) ) Marx's Capital deals with the specifics of all this brilliantly.
Khawaga wrote: Socially
Khawaga
As I understand it, it really is an average, but the more competition develops, the smaller the range of differences in actual labour-time, since, as you note, those who take more time to produce are forced out of business. In your example, the average would be 1.5 hours. It is up to you to either continue selling your product at that rate, and realize a surplus-profit on each item you sell, or to lower your price to try to corner the market, and force your competitor out of business. This decision is of course a gamble. But in competitive capitalism there will soon enough be a producer who will lower their selling price, forcing others to match it, which of course they can only do and make a profit on if they adopt the same production process with the same technology you have (or one equally as or even more productive). A new average is then established. You acknowledged as much yourself, I think. But you are right to emphasize the "necessary" part of the formula, as this refers to the minimum necessary time to produce the thing. Competition, and the technological invention it drives, keeps pushing this minimum lower.
Actually contrary to what
Actually contrary to what seemed to be implied in a earlier post Marx starts off with a trans-historical analysis of the “labour theory of value” or more properly the Law Of Value.
Then with the understanding or theory of it established then applies that Law to capitalism.
And in fact the law of value, of which ‘abstract Labour’ is a part, preceded capitalism, as Engels pointed out in the supplement in Volume III written for those had got the wrong end of the stick.
And far from the law of value being historically specific to capitalism, it actually starts to breakdown under capitalism due to the effect of the average rate of profit ie stuff exchanging for above and below their values due the rate of profit demanded on different amounts of capital etc etc.
Thus;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/supp.htm#law
and as a synopsis from Engels covering abstract labour we have thus;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/ch01.htm
So in other general words; work or activity is a compound of two different things, which is dialectics in the sense of looking at ‘one thing’ as a composite of two things.
That is a ‘definite productive activity, weaving labour, tailoring labour, etc. — “useful labour”;’
And
“simple expenditure of human labour-power, precipitated abstract (general) labour.”
And you can ‘abstract’ either out depending upon what you want to do.
The tertium comparationis is useful, apart from being in Latin, as it sums up the logic that Karl uses in the crucial opening pages of Volume One.
It means basically that the third part of a comparison is the quality that two things which are being compared have in common.
So he theorises that as one commodity can be compared with as an equivalent with another, the equivalence must (or could be) the result of another as yet obscure ‘reducible’ quantitative ‘property’ in which they are identical or equal.
That is in fact the bedrock of scientific analysis.
Thus if a litre of water weighs the same as a block of iron it must be because they contain the same amounts of something else.
Which is in this case that they contain the same amount of baryons (for simplicity protons and neutrons).
Water and Iron only differ in their concrete form due to the different arrangement of the ‘abstract’ baryons.
Although scientist will never be content until they can reduce mass to one abstract thing and can say the both contain the same amount of one even more abstract thing, probably gravitons or something
Which is what they are doing with the Hadron collider thing.
My inner five year old is
My inner five year old is displeased.
Oh well, I give up. I'm off to become a Randian!
Jk
Dave, I am far, far happier
Dave, I am far, far happier with this...
Dave B
...than I was with this...
Khawaga
It must be the historian in me, that has difficulty believing that all the detailed thinking behind 'Critical Political Economy' can only be applied to capitalism.
I'm now becoming warier of some of the things that Khawaga and ocelot said earlier. But, if anything, this has re-energised me, to think that there may be some more mileage in some of the things that I outlined earlier (the 'Smith family' model), which were far simpler to comprehend than the esoteric complexities of the main explanations.
This doesn't mean that Khawaga was necessarily wrong (and Khawaga was definitely helpful in keeping me thinking), but that I still think that there must be a far simpler way of teaching the meanings within Capital to other workers.
Of far more serious implication, though, is my next thought - if Dave B is correct, and 'value' (of some sort which I haven't yet isolated in my own thinking) is transhistorical, than why can't it be applied to the future Socialist/Communist society, to help workers organise production efficiently?
Heresy?
LBird, Dave B adopted Engles'
LBird, Dave B adopted Engles' interpretation. There's been quite a lot of critique of Engels misinterpretation of those chapters; an interpretation that he offered after editing together Volume 3 (well more than editing; he rewrote huge parts of it; some chapters are completely Engles'). He could not get his head around how values are transformed into prices. His solution was to argue that Capital should be read almost as a linear history rather than a logical argument that progressively introduces new levels of abstraction.
Treating value as transhistorical is silly in my opinion because that is exactly that Marx warns against when he critiques the categories of bourgeois economics. That they're not seen as historical. So paradoxically, a so-called "historical" approach is actually ahistorical.
You Smith family model, btw, can work as an example both for a logical and a historical interpretation of the first few chapters.
I have undertaken a
I have undertaken a translation of an essay by Ingo Elbe that addresses some of those Engelsian distortions of Marx's work. The English translation remains incomplete but a few key passages are available:
http://communism.blogsport.eu
"Use-value" refers only to
"Use-value" refers only to the utility, the usefulness of the object, product. Consequently "use-value" is more than trans-historical, it can even be independent of human production. Thus Marx refers to nature as being a source of "wealth," in that nature provides objects of utility to human beings independent of the social organization of labor, of production
Concrete labor is the specific labor expended in making an object, and consequently concrete labor is not restricted to the production of commodities. Concrete labor is embodied in shoes created by direct producers for direct consumption, shoes created by direct producers for indirect consumption; a leather belt, milk, cheese, beef stew etc.
Abstract labor refers to labor that is conducted under specific social relations, specific differences, and even conflicts, between labor and the conditions of labor; the conditions of labor under capitalism is the organization of labor as wage-labor for the aggrandizement of surplus labor-time.
Abstract labor refers to the social mediation, the mechanism for measuring labor, converting it into a universal medium for exchange, for accumulation; converting it into value.
"Time is everything. Man is nothing, or at most, time's carcass" wrote Marx. He wasn't kidding.
So Fred didn’t understand the
So Fred didn’t understand the Law of Value then!!!!!!!!!
Ok then where did Marx say that the Law of Value or in other words that the exchange values of commodities was specific to capitalism?
Was Aristotlian Greece and feudal Europe transhistorical to capitalism?
The following quote from Karl is useful I think as it deals with that ‘obscure’, ‘common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house’ that needs to be ‘deciphered’. But was even more obscure for Aristotle than it is in capitalism
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Part I: Commodities and Money Chapter One: Commodities
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
And in feudalism we have Karl applying the law of value to deduce surplus value and surplus labour etc just as in capitalism. In fact as he says it is such an obvious case it hardly merits dwelling on it.
Capital Vol. III Part VI Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent Chapter 47. Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent I. Introductory Remarks
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm
On value in socialism it will exist as Karl (and Fred) said it would, but without exchange value, but lets leave that for now.
We did it here a few years ago.
Marx-Engels Correspondence
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868 Engels To Marx In London
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_04_26.htm
Good point!
That made it into the relatively tough section in Volume III on Merchants capital.
m is for the german mehrverte or surplus value a translation error that also went into Volume III at one point.
waslax wrote: Well, you are
waslax
I understand that the exchange rate is negotiated. If the other party doesn't agree with my rate of exchange, we can negotiate further, or break off the deal. And I agree that, by definition of 'commodity', labour time is common to all commodities. What I don't get is, why must labour be the common denominator that the exchange is based on? Why can't use-value be the common denominator?
For instance: I can imagine an exchange between two people in which neither know anything about how the goods were produced (their abstract labour). In order to exchange, theoretically, all they need is the framework "I want what you have, you want what I have." In this case, the goods are made equal in terms of use-value, not abstract labour.
You might say that use-value cannot be the common denominator because one use-value cannot be compared to another. But neither can one instance of concrete labour be compared to another. You can lose the qualitative aspect of labour and by abstracting to 'socially necessary average labour time', but does that make it a better method of comparison? How can you equate 5 hours of work coal mine to 5 hours of filing paper in an office? Besides, the same method of abstraction can be applied to use-value, creating something like 'utility' in mainstream economics, an abstraction to beat all abstractions.
Are you saying that, given the socially necessary average labour time of good A, and the market exchange rate between A and B, we can deduce the socially necessary average labour time of good B?
If so, I'm interested in how we can determine the socially necessary average labour time of good A, without reference to any exchange rates. How is this done?
Thanks for clearing up that mess about what 'abstract labour' refers to. I much prefer the term 'socially necessary average labour time' - it has units!
Footnote 19 from that Elbe
Footnote 19 from that Elbe piece is very interesting for what LBird was asking
LBird
The problem if we take value with us as a concept for planning leads us down the road of centralized planning:
Elbe
I wish people would back
I wish people would back things up. This is a discussion about Marx’s interpretation of the labour theory of value not a list of other peoples interpretations.
I am paraphrasing what Karl and Engels wrote down, open and welcome to attack.
( I can’t take seriously the attack Engels and thus drop him.)
I will admit however that as regards the labour theory of value that the competitive and international market dimension of capitalism can be seen as giving a stimulus to commodities being sold at their value particularly as regards to the caveat of socially necessary labour.
And abstract labour or labour in general manifests itself more clearly in the fluid division of labour with wage labour being sold and hawked as a commodity etc.
And work just becomes a matter of the time and effort you spend at it irrespective of were it is or what you are doing.
What is going on here is logical scientific reductionism to develop laws and formulae to be applied back to the real world for understanding as with Aristotle in his application of tertium comparationis to exchange value.
Versus sociological whaffle.
tertium comparationis was done on the fourth page of the opening chapter. after having taken out ‘the concrete forms of that labour’.
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Part I: Commodities and Money
Chapter One: Commodities
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
By the way Rabbits points are good ones, as is the stuff on skilled and unskilled labour.
As was the stuff about why a feather doesn’t fall to the ground as fast as a hammer etc.
Buts lets follow and understand the logic and Marx first and then attempt to trash it later, you can’t criticise something until you understand it first, unfortunately.
Arguing that the law of value
Arguing that the law of value is "trans-historical" based on Aristotles' incomplete account kind of proves the opposite. Since the Athenian economy was not governed by a fully developed law of value, Aristotle's account was necessarily incomplete. Historical materialism is more powerful than even the greatest intellect.
Secondly, we need to be very careful about Marx's exposition of ground-rent. First and foremost since at all points when Marx is talking about ground-rent he is careful to identify ground-rent as the way in which value in land is realized economically under capitalism. He makes it clear this ground-rent is capitalism's encounter with landed-property, and that rent persists because capital cannot fully overcome the limitations of this landed property, and could not without abolishing private property in its entirety.
All societies do not labor under the law of value. All societies do labor under the need to apportion, distribute, organize, expend, the total socially available labor time in a manner that satisfies the needs of the society to reproduce its relations of production.
That is mightily different than the law of value, which is a specific expression, manifestation of this need based on the class relations of capital.
Marx is very clear in his critique of capital that he is not expounding on universal laws, or relations, common to all societies at all points in time. The laws are not laws like the conservation of energy is a law, or the 2nd law of thermodynamics is a law. The "laws" are nothing other than the necessities, the internal logic, of the modes of production. They are nothing but expressions of the class relationships at the basis of production.
That Greek and Roman societies may have had a proto-proletariat; that the word for capital actually derives from those societies' words for cattle is very interesting in foreshadowing what developed in England after the 16th century, and then in Europe. But it does not mean that Greek and Roman society were organized around a law of value. They could not be, unless they were organized around the production of value; of appropriated wage-labor.
On the book-keeping of value
On the book-keeping of value in socialism, it isn’t rocket science.
If we are going to build a bridge in socialism we can do it this way or that way using these materials or those type of materials ie we could build it out of titanium or steel and both methods would produce an equally useful bridge.
So the two plans are put forward and the book-keepers say are but titanium takes longer to make and involves more effort and therefore has more value. And thus the titanium bridge would ‘cost’ more in human effort or would be more ‘expensive’ in terms of ‘expended’ human labour power.
Not exchange value as no one would be buying and selling titanium for steel or whatever.
So;
Capital Vol. III Part VII Revenues and their Sources Chapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of Production
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm
Dave B, the whole point for
Dave B, the whole point for Marx is that he "discovered" the dual character of labour, i.e. that labour is both abstract and concrete at the same time, but that this duality exists only in capitalism, that is, when capital makes the commodity form its own and labour-power becomes a commodity.
The real world that you're referring to Dave is the capitalist world for Marx; specifically the imaginary, topsy-turvy world of bourgeois political economists. Your Aristotle example is interesting, but you do not include the observation that Aristotle could not have "discovered" value since ancient Greece was a society in which production was mainly done by slaves. In other words value is a social and historically specific category.
Khawaga wrote: The problem if
Khawaga
Why would 'planning' be necessarily 'centralised'?
Surely workers will have to make all sorts of plans (transport infrastructure, building hospitals, etc.), and some concept of some sort of 'value' will be required to allow us to make decisions, to allow us to prioritise what we produce and when, and to bring together perishable goods in a timely manner.
And these decisions, for Communism, would necessarily involve democratic decision-making by Workers' Councils, with the decision being made at the appropriate level of Council covering all those involved by the effects of that decision.
Once again, Khawaga, I'm not too sure, yet, of the implications of these political views of what Communism is, for the interpretation of what 'value' is.
But one thing I know already for sure: one's economics, politics and ideology and all intermingled.
'Value' (and interpretation of what Marx 'meant') is as much an ideological question as it is a narrowly economic one.
Anyone trying to get a grip
Anyone trying to get a grip on what Marx is talking about in Capital should notice that there is significant disagreement about fundamental aspects of his theory. This makes it all the more essential to actually read what Marx says in Capital. If you don't read it, you have no basis on which to evaluate all of these contending interpretations. Not that reading it makes everything crystal clear. But, as Marx said in the Preface to the French Edition of Capital, there is no "royal road to science."
That said, the historical specificity of Marx's analysis is of the utmost importance. Marx believed the political economists' treatment of capitalist categories and laws as ahistorical reflected a blind spot of great significance.
See, for example, Marx's words in the first chapter of Capital: Marx
Briefly, Marx's object of study is the capitalist mode of production, and he begins by analyzing the commodity, the general form of products in a capitalist society. The fact that labour is expressed in "value" is not, as the above passage suggests, a "nature-imposed necessity," or an ahistorical fact. What is ahistorical, or common to all forms of human society, is the production of use-values, or useful articles. So, when Marx analyses the commodity as the basic form of capitalist wealth, and says that the two factors internal to this form as a historical object are use-value and value, it is quite easy to see that the commodity's character as "value" is its historically-specific aspect. Or else we say that "commodities" would be produced even in a communist society, which directly contradicts Marx.
Marx often criticized specific economists for transforming "value" into something absolute or ahistorical (and his whole theory of fetishism makes little sense if a useful good is naturally a bearer of value.) As Marx wrote in Book III of Theories of Surplus Value Marx
And of course Marx makes much the same point about specific social relations in the first chapter of Capital:
Marx
And Marx makes the same point again: Marx
As this idea of historical specificity was used by Marx to criticize bourgeois economists, it was of special concern to him. I think that it is plain that Marx does not write about any ahistorical "Law of Value." To do so would be to say that private property and commodity production are entirely natural!
And lastly, regarding Dave B's comment that "...far from the law of value being historically specific to capitalism, it actually starts to breakdown under capitalism....": Marx identified this idea with Adam Smith and specifically singled it out for criticism. For example, writing about Torrens in Book III of Theories of Surplus Value, Marx comments on a remark of his about "that early period of society [before capitalism]," writing, Marx
Marx thus does not see the law of value as ahistorical. He further writes that Torrens follows Adam Smith in supposing that the law of value applies to this early period of society but no longer applies when commodities are products of capital. Marx writes, Marx
Marx therefore considers Torrens’ position to be flawed: Marx
For those who are interested, Dave B's interpretation of some of this stuff was criticized by Mikus and I on an old thread: http://libcom.org/forums/theory/capital-vol-1-reading-group-chapters-1-2-22092008?page=2
Dave B wrote: So the two
Dave B
Aha. So in your example, instead of labour time, the common denominator is labour power, a phrase Marx also uses. How are we to measure expended labour power? Calories burned? Pounds of sweat?
Yeah maybe it is hard to
Yeah maybe it is hard to tell, some kind of criteria about who or what requires more work or effort than another.
Time spent or expended would be useful but the intensity of work would have to come into it.
Working in a titanium plant might be a bit cushy with electrolysing ores or whatever as opposed to the manly stuff involved in steel production.
And as to the trans-historical theory of value Karl goes further, which is fine with me as a thought experiment scientist, as regards to trans historical imaginative fiction with Robinson and Crusoe.
At 1719, early ‘capitalism’ and abstract labour value etc on one Island.
But you see I don’t think it was stupid as that; it is what us scientists do all the time as with Einstien’s spook effect thought experiment on electrons, although he lost that one,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Dave B: From what I've been
Dave B: From what I've been reading of Marx, I don't think Robinson Crusoe makes for a good example of the theory of labour-value. Since Crusoe doesn't live in a capitalist society, his labour does not produce commodities. He produces food and shelter for himself, but these goods aren't meant for exchange. Thus, they have no exchange value. You can't even draw a fine line between his labour and non-labour.
Rabbit wrote: waslax
Rabbit
I don't see the point in asking "why must it be so?" The question is, in the actual history of capitalism, is it or is it not so? It clearly explains a lot about how capitalism works, if it is indeed so. How could use-value serve the same purpose? Each different use-value would have to be exchangeable -- and therefore commensurable -- with each other one. How would that work -- without any reference to the labour put into each such? How would it be determined, e.g., how many loaves of bread would be standardly exchanged for a leather coat?
Yes, such an exchange can occur -- there is nothing stopping it from occurring. But we aren't really so concerned with this or that exchange, are we? We are concerned, once again, with the actual historical reality of capitalism and its markets. So we are talking about exchanges in general, of which there have been very many over the years, where there is a standard rate of exchange of items exchanged. And we are talking about people, initially, who are trying to get what they need to live and who are engaging in significant durations of labour in order to produce the items they are looking to exchange in order to acquire what they need to live. These people will have some idea about how much labour is required (i.e. the average minimum, i.e. abstract labour) to produce the item. Obviously they will know how much time they have laboured to produce the item. And once they go through the exchange process a few times, and think about how some exchanges perhaps aren't exactly equal or fair, where one party "gets the better" (or "takes advantage") of the other, they will likely begin exchanging closer to whatever the market standard is. Remember that they will learn from others what rate of exchange (for the same item) they have exchanged at, and regular exchanging parties will soon enough be posting their own exchange rates. I'm leaving out here, of course, any reference to money, since that is how we are conceiving of things, even though in actual history money was the medium of such markets and exchanges. When you realize the role money has had in capitalism, value as expressing abstract labour makes a lot more sense; whereas, abstracting from money in analyzing exchange and value in capitalism, makes it easier to see exchange as more like barter, and more difficult to see any 'need' for abstract labour.
An hour of labour equals an hour of labour. They are both labour of an equal duration of time. But obviously some labour is "worth more" than other labour. That's part of the beauty of Marx's theory: labour itself -- actually labour-power -- is a commodity that is sold on the labour market, and factors that make some worth more than others are things like how skilled it is, how much training or education is required to do it, how dangerous it is, etc. As we well know, an hour of a software engineer's labour is worth a lot more than an hour of a janitor's labour. Nevertheless, at whatever the level of value of the labour concerned is, the product's value is still a factor of the amount of labour needed to produce it. So, e.g. other things being equal, if item A requires 5 hours labour worth 4 units per hour, while item B requires 5 hours labour worth only 2 units per hour, item A will have a value twice that of item B. The ratio -- of the different values of the labour involved -- gets taken into account, but labour-time remains the basic determining factor. The market takes all of this into account.
The answer to the first question is yes. I think your latter question here is confused. (Sorry) You ask "how we can determine the socially necessary average labour time of good A, without reference to any exchange rates", when you had begun by saying "given the socially necessary average labour time of good A". So you had started out already assuming that this amount was known. It doesn't make sense to then ask how we can know it. But if we don't make that assumption of knowing the amount beforehand, of course it is only by reference to exchange and exchange rates that we learn it. Repeated exchange eventually establishes an average. There is nothing circular about that, though. Unless you're suggesting that there needs to be an independent way of verifying this. (That would be tantamount to asking for scientific proof of Marx's theory of value; but of course no theory of value, Marx's or any other, is capable of such proof.) In theory, one could look at all the of the various labour processes required to produce a given item, and all of the different ones that there are producing it for a given market, and find the average, without any reference to exchanges of the item in question.
OK, just to clarify a few
OK, just to clarify a few things. As you can see (hopefully) from the above, there are a number of different interpretations or readings of Marx's work. One of these "readings" we call the 'orthodox Marxist' reading, which is (roughly) what Dave B is defending above.
Amongst other things, this reading (originally concocted by Engels and Karl Kautsky) holds to the somewhat miraculous belief that Marx and Engels were "two bodies, one mind(soul)". That is to say that anything that comes out of Engels' pen, even after Marx's death in 1883 makes him unable to protest, is ultimately part and parcel with "Marxism" and couldn't possibly be in contradiction with Marx's analysis.
There are also other non- or anti-orthodox readings which reject this as arrent nonsense and have repeatedly proferred as evidence, quotes from Marx which they submit are in obvious contradiction to Engels' writings. Especially the notorious "Supplement" to Vol III. And this, I might add not only in post-WWII readings such as the Italian operaisti or the German Neue Marx-Lektüre (New Marx Reading), but going back at least to Rosa Luxemburg who accused Engels and Kautsky of re-writing Marx in the production of Volume III in a way that was tantamount to forgery.
So this is hardly a new idea, and one for which a substantial volume of evidence has been put forward over the last century, hence Dave B's affectation of shock and surprise ("!!!!!!") that anyone would even think of suggesting that Engels' understanding of the law of value was not the same as Marx's, is disingenous.
Back to the question of whether abstract labour and value are categories specific to the historical period where capitalist social relations dominate society, or are some transcendant "eternal laws of history".
The Stalinists had a very clear incentive to say that value was not only a feature of capitalism, but socialism as well. This was because they were attempting to use 'socially necessary labour time' as the numeraire to govern their state-owned monopoly economy (in the absence of price setting via markets). Clearly if they accepted that the law of value was limited to capitalist societies, this gave the lie to their contention that the USSR was socialist.
Given the Trotskyists opposition to Stalinism, you might think that they would have attacked this line of argument. In fact, as far as the orthodox Trotskyists went, Ernst Mandel (mentioned above) being a leading example, they in fact accepted that the USSR was on some economic level, not capitalist, and also accepted that the law of value will continue to apply in socialism, at least in the "lower phase" (according to Marx's notes on the Gotha Programme - a key plank in the orthodox faith). Hence the orthodox Trotskyists insistance that the USSR was a 'degenerated worker's state' rather than some authoritarian statist variant of capitalism.
What united both Trotskyists and Stalinists, despite their political differences, was a loyalty to the schema of orthodox Marxism originally laid out by Kautsky, despite their (again political) criticisms of him. The pre-war ultra-left Marxists critics of Lenin and his successors, whether Stalinist or Trotskyist, also in many ways, clung to the orthodox reading of Marx. This is clearly laid out in the Programme of the GiK (here on this site), which is again committed to continuing to use 'labour accounting' to manage allocation and distribution in a post-revolutionary socialist society.
In the post-ww2 period, the ultra-left position evolved somewhat from the old or paleo-ultra positions, going through a transitional "conseillism autogestionnaire" phase (meso-ultra) in the 50s and 60s which ended in a muddle which led to people either rejecting Marx entirely (Socialisme ou Barbarie's Castoriadis & Lyotard for e.g.) or eventually making the rupture that led to the "neo-ultra" positions of the likes of Dauvé et al, which now aim for 'immediate communisation', rejecting the notion of any "socialist law of value" in any so-called transitional phase.
But there is a historical ground for this fundamental schism that has run through the entire socialist movement from it's inception, which goes back before Marx. In fact the full intent of Marx's work does not make entire sense until you understand the kind of 'socialism' that he was writing against.
The origins of the socialist movement lie in the original Co-operative movement of the 1820s (not to be confused with today's ethical retail and worker-run business co-ops). An argument arose in that movement around the issue of "Labour Notes". This was the idea that because the working class were exploited by being paid by capitalists less than the value of their product, they should arrange to work without masters and exchange their products with each other in proportion to the labour-time embodied in them, using a system of Labour notes (rather than bank notes) at self-run exchanges. (This idea was brought back from the USA by Robert Owen and is pretty much the same as Josiah Warren's ideas). By cutting out the exploiter, the Labour notes advocates hoped to secure "the right to the full product of labour" for the working class.
It was against this "distributist" socialism that Marx set out to provide an analysis to show that "fair exchange" schemes (in our day "LETS", worker cooperatives, local currencies, and other such schemes) will never bring the working class the ability to escape from exploitation, as exploitation does not originate in the sphere of circulation - where it does in fact appear - but in the process of production itself.
Ironically, the "orthodox Marxist" reading of Marx, took Marx's painstaking efforts to untangle the spheres of production and circulation, in order to expose this problem, as meaning that the two sphere were completely separate - therefore, there was no problem with retaining the relations of distribution of capitalism, so long as production was transformed, due to the common ownership of the means of production. This, ultimately, led back to the idea of workers receiving a wage in "I can't believe it's not labour notes"* certificates of hours work, to be exchanged for means of consumption of equivalent 'socially necessary labour time' at the state store. This idea of the separation of the relations of distribution and the relations of production is such an article of faith for the orthodox, that in the Introduction to the Penguin edition of Capital vol. III, Ernst Mandel goes out of his way to point out that when Marx wrote of the relationship between the relations of distribution and the relations of production (in what became ch. 51 of volume 3) that they are inseperable, that this was not to be taken 'literally', falling back, as ever, on the support of the Gothakritik.
So, in summary, the orthodox Marxist reading that value is a trans-historical category, not historically specific to capitalism (despite all the evidence in Marx's writings, a small selection of which Dave C has quoted above), is directly related to their conception of socialism based on labour-value accounting and differential distribution or remuneration based on labour contributed - a.k.a the wage (to each "according to deed", as opposed to "according to need"). The anti-orthodox view is that capitalist relations are embedded not only in the private ownership of the means of production, but also in it's specific and historically unique relations of distribution (exchange, value). That in order to escape from capitalism we need to not only socialise the means of production, but also to abolish value, wages and exchange (and by consequence, the state, which is above all a body of wage-workers, armed or not).
As a post-script, getting back to Ancient Egypt (as mentioned in that truly dumb-ass qoute from Engels about the law of value going back 8000 years). One detail is that as the economy acquired a numeraire (the deben see here and here) and a price list of the official deben prices of various goods and chattels was published. But this is not the law of value, which Marx expressly identifies as being produced by the 'blind operation' of market competition, but the rule of the God-kind, the Pharaoh. This practice of price setting by the reigning political authority in fact continues through most of human history prior to the emergence of capitalism (see Georges Rudé's work on the bread riots of the middle ages, which were aimed - and in fact still are - at getting the political authority to set the official price of bread at a more affordable rate (how effective such a measure actually is in conditions of growing market forces, is another matter)
Ocelot, thanks alot for
Ocelot, thanks alot for putting this discussion into some sort of 'ideological' context.
If I've understood you correctly, you seem to be saying the following (but please put me right if I'm mistaken):
Position A (that of Khawaga, ocelot, dave c, for eg.?)
Non-orthodox Marxism (based an Marx alone)
- value is historically specific to capitalism (ie. won't exist under Communism at all)
- Communism has only one phase/stage
- therefore, no need for any sort of 'state'
- based on 'Anarchism' (including Luxembourg)
Position B (that of Dave B, for eg.?)
Orthodox Marxism (based on Marx, but also Engels & Kautsky)
- value is trans-historical (ie. will exist at least in the early part of Communism)
- Communism has a early stage of Socialism
- therefore, a need for some sort of 'Workers' state'
- based on 'Marxism' (including Stalinism, Trotskyism, Left Communism)
Is this a fair summation of what you are saying?
One further question:
ocelot
Couldn't it be argued that that problem with the Stalinist USSR was not that they argued 'value is a feature of Socialism' (ie. the early phase of Communism), but that the economy of the Stalinist USSR was not under the democratic control of the proletariat?
In other words, 'value' under proletarian democracy would be entirely different to 'value' under market capitalism or Stalinist dictatorship, and that that was the real problem, ie. a lack of proletarian democracy, not the 'false use of historically-specific value'.
'Value', under prol. dem. would (once again?) become a 'socio-economic' category, rather than a narrowly 'economic' category, as under the impersonal, undemocratic market. The term 'value' under Critical Political Economy would be different to that under Neo-Classical Economics.
This whole post is very tentative, and I would welcome your criticisms, corrections and further explanations and clarifications.
LBird wrote: Ocelot, thanks
LBird
Well, close. However there have been Orthodox Marxists like the pre-ww2 council communists, who might have not have been up for a 'Workers' state' (but my knowledge of the early councillists is very limited, I'm sure there are others who can clarify). As for Dave B's actual position, I admit to being somewhat in the dark. The arguments he has advanced in this thread are all of the orthodox type, however he is also a member of the SPGB, who's online texts on 'what is socialism' seem to be very much against the retention of the law of value (or the state) in socialism - at least to my brief readings.
LBird
Not only could that position be argued, but indeed it has been. But you're actually making two propositions here, which don't necessarily have to be connected.
1. The problem with the Stalinist economy was not the economic base of value accounting, but the political problem of the lack of genuine proletarian democracy?
2. Would the term 'value' itself not change meaning in a situation of genuine self-management of social production?
1. is commonly put forward by Trotskyists for e.g. - and equally commonly criticised by their opponents (whether anarchists or ultra-left Marxists) on the grounds that it reproduces the competitive 'dog eat dog' dynamic of capitalism.
2. That is indeed likely and desireable - i.e. that we "value" free time, methods of production that don't destroy our environment, processes that are co-operative rather than competitive, and so on. But here we are reclaiming 'value' as being something founded in subjectivities, brought together in cooperative political processes, rather than something alienated that stands objectified against our own desires and is expressed as a repressive relation of force.
Thanks again, ocelot. I sure
Thanks again, ocelot. I sure you're as aware as I am that 'ideological underpinnings' play a great part in any analysis/ explanation - that's why I'm so keen to expose these, as a basis to further discussion about individual-use-value/concrete labour and social-value/abstract labour.
Indeed, my very characterisation of u-v/c-l as 'individual', and s-v/a-b as 'social', will have, I'm sure, some analytical (and political) consequences.
Two further questions, for now:
1. Why should 'value accounting' (ie. my 'social-value') necessarily reproduce 'dog-eat-dog' competition? Two 'social-values' can be communally compared and a democratic decision made about which is preferred, without either being chosen purely on narrowly 'economic' grounds. That 'keeping dogs' doesn't necessarily mean we'll allow them to eat each other - we'll be in control.
2. you say:
ocelot
I don't think I agree with how you are characterising 'value' here as 'subjective' - to me, 'subjective' means individual appreciation, ie. use-value (or the neo-classical 'psychological theory of value').
Again, to me, 'value' is 'social-value', which can only be comprehended/understood at the social level, ie. as a product of democratic discussion (as I posited, all those posts ago, in my early gropings with the 'Smith family' model).
Social-value/abstract labour can only be dealt with at the social level, not the individual. To emphasise, 'value' can't be calculated (for want of a better word) by an individual - it is a 'discussion/dialogue', not a personal feeling or intuition.
I'm not a fan of using models based on 'objective impersonal forces' - we must use 'socio-economics', and class struggle politics.
I'm sure you can see some implications here for one's ideolological basis: that is, 'Individualist Anarchism' versus 'Class Struggle Anarchism/Libertarian Marxism'. For the former, the starting point is the 'individual', whereas for the latter, the unit of analysis is society.
Communism is a 'social' ideology, in my eyes. 'Individualism' is rooted in bourgeois ideology.
Where these thoughts leave my attempt to understand the difference between 'abstract/concrete labour', I'm not sure.
Please give me some more input.
There will no buying and
There will no buying and selling in socialism and no state and no money, no exchange value.
It will be still necessary to in my opinion to take into account the amount of time required to produce one thing one way or another ie value, if you are interested in minimising the total or aggregate working days of the workers.
That will be more important than ever under communism because the capitalist market through the money system that performs that function automatically for you will no longer operate.
From 1877, when Karl was still alive;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/notes.htm#n*15
So I say again where did Karl say that value and surplus value was specific to capitalism.
Quote: So I say again where
In the chapter on the Working Day. Where he writes, among other things
Marx
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2
Thus surplus-labour has indeed always existed, but for the majority of human history it has been linked to use-value and concrete labour (but at times linked to exchange value). It is only in the capitalist mode of production, in which labour acquires a dual character and the production process becomes a dialectic of a labour process and a valorization process, that surplus-labour becomes (takes the form of?) surplus-value.
OK then to put it in context
OK then to put it in context we are being ‘transported back’ here, to exchange in barter and at the point at which money is just about to be introduced, somewhere around the dawn of recorded history.
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Two: Exchange
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
But that selection is
But that selection is meaningless without the discussion of the value-form in chapter one. And again you're doing a historical rather than logical reading. And while it's true that "the value of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour in the abstract" it only becomes an embodiment of abstract labour in the capitalist mode of production, i.e. when the commodity form is generalized.
LBird wrote: Position A (that
LBird
I don't mean this as any attack on LBird, as he seems to be contributing in good faith, but this sort of schema is entirely misleading, and one's interpretation of Marx does not directly correlate with a series of political positions. To take a relevant example, Dave B clearly does not align with "Position B," while I do not align with "Position A" (or the "neo-ultra" tendency in general). Ironically, Dave B and I discussed this "first phase of communism" stuff on these forums, and our views were quite the opposite of what you might expect from this schema:
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/dreaded-labour-notes-02042009
dave c wrote: I don't mean
dave c
No offence taken, dave, I'm only surprised you think your criticism can be seen as an attack - I've got a thick skin (for genuine criticism, at least), and I openly asked for criticisms and more.
dave c
Well, I wouldn't call it entirely misleading, as I think it's a good starting point for our understanding of the various ideologies involved, but, of course, it needs a bit more detail, as you've provided.
[start edit]
Don't forget, I was just trying to summarise ocelot's longer post, into something more readable and 'shorthand', to prompt further discussion.
[end edit]
I just haven't got a lot of time for 'individualistic' explanations of ideological positions - that is itself ideological (as, indeed, is my dislike). We can fit people into broad categories - I just don't know yet what they are, in relation to the question of abstract/concrete labour.
By all means, if you want to correct or construct anew my tentative 'positions', be my guest. I'm here to learn. As for 'neo-ultra', I'm afraid you'll have to expand on that a bit - how does it fit into our discussion, and what would you see as your position?
Lets not run before we could
Lets not run before we could walk, the abstract labour stuff in bold was just meant to be the cherry on the cake
In an earlier post I said that Karl started analysing the law of value and the nature of value re commodities trans-historically and then having understood its general nature then went onto to analyse it in capitalism to analyse and understand capitalism, or something like that.
So lets test that thesis.
Chapter one opens up with;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Note, not commodities in capitalism, but commodities in general, unless I am going to receive another bombshell that you only get commodities in capitalism and that they are specific to capitalism.
Now you could argue ah but he just means commodities in capitalism.
But in chapter one he doesn’t mention capitalist commodities.
Which would be out of character as regards his general style of tedious repetition on what was important
In chapter two he doesn’t mention capitalism at all but discusses barter and the introduction of money to facilitate this process. And that value at this stage is extant.
but at at this point the commodities already have this transhistorical value, the value exists;
There is an element of subjectivity and objectivity to abstract labour.
So suppose we are in a non-capitalist village or whatever and one bod is herding geese and selling them and the eggs or whatever.
He is a goose herder by nature as was his father and his father and its in his blood and the love of his life etc and he has no concept of goose herding being anything but concrete labour producing use values and gold money upon its sale.
So goose herding and goosey products take a turn for the worse he gets less and less gold money for his weekly work.
But what he notices is that the maker of the recently fashionable blue suede shoes is getting more money for the same amount of effort and or labour time.
Abstract labour or general effort suddenly enters into his consciousness as the other guys general effort is more rewarding than his own.
Envy and resentment is shortly followed by activity and he switches form goose herding to cobbling. And the search for the maximum amount of gold for the least amount of effort and labour time, and that least ‘amount of effort and labour time’, which is all that matters now, is nothing but abstract labour.
To conflate things further whilst he was in the to some extant delusional about the noble, purposeful and useful business of gooseherding and in denial as to his pecuniary motives he was to that extant ‘un-alienated’.
Now he is moves in terms that general effort, abstract labour, in return for money is all that matters.
As a humanist I believe that people do not so readily sell their souls in such a Faustian bargain.
But capitalism certainly energises that process.
Actually there is one great quote for you lot in volume one, although there is context that saves me, on capitalism being necessary to liberate, so to speak the Law of value, and letting it rip.
I was in a buttock clenching position yesterday not looking forward to having tackle that one.
But like Ted Grant on state capitalism and leftwing childishness I can chill out as no one but me has read it.
And oh yes, Dave C and Mikus were great fun and are challenge.
Down with labour notes and Deleonist .
Quote: Note, not commodities
But look at the quote you've just cited; he's interested in the commodity because it is in that form that the wealth of capitalist societies appear to us. He thus says that logically, not historically, we should start with the commodity because that is the dominant value-form (which he later expands to include money). The whole point of beginning with the commodity form is so that he can arrive at its fetish; to come full circle so to speak. The series of abstractions (away from concrete labour and use-value, exchange value, money) he goes through in chapter 1 leads up to the fetish. It is a logical argument, not a historical one.
I do not, however, disagree that commodities exists only in capitalism. Capitalism is simply a system in which that form has become generalized.
LBird, I'll try to clarify a
LBird, I'll try to clarify a little what I meant. I don't think the schema is misleading because it doesn't sketch out a place for my very important ideas ;) but because I don't think that there are two coherent political/economic theoretical frameworks to identify here. In other words, I don't think it is a good starting point, if that means a starting point for clearly identifying two such frameworks (which I don't think exist). For starters, "Non-Orthodox Marxism" can mean many different things, both in terms of politics and in terms of interpreting Marx, and one interpretation of Marx does not necessarily lead to one politics, or vise versa. And in a discussion that centers around abstract labour and value in Marx, it seems like that should be what divides the two groups. What you would then notice is that you might have, under your "no value under communism" Group, various views on the state and transition, rendering the whole project of neatly classifying political positions under a side in an interpretative dispute somewhat useless.
That is not to say that some of the historical background that ocelot mentions is useless. But, in the context of this thread, it doesn't justify any classification for a coherent "Non-Orthodox Marxism," much less a grouping of individual participants on this thread. Hopefully that is a bit clearer. When I mentioned a "neo-ultra" tendency, I was just following ocelot, when he was talking about a modern tendency in a broad non-Leninist Marxist tradition (and which you, perhaps unknowingly, were using as a model for "Non-Orthodox Marxism"). It could be identified with Gilles Dauve and others who would share some of these positions with regard to the law of value and transition to communism. This modern tendency diverges from what ocelot called the "paleo-ultra" tradition of council communism. I don't really want to go on about it, but, within this tradition, I sympathize more with the "paleo-ultras," am closer to Marx's political views than those of the "neo-ultras," and think the "neo-ultra" critique of the "paleo-ultras" is very weak.
Dave B, I like your story
Dave B, I like your story about the goose herder. I note that your conceptualization of abstract labour includes both labour time and effort, and if we generalize further we could probably include aspects like 'difficult to make tools' and 'difficult to acquire skills' within 'effort'. Can you think of a passage in Marx where he talks about this?
Also, why do you not think that your goose herder is, in fact, living in a capitalist village? We observe a division of labour, a currency based on gold, and a profit-oriented mindset.
Dave B wrote: Chapter one
[quote=Dave B]
Chapter one opens up with;
Well, besides the fact that you are ignoring the opening sentence, no, commodities are not specific to capitalism, but the regulation of production by, for, and through the accumulation of value... i.e. the organization of labor as a commodity is indeed unique to capitalism, and that is Marx's subject.
Uh.... yes he does, right there "the wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production..."
Except for that first sentence. And after that... Marx isn't concerned with the commodity per se, he is concerned with the commodity as the manifestation, expression of value,. And the existence of a universe of commodities as expressions of value, with the myriad of exchanges is only possible under capitalism. It is only possible under capitalism because the social expression of labor is as a commodity.
Given that this is a translation, and from the 4th edition I think, and that Marx had considerably edited the first chapters on value after the publication of the first edition, we are probably better off not speculating about what fits, and doesn't fit, his general style.
Again, the question is not if value exists in barter, simple exchange, etc. The question is not if money represents the universal equivalent of value, standing for and apart from all commodities at one and the same time. The issue is if production is regulated by the law of value; if the social organization of labor is as a commodity, as a value producing activity.
Such an organization requires a very specific set of social conditions-- where the actual condition for labor opposes the laborers themselves. Those relations of production specific to capital are, besides making capital capital, make the law of value the regulating principle.
This is why surplus product takes the form of surplus value under capitalism and does not take that form in feudalism.
If the law of value regulated feudal economies, they would be capitalist not feudal.... not to put too fine a point on it.
Marx is the introduction to the first edition of volume 1 remarks how the human mind has struggled for 2000 years to understand the value-form. Does that mean the law of value regulated production in 33 BC? Obviously, not given that the production that predominated was slave production.
dave c wrote: LBird, I'll try
dave c
No, it doesn't mean 'a starting point for clearly identifying two such frameworks' - I'm more inclined to see it as a 'good starting point' because there are more than two incoherent 'political/economic theoretical frameworks to identify here', which need at least discussing!
To be clear, I think 'frameworks' (or ideological positions) do shape one's views of economics/politics, which is why I'm keen to examine some of the beliefs behind the various views of 'abstract/concrete labour'.
dave c
I'm prepared to accept there might be more than two positions, and there might be overlaps/lack of clarity/misunderstandings between all three, four, etc., but I don't believe they are simply individual positions which should be taken at face value.
So, again, I don't think "an interpretative dispute [is] somewhat useless". In fact, I think interpretation is at the heart of the matter.
Of course, I don't have the answer yet (and I probably never will), but the underlying interpretation of 'abstract/concrete labour' is as up for debate as there is no 'objective truth'. I'm interested in trying to understand all the points of view - which can only help me to choose between them.
A simple exegesis of Marx's words is not enough - all the 'counter-quoting' in the world won't settle the issue. We're not religious fanatics, quoting the relevant section of the bible as authoritative, are we? We are (or should be) Critical Communists.
That attempt to link
That attempt to link particular interpretations of value-form theory to certain political leanings is ridiculous.
FWIW, I don't feel any affinity for any "anarchist" tradition, think the adjective "libertarian" as applied to various strands of Marxism is just a decontextualized attempt to apply anarchist criteria to intra-Marxist debates, and would argue that Rosa Luxemburg is outside any anarchist heritage (most anarchists would agree). I mean, DIE LINKE in Germany even has their non-profit foundation named after Rosa Luxemburg.
By the same token, presumably anarchists who have any intellectual affinity for Proudhon also adopt Proudhon's substantialist, pre-monetary value theory.
So a Left-Ricardian/Engelsian/Proudhonian substantialist value theory is perfectly compatible with "libertarian" politics.
And a non-substantialist/value-critical/monetary value theory is also perfectly compatible with "reformist" politics (as can been seen by the countless left academics in Germany who attempt a synthesis between form-analytical readings of Capital with a state theory in the tradtion of Poulantzas and Gramsci).
If one wished to produce in
If one wished to produce in order to buy a window, then one would have to produce commodities with the same price as a window. However, this labour could be expended upon commodities as different as cars and headphones, insofar as either could be exchanged for the window, while in either case the result would still be the same amount of wealth on the market. The physical act of producing different commodities is highly different, but on the market they do not count for you as specific physical things, but rather as salable goods, which find their use precisely in their ability to exchange. As salable goods, they would be equivalent insofar as they can sell for the same amount, and therefore they are equated qualitatively; one can sell commodities vastly different in physical form and receive the same amount, hence making them equivalent on the market, where they would be differentiated not in terms of their physical form, but rather only quantitatively, in one being able to sell for more than the other.
As such, the labour expended upon these commodities, insofar as it is production for exchange rather than for use as such, is equally undifferentiated qualitatively. As one is not using the product qua physical object, it becomes labour "expended without regard to the [physical] form of its expenditure." After all, the physical act of labour is determined by the physical product to be produced, and depends upon this; Homer did not write the Iliad by tap dancing. Conversely, in commodity production the various physical objects are equated insofar as they are commodities, and as such the various different physical acts leading up to and determined by this product in fact become qualitatively equated along with their products. I may spend some time producing cars, or spend some time producing doors, but if both are equal on the market, where it is only a quantitative matter with different commodities representing different levels of homogeneous market wealth, then the two forms of labour are also equated qualitatively qua homogeneous wealth-producing labour. They both give me the same amount on the market, and hence are equal as salable commodities, and my production, insofar as it is production for exchange, or production of salable commodities, is equated. At most they may be quantitatively different, with one taking more time than the other, and in this case I may choose to take the one which takes less time. Nonetheless, I could not do this if I were producing products for my own consumption, in which case it would not be simply a matter of quantity of time.
As such, we have abstract labour, which is not merely a mental abstraction from particular physical forms of labour (of course all labour is labour, as well as being a particular type of labour, and has a certain length, but that is not the point), but an abstraction made in actual practice in the market. As a product of abstract labour, production for exchange, the commodity is a value (this is a definition). A value is simply a product of abstract labour, in the sense above discussed. As such, the product as a value is simply the product looked at only in its aspect as a product of abstract labour, in which it is undifferentiated from all other commodities qualitatively. The product can be said to both 'be a value' ("as crystals of this social substance, which is common to them all, they are values - commodity values") and 'have a value' ("A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it") in the same way that an object both is a mass and has a mass. Likewise, just as mass has a certain magnitude, expressed in grams, pounds and so on, in which the product is treated only as a mass and hence as qualitatively equal with all other masses, value also has a magnitude; as we have seen, as values commodities are differentiated only quantitatively, and hence their magnitude is determined by the length of the qualitatively equivalent labour.
This determination is, for Marx, precisely how production is distributed according to social need in commodity production; I won't elaborate too much here, although Engels' notes on the subject here are fairly straightforward. In society, labour-time must be distributed among specific products in certain proportions. If one were stranded in a jungle and spent all of one's time producing swords rather than food, one may well starve, and that would be inconvenient. The same applies to society. The general conundrum here is that the individual producers produce for themselves, but not physical products for their consumption, and they carry out their labour as abstract labour for themselves, but this abstract labour must be distributed among specific types of physical labour. Production is not regulated on a social level, but carried out by individuals who do not need their products, but nonetheless it must be regulated, and this may only, ultimately, be done through private incentives, as production is carried out privately, and hence the distribution of social labour may only take the form of private incentives. This is done precisely through the fact of quantitative differentiation in the qualitatively equal abstract labour. The product is a product of a specific amount of abstract labour, but exchanges with others which may have different magnitudes of value, and this is precisely what is accomplished through the alteration of supply and demand, wherein products which have had excessive labour applied to their production exchange for less than the abstract labour represented by them, while conversely the opposite occurs when too little is produced of a product.
This takes the form of alterations in price, by which the product is manifested as a product of abstract labour, independent of the will of the producer, and hence of an independent law governing an ungoverned society. The law takes the form by which products are 'undervalued' and 'overvalued' on the market through price relative to their labour, so that a certain amount of labour in one sphere is more remunerative than the same amount in another, and hence production declines in one and increases in another. This 'undervaluation and overvaluation' as a means of distributing social labour-time may only take place due to the determination of value by labour-time. This law is, ultimately, simply the determination of value by labour-time, by which different forms of labour become qualitatively equal, allowing for transfer between them according to social need, and hence products may be undervalued or overvalued so that the producers are spurred to produce more or less in terms of labour-time, or to migrate between spheres of production, which is only possible because value is quantitatively differentiated in terms of labour-time. If not for this determination, then there is no way to thus spur the producers to migrate precisely because their product could not be overvalued or undervalued, and hence social labour could not be distributed. In other words, because value is in terms of labour-time, abstract labour may be socially distributed amongst particular forms in terms of labour-time; deviations of price from value are therefore simply how this law of value, namely the determination of value by labour-time, functions. The possibility of such divergence is, of course, inherent in the market, and it takes place simply as a means of distributing social labour-time.
As such, as soon as the product of labour becomes a commodity, "the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour." Likewise, "As values, [commodities] constitute only relations of men in their productive activity. Value indeed “implies exchanges”, but exchanges are exchanges of things between men, exchanges which in no way affect the things as such. A thing retains the same “properties” whether it be owned by A or by B. In actual fact, the concept “value” presupposes “exchanges” of the products. Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not manifest themselves as “values” of “things”. Exchange of products as commodities is a method of exchanging labour, [it demonstrates] the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others [and corresponds to] a certain mode of social labour or social production." The second quote could perhaps do with some elaboration, but I think that I've written enough for now. In any case, it should make it fairly clear that value only exists in commodity production, that is, not trans-historically.
I'm certainly down with labour notes and De Leonism.
Angelus Novus wrote: That
Angelus Novus
So, I presume you think that 'particular interpretations of value-form theory' are free from 'political leanings'?
We live in a class society, are dominated by competing political ideologies, are social beings, and are all influenced by what we read and discuss, and we here are all self-avowed Communists, and yet you seem to think that there is no link between economics and politics?
Now, that is ridiculous!
LBird wrote: and yet you seem
LBird
Are you trolling? I never said that. I said there is no necessary correspondence between particular interpretations of Marx's value-form analysis and a specific set of political positions.
Amongst people advocating the non-substantialist value theory that Khawaga and I are arguing for on this forum, you will find in Germany people who are indeed some species of Left Communist or anarchist, others who are classical Marxists of one of the 57 varieties of Bolshevism, others who are dyed-in-the-wool social democratic reformists, others who are politically abstentionist academics, others who are hardcore Zionists or anti-socialist liberals (i.e. the various Post-Anti-Germans).
These are largely questions of Marx exegesis and philology, not burning questions of immediate political intervention (though of course I think most activists would benefit from reading _Capital_. That's not the same as saying a correct reading of _Capital_ guarantees correct political positions).
Angelus Novus wrote: Are you
Angelus Novus
Why is it that you can be dismissive by calling someone's opinions 'ridiculous', but then you get upset when someone ridicules your ideas?
Either develop a thick skin, or put your (often justified) criticisms in better words and tone. I've been nothing but open about my ignorance of these issues, and I expect a fellow Communist to treat my questions, and attempts to formulate answers to various issues, with respect. If you (and others) think I'm wrong, fine. I welcome criticism - but I won't accept sneering dismissal by a self-selected 'authority'.
Now, to the serious stuff.
Angelus Novus
If there is such a position as 'non-substantialist', why didn't you or Khawaga say so, and that you two embrace it, and outline what it means, in contrast to a 'substantialist' view of 'abstract/concrete labour'? I didn't know this, and I'll hazard a guess that there are others who don't, either. It must be obvious that this underpinning idea to your analysis is precisely what I'm trying to uncover.
Furthermore, it does your case no good that it wasn't mentioned earlier, when you seemed to be saying that your interpretation was the only one, and was correct, rather than putting it in context for others to judge; that is, that it was an interpretation.
Who said, 'Information is power'?
Angelus Novus
This, perhaps, is a key point of disagreement between us. I think it is, if not immediate, then at least very important, that workers can understand Capital.
And in the context of this thread, where the OP asked for an explanation fit for a five-year-old, and I pleaded for one fit for an eighteen-month-old, is it really the time and place for philology and 'quote-mongering' between the cognescenti?
Angelus Novus
Well, we're on the same hymn-sheet, now, mate!
If only we could understand what we're reading, and that those who do actually have some understanding would help, rather than obfuscate!
LBird wrote: So, again, I
LBird
Just wanted to point out, this is not what I said at all, just take a look again at my post. I said that the attempt to classify political positions under the heading of the "no value in communism" Group is somewhat useless. For example, Angelus is identifying with a "non-substantialist" interpretation. He is well aware that I don't identify with this interpretive tendency, and we have discussed this on here (I'll spare you the link). Yet we are clearly on the same side in terms of classifying the law of value as historically specific. Furthermore, Angelus points out that even within this subgroup of people who think that the law of value is historically specific, you have all manner of political positions represented.
It just seems odd to me that you would want to undertake some sort of elaborate charting-out of all these political tendencies (which, as Angelus and I have both argued, have no necessary correspondence with various interpretations of Marx). And I think this is odd because it takes you further afield, into a forest of other questions that simply will not help you better understand Marx. I think the source of a certain mutual incomprehension might be that you think there is some Platonic "value" somewhere out there, and we are all trying to describe the same thing, and only incidentally (and rather annoyingly, rather religiously) using Marx to justify our ideas. I think that the question of the historical specificity of "value" on here is a discussion about Marx's work, and most assume that when you ask about abstract labour and value, you are asking about Marx's work. But if we shouldn't appeal to Marx's writings, but rather to how attractive our politics are in discussing these points... then I think that is ridiculous.
dave c wrote: I think that
dave c
Well, the OP was about 'abstract/concrete labour', no mention specifically about 'Marx'.
Of course, we both know that Marx's ideas on this are a central part, but not the only part.
The OP and I both asked for a simple explanation, but we were given complex explanations, in terms which we don't understand, and since then it looks like the OP has given up entirely.
In fact, as I've said, the thread has been hijacked by 'experts' who just want to quote 'the master's words' at each other (yet again), rather than actually have some success in explaining labour, value, etc. to those who keep asking for simpler explanations.
And funnily enough, I do think there's something rather 'religious' about this philological approach of what Jesus really meant.
When Dave B posted, it was the first time I realised just how much disagreement there was, and also how, at first glance, I preferred his take on some things. That doesn't mean he is right, or that my initial impressions were right. I'm not sure, but there doesn't seem to be much help about to help me clarify.
And perhaps my 'political' classification was wrong/unwise/ill-informed, but it was an attempt to get to what has actually come out during the strained discussion.
Now, we all know there are substantialists, non-subs., historically-specific and transhistoric - no doubt, if this tedious, uninformative debate carries on, some more 'labels' will come out of the woodwork.
dave c
Sigh! Where did I say that 'attractiveness in politics' should play a part? If you mean 'try to uncover political assumptions and see how they match my assumptions', then you're closer to the truth. But then, I might just abandon my assumptions, given more information. Whether it is 'attractive' or not is not the issue.
'Ridiculous'? There's that word again. Can't you and Angelus play nice, for a change? With me, at least.
Wow, I'm really behind in
Wow, I'm really behind in this thread. Still I don't want to ignore direct questions, even if the current debate has moved on a bit. So.
LBird
Well, that's a big one. Debate has been going backwards and forwards between advocates of market socialism (and a good number of folk who don't like the label, but have pretty similar ideas in practice) and value-abolitionists (for want of a better name) for a long time now.
What I'm specifically referring to here is not just taking account of labour time for production, but specifically, the distribution of unequal shares of the social product in proportion to the measured contribution of labour contributed. It's this 'wage' relation that transforms 'socially necessary labour time' from a hypothetical socially-neutral metric into a relation of force and source of competition between producers. "Who measures?" becomes the crux of the matter. Did I really work as hard an 8 hour day producing widgets as you just have making doohickeys? Maybe I've just figured our a neat trick how to make widgets in half the time and have just spent the last 4 hours of my day arguing about abstract labour on teh internetz, rather than doing any real work? I won't belabour the point, but you get the idea.
LBird
No, I totally agree, as far as 'product of democratic discussion' goes, that's what I was trying to talk about with 'co-operative political processes', although, on reflection, 'political' is also misleading here, as the intention would be to have transcended capitalist separation of the political and the economic... I guess my use of 'subjectivities' here was misleading. Certainly I have no truck with bourgeois individualism. I wouldn't perhaps go quite as far as the anti-humanism of Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari (tho I have time for all 3), but I do think that we produce each other, and meaning, socially.
Angelus Novus' intervention made me look back on that schematic. I originally missed this bit "- based on 'Anarchism' (including Luxembourg) ". I'd have to agree that there's no such thing as an "anarchist" reading of Marx (and Luxemburg sure was no Anarchist, just look at the start of her argument in the Mass Strike, that the general strike is not necessarily only an anarchist tactic). I've certainly met anarchists who were still, other than their committment to the goal of abolishing the state via libertarian methods, still very wedded to an impeccably orthodox reading of Marx.
There is not a direct one-to-one (isometric) mapping of readings of Marx onto political affiliation. To me, to use a slightly sideways analogy, it's rather like the relationship between Madhab (school of law/fiqh) and Aqidah (creed) in Islam. The two are not directly connected in every case, but every Wahhabi follows the Hanbali madhab, and all Ja'faris are Shia (but not all Shia are Twelvers, and not all Twelvers are Usulis - Bahraini Shias, for instance are Akhbaris, but I digress...). That's a total sidetrack, but see here for anyone interested in that sort of stuff.
The problem is the thread is centred on the problem of abstract labour and, since, the subordinate but related question, of whether abstract labour is a category of capitalism only, or a transhistorical category. I brought in the question of different readings of Marx and the perspective of orthodox Marxism, but this question alone does not really define the full collection of beliefs that define orthodoxy.
There's kind of a bigger problem as well, which a number of people have already alluded to. It's difficult to work through Marx using a "waterfall method" or a Euclidian style of exposition. That is to go through each stage and not move on to the next until you have completely understood the definitions given in the preceeding stage, expecting each successive stage to build on the definitions of the one before. Marx's concepts, like the components of an engine or machine, rely on each other to make sense collectively. Unlike a machine, however, Marx's method of exposition starts at a very high level of abstraction and then gradually moves down towards the complexity of reality. At each change of level of abstraction, the categories previously investigated at the more abstract level need to be revisited to see how they are modified by the complexity added by the increasingly concrete stages. (Or at least that's how Rosdolsky's reading sees it :) . No idea how to make that simple for a 5 year old, except to find a real-world analogy somehow. But anyway. Basically, you sort of need to read the whole lot to see how it all fits together, rather than going through the waterfall, step-by-step process.
On the non ‘capitalistically
On the non ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ question and of course if all commodities are ‘capitalistically produced’ then ‘capitalistically produced commodity’ is a tautology.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm
Capital Vol. III Part VII Revenues and their Sources Chapter 51. Distribution Relations and Production Relations
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch51.htm
Capital Volume II Part I: The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuits Chapter 1: The Circuit of Money Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch01.htm
And I know Engels is now discredited but feel free without fear of contradiction to accuse me of understanding commodity production in the same way as Fred.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/letters/84_06_26a.htm
The issue of surplus value etc as regards feudal peasants has already been given in the explicit and palpably unequivocal quote from volume III.
And to return to the not so stupid ‘village idiot’ who keeps on making the most interesting points, and I don’t flatter you because you flatter me, and beware the wisdom of ‘fools’.
On the why isn’t the goose herder in a capitalist village etc. Well to keep it simple he and his fellow villagers have not been dispossessed of their own means of production and do not as yet have sell their labour power as a commodity to a capitalist.
The handloom weavers and fellow Proudhonist artisans and goose herding peasants were not originally capitalists, all they wanted to do was produce their own commodities and sell them without exploiting or employing others.
And prevent the opportunity for the accumulation and monopolisation of the means of production, capital, in individual hands and forcing others to work for them.
But within this notion of commodity production lies the seed of capitalism itself.
The unsuccessful goose herding peasants would slowly sell their egg laying geese to make ends meet and would end up dis-appropriated of his self sustaining means of commodity production.
And end up having to sell all that he had left, his labour power.
The same was happening in Russia as regards the ‘lazy’ peasants versus the industrious, efficient hard working ones.
[ there was some interesting stuff from Lenin on this, and I mean it in the best possible sense, as regards the even left SR’s insistence of the right of peasants to sell their allocated land and it was as regards to the at that point corrrupted Mir system]
The handloom weavers were more caught out by the ignoble advance of technology and the diminution of the value of their concrete labour, and vented their economic fury on that.
There is in my opinion a sort of flaw in the ‘labour theory of value’ which however is compensated for in the theory in terms of the equalisation in the value of abstract or general labour.
That is in the predicate that goes back page 4, that the exchange value of a commodity has nothing to do with its use value.
In the fast moving environment of technology some products and the specific types labour power required to produce them are temporally more useful than others, and that is reflected in the exchange value as opposed just the abstract labour or general effort required.
this debate is getting to cluutered for me and these 'Captcha's' are too hard.
ocelot wrote: Debate has been
ocelot
Well, I think the market should be smashed in its entirety. But, to be replaced with what? I'm not sure of a straight jump to Communism (I suppose I've been influenced by Marx in the Gotha stuff), but I'm certainly sympathetic to all those on this board who think it can be done. But we need to discuss how this could happen, given that "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living."
ocelot
The obvious answer to this is: 'the collective', not the individual. It can't be beyond our wits to formulate a way measuring 'abstract labour' (as I tried to show in my simplistic 'Smith family' model). Since we will be working together in communities, how could an individual just hide a 'neat trick'? We could elect delegates from one industry to work temporarily in another, if there were any serious questions about 'slacking' within an entire factory/office. And we must assume that, if we've actually got to Socialism/Communism, that most of the selfish bastards will already have been identified and have had the errors of their ways pointed out. Further, a new generation growing up under Soc/Com would be socialised entirely differently to the individualist, selfish, money- and fame-hungry people we produce today. We don't need to have any ahistoric ideas about 'goodness' of human nature to see that its possible to have a society that brings out the best in humans, rather than the worst, as capitalism does.
ocelot
It seems we agree on many things.
ocelot
I agree with the latter (socially-produced individuals), but I only know a little about Foucault, and he seems to be a Neitzschean, so I have no time for him.
I'll leave the 'schematic' stuff alone - I seem to have smoked out some information, which was my purpose.
ocelot
This, I suspect, is a big problem for a lot of people - it certainly is for me. I'm not sure how to overcome it, or if it is even possible to do so.
ocelot
To me, though you obviously mean well, this is like being advised to learn Russian by just reading Russian - no dictionary, grammar, advice, initial teaching - just isolated reading, and have faith that 'it'll come to you, one day'.
I'm sure that after twenty years I still wouldn't have made sense of the alphabet, never mind anything deeper like meaning. I'd need a Russian teacher who uses a 'step-by-step' approach.
Although, I'm prepared eventually to accept that it's 'just me', and others can learn by this wholistic method. But I don't want to give up just yet.
At least now I know 'use-value' comes from 'concrete labour', and 'value' from 'abstract labour'...
It just doesn't seem much for all the posts, both mine and everyone else's.
LBird, I am curious where you
LBird, I am curious where you think the "concrete labour"/"abstract labour" distinction exists in non-Marxist economics, or if you were just distinguishing between Marx's theories and the different theories of Marxists. Maybe you know of Marxists who explicitly distance themselves from Marx's use of these terms? This may be where we are talking past each other. At least up until Marx's time, the concrete and abstract labour distinction didn't exist, to my knowledge. In Capital, Marx writes, "I was the first to point out and examine critically this twofold nature of the labour contained in commodities." (Penguin, 132) As for trying to understand these categories, I naturally suggested to read the first part of Capital. Do you think this is bad advice? Also, Zeronowhere gave a pretty clear and brief exposition of this stuff in his own words. Capital is difficult, but as I said before, it makes no sense to make your mind up about someone's interpretation of Marx without actually reading Capital.
Dave B wrote: On the non
Dave B
Who here has claimed that only capitalism produces commodities?
Ummm.... case closed, kind of, no? The property laws of commodity production CHANGE into the laws of capitalist appropriation. I think that pretty much means they change into the law of value; the law of the rate of profit; the law of production prices... actually all those things derived from the law of value.
a capitalistically produced commodity is one that is produced by labor organized as wage-labor, for the appropriation of surplus value and the accumulation of value. A capitalistically produced commodity is one that exists, circulates, gives up it specific utility to a universal equivalent representing..... value. A capitalistically produced commodity is one that is not produced for the consumption of the producers, that has no use in fact to the producers. A capitalistically produced commodity is one that is produced by abstract labor-- labor in general, social labor made accessible through its measurement by time. A capitalistically produced commodity is actually a representative of the social relations of production that create the law of value.
Ummm.... yeah again... without a class of wage-laborers there is no production governed by the law of value.
Dave B wrote: On the non
Dave B
To my knowledge no one on this thread has said that commodity production is specific to capitalism. In fact Khawaga for e.g. has specifically said the opposite. Not sure what the point of this post is then. Unless you think that commodity production necessarily implies abstract labour.
dave c wrote: LBird, I am
dave c
I'm not sure - partially a Marx/Marxists clash, and for 'value', LTV, etc. some earlier non-Marxist economists. Although I consider myself a Marxist, I don't hang on Marx's every word - he had an arsehole, just like me and you. He talks bollocks sometimes, just like everybody, including me. And he was completely shite at explaining his ideas, hence the years and decades of arguments about what he 'really' meant, starting with Fred.
dave c
I've tried reading Capital; the historical stuff? - fine.
Reading the economics?
It's like blah someone pong keeps peep mixing nurt words wonk that imm don't mean ping whizz ying tong yiddle I poe much quark arf at all bzzzzzt. Will it really make sense if only I persevere?
Can't you *%!^ing help!?
LBird wrote: ocelot
LBird
Yeah, but to be fair, it could just be that we're rubbish teachers. I mean breaking down complex systems of thought into easy to digest chunks is definitely a skill that a few people are really good at, but most of us aren't - I know I'm not. The only think I ever successfully taught was martial arts, but that's about physical movement, not ideas. Another pointless digression...
LBird, I am still not
LBird, I am still not understanding. Earlier, you said: LBird
It seems to me that someone who brings up this distinction is clearly talking about Marxist economic categories. And I showed that Marx thought that he was the first to make this distinction. Maybe you didn't see this as a specifically Marxian question, but it certainly seemed like you did when in your first post you refer to these “Marxist economic categories." In your next post you wonder if you are "wrong about Marx." I don't get it. If someone is asking about concrete and abstract labour and mentions having trouble with Marx's economic work, what else could they be asking for except some help in understanding Marx? I just don't know what you want help understanding any more.
Earlier, you said about Capital: LBird
So, I thought to myself... you are trying to ask other people to explain something you have not bothered to read, since the first chapter is where Marx very carefully explains these things. Sure it is difficult. Maybe you have been put off by his style. But then when you say you like Dave B's interpretation, at least initially, I don't know what you mean. If we are not just talking about Marx, do you mean that the way he describes "value" is close to how you want to use the word "value" in some not-necessarily-Marxian theory? Or do you mean that it is a convincing interpretation of Marx? In which case, I don't know on what basis you think this, and I still suggest reading the first chapter, so that you can see what explanations make sense of the text. I'm not trying to be unhelpful. I'm participating in a Capital reading group currently, with some people who have little familiarity with Marx. And I couldn't imagine just telling them my reading of it, without encouraging them to read it for themselves.
dave c wrote: I just don't
dave c
So, after all the posts I've made, saying I don't understand about value, labour, etc., you don't offer some easy-to-understand definitions, but say that you don't understand.
This thread is going nowhere.
dave c
Look, dave, it's fuckin' obvious that I've tried to read this impenetrable shit, clearly when I said I 'always skip it', I mean because I've tried it in the past and have thus learned that it is meaningless, so now I 'always skip it'.
Surely you can tell that I've tried... Do you really think...
dave c
I know this is true, mate, of you and all the others who've posted, but I could cry at its implications.
Tears of frustration, exasperation and sadness.
basic concept of labour value
basic concept of labour value theory is dicussed here:
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/questions-concerning-marxs-capital-11032011
ill help with anything u dont understand, i like to think of myself as someone who can "break things down". and if i cant, all the better, then at least i know about what i dont know ;)
yourmum wrote: ill help with
yourmum
Am I a glutton for punishment, or what? Well, here goes...
Thanks, yourmum, that's a very kind offer! I think I might take you up on it!
Firstly, can you have a look at this post of mine, and see if you agree or not with it, as it is the last post I made in which I think I was making any progress with this seemingly intractable problem.
LBird, #9
By 'best-practice', I was meaning shorthand for 'socially necessary labour'. And the 'use-value' created was 30 hours' worth, and the 'value' created was 21 hours' worth.
And, to be specific, Janet created 10 hours' worth of 'use-value' for herself, but this was only 1 hour's worth of 'value' for society.
[edit - and I've accepted Khawaga's suggestion of 'Critical Political Economy' since that post]
Though, having had a quick look at the link you provided, I think we at least have to engage with the issue raised by ocelot that 'use-value' is not just subjective. I think, at the moment, that ocelot is wrong, but I'd like to discuss that with you, ocelot and anyone else who wants to stay away from any other concepts (just for now, please), and doesn't just want to post quotes to 'prove' what Marx 'meant'.
So, to summarise, are you happy with what I wrote? If so, is 'use-value' only subjective or not?
If I type 'ssss' in 2
If I type 'ssss' in 2 seconds, then this was the time necessary for me to type this. We may call the type necessary to produce something the necessary labour-time. The time is not 'necessary' in the sense of 'minimum possible', rather in the sense that if I wish to type it, it will of necessity take some time, and 2 seconds happens to have been the time which was necessary to type it in this case. The necessary labour-time is determined by productivity, intensity and skill of labour; to go back to the analogy, this time could be increased or decreased by using a keyboard which is easier or harder to press the keys on, by putting in more or less effort, or through practicing and becoming skilled at typing the letter 's' on a keyboard.
However, the various 's'es may have taken different times to type, in which case they would have different individual necessary labour-times. For example, one may have taken 0.6 seconds, another 0.3 seconds, and so on. However, as the total time expended was 2 seconds upon 4 letters, these individual labour-times average out to 2/4 = 0.5 seconds. This may be called the average necessary labour-time. The socially necessary labour-time is simply the average necessary labour-time for society as a whole, and hence will be determined by the variations in productivity, intensity and skill among the various producers in this society. Ultimately, it will be determined not only by the highest and lowest of these, but ultimately by the average, and hence it expresses the necessary labour-time under average conditions of production.
The socially necessary labour-time for 1 shoe would be 20/11 = 1.818 hours. There is no question yet of value, as there is no production for exchange.
On the market, all commodities of a certain kind feature only as samples of their kind. If I were to sell an 's' from the above 'ssss', then it would not matter which one I sold, as each counts only as an 's'. In the market, then, the various commodities of the same kind become interchangeable.
In their aspect as products of abstract labour, commodities appear simply as vessels by which producers, or productive enterprises, receive the fruits of the social labour set into motion by them. As their labour is private labour, labour carried out to produce products for private consumption, but their actual products are meant for social consumption, therefore they cannot simply give their product away, but must retain it in its value-form. If they did not retain the product of their labour in some form, then it is not private labour; as they do not retain it in its physical form, they must retain it elsewise, and this only takes place through this labour, as private labour, becoming incarnated in another product, which in fact enters into the private ownership of the capitalist.
This only takes place through its becoming a social product, and passing into the ownership of another. To become a private product, it must also be a social product. This in fact takes the form of surrender of the product to the market and to market forces, where it appears separated from the private producer, who faces society abstractly as an external force in the form of supply and demand and such. However, as products of a certain kind feature only as average samples of their kind on the market, they are also equated as average vessels of private labour; or, to put it another way, as vessels of private labour, they are interchangeable equivalents. In order for the product to be realized by the producer as a private product, it must be represented upon the market as an average sample of the total social product, and counts only as such; the necessary corollary of this is that for the producer's labour to be realized as private labour (which involves precisely the product becoming a private product), it must take its place in the market as a sample of the total social labour on products of its kind, and is counted only insofar as it is average labour. To put it in another way, in surrendering their products to the market, the various producers must posit them as simply average samples of their kind (which is equivalent, as we said, with putting them on the market); as such, in producing for the market, which is prior to but inseparable from putting them on the market, their labour counts only insofar as it is average labour, precisely because their intention is to place their product in the form of an average social product. In making their products vessels of private labour, they make them equivalent with all others of the kind in the market, and hence their labour counts as private, the creation of vessels of private labour, only insofar as it is in accordance with the social average; if it is less productive than this, then it counts as less private, abstract labour, precisely because in putting their product on the market the producer equates its character as product of private labour to that of all other products of their same kind, and hence as vessels of less private labour than they have performed.
This ultimately simply expresses the fact that the social aspect of the market appears as the temporary surrender of the private nature of the product to social forces, and hence the product appears completely separated from the individual producer as simply a sample of the social product. As much labour-time as the individual producer may have spent, they must posit their product as simply an average product of its kind in order to realize it on the market. All of their labour counts in determining abstract labour, but only the abstract labour represented by the total social product, of which each commodity features only as a sample. As such, the total magnitude of abstract labour cannot differ from the total amount of concrete labour-time performed on production of market goods, but the abstract labour represented by a single commodity may differ from its concrete individual necessary labour-time.
As such, a producer who produced for the market at very low intensity (ie. lazily), would not produce more value, as their products, as values, are only samples of the total social product, and hence the total social production. In producing for the market, they posit their products as samples of the total social product (for their products, to become private, must become social), and hence as a social product. The expression of value, and hence the magnitude of abstract labour, in terms of socially necessary labour-time is simply an expression of the wider contradiction between private and social labour in commodity production.
Zeronowhere, thanks for your
Zeronowhere, thanks for your generous attempt to explain things to me.
Unfortunately, for the purposes of my 'scenario', you lost me with 'exchange', 'market', 'commodities', 'value-form', etc.
If you remember, I said:
LBird
... so to help my learning, I'd like to stick to my simplistic outline, at least initially. I'm very aware that the issues are much more complex, but to aid my learning I'd like to try what ocelot called the 'waterfall' method. It might not work, but the other 'in the deepend' method definitely won't work.
Thanks again, and I'll hopefully return to your post in the future when I have a better grasp of the basics.
First, I've got to give yourmum a chance, as they think of themself 'as someone who can "break things down"'. Boy, do I need things breaking down.
In post 83 Apr 11 2011 23:05
In post 83 Apr 11 2011 23:05
I stated that;
Which was contested.
Capital Vol. III Preface
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
And that fits in with Fred’s interpretation in the supplement to volume III
Which is why, as commodities are so obviously general to other forms of production (which I wanted to nail down first), he said the following;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
Rather that;
So the question is then;
1) is Fred stupid and didn’t understand what Karl was on about, like me
or
2) or is he lying
Commodity and law of value;
Commodity and law of value; not the same thing at all. While there were commodities prior to capitalism because use-values were produced for exchange it is only in capitalism that the commodity becomes a form of value. And as others have pointed out, it hugely significant when production is done by alienated wage-labour rather than say, tenant farmers, who did not produce based on value and neither was value extracted from their labour, but rather part of the surplus product.
With regards to your question:
1). He wasn't stupid, just had a poor interpretation. Please bear in mind that Freddy came up with his reading of Marx after editing/writing Vol. 3. He had huge difficulties with the so-called transformation problem (i.e. value into prices). Rather than viewing production prices as another abstraction, he could only get to grips with the problem by going back to Vol. 1 and reading it historically and linearly.
Could you elaborate on the
Could you elaborate on the following I am really not quite certain what you mean I don’t want to go on a wild goose chase guessing;
And can you back it up with a clear as opposed to opaque quotation from Marx.
you will have a better chance digging around in the pre circa 1863 stuff.
And ;
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1867 Marx To Engels In Manchester
[London,] 27 June 1867
and
and link
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_06_27a.htm
Quote: Introduction by the
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm
Dave B, nothing of what
Dave B, nothing of what you've cited deals with anything about a historical vs. logical reading of Capital. It's just the contents of the appendix to the very first edition of Capital. If you noticed what I wrote;
Now I shouldn't have written "after reading", but while editing/writing Vol. 3. That's when he ran into the so-called transformation problem. And, if Marxologists are anything to go by, it is then that he came up with what is now the orthodox reading of Capital as a linear-historical narrative rather than a dialectical one in which the narrative progresses through levels of abstraction. Now I am not saying, and never have, that Engles did not know Marx used dialectics; after all, it was him that told Marx to revise the first chapter because a reader not versed in Hegelian dialectics would have a hard time. Still that is not evidence for the fact that Engels later in his life, after Marx died, had problems interpreting the text dialectically. Interestingly, it is from the previously unpublished first edition of the German version of capital that it becomes much clearer that Capital should be read logically (cf. Neue-Marx Lekture).
Are you trolling?!!?? The "quotation" is chapter 1. When it comes to the value form you can't just cherry pick quotations, like some analytical Marxist. The entire chapter is a meditation on the value form as it is under the capitalist mode of production.
And btw, I don't get what it is you're arguing anymore. You're just quoting random stuff, not explaining why you think it's important (in your own words). It seems that you believe the scripture is enough, when clearly what we are having a discussion over is an issue of interpretation of how to read Marx.
I guess this is as good as
I guess this is as good as any moment to throw in Mattick's review of Rubin:
@LBird yeah. individuals dont
@LBird
yeah. individuals dont have the means to measure the value they produce as they dont see how productive others are, they can only measure their concrete labour. however characterizing the process of objectifying the value as a "democratic discussion" seems way off the mark to me. marx referred to it in terms of "behind their back", meaning its not object of conscious discussion but it comes to you in form of a law that if u dont acknowledge will lead to your fail at making business. soooo while the "discussion" part may hold true in a sense when you look at an exchange, you have to make some consent, the democratic part on the other hand i cant follow at all. mind explaining what you are thinking of when u write that?
If there is any need to bring the use value into this dicussion we will see about it, for now id like to keep that topic in the other thread.
about your example... its a bit misleading, because it seems like both are making handmade shoes but someone needs 10 times longer.. why is that? because there could be a reason you also pay for, not just inability. theres plenty people who want top pay for handwork, for a unique shoe or stuff.. same value is of course for same use values. look at art for example. there the use value becomes directly the exchange value and no average production costs play a role because the use value consist in the uniqueness of the artpiece. so shoes can be art too and thus in the light of your example it would be necessary to say that they produce the SAME shoes, not just shoes.
Thanks, yourmum, for engaging
Thanks, yourmum, for engaging in this at my level. First rule of teaching, eh, talk to the pupil in a language they understand, and let them set the pace of the discussion. Anyway, to take your points in a reverse order, as I think this will help:
yourmum
No, I said Janet is hand-making the shoes, and spent 10 hours making 1 pair; whereas Jacqui is using best-practice (ie. socially necessary labour (using a machine or whatever, I didn't specify, and it doesn't matter for the purposes of this)) and spent 10 making 10 pairs of shoes.
This, to me, gives 11 pairs of shoes, which took 20 hours of concrete labour, but took only 11 hours of abstract labour (ie. socially necessary labour time).
Is my understanding correct, as far as this simple example goes?
yourmum
Again, to me this is the key point. As you say, "Individuals don't have the means to measure the value they produce as they dont see how productive others are, they can only measure their [own] concrete labour" [my insert of 'own', to clarify]
The measurement can only take place at the social level. It requires Janet, John and Jacqui to meet and discuss what counts as 'socially necessary labour'. Only society can determine this, not isolated individuals, by comparing methods, techniques, etc. to find the 'best-practice'. Of course, to jump ahead a little, this 'comparison' in our system is done by the impersonal, undemocratic market, whereas for Communists it will be found in democratic methods, by discussion and voting.
As you say, the market comes at us ""behind their back", meaning its not object of conscious discussion but it comes to you in form of a law that if u dont acknowledge will lead to your fail at making business."
Communism is the democratic control of the economy. Thus, we must build these democratic structures into our explanation of 'labour', 'value', etc. After all, we are engaging in Critical Political Economy, not neo-classical economics or considerations of 'failing at business'.
Have I outlined my thinking to your satisfaction on this issue of the connection between 'abstract labour' and democracy? The 11 hours of abstract labour by the Smith family can only be identified, for us, by democratic means, by society, not the individual.
The worth of Janet's pair of shoes can only be decided by Janet, John and Jacqui in conjunction with each other, not by the three separately by themselves.
I want to leave exchange value, etc. till after you follow my reasoning on this issue, or show me where I've gone wrong, on this issue. Thanks.
@LBird you are saying we, as
@LBird
you are saying we, as communists, must figure out the value of stuff and therefor engange in democratic control and whatever.. but why should we want to figure out the value? Is there any purpose you need exchange value for as a communist except for dealing with capitalists? Pray tell which one?
imho yes u got the difference, if they produce the same use value shoe thats correct, so if it was the same to people if they buy janets shoes or jacuis. that was the point im trying to make with the art-use values. for the exchange value to split from the use value u need to have a continual production and trading of the same thing.
now im trying to wrap my brain around Zero's post. maybe more later..
yourmum wrote: imho yes u got
yourmum
Thanks for the confirmation, yourmum. Now, having comprehended concrete labour (creates use-value) and abstract labour (creates value), I can move on with my learning, to some other concepts.
yourmum
Well, I personally think that in Communist society (or, at least its early stages) we'll have to have some way of organising production, to satisfy as many wants of as many people as is possible. That will require us to make informed decisions, hence my linking of democratic politics with economic production.
But I'd rather not take that line of thought any further on this particular thread, because I recognise that it will cause unnecessary arguments in regard to what I'm trying to learn. As I say, that line is better kept for a thread on why we learn this stuff!
I'll post again later, with some more questions about some more concepts. Thanks again.
Capitalist Commodity
Capitalist Commodity Production Without Wages Then?
Responding to Khawaga post 115 Apr 13 2011 23:18
I thought the point of making the quotes was clear.
However, it was that both Karl and Fred were working together and consulting each other in the formulation of the opening chapter of capital Volume one.
Are we being asked to believe that Fred hadn’t realised that Karl was only talking about commodities in capitalism?
Or that Fred was ‘lying’, or at the very least ‘misrepresenting’ Karl, when he said;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
I am of course not just restricting this to an interpretation of the opening chapter according to Engels or not, and a debate about his integrity etc.
I have sited the example of value of commodities in Aristotelian Greece and even earlier at the dawn of recorded history and the introduction of ‘money’.
So from a footnote from chapter one;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#15
So is it capitalist commodity production without wages that is being discussed then?
Keep going Lbird you are
Keep going Lbird you are plodding along at a merry old pace
If the law of value operated
If the law of value operated "trans-historically" does anyone care to give us a bit of the old razzle-dazzle and show us how the law of value governed agriculture in pre-Columbian Mexico, or in the Ottoman Empire, or perhaps China in the 15th, 16th, 17, 18th centuries?
I'd like to see the "regulatory role" of the law of value in a concrete "pre-capitalist" mode of production, so please..show us the value.
Marx’s footnote 15 (in full)
Marx’s footnote 15 (in full) in the first chapter of Capital, v.1:
“The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.”
Dave asks:
“So is it capitalist commodity production without wages that is being discussed then?
Marx is discussing the commodity generally, not capitalist commodity production at this point. He is, at this very early point in his presentation, abstracting the commodity from production, and the production process, as much as he can. He is also abstracting, therefore, from the question of the wages paid to the labourer.
"... a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation" is not a reference to historical priority, but to priority in his investigation/analysis/presentation. That is, it is a matter of conceptual, rather than historical, priority.
Quote: So is it capitalist
Dave B: what Wasalax said
wasalax
Angelus Novus wrote: I have
Angelus Novus
BTW, enjoyed this. I hope you persevere with the rest of the introduction. Maybe some day Elbe's book will get an english translation, sadly my German isn't up to reading the original.
Dave B wrote: Keep going
Dave B
‘Plodding’? I thought it was a canter, or at least a fast trot!
Anyway, on with the plod.
LBird
Some further details:
If Janet hasn’t made her shoes to exchange them, but to wear herself, then she has created a ‘product’.
But Jacqui has made all her shoes to exchange them, so she has created ‘commodities’, as has John with his cakes.
So, the Smith family has used 30 hours of ‘concrete labour’, which produced 21 hours of ‘abstract labour’, but only the equivalent of 20 hours of ‘abstract labour’ is going to be used for exchange.
The Smith family has 20 hours’ worth of ‘commodities’ for exchange and one pair of shoes for Janet’s use. They have the ‘use-value’ of 11 pairs of shoes, but only the ‘exchange-value’ of 10 pairs of shoes (since Janet’s pair were made for immediate use) and 5 cakes.
Is this all OK, so far, anyone who's still interested in my 'plodding' progress? If so, I'll move on properly to a consideration of 'exchange-value', within my scenario.
LBird wrote: LBird
LBird
Within the Marxian scheme, abstract labour is only 'realised' in the act of exchange. Now some people (perhaps those with a 'substance' idea of value) may see 'realisation' as being the exchange of already-existing value in a product for its monetary equivalent. However, it is alternatively (more commonly?) understood by 'realisation' that the value only really appears at that stage. By 'appear' I don't mean 'seems', but comes into actual existence - is 'actualised'.
That is, that a load of hours (even at socially average rates of productivity) invested in products that are in the end never sold, in fact produces no value at all - NB this also makes sense at the level of aggregate accounting of total social production. (I can't be bothered to seek out the particular Marx quotes, but I'm pretty sure others can throw them in, if necessary).
Also, concrete labour is a process of carrying out successive tasks or actions, it is not relevant to quantify it in time. If it takes an amateur all day to build a garden wall that a qualified brickie can get up in two hours, that makes no difference to the concrete labour, which is the construction of the wall, whether you do it in an hour, a day, or bit by bit in your spare time over a month.
So, at the moment, the Smiths have produced no abstract value at all, until they sell the products they have made for sale. Assuming that they sell the cakes and Jacqui's shoes, they will realise 20 hours value. Unless, for some reason, before they have chance to sell the cakes and shoes, there is a revolution in the productivity in the shoemaking industry (say), such that the value of each pair is halved, then they will only realise 15 hours value when they sell at the new lowered prices, even though, at the time they invested the effort in production, they invested 20 hours at the-then socially average rate of productivity. Capitalism's a bitch...
But this is the thing, you cannot have value without exchange value, because the act of exchange is where value appears, even though it originates in production. (Hence commodity fetishism and vulgar economics.)
ocelot wrote: So, at the
ocelot
Ocelot, I know you're trying to be helpful, and I'm sure what you're saying will come in very useful later, when I have a grasp of the relevant concepts, but can't you see that taking things step-by-step is a useful learning strategy?
This isn't to accept that there aren't further complications, but that for a learner new to any subject, it's better to have a tenuous grasp which can be corrected, than no grasp at all because the concepts are meaningless.
No matter how many times I've stressed this method on this thread, it seems that most posters are trying to throw me in the deep end, which I've persistently explained hasn't worked in the past, and isn't working now.
So, having said that, is what I've outlined in my previous post correct as far as it goes?
I know it's more complex, and with your help, and the help of others, I'll hopefully get there (one day). But for now, humour me - I know it's working in some sense, because now I can actually ask questions, whereas before this thread, I didn't have a clue.
Waslax, quoting Marx,
Note, the present stage, not forever.
I'm really not sure why this idea of a learner taking things slowly is causing such a problem on this board - does anybody know why this should apparently be so for Communists? Why should learning Marx have to use a big-bang, in-the-deep-end, everything or nothing, approach?
I know it's not on purpose, but why should the teaching of Marx's Critical Political Economy be so poor? And it clearly is so, because so few people understand it.
The easy answer is that it's 'too complex' - but I disagree. It's always too easy to blame 'poor learners'.
Anyway, back to the feedback for my scenario...
S. Artesian wrote: If the law
S. Artesian
Well perhaps I can’t deal with that exactly, but would the following be of any use?
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Two: Exchange
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
Presumably primitive societies or communities beginning to barter with others etc for ‘foreign objects’ and the constant repetition thereof, like isn’t wage labour or capitalism.
As to the concept of value as substance, we haven’t got to the really difficult out of the box stuff yet.
That takes time, the record so far in my experience at 20 minutes was a female maths graduate and computer programmer, might have expected that if I had thought about it.
Incidentally the introduction
Incidentally the introduction of feudalism, and to a certain extant slave societies, does in fact complicate things somewhat as the owners of the surplus product, surplus labour and ‘surplus value’ are to a lesser extant under an economic pressure to exchange it with each other at its value.
But we are rushing too far ahead I think.
Incidentally the introduction
Incidentally the introduction of feudalism, and to a certain extant slave societies, does in fact complicate things somewhat as the owners of the surplus product, surplus labour and ‘surplus value’ are to a lesser extant under an economic pressure to exchange it with each other at its value.
But we are rushing too far ahead I think.
LBird wrote: If Janet hasn’t
LBird
Check.
No. What has happened is that Janet has spent ten hours making shoes, Jacqui 10 hours of shoes (so 20 hours of shoe-making) and John ten hours of cakes. When it comes to concrete labour a bucket is a bucket so to speak. What you do when you say 30 hours of concrete labour is to eliminate the difference between shoe making and cake making. And that is what abstract labour is; human labour expended in general. The whole idea behind concrete labour is that you do take into account the particular content of labour (in your case, shoe-making and cake-making). In other words, what you have done is to confuse concrete with absolute labour and the reason why you have done this is because you try to quantify concrete labour in terms of labour-time rather than in the actual products produced. Labour-time is only the measure of abstract labour; it cannot be for both abstract and concrete labour. This is why I tried earlier to argue that a good short-hand for concrete labour/use-value is always to think in terms of quality and qualitative differences, whereas for abstract labour/value quantity and quantitative difference.
However, you're right that the socially necessary labour time (or abstract labour or value) is 21 hours (and in fact; that's the "trickier" part to understand in my experience of reading Capital with newbies).
Well that's very helpful, but
Well that's very helpful, but helpful to the historical and logical analysis immanent to Marx's critique of capital that the law of value does not achieve its expression as a law until, unless, without etc. the dominant mode of production being the capitalst mode of production, where labor itself is organized as a [surplus]value-yielding commodity.
This is the part that should be emphasized for purposes of this discussion:
The exchange, the extent to which exchange grows, or dominates depends on their production. Historically and logically pre-capitalist economic formations cannot remain pre-capitalist and achieve that quantitative proportion of production for exchange that embodies the mechanism, the mediation, the law of value. And why is that? Again, because labor itself is not dispossessed, is not detached, is not composed and represented as a value in exchange for the means of subsistence.
And that's why there was very little evidence for "incipient capitalism" in China during those centures [Mao to the contrary not withstanding]; there was no development of "organic capitalism" from Spanish agriculture [except in Catalonia] etc etc. The law of value did not function; did not dominate because labor was not organized as a value in exchange.
Khawaga wrote: When it comes
Khawaga
Yeah, point taken, Khawaga, about 'concrete labour' being, well, 'concrete'. And I do understand that SNLT is only for 'abstract labour'.
But, to understand the concepts, it's very helpful (if not indispensable) to be able to contrast the 'work-hours' used (ie. 30) with the actual hours of SNLT (ie. 21) - this allows the new learner to get their teeth into something that can be quantified and compared. Later the need to think about 'concrete-labour' in terms of time (rather than, as you say, shoe- and cake-making) disappears with familiarity.
Khawaga
The fact that now, after this 'simplifying' process, I seem to understand the 'trickier part' seems, to me, to bear out what I've been saying.
And I think you agree, given my simple scenario, that the Smith family are now in the position to exchange 20 hours' worth of commodities (as Janet has kept 1 hour SNLT embodied in her hand-made shoes for herself - which wasn't SNLT anyway really (it was just 10 hours of her 'concrete-labour'), because she never intended production for the market, but treating it as such, temporarily, allows the learner to quantify, compare and contrast all these unfamiliar terms).
I'll move on next to 'exchange' - but only a simplified version. Please bear with me. Thanks again.
Khawaga's insistence that
Khawaga's insistence that concrete labour cannot be quantified is mistaken. The labor of workers in capitalist production is abstract as well as concrete; i.e., it has a dual character. But its designation as abstract labor refers to its social character, and it is not its social character that allows it to be quantified. One reason this confusion arises is due to the fact that, as abstract or value-producing labor, the concrete labor counts only quantitatively. But this abstraction can only be made from a given amount of concrete labor. Another reason this confusion arises is that socially necessary labour is not taken to be some average of useful labors, but is treated as some ineffable quality of abstract human labor. (An average of concretely useful labor hours, this quantum is simultaneously a measure of abstract labor.) Labor's character as socially necessary concerns only the magnitude of value, and is defined by Marx as the average amount of time required to produce any use-value. So, while socially necessary labor is not identical with useful or concrete labor, it can only be determined as a social average with regard to concrete labor times. Khawaga thus renders socially necessary labor time a meaningless concept. And this is no great loss for those who view value as only coming into existence in the act of exchange, but it might be of some importance for someone trying to understand Marx. Nonetheless, if our understanding of these terms is taken to be some sort of empirical question--if, for example, I could be wrong about use-value being objective in the sense that I have failed to accurately describe some aspect of the economy--then my argument can perhaps be interpreted as a mere argument from authority.
Of course concrete labor can
Of course concrete labor can be quantified: 10 pairs of shoes, 7 shirts, 24 brooms, 10 microprocessors. However what cannot be done when products and production are privately owned, when the purpose of production is not, and cannot yet be, directly social, consciously organized for the satisfaction of human needs, is the exchange of 1 to10 pairs of shoes for 1 or more microprocessors or 7 or less shirts.
When the means of production are private property, then the products must in their social circuits reproduce the very social relations of the classes at the heart of that production.
That means the reproduction of the relations where the owners of the MOP have no use for the product they "produce," save their use in exchange, their use as a vehicle for accumulation.
And it means the reproduction of that relation where labor has no value to the laborers save its value in exchange for the means of subsistence or some equivalent.
Abstract labor is not just labor in general, or labor measured by time, it's labor that is made abstract, is distilled, through its aggrandizement and expropriation. Value is the expression of that abstraction of labor through the aggrandizement of its time.
This become a bit more clear if we look at Marx's comments on the Gotha Program, where he says:
And Marx then talks about the transition period as that cooperative society emerges from capitalism, bearing all the marks of that birth:
And the "so much" the "amount," the quantity is measured through time. It is not measured through the concrete nature of the objects produced. Eight hours operating a switching locomotive spotting 50 cars of produce at supermarkets is equal to the 8 hours absorbed from the crew operating a 200 car coal train from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to North Platte, Nebraska.
I think this debate revolves
I think this debate revolves around whether we are understanding the opening chapters as follows, and I quote it because it is my unprejudiced position.
Capital Vol. III Preface
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
And the other ‘argument’ that is being put forward that, ‘no it isn’t’.
That is obviously critical to how we interpret the whole content and that we are actually disputing the meaning of the opening sentence.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
We are all agreed that it is obvious that commodities are not specific to capitalism.
If the investigation was going to be about capitalist commodities it would have read;
Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of this commodity.
Now on its own this isn’t very much but that opening sentence is certainly no evidence, as the only evidence cited, that the investigation is about the capitalist commodity rather than commodities in general beginning with the value of the simple commodity.
In fact if Karl had mentioned the capitalist produced commodity more than once or even once in the opening chapters then that wouldn’t be evidence against it being a investigation into the values of commodities in general.
But he doesn’t even do that, because as Fred says it ‘proceeds from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise, ultimately to arrive from this basis to capital — why he proceeds from the simple commodity instead of a logically and historically secondary form’.
And we therefore get a succession of examples of value in simple commodity production, evidence of which I have provided myself.
But I appreciate that the fraternity of sociologists and philosophers have never been much interested in and pay scant attention to evidence and facts.
I read capital without prejudice from a cold start in 2004, if I had any prejudice it was that it was going to be a load of bollocks because I didn’t believe the proposition that feudal peasants didn’t produce surplus value.
All this is on the record on Forums elsewhere.
And I hadn’t read Fred’s interpretation in the Preface to volume III before I adopted it.
No, that's not what the
No, that's not what the debate revolves around. The debate is about the assertion that the law of value operates trans-historically.
The law of value is not a natural law of the physical universe. It is the product, and regulator, of specific social relations of production. If it could exist in all its miserable glory, and glorious misery, prior to those social relations of production, then you need to explain exactly why those prior modes of production did not, and could not, develop the practical basis for the abolition of the law of value.
A mere technical point, I'm sure.
For the others there is a
For the others there is a passable analysis from the other Karl below
Karl Kautsky The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I.
COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL
Chapter I. COMMODITIES (1) The Character of Commodity Production
Which includes the quote;
And later in his proceedural analysis he almost lifts the chapter one footnote quote from Karl
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm
Not that I take my cue from Kautsky on everything and only read this fairly recently.
Kautsky misses more than one
Kautsky misses more than one point in his "just-so" story: 1) that the communistic village is not organized around exchange for the purpose of accumulating value [another mere technicality, I'm sure] 2) in the village, there is no private exchange going on; there is social distribution based upon the social overseeing of production [another mere technicality I'm sure].
Now if that commune were to dictate that a third smith be trained to produce either agricultural implements or weapons for exchange with other villages, cities, for say magazines, or sunglasses... then we have the beginnings of the transformation of production into production for value, but only the beginnings. We do not yet have a trans-historical law of value in operation.
"Simple," isolated commodity production is not based on dispossession of the producers from the means of production, therefore it cannot be regulated by the law of value.
And one more thing, this by
And one more thing, this by Engels:
is just flat out wrong. Marx is working backward in capital from the full developed law of value, from fully developed mass commodity production. This full development allows him to "see" through the veil obscuring the historical origins of commodity production.
Marx cannot proceed from the simple commodity because he is not living in a simple commodity production society; and also, no simple commodity production society yields up, on its own, a law of value. Look at the background to the writing of Capital. Hell, look at the title: A Critique of Political Economy. Marx is grappling not with the simple commodity, but expanded commodity production as presented by the political economists, most importantly Ricardo.
This is exactly parallel to what happens with Marx's analysis of abstract labor. It is only because Marx begins, in his critique from the vantage point of England, where abstract labor has been most concretely expressed that he can articulate the links, the interpenetration of abstract and concrete labor in the "simple" commodity.
Would I be on relatively the
Would I be on relatively the right track if I were to say this:
Concrete labor is done by a specific person, in a specific occupation, creating a specific commodity; while abstract labor is done by a hypothetical worker of average productivity?
What I would offer is that it
What I would offer is that it is essential to understand that concrete labor and abstract labor are not two different types of work taking place in different time periods or different parts of the economy. To put it simply, there is only the labor of the wage-worker, which is important in two different ways. It is important that the worker labors in a specific manner to produce a specific use-value. But this is not what counts in terms of capital accumulation. What happens is that the same labor process is viewed only quantitatively with regard to the expansion of value, as some quantity of mere exertion, performed without regard to its particular social utility. This abstract labor is performed by workers whose labor is not directly social, and we abstract from the concrete character of that labor in comparing it to the labor expended on completely different use-values. Thus "abstract labor" refers to the social form of this private, not directly social, labor. This labor is objectified as the value of things.
Not exactly. The point is
Not exactly. The point is that under specific social relations of production the labor is both concrete and abstract, yielding both use-values and value. Marx likes to use the examples of weavers and spinners. Both engage in concrete labor, the spinner spinning the wool or cotton or silk into thread; the weaver weaving the thread into a shirt or coat. Both engage in abstract labor in that the labor of each and all is organized as a commodity, thus yielding value, a sort of aqua regia that dissolves all the distinguishing characteristics of each commodity into a uniform medium so the commodities can be exchanged.
edit: nm
edit: nm
Value=socially necessary
Value=socially necessary labor time, right?
Well, value is the abstract
Well, value is the abstract form of wealth in a commodity-producing society. As products produced for exchange by private producers, these products are values. So value is, as a social objectivity attaching to useful things, an objectification of labor expended without regard to the form of its expenditure, or abstract labor. After Marx defines commodities as values insofar as they represent congealed quantities of abstract labor, he writes that the magnitude of a commodity's value is determined by the labor-time socially necessary to produce it. However, this amount of labor time is not, in itself, value. In other forms of society, the social character of labor would not be expressed in the value of things, but there would nonetheless exist some average social productivity. This social average, would not, however, present itself as a regulative norm operating behind the backs of the producers, precisely because labor would not be divided among private commodity producers.
Can people talk so I don't
Can people talk so I don't have to translate this through Marxish Babelfish? Thanks.
Well, my quick answer to your
Well, my quick answer to your last question would be: the terms are not equivalent, although you may be on the right track. I would say to look at Zeronowhere's post #108 if you'd prefer a different style. In that post, Zeronowhere talks about socially necessary labor before talking about value. In Capital, Marx derives "value" after discussing exchange-values, and only later talks about socially necessary labor time as a determinant of value.
Dave C wrote: Khawaga's
Dave C
I've not insisted that at all; several places I've said that you can count the hours or the products no problem. And of course concrete labour must be counted to figure out the productivity. LBird's problem was that he reduced two different kinds of labour into the one measure of labour-time, thus reducing shoe-making and cake-making to labour in general.
And also bear in mind that I am also trying to explain something to LBird. Hence my use of words like "good shorthand" to thing of CL in terms of quality and AL in terms of quantity. LBird seems to want to keep Marx's categories analytically separate in order to understand them; of course when they're considered dialectically it's a completely different thing. Then it doesn't matter to uphold a strict division between quantity and quality; they operate at the same time because labour has a dual character and the production process is both a labour process and a valorization process. But LBird is nowhere close this kind of argument.
yoda's walking stick
yoda's walking stick
It is better to think of abstract labour as the human effort (or the amount of free time you give up) that everyone expends performing any particular type of concrete labour.
From page 4
So I, as a non-hypothetical factory worker, performed abstract labour last week and will again the next.
You can start tagging onto it sociological social relational stuff if you want at this stage, to muddy the water.
This is of course a generalisation and reductionism, but it needs to be understood first before we deal with the flies in the ointment like skilled and unskilled labour etc.
When the basic principles are established the problems are dealt with by feeding them back, as with Galileo, he wasn’t phased by hammers and feathers falling to the ground on earth (as opposed to the moon) at different rates.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_15_feather_drop.html
Much of Dave B.'s position
Much of Dave B.'s position can be summed up in this part of Engels's preface to Volume III:
Marx does not proceed from the simple production of commodities as the historical premise. He starts with the analysis of the commodity, the "full-blown" capitalist commodity as the embodiment of value, as the vehicle for accumulation, capable of expressing relative and equivalent value, of universal exchange. From there he shows how those facets, that "life" of the commodity is at core a social relation governing the labor process.
The dissembling state
The dissembling state capitalist Bolshevik!
It isn’t much of Dave B’s argument it is Dave B’s argument and I provided that quote thank you very much along with supporting evidence my opponents are just saying no it isn’t backing it up with nothing. This is turning pythonesque.
So Engels is a Liar then?
Evidence has been provided.
Evidence has been provided. Take some time and read Marx's economic manuscripts in vols 33 and 34 of the collected works.
Your argument relies on a misinterpretation of yours [and Engels] that says Marx started from simple commodity production. No he did not start from simple commodity production. He started with a critique of Hegel's philosophy of right, and then moved to the critique of political economy-- political economy being the bourgeoisie's attempt to understand their own organization of production.
Get that? He moved on directly to political economy, to the critique of political economy.
He did not derive that critique from simple commodity production [I don't believe Marx ever used that phrase]. He derived the immanentcritique of capital from capital. He uses the commodity to analyze the "genetic material" of value and shows how that material is a social relation of production; a historically specific organization of labor. He says as much numerous times in his critique of political economy and economists who regard the "market" "exchange" "private ownership of the means of production" as a "natural" and eternal arrangement.
That historically specific organization of labor is the organization of labor as a commodity.... as wage-labor. It is that specific relation that gives the law of value its regulatory authority.
Engels a liar? No. Engels wrong? Yes. He had been wrong before. He was wrong in this.
Want me to cite the sources? Poverty of Philosophy, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy] Capital, vol 1-3 Theories of Surplus Value Economic Manuscripts 1857-1864
Dave B wrote: So Engels is a
Dave B
No, it has been noted several times that no one is saying that, but still you persist with this, as if your opponents here are slandering this Great Man. It really shouldn't be that surprising that Engels, in the 1890s, in his 70s, didn't fully comprehend the whole of Marx's value theory and its significance. Maybe he never did. Maybe he had earlier on, and then lost some of the 'niceties' of it, as the vulgar interpretation proliferated, and as he had then many other less esoteric things to contend with. It shouldn't be so surprising that he never fully got it, given that likely only a handful, at most, of people really fully understood the theory and the significance of commodity fetishism within it in the 19th century. In any case, it was Marx's theory and Marx's work -- all of the 'critique of political economy' from the Grundrisse on -- not Marx's and Engels', so it just isn't adequate to cite something Engels wrote as evidence that that was what Marx meant in this realm of his work. Other stuff that they worked on together, yes, but not here.
Quote: He did not derive that
A little help from the search engines
[quote=Marx]Just as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when modern bourgeois society was in its infancy, nations and princes were driven by a general desire for money to embark on crusades to distant lands in quest of the golden grail, so the first interpreters of the modern world, the originators of the Monetary System – the Mercantile System is merely a variant of it – declared that gold and silver, i.e., money, alone constitutes wealth. They quite correctly stated that the vocation of bourgeois society was the making of money, and hence, from the standpoint of simple commodity production, the formation of permanent hoards which neither moths nor rust could destroy. It is no refutation of the Monetary System to point out that a ton of iron whose price is £3 has the same value as £3 in gold. The point at issue is not the magnitude of the exchange-value, but its adequate form. With regard to the special attention paid by the Monetary and Mercantile systems to international trade and to individual branches of national labour that lead directly to international trade, which are regarded by them as the only real source of wealth or of money, one has to remember that in those times national production was for the most part still carried on within the framework of feudal forms and served as the immediate source of subsistence for the producers themselves. Most products did not become commodities; they were accordingly neither converted into money nor entered at all into the general process of the social metabolism; hence they did not appear as materialisation of universal abstract labour and did not indeed constitute bourgeois wealth. Money as the end and object of circulation represents exchange-value or abstract wealth, not any physical element of wealth, as the determining purpose and driving motive of production. It was consistent with the rudimentary stage of bourgeois production that those misunderstood prophets should have clung to the solid, palpable and glittering form of exchange-value, to exchange-value in the form of the universal commodity as distinct from all particular commodities. The sphere of commodity circulation was the strictly bourgeois economic sphere at that time. They therefore analysed the whole complex process of bourgeois production from the standpoint of that basic sphere and confused money with capital. The unceasing fight of modern economists against the Monetary and Mercantile systems is mainly provoked by the fact that the secret of bourgeois production, i.e., that it is dominated by exchange-value, is divulged in a naively brutal way by these systems. [/quote]
and
[quote=Marx]In order to prove that capitalist production cannot lead to general crises, all its conditions and distinct forms, all its principles and specific features—in short capitalist production itself—are denied. In fact it is demonstrated that if the capitalist mode of production had not developed in a specific way and become a unique form of social production, but were a mode of production dating back to the most rudimentary stages, then its peculiar contradictions and conflicts and hence also their eruption in crises would not exist.
Following Say, Ricardo writes: “Productions are always bought by productions, or by services; money is only the medium by which the exchange is effected” (l.c., p. 341).
Here, therefore, firstly commodity, in which the contradiction between exchange-value and use-value exists, becomes mere product (use-value) and therefore the exchange of commodities is transformed into mere barter of products, of simple use-values. This is a return not only to the time before capitalist production, but even to the time before there was simple commodity production; and the most complicated phenomenon of capitalist production—the world market crisis—is flatly denied, by denying the first condition of capitalist production, namely, that the product must be a commodity and therefore express itself as money and undergo the process of metamorphosis.[/quote]
or finally in Vol. 3
[quote=Marx]This reduction of the total quantity of labour going into a commodity seems, accordingly, to be the essential criterion of increased productivity of labour, no matter under what social conditions production is carried on. Productivity of labour, indeed, would always be measured by this standard in a society, in which producers regulate their production according to a preconceived plan, or even under simple commodity-production. But how does the matter stand under capitalist production?[/quote]
Engels mentions it also:
[quote=Engels to Kautsky]The moment you say means of production, you say society and a society determined by, amongst other things, those means of production. Means of production as such, extraneous to society and without influence over it, exist no more than does capital as such.
But how the means of production, which, at earlier periods, including that of simple commodity production, exercised only a very mild domination compared with now, came to exercise their present despotic domination, is something that calls for proof and yours strikes me as inadequate, since it fails to mention one pole, namely the creation of a class which no longer had any means of production of its own, or, therefore, any means of subsistence, and hence was compelled to sell itself piecemeal.[/quote]
I don't know which side in the dispute these quotes prove right here. Safest to assume that everybody is wrong.
edit;
This is unrelated, but I wonder if anyone has a review of Kautsky's Labour revolution:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/index.htm
Dave, maybe you know if the SPGB has done this? It's a major work and I love to read a critique/appraisal of it, but I don't know if anybody has done it.
I'll check the other sources
I'll check the other sources later, however, this:
Noa Rodman
[/quote]
...is just a bald-faced mistranslation. "Simple commodity production" is "einfache Warenproduktion" in German. In the original text, however, we find the phrase "einfachen Warenzirkulation", or "simple commodity circulation":
Source: http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me13/me13_049.htm#C
This is just another sterling example of how unreliable MECW translations often are, and why serious Marx scholars in Germany prefer the Fowkes/Fernbach/Nicolaus translations in the Penguin editions of Capital and the Grundrisse.
Sorry for the thread interruption, I'll let SPGB-Dave get back to arguing that Marx was merely a minor Left-Ricardian.
Yes and the second quote in
Yes and the second quote in German is 'bloße Warenproduktion'.
It's not only the SPGB who argue this though, also the ABC (of communism):
Noa Rodman wrote: Yes and the
Noa Rodman
which would translate to "mere commodity production", something far different from a historical epoch of simple commodity production.
Sorry, but arguments from the authority of old Bolsheviks are not persuasive to me, even one with such an impeccable moral record as Bukharin. Might as well just argue from Engels' authority, in that case.
P.S. Noa, since you read
P.S. Noa, since you read German, Nadja Rakowitz devoted her doctoral thesis to disproving the existence of a notion of a historical epoch of "simple commodity production" in Marx's work:
http://www.ca-ira.net/verlag/buecher/rakowitz-warenproduktion.html
On a much less exalted level
On a much less exalted level than considerations of translating Capital from German, this weekend I've actually read and understood the first two sections of chapter one!
Next, section three, 'The Value-Form, or Exchange-Value'.
I'd like to thank all those who've contributed to me getting this far, especially (though I think we have our differences in translating the English, never mind the German) Khawaga.
But as far as Marx's writing style goes, I can't help being reminded of Alphonso X of Spain's supposed retort, when he'd had the extremely complex Ptolemaic model of the Solar System explained to him:
Alphonso X
I'd give much the same recommendation to Charlie about Capital.
Anyway, thanks, Comrades!
Here I'm not arguing anything
Here I'm not arguing anything with you Angelus, but Rakowitz writes 'Die Konstruktion des einfachen Produktentauschs und der einfachen Warenproduktion ist die “(n)ormative Voraussetzung der Smithschen Vorstellung über Gesellschaft und Ökonomie...' so she considers simple commodity-production and -circulation belong together. And I think Nadja would fully agree with this excerpt from the above passage from Marx:
'Vorstufe' could be translated as pre-stage or rudimentary stage.
In the second quote Marx considers bloße Warenproduktion as something in time prior to capitalist production, so if not exactly an epoch, it must imply existence. I think it's difficult to interpret his mention of simple commodity production as a chronologically prior level of abstraction.
In the third quote Marx (from chapter 15 Vol.3, so this was actually from Marx, right?) uses the words 'einfache Warenproduktion' in contrast to capitalist production, though this doesn't have to imply historical existence.
My worry is that if simple commodity production didn't exist (if only as a small short stage - not an entire historical epoch), and instead was just a logical level of abstraction, as Rubin does (not followed therein by Mattick afaik], you separate method from object. At what chapter does Marx begin to speak of the existing capitalist production then, or does he never quit his methodological realm of abstraction?
LBird wrote: this weekend
LBird
Excellent and good for you. Hopefully at least some of the discussion here has helped, even though it got horribly side tracked and at times theological ;)
Thank you as well; I always learn something when I have to explain stuff in terms that I normally wouldn't use.
If you want to discuss this section as well I think a new thread is required (and one that is heavily policed so that it won't get as side-tracked as this one).
This is starting to get
This is starting to get complicated as these thing tend to do and now we several things in the air.
The first point is the SPGB thing, and I did not mention the SPGB first. It has not been the SPGB position that the law of value is trans-historical, there was a bloodbath of a debate on this on our forum circa 2005.
The “question 59” debate.
I am a communist and don’t believe in a state, money, exchange value and all the rest and I can not see why a law of value acting trans-historically changes any of that, or the same criticism I had of capitalism as before.
As I said before I think, about digging around in the pre 1863 stuff, I do think that Karl changed his position on this kind of thing but it is a bit nuanced and best left alone I think.
The second point is Engels position and mine, I hope it is clear now that I did not approach this from a party position.
I read volume one and came to exactly Engels interpretation. We are being asked to believe that they did not understand each other when they worked together on the opening chapters, or Fred forgot about it?
On Fred’s supplement to volume III, which is ‘consistent’ with the stuff in the preface on the law of value going back to the beginning recorded history etc I think that was exaggeration to illustrate a point or hyperbole and he goes a little bit too far therefore for me.
In fact objections to that go back to when it was written and the first criticism comes from our old friend Parvus via Bernstien of all people. And as I mentioned earlier I have some sympathy with it re the owners of surplus labour not being obliged to sell it at its value.
Eduard Bernstein Evolutionary Socialism Chapter II The Economic Development if Modern Society (a) On the Meaning of the Marxist Theory of Value
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/ch02-1.htm
Whilst not of course agreeing with where Edward goes with this, he has a valid point, eg as one point, when you have a monopoly as in the guild system you can exchange at whatever you think you can get away with.
But despite the general objection it does not appear to challenge the preface argument or Fred's ‘interpretation’, Kautsky’s as well, of the opening chapter.
So then we have, which is good;
At what chapter does Marx begin to speak of the existing capitalist production then, or does he never quit his methodological realm of abstraction?
Well probably chapter 4, in chapter 3 we are still getting the basic law of value stuff for all commodities, and we start to get that “immanent” thing as he drives home the bigger point;
Chapter Three: Money, Or the Circulation of Commodities
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#a25
And then he goes on to the perplexing problem of having two universal standards of value ie silver and gold. The point being that the actual value of gold and silver is the amount of labour time required to produce them. And as that can change in time and the amount of labour time required to produce silver goes down say relative to gold or the other way round it screws stuff up a bit.
The historical context is “from the reign of Edward III”, you could argue that merchant capitalism and usury or using money as capital to extract ‘surplus labour’ from others is starting to kick in then if you want. As in the case of the ‘small Roman peasants’ a bit earlier.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#n4
Dave B quoted Marx: Marx
Dave B quoted Marx:
Marx
A historical example of a 'change' which 'disturbed the ratio' was the penetration of the Tokugawa Japanese Tributary Mode economy by the capitalist West after Perry's 1853 expedition.
http://www.daggarjon.com/Currency_Japan.php
In China, buy 15 pieces of silver (where 15 pieces of silver buy 1 piece of gold);
Ship silver to Japan, buy gold at 5 to 1; (ie. now have 3 pieces of gold);
Take 3 pieces of gold to China, buy 45 pieces of silver;
Ship silver to Japan, buy gold at 5 to 1; (ie. now have 9 pieces of gold);
...9 gold...135 silver
...27 gold...405 silver
...81 gold...1,215 silver
...243 gold...3,645 silver
...729 gold...10,935 silver
etc. - few trips, riches for life.
This trend eventually 'disturbed' the entire Tokugawa regime.
Noa Rodman wrote: My worry
Noa Rodman
Is anyone here saying that simple commodity production didn't exist? That would be silly. If 'simple commodity production' = pre-capitalist commodity production, i.e. commodity production without wage labour, then obviously it did. That would be commodities produced by (the labour of) those who own the means of production involved in their production, and thus who also own and bring to market those commodities. Capitalism didn't just arise sui generis. Those are historical facts. But they are not relevant to Marx's methodology of investigation in the early chapters of Capital, v.1. The object of investigation is capital.
Rather than "speak of", if we are concerned with where Marx begins to investigate or analyze existing capitalist production, it would seem to me to be chapter seven, entitled "The labour process and the valorization process".
Quotes? You want quotes?
Quotes? You want quotes? "Harry, turn on the blue light. The guy wants a blue suit," as they used to say on Orchard St.
1. From the author's preface to the first edition of Capital, vol 1 Charles H. Kerr edition, 1906:
2. From the author's preface [actually afterword] to the 2nd edition, where he approvingly quotes part of the review from the Europrean Messenger of St. Petersburg:
And what's Marx's response to this reviewer? Does he suggest the reviewer is wrong? That the reviewer doesn't understand the "trans-historical" functioning of the law of value? That the reviewer needs to talk to F. Engels to truly understand Marx's task and topic? Nope. Not a word of that.
Marx says this:
Engels, in arguing that Marx is providing a "historical analysis" or "historical record" of the functioning of the law of value is actually stripping Marx's critique of that law and that value of its historical specificity. Engels is making the law of value ahistorical, independent of the social relations of production.
3. More? More on the specificity of the law of value? How about the fact that the law of value cannot govern under all conditions of labor? "Harry, turn up the blue lights. I've found a tie to go with that suit."
From A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1970, New World Publishers, p. 31-32
bold added.
Marx continues:
Get that, comrades? The conditions of labor that create exchange value require a specific social organization of labor that distills all particular labor into a common medium. Those social conditions can only exist when labor itself is organized as a commodity as wage-labor. "Simple commodity production" does not homogenize labor to a general character, to a socially undifferentiated measure called time. Simple commodity production is simply too simple, isolated, peripheral, marginal, to establish such relations on the scale necessary to.... necessary to reproduce accumulation which is in fact the law of value in operation.
See, without abstract labor, no social production of value. Without social production of value, no law of value. Without the law of value no accumulation.
It's just that simple, and not, Fred.
Late response to Khawaga:
Late response to Khawaga: Apologies, as it seems I misread the intent of some of your remarks.
Quote: Is anyone here saying
[quote:Waslax]Is anyone here saying that simple commodity production didn't exist? That would be silly. If 'simple commodity production' = pre-capitalist commodity production, i.e. commodity production without wage labour, then obviously it did. That would be commodities produced by (the labour of) those who own the means of production involved in their production, and thus who also own and bring to market those commodities. Capitalism didn't just arise sui generis. Those are historical facts.[/quote]
No, I don't think anyone denied it existed. Dave B thinks it began with Edward the third, but also earlier in Rome. I already started haggling with Angelus about the duration of simple commodity production:
1 it is just a short pre-stage, i.e. 16-17th century
2 it is the rudimentary phase of capitalism itself
3 it spans all pre-capitalist commodity production
4 who bids higher/lower?
I think bid no.2 allows the historical interpretation of these chapters.
It was a trick question: the correct answer is from the first page.
Artesian
Dave already stated he thinks Engels was bending the stick a little. However, to be fair to Engels, he seems to make your point in a criticism of Kautsky:
Engels
So can we from this conclude that Engels believed the law of value was operative in earlier periods, but only very very mildly? Back to haggling.
Given what, as someone who
Given what, as someone who was ignorant of the meaning of the categories of Capital, I've learned during this discussion and what I've read in the first two sections of chapter one, I'd like to offer some small advice to anyone intending to try the same.
That is, everywhere where the text mentions 'value' write above it in pencil 'social', so that it now reads 'social-value'.
For example, the heading of chapter one, section one, reads:
'The two factors of the commodity: use-value and value (substance of value, magnitude of value)'
Amend this to read:
'The two factors of the commodity: use-value and social-value (substance of social-value, magnitude of social-value)'
If this is done throughout the text, it helps to keep it in mind that when Marx refers to 'value', he's not meaning the everyday usage of the term; ie. 'value'.
He's meaning something in comparison to 'use-value' (which itself is individual and concrete), something which is not 'value' as we ordinarily understand it, but 'social-value'. It is an abstraction, not something that you can touch or use as an individual.
To me, this amendment signifies the importance of recognising that it's all too easy to read Marx's term 'value' as the common-or-garden, day-to-day word 'value' that we all already know, and so to lose sight of the special significance he gives to his concept.
I hope this little piece of advice helps - it has me.
Noa Rodman wrote: Quote: Is
Noa Rodman
No, I don't think anyone denied it existed. Dave B thinks it began with Edward the third, but also earlier in Rome. I already started haggling with Angelus about the duration of simple commodity production:
1 it is just a short pre-stage, i.e. 16-17th century
2 it is the rudimentary phase of capitalism itself
3 it spans all pre-capitalist commodity production
4 who bids higher/lower?
[/quote]
Can we bid sideways? I mean, we can all agree that fishing is an activity that predates capitalism, that doesn't make fishing a historical mode of production, with a unique set of social relations and laws of motion specific to it, or even - and here is the argument - a law of motion otherwise thought to be specific to the capitalist mode of production - i.e. the law of value.
As an economic activity, artisanal commodity production of course goes back through the city-dwellers of history, from the Ming through Ancient Greece and Rome, and so on. But does a given economic activity determine the overall social relations of a society? And if the "commercialisation model" - that capitalism developed organically out of the simple commodity production of artisans and guild masters in trade-centre cities - is correct, then why did capitalism not arise much earlier? You can't say the Ming didn't have the technology. The orthodox 'Marxist' model of history may (just) have been defensible from within the limits of the ignorant, self-obessessed historiography of late 19th century Western Europe, but it's no longer reconcileable with 21st century historical knowledge.
S. Artesian
One thing's for sure, it can't be assimilated to a "logical scientific reductionism" reading. You don't necessarily have to wrestle with 19th century German Idealist philosophy (Hegel? Nein danke...) now that we have systems and complexity theory, but the one thing the analysis cannot be grasped with, is naive reductionism.
Quote: One thing's for sure,
I agree. And nope, you don't have to wrestle with Hegel, although I have-- 2 out of 3, no biting, gouging, or kicking-- and I wouldn't wish it on anybody, more or less. Science of Logic had me near tears until I started think of it as a very long soliloquy] from Hamlet.
But you do have to wrestle with Marx, and his transposition of Hegel's dialectic from "consciousness" to the social labor process.
Quote: This makes clear, of
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
Is this a lie? Or does he just 'reinterpret' it, after a failure to recollect, like Blair and Rumsfeld interpreted the WMD evidence.
Dave B wrote: Quote: This
Dave B
That's already been answered. How about he's just wrong? Marx does NOT begin from the simple production of commodities. He begins from the commodity as the expression of value, and the commodity that expresses that value must fully is the capitalistically produced commodity.
Engels is mistaken. And not for the first time. Why is that so hard for you to grasp? Engels did not write the opening chapters of Capital did he?
Read the chapters yourself and tell he where Marx analyzes "simple commodity production."
Finish reading that section on Aristotle and value, and what do you get? This:
bold added.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the law of value is that dominant relation between man and man being that of owners of commodities.
"Simple commodity production" does not exhibit that "simple dominant relation" because labor itself is not organized as a commodity.
Finally the thread is ruined
Finally the thread is ruined which allows me to ask
@Angelus, could you verify if the following article of Isaak Rubin was translated: On the question of social and abstract labour (Response to S. Shabs' critique), 1928, 3.
I suspect it hasn't been translated (if you could check, maybe it was published in Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, 1925-1936).
Also, in Abstract Labour and Value in Marx’s System footnote 3 says the translators can't trace the passages Rubin quotes from himself and I think that's because these are from the last chapter 'Response to critiques', which probably was included only in some Russian edition(s).
Furthermore, I don't even know if these are two texts or one and the same.(edit; these are two different texts)
If not, this just goes to show how a key debate between top Russian marxists on abstract labour, value, etc. is simply unknown to us.
@Dave B or anyone else, how about finding any review of Kautsky's major work The Labour Revolution (1924)?
LBird: Could you elaborate on
LBird: Could you elaborate on your "everyday"-value-term? I dont get it. When people talk about what stuff is worth, they talk about value. when they talk about what stuff is worth to them, they talk about use value. I dont see why Marx shouldnt fit with those concepts.
yourmum wrote: LBird: Could
yourmum
Yeah, in everyday usage 'value' means the same as 'worth'. Further, in everyday usage only the individual can say what something is 'worth' to that individual. In both cases, everyday usage clashes with Marx.
I think you're wrong on 'use-value': I've never had a day-to-day conversation in the pub when anyone has described 'what stuff is worth to them' as 'use-value'. They say stuff is valuable to them or it's worth something, and that they themself are the arbiter of 'value' to themself.
The only people who use the term 'use-value' are people who've read Marx, and are now Communists.
Given that my advice is aimed at new readers of Capital, I think that it's worth stressing that Marx isn't talking about 'value' (a word they'll have met before and have preconceptions about), but is talking about an entirely different term 'social-value'.
This usage both captures the difference compared to everyday 'value' and stresses the 'social' aspect that can only be determined by the collective, not the individual.
Unless Communists make some attempt to explain Marx's concepts to workers new to his ideas, and don't just keep repeating 'Read Marx', then his ideas will never gain the widespread understanding that both they deserve in themselves and we require for the future.
Anyone who thinks that the advice 'Just read Marx' is good advice, is deluding themselves.
"when anyone has described
"when anyone has described 'what stuff is worth to them' as 'use-value'."
yeah but my point is you have someone describing use-value as "what stuff is worth TO THEM". in comparison to "what stuff is worth" without further reference when they talk about the exchange value.
Quote: @Dave B or anyone
The only review I found for Kautsky's Die proletarische Revolution und ihr Programm is by Ludwig von Mises, but it's only very short.
[quote=Mises (1923)]Auch die marxistischen Parteiliteraten können die Beschäftigung mit dem Problem der Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen nicht mehr länger ablehnen.
Schon ein halbes Jahr nach dem Erscheinen meiner Abhandlung »Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen« behandelten der Moskauer Nationalökonom Tschajanow, die Bolschewiken Strumilin, Bucharin, Varga und andere das Problem in einer Reihe von Aufsätzen in der »Ekonomitscheskaja Shiznj«, einem Amtsblatte der Sowjetregierung.(22) Das Ergebnis dieser Erörterung war kläglich. Tschajanow kam nicht über den mißglückten Versuch hinaus, Verhältnisziffern für die Aufstellung einer Naturalwirtschaftsrechnung einzelner Produktionszweige willkürlich zu konstruieren. Strumilin verwarf den Lösungsvorschlag Tschajanows und versuchte es mit einem System der Konstituierung des Arbeitswerts. Seine Ausführungen über die Beziehungen des Arbeitswertes zur Nützlichkeit werden in dem uns vorliegenden Auszuge nur kurz erwähnt. Varga befaßt sich nur mit der Arbeitszeitrechnung, ohne auf die Schwierigkeiten, die ihrer Anwendung entgegenstehen, näher einzugehen.
Ganz besonders leicht macht sich Kautsky die Lösung des Problems. Daß es mit der Arbeitszeitrechnung nicht gehen kann, sieht er nun endlich ein. »Statt sich an die hoffnungslose Arbeit zu machen, fließendes Wasser mit einem Sieb zu messen – und dieser Art wäre die Konstituierung des Wertes –, wird sich das proletarische Regime für die Zirkulation der Waren an das halten, was es greifbar vorfindet: ihre historisch gewordenen Preise, die heute in Gold gemessen werden, was selbst die weitestgehende Inflation nur verschleiern und verzerren, nicht aber aufheben kann. Was selbst der ungeheuerste und vollkommenste statistische Apparat nicht zu leisten vermöchte, die Schätzung der Waren nach der in ihnen enthaltenen Arbeit, das finden wir in den überkommenen Preisen als Ergebnis eines langen historischen Prozesses gegeben vor, unvollkommen und ungenau, aber als einzig mögliche Grundlage für möglichst glattes und leichtes Weiterfunktionieren des ökonomischen Zirkulationsprozesses«.(23) An diesen überkommenen Preisen wird zunächst nichts geändert. Doch, »wenn das gesellschaftliche Interesse es erheischt«, können »die Ziffern der Produktion und der Preise einzelner Waren« (497) auch »abweichend von den aus der kapitalistischen Zeit überkommenen festgesetzt werden«. Das, meint Kautsky, »ist, von Fall zu Fall vorgenommen, eine weit einfachere Operation als das Berechnen der Arbeitswerte aller Waren zur Einführung des Arbeitsgeldes. Natürlich wird man dabei nicht willkürlich verfahren können«.(24) Doch bedauerlicherweise unterläßt es Kautsky, zu zeigen. wie das anders als willkürlich geschehen könnte. Und wenn er die Beibehaltung des kapitalistischen Geldsystems empfiehlt, erklärt er, sich auf Andeutungen beschränken zu müssen und keine Geldtheorie geben zu wollen.(25)
Man wird Kautsky nicht Unrecht tun, wenn man feststellt, daß die von ihm vorgeschlagene Lösung keiner weiteren. Erörterung wert ist. Daß man auf die Dauer mit den überkommenen. Preisen das Auslangen nicht finden kann, gibt er selbst zu. Er weiß jedoch nicht anzugeben, wie man die erforderlichen Korrekturen vorzunehmen hätte.[/quote]
Anyway, continue...
yourmum wrote: yeah but my
yourmum
I'm not quite sure what point you're making here, yourmum.
My advice was aimed at anyone reading the first two sections of chapter one of Capital for the first time.
I've not mentioned 'exchange-value', yet - and certainly no-one in the pub uses a term like 'exchange-value'.
Perhaps you frequent a better class of pub than the ones I do. There, the only 'value' they're interested in is the 'ABV' of the Real Ale. And that's satisfyingly 'concrete', not theoretically 'abstract'.
mmmmm..... Beer.....
Actually I think Lbird is
Actually I think Lbird is showing some insight.
So on use-value and value etc as a thought experiment.
When I decorated my house myself, once I completed it was a use value to myself, which in anticipation of, was the reason I did it.
However I could and did whilst looking at it consider the amount of effort that I put into doing it.
And that would be its value, I could have theoretically, and I did consider it, fund it by putting in overtime and paying somebody else to do it.
And thus my ‘abstract’ labour overtime or human effort at work would have been equivalent to the ‘abstract’ work I did myself on the house, to achieve the same use-value.
And then I could have looked at my decorated house and seen it as the amount abstract effort and time I expended as a concrete chemist as opposed to an amateur concrete painter and decorator.
Actually the working class who are engaged in tangible useful work, like factory workers, are not so daft as people make out and they can see more clearly than intellectuals that a load of non concrete ‘work has gone into that’.
In fact I believe it is part of our culture, my parents, both factory workers (the guy’s in the pub) used to instil in me, as a feckless youngster, the value of stuff in terms of how much effort, for someone, had gone into making it as opposed to its exchange value or price.
As I kind of moral perspective admittedly.
Workerist snob but why not, it is true.
Whilst the epigram about knowing the ‘price (exchange value) of everything and the value of nothing’ admittedly can be viewed as the use-value it can also be understood as Marxist ‘value’.
Acute only to those who do tangible useful work
Scientific laws are generally the formalisation of empirically and experimentally observed facts or if you like spotting correlation’s or patterns.
The law of value, as it evolved was such, people observed that expensive stuff or stuff that had a high exchange value tended to involve more time its manufacture.
And that obvious truism underpins the credibility of the law even to the not so stupid guy’s in the pub.
As it did to that scientist Benjamin Franklin who was certainly one of the originators of the theory.
Once any ‘scientific’ law is ‘established’ however as Feuerbach, Karl’s mentor, astutely noticed the scientific law becomes the object of scientific investigation itself.
Or in other words why does the law work.
And that leads onto further understanding.
What underpins the law of value or in other words what is ‘natural’, ‘eternal’ or materialistic about it is that all that does matter or is of value is the amount free time of our lives that we have to give up to obtain useful things.
I think what Karl was doing in the opening chapters of das capital was interesting for me as a scientist, as he was pretty much ‘thought experimenting’ which became a standard scientific technique later.
I wouldn’t want to credit him with originating the idea but it is certainly for me a fascinating early example of it.
Much of the content of the early material is slightly surreal for those unfamiliar with that method, in the sense that linen weavers never did barter their product for bibles or whatever it was.
(and you will have more success teaching chemistry to a budgerigar than that scientific method to a sociologist)
But then again as in the quantum mechanics versus Einstien debate, that Einstien lost for the moment, both sides of the argument appreciated the ‘surreal’ logical implications of it.Eg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat
[I think Einstien is going to be proved right in the end when we understand the interaction of ‘random’ invisible neutrinos on quantum effects.]
Some people seem to think that the law of value necessarily has something to do with accumulation and capitalism.
Proudhon, and I am no fan, even recognised before Marx the basic problem, and thought of the solution in terms of creating a situation were commodities did exchange at their value.
Thus no exploitation and accumulation.
Dave B wrote: Scientific
Dave B
Yipes. Could I interest you in some Kuhn or, better, Lakatos?
Dave B
This point has been made before, by different contributors to the thread, but it's worth repeating one more time.
The law of value is a social law. Not a law of physics such as those that began operating seconds after the big bang and will continue to operate until the heat death of the universe. To the degree that Marx wanted to rescue the critique of political economy from the various ethical or 'true' socialists that mixed moral judgements into slipshod muddling with economic categories, he aimed to raise it to the level of a social science. But not a physical science, whose laws are "natural, eternal [&] materialistic".
Seeing as we've reached the point of rambling posts with little connection to the OP, I'll throw this in from something I was working on last week. It's actually from something on world monetary systems (Gold standard, Bretton Woods, etc.), but it seems apposite:
I should add that in pre-capitalist formations, the coding authority is the king, god-emperor, grand negus or whatever, who is also the commander-in-chief, and the enforcement system is the military force - that is that the apparatus of monetary rule is not distinct from that of political rule. This is radically different in capitalism, particularly in the pole of force delivery which appears for the first time as "an inner law, a blind natural force vis-a-vis the individual agents".
"The only good laws aren't enforced" as the intro to a particular song went, and the law of value is not one of those laws.
LBird wrote: I'm not quite
LBird
The point I think he's trying to make is that in the topsy-turvy world of capitalism, people come to view exchange-value as the 'individual value' of things rather than the actual use they can get from something.
LBird wrote: yourmum
LBird
I think you are simplifying things here too much. The everyday usage of the word "value" has a number of different meanings. Check the dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th ed.) lists nine different meanings for "value". The meaning that you provide is one of those, and yes, it is listed first, and so is probably the most common one. However, the third meaning COD provides is:
This is one of the "everyday" meanings of the word "value". This usage does not make value or 'worthiness' dependent on particular individuals' valuations or attitudes. It is clearly a social conception of value. As a social conception of value, it is confined to a specific realm of life. And that realm is the economic realm. So we can say that this is the 'economic meaning' of "value".
Now, to bring it back to understanding the opening chapters of Marx's Capital, v.1. This book is subtitled "a critique of political economy". And it begins by considering the nature of the commodity, as the basic unit of the capitalist mode of production. As a result, can we not assume that the typical (first-time) reader of Capital will be able to figure out fairly quickly that it is this economic meaning of the word "value" that Marx is concerned with?
I apologise for rambling and
I apologise for rambling and it is unforgivable especially as I criticise others for doing it.
If you consider that evaluating things according to the amount of labour time that goes into them in order to minimise your working day and maximise the material use value benefits of your labour as social then so be it.
And that 'law' can obviously operate in different social or economic environments.
I gave the example the goose herder switching to cobbling in the situation of simple commodity production where the commodity producers own their own means of production and where wage labour does not exist.
Where he changes his concrete labour to obtain the maximum amount for his abstract labour or general expenditure of human effort and time that is only thing quantifiably common to all labour.
That kind of thing also goes on in capitalism as regards wage labour where lorry drivers become computer programmer’s etc.
And Karl never included stuff in his book without a purpose for those with eyes to see, although he was obviously too clever for his own good and as a result I believe people have understandably missed the point.
I believe in his passage on Robinson Crusoe on value in the non-social society of one he was in fact making the very point that I am making.
At the end of the day I can appreciate and follow Kautsky’s take on Das Capital as below even if I have reservations about it here and there ie in .
Kautsky The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I. COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL Karl
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm
And obviously I follow Engels take on it, as I did whilst a read it and obviously not prejudiced by any party position, and you will have to take my word for it that I did not read the preface to volume III before volume I.
I think it is as clear as it can be that they Karl and Fred did work together on the opening chapters of volume one.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867/letters/67_06_27a.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm
It is also worth bearing in mind that Fred taught Karl economics and was well ahead of him in say 1843 when Fred was writing some pretty good stuff on it whilst Karl was puzzling of the meaning of foraging for firewood.
Incidentally for the interest perhaps of S Artisan as a Leninist, Lenin made a rare foray into this kind of thing and appears to be drawing from the Kautsky article cited above. But I get the impression that Vlad was not really comfortable on this ground and sensible chap that he was tended to stay away from it.
Marx’s Economic Doctrine
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/ch03.htm
Incidentally if the law of value does not operate in simple commodity production, if you believe such a thing exists, on what basis do non capitalist commodities exchange?
Quote: Incidentally if the
That can be reduced to the difference between C-M-C and M-C-M. Quite simple, really.
waslax wrote: Now, to bring
waslax
Well, this is the $64,000 question. Can "the typical (first-time) reader of Capital... figure out fairly quickly that it is this economic meaning of the word "value" that Marx is concerned with"?
I don't think it is obvious that the term 'value' means 'social-value'. It's only become clear to me through this discussion, and with the help from other posters, including you.
But perhaps I'm just a bit thick, and slow on the uptake.
It needs other posters new to Capital to say whether:
a) they read the first two sections through and 'figured it out fairly quickly' by themselves;
b) they've benefited from this discussion, and only now does it make some sense (my position);
c) it was bollocks both before and after this discussion, and they're still none the wiser.
I fear c) will be the more prevalent answer, and that the responsibility for that lies with both Marx and later Communists, including us, for not explaining the concepts better.
Frankly, I hope that I'm wrong, and that 'a)' is the most common answer, and that if I'm put in the corner facing the wall and forced to wear a pointy hat with a big 'D' on it, the problem will be solved.
LBird wrote: It needs other
LBird
When I wrote "figure out fairly quickly" I of course meant that they figure out what meaning of the word "value" Marx was concerned with in the early chapters of Capital, not that they figure out fairly quickly the full significance of Marx's theorization there. I fully concur that that theorization is not easily grasped, even by the brightest of us.
Khawaga
Khawaga
Well it is a bit of a quibble but that is not “exactly” true, and you have obviously just lifted that from Lenin, never a good idea, in the link I gave you.
It should be as far as the capitalist is concerned M-C-M', not that I ever like that Hegelian expression, and it led to the mistake of leaving out un-consumed fixed capital that originated in volume one, because it just returned.
Anyway;
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Part II: The Transformation of Money into Capital
Chapter Four: The General Formula for Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm
Capital Vol. III Part I The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit Chapter 2. The Rate of Profit
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch02.htm
Does SArtisan think the Kautsky explanation of the opening chapters is outstanding?
Quote: Well it is a bit of a
Didn't bother reading the link you posted (and I don't bother reading much of Lenin in any case); don't understand most of the points you're trying to make (there doesn't seem to ever be one) and my response was purely based on Vol. 1.
And I still think that you don't seem to catch that historically there is a difference between surplus labour and surplus value, but that in the capitalist mode of production the two becomes the same.
And seriously, the last maybe 6-7 posts from you Dave B, I don't get what point(s) you're trying to make. To me you just seem to be rambling and stringing together a series of quotes (and my reaction to them is typically: "so what?"). So, in the spirit of this thread, can you please explain in very simple language what point you're trying to make? Or are you still arguing for a historical reading of Capital?
Well the point is that Engels
Well the point is that Engels is accused of re-interpreting the opening chapters of Das Capital with his
What I am putting forward is that apparently Kautsky, in his synopsis of Karl’s Capital appears to make the same 'mistake'.
And 2/3 of the way down into his article after discussing the evolution of pre capitalist simple commodity production and that these commodities have value. He says as if it wasn’t already obvious that;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm
Commodity production is a historical category if you like in the sense that it hasn’t always existed, but that is not at issue.
And I think we all agreed that commodity production occurs in pre capitalist and capitalist production.
Again Kautsky says;
In other words, making a reasonable paraphrase, that;
What I would like to know is who first challenged this interpretation when, where and how.
I have accepted that Engels supplement quote was challenged and I gave an early example of it with a linked quote.
Not that I have any respect for Lenin on this, but he certainly didn’t challenge Kautskys article in fact he praised it.
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/KM14.html
And it would be safe to say I think that your argument is not directly addressed by Kautsky because it did “not yet exist”.
I think you're now conflating
I think you're now conflating "the law of value" with the simple existence of value. Conceptually and logically pre-capitalist commodities would have to have value. However, the point is that social production and exchange was never ever subject to the law of value. This can occur only when the commodity form is generalized, i.e. when labour-power is commodified. So I can agree with Kautsky that\
But as I've said, this simple claim has got nothing to do with the law of value being transhistorical. And this is the reason why I previously (and very shortly) argued that the basis of non-capitalist commodities being exchange is C-M-C. This is perfectly in line with Marx's logical argument as well with the historical existence of commodities prior to the capitalist mode of production. It is when exchange is regulated by M - C - M' that the law of value comes into effect because M - C - M' requires the existence of capitalist social relations (thus the formula M - C (LP+MP)...P...C' - M' describes capital much better).
That's fer sure. As far as I know it only came into existence in the 60s with the Neue Marx Lekture (whose main inspirations were the original first chapter of the German edition of capital, I. I. Rubin and Pashukanis), though for all I know there might be people that have challenged Engles' and the second international's orthodoxy before that.
Khawaga wrote: I think you're
Khawaga
But not necessarily in the General Form of value which is associated with the positive emergence of abstract labour itself and the heightening of the antagonism between the equivalent and relative forms. Depending on your reading of Ch 1, Section 3 The Value-Form, c The General Form of Value, 1) The changed character of the form of value. See also note 26 in the following section on the development of the relative and equivalent forms:
Which is not just a side-swipe at Proudhon, but all vulgar economics that skips straight from the accidental or elementary form to the money form while trying to pretend that the latter is just a convenience, with no real transformation of social relations from those of barter.
Thanks for that comment
Thanks for that comment Ocelot. Haven't looked at it exactly that way before, but I agree.
Yeah, the first time I read
Yeah, the first time I read ch 1, (a few years after my first attempt in my late teens, which I gave up in disgust), once I'd sorta got my head around abstract labour being the basis of value and exchange value (not that I really noticed the difference at that stage) I couldn't figure out why he was banging on about the different forms and I just thought it was some 19th century German Idealist perverse way of making a simple thing complicated. That is, I kinda assumed all the different forms were more or less equivalent logical developments of the same thing. It wasn't until many years later that I realised that they weren't the same thing at all, and the shift between form B and form C above all, is a significant transformation. Even though Marx isn't writing a historical account and is trying to focus specifically on value in isolation from other capitalist relations (e.g. wage labour), he does nonetheless leave enough breadcrumbs to signal that the change between form B and form C implies a modification in social relations.
Theories of Surplus Value,
Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3
[Chapter III] Adam Smith
[1. Smith’s Two Different Definitions of Value; the Determination of Value by the Quantity of Labour Expended Which Is Contained in a Commodity, and Its Determination by the Quantity of Living Labour Which Can Be Bought in Exchange for This Commodity]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htm
So if the Law of value, ie that commodities exchange according to the amount of labour required to produce them or whatever, does not operate in pre capitalist simple commodity production.
Then on what basis do they exchange or is it just “makeshift for practical purposes”?
For balance and the ‘other view’; I will provide some ‘content’ as my opponents have deferred.
Engels’ Edition of the Third Volume of Capital and Marx’s Original Manuscript
MICHAEL HEINRICH
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/editorial/heinrich.htm
Incidentally it has been reported that Engels edited and amended what became the standard Dummies Guide to Das Capital; Kautskys ‘The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx’ of 1887
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/index.htm
Which contains the ‘trans-historical’ analysis; so Fred’s reinterpretation after “writing” volume III that moved to a whilst really needs to be changed to a before.
I realise that this was
I realise that this was posted a while ago and I've been away for a bit, but I should probably respond since this thread is still near the top of the page.
Khawaga
My point was that I think that explaining the use-value/value distinction by referring it to a distinction between quality and quantity is entirely misleading. They (Use-value and Value) are both qualitative aspects of the commodity, and these different qualities can be determined quantitatively in different ways. A better way of viewing it in my opinion would be as a distinction between the physical properties of the commoditiy and it's social properties.
Been away awhile, but in my
Been away awhile, but in my absence:
1. How did I become a Leninist? Last time I checked, I didn't buy into vanguard party-ism, Lenin's theory of imperialism, the "right of 'nations' to self-determination," etc. I do support "All power to the soviets" but that, IIRC, has bit broader base than Lenin.
Maybe I'm a Leninist because I think the Russian Revolution was a proletarian revolution? Or because I can't conceive of a capitalism without a capitalist class?
Or is it because it's clear to me that the Bolshevik seizure of power was supported, even demanded by the Russian working class?
If that's the case, sure I'm a Leninist.
2. No, I don't accept Kautsky's rendition of "Marxist economics."
3. In TSV, Marx is referring to Smith's "model" of simple commodity exchange, which breaks down in that there is no basis for accumulation. What is that basis? It's surplus value, it's labor organized as wage-labor, which is what makes the law of value the abstract embodiment of the concrete social relation regulating production.
4. If the law of value isn't dominant how does exchange occur under "primitive conditions," DB wants to know. First and foremost, Marx writes that it occurs at the fringes of societies, where such societies come in contact with each other. A simple examination of the history of such exchange will show that the exchange is hardly dominant, and that production is not organized based on the incidents or principles of such exchange. Secondly, accumulation does not occur in those areas of exchange-- no accumulation of private wealth commanding social labor. That's the difference between individual exchange, petty producer barter, and the exchange of commodities as representatives of capital.
5. And finally, for the nth time, Marx does not begin with the analysis of simple commodity production. Read the first chapters of Capital again. He starts out with the commodity as the embodiment of value, and he proceeds to analyze value-- the product, goal, alpha and omega of capitalist commodity production.
S.Artesian wrote: In TSV,
S.Artesian
It breaks down yes, but only in capitalism; the Smithian/Ricardian law of value is valid for simple commodity production (and according to your reading, Marx does imagine a simple commodity production in the first chapters, albeit a non-existing one, see Rubin). With the advent of capitalism Marx says the law of value changes, even becomes suspended. Marx's law of value indeed differs from the Ricardian; but they are both valid. How can this be? They are about the (non-)operation of the law of value in different historical eras.
Hi S. Artesian First of all
Hi S. Artesian
First of all we need to make clear again what the argument is; I am saying that the law of value operates, or more accurately develops from, pre-capitalist production where producers are not wage slaves.
So from the second chapter of volume one where Karl never mentions or even hints at capitalism or wage labour etc he says that;
At this point because ‘The proportions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a matter of chance’ the law of value does not operate, only exchange of commodities.
Then he goes on in the next page after briefly discussing the idea of money first being used to improve upon this barter process, and introduced by nomads with cattle and slaves being used as the universal money commodity etc.
Ie the displacement of barter, as means of exchange, by ‘money’ or a universal equivalent of ‘value’, then;
And in the next paragraph, on the pre-capitalist historical introduction of money as the ‘manifestation of the value of commodities’;
,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
Although we need to go back a few pages to understand this as regards independent producers, even if the guy in the pub or wage slave understands it equally well.
What that means is that I am not going to exchange something that took 10 hours of my labour for something that costs 5 hours of somebody else’s, if I can help it.
[Although that can occur with the simply commodity production of modern un-waged non feudal peasants who are forced to sell their products at below its value which can be one source of the surplus value of the modern merchants.]
Unless you are going to say that the surplus value of the merchants ‘originates’ from the merchants variable capital.
All that changes with capitalism, as in the theories of surplus value quote I provided, is that labour power becomes a commodity.
I still don’t know where this alternative interpretation of Kautsky’s and Engels originated from, apart from Germany in the 1960’s
Noa Rodman wrote: S.Artesian
Noa Rodman
Marx imagines a simple commodity production.... of course he does, he imagines also schemes of simple reproduction. He does not however begin his analysis nor derive the law of value from examinations of systems of "simple commodity production."
He is examining the commodity as the embodiment, the expression of value, and this manifestation only achieves its "acuity" under the conditions of labor that define industrial capitalism, i.e. wage-labor.
I'm not sure what you mean, or where you derive the notion, when you write "Marx says the law of value changes, even becomes suspended." A reference might help here. I'm not quite so sure that the law of value itself changes.
Marx doesn't offer a different version of the law of value, a law of value 2 so to speak. And he most certainly is not analyzing, in Capital and his other economic manuscripts an historical era different than that analyzed by Ricardo. On the contrary, it is precisely the same development of capitalism in England that he is examining which is what gives his explication of the critique "immanent" to capital such power, and such force in "abolishing" political economy.
As for the non-operation of the law of value-- Marx goes to great lengths to show that he can explain the operation of this law even in areas where Ricardo cannot-- i.e. differential and absolute ground rent; cost price, prices of production, average rates of profit, etc.
Hello Dave B. I thought the
Hello Dave B.
I thought the argument was the claim by Engels [and Kautsky] that Marx in Capital is providing a historical "allegory" in a sense, of the law of value. I thought you were, at one point, arguing that because commodities existed prior to industrial capitalism, the law of value must have been the regulator of the societies producing those commodities prior to industrial capitalism.
IMO, that view mistakes Marx's analysis of the single commodity produced under the social conditions of industrial capitalism with "simple commodity production." In truth, I'd be a little hard pressed to name a system that was organized around "simple commodity production." I honestly don't think such a thing as "simple commodity production" has existed historically, or can exist historically. It reads to me like some mixture, and myth, of equal parts Jefferson and Proudhon where all the individual producers, employing their own labor, get together in a sort of town hall/school board/PTA meeting and exchange their wares for.... exactly for what? Since simple commodity production necessarily requires the same commodity producers to be capable of supporting their own subsistence..., exactly what, how, and WHY are commodities being exchanged? For purposes of accumulation? Obviously not.
Anyway that's what I thought the argument was, and I'll say it again, Marx's analysis of the commodity presupposes not simple commodity production, but industrial capitalism, expanded reproduction. Only on that scale, a scale driven by world markets does the expression of value expand beyond the mask of value to reveal itself to be nothing other than the social conditions of labor.
PS Where did the "Leninist" come from? Not that I feel insulted. I've been called worse things, believe me. But usually by people who know me.
S. Artesian wrote: In truth,
S. Artesian
Capital Volume II Part I: The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuits, Chapter 1: The Circuit of Money Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch01.htm
Just to help you along
Marx Myths and Legends. Christopher J. Arthur The Myth of ‘Simple Commodity Production’
http://marxmyths.org/chris-arthur/article2.htm#n3
There are worst things than being called a Leninist?
Are you the S. Artesian from Revleft, I can’t post there anymore as they are stopping me logging on to reply.
I really feel like a Menshevik now.
You see I knew 20 posts ago
You see I knew 20 posts ago the that the goal posts would move and that despite the howls of indignation, and don’t call us stupid, when I suggested that there was such a thing as pre capitalist (or simple commodity production).
Now already, no such thing has ever existed.
Same one. No, they are not
Same one. No, they are not stopping you, according to the mods/admin. There's something wrong, they think, with the settings on your browser or something. I forget.
And yes, I'm aware of that quote... but where in history is there an example of a society organized around "simple commodity production." The "same condition" that makes the transition possible, a class of dispossessed laborers whose only use for their labor is as a means of exchange doesn't come out of "simple commodity production."
The disintegrating impact is on older societies that only transform excesses into commodities. That is not a society organized on the basis of "simple commodity production." That is a society organized, as Marx states, to meet the direct needs of the producers. In short subsistence. And in short-- no accumulation.
So where are these societies of simple commodity production where the law of value regulates production? Nowhere.
The "simple commodity production" society is not even an abstraction. It's a misnomer and a misunderstanding of what Marx is doing in his examination of the commodity.
Anyway, I didn't think I was a Leninist on Revleft, but at my age, I'll have to go back and check.
Yeah, there are worse things than being called a Leninist, but again, I am not a Leninist, if you mean by that agreeing with the usual Leninist check-list of "dos" and "donts"
No, we all agree that there
No, we all agree that there was pre-capitalist commodity production. We have never agreed that Marx's analysis of the commodity is based on pre-capitalist societies where the law of value regulated social production of commodities; where the law of value was the dominant organizing principle of labor and property.
Incidents, moments, of commodity production existed. Social organization of labor for the production of commodities depends on the dispossession of the producers from the conditions of production. And that is organization we call capitalism.
Details, details, details.
Quote: I still don’t know
It was a Menshevik, in early 1923. Unfortunately Rubin didn't give names or sources when relating to the reception to Engels' article from 1895:
[quote=Rubin]Engels' article found ardent supporters, but just as ardent opponents, some of them Marxists. Opponents pointed out that exchange did not encompass the entire social economy before the appearance of capitalism, that it spread first to surpluses which existed after the satisfaction of the requirements of the self-sufficient, natural economic unit, that the mechanism of general equalization of different individual labor expenditures in separate economic units on the market did not exist, and that consequently it was not appropriate to speak of abstract and socially-necessary labor which is the basis of the theory of value.[/quote]
last post on what basis is
last post
on what basis is the "the excess produced into commodities" exchanged between these 'older' subsistance economies?
Artesian wrote: Marx imagines
Artesian
.
Rubin
I just don't see a reason for Rubin's excluding that it explains 'the type of economy that preceded the capitalist economy'. >has cake and eat its.
Artesian
It was firstly in reference to Dave's previous post quoting TSV, but suspended is too strong, so I withdraw that.
My other reference (basis also for Mattick), if you read German, is toGrossmann:
Noa, Thanks, but again where
Noa,
Thanks, but again where historically do we find social production organized as simple commodity production? It's a bit of any oxymoron, no?
Dave B wrote: last post on
Dave B
Honestly, and not to be flip about it, it doesn't matter. It's not important. The law of value is not regulating social production.
That products are exchanged, and that these products carry or represent human labor can be said about any number of societies at any point in history. So what?
The law of value to be expressed as a "law" requires a specific social condition of labor.
Dave B wrote: last post on
Dave B
On the basis of accidental value. That's what accidental value means - proportions in which different products exchange for each other, in the absence of generalised commodity production, and the subordination of relations of production to market forces of competition and its law of value - which presupposes the commoditisation of labour power, as wage-labour.
I will try another tack then
I will try another tack then and go back to the main thrust of the argument that Karl opens up his discussion on the law of value operating on commodities that are not produced capitalistically.
Here he clearly discusses I think the law of value operating in the sphere of ‘private labour’.
Chapter One: Commodities SECTION 4 THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES AND THE SECRET THEREOF
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
The question then is; what is this ‘private labour’? Is it the independent production of the ‘self employed’ and people who own and work with their own means of production and without wages which perhaps ‘ as a category in this present stage of the investigation has as yet no existance’.
Or in other words simple commodity production.
And that the ‘cardinal fact of capitalist production’ is the antithesis of ‘private labour and the means of production being the private property of the immediate labourers’, as in;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm
And also where is “Adam Smith’s great merit” and “deep insight” when “he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour”; if it is a load of bollocks?
IE
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htm
On the other hand; if there is ‘great merit’ in recognising the development of the law of value as it passes from simple commodity exchange (private labour?) to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour.
Where the means of production is no longer the ‘property of the immediate labourers’.
Then would there not be merit in considering the former case as it developed into the latter?
The reason why the law of value operates in simple commodity production of the private labour is as stated;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
And that is the gravitational force that restores accidental exchange values to the ‘natural prices’ or according to the amount of labour time required to produce them.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
I thought someone was going to complete the apostasy with marginal utility or something.
All this requires a market of course but markets existed in ‘pre-capitalist’ medieval times apparently;
The guild system that was responsible for much non agricultural production admittedly operated a monopoly and cartel system in western Europe (not in Russia apparently).
And therefore those products would not sell at their value, but cartels are not unique to simply commodity production either.
This is getting worse, not
This is getting worse, not better. This issue that was posed originally was the claim that the law of value operated "transhistorically," that it regulated social production, NOT just the production of those articles exchanged as commodities, but the general social production... which is to say, the general social reproduction, which is to say, not putting too fine a Marxist point on it, the reproduction of the social relations of production themselves, which is to say the conditions of labor.
That's what it come down to, really, because when we are discussing value we are discussing nothing other than relations of production which are the conditions of labor.
So for the law of value to operate "transhistorically"--as the regulator, the DNA and messenger RNA of the society-- it would have had to create those social relations of capitalism, wage-laborer and owner of the means of production in a pre-capitalist capitalism, you should pardon the awkwardness of the construction.
We can look at any number of abstractions Marx made, abstractions of others regarding "simple commodity exchange" or even "simple commodities" and try to make them the concrete substance of Marx's critique, but that won't change the fact that they are simply abstractions, suppositions, theoretical models, distillations of method and exposition, designed to illuminated the basic condition of capitalist commodity production, and as such abstractions, their "simplicity" is possible only because of the "complexity," the completeness of the operation of the law of value "untrans-historically."
Have to agreed with S.
Have to agreed with S. Artesian, this really is getting worse rather than better...
Dave B
Fishing. Remember fishing? Once more, with feeling. An economic activity does not a mode of production make. Just because there were people who earned their living by fishing in Ancient Rome, does not mean that it was a Fishingist social system. Still less than, because there were artisans engaging in simple commodity production, does not mean that Ancient Rome was a society dominated by commodity production, or the law of value.
Dave B
Once again you are quoting Marx investigating capitalist relations of production at a high level of abstraction. This has nothing to do with pre-capitalist economic relations. The coincidence of the word "accidental" here (in relation to the fluctuation of prices in capitalism, around value - or, later, prices of production) has nothing to do with accidental value as delineated in Chapter 1, where, (despite the fact that as previously stated ch. 1. is primarily a logical and not an historical account), there is a clear nod in passing that the transition from the accidental form, even in its expanded form, to the general form, presupposes major transformation in the social relations of production, and in fact transforms the relation of value as a whole.
It is the whole point of Marx's exposition that the contradictions to (of) the law of value that Smith sees as somehow historically external to an apriori "law of value" corresponding to the bouregois myth of "pre-capitalist capitalism", are internal to the law itself - that's the whole point. That is, you didn't have a well-formed law of value before capitalism came along and perverted it - the law of value is created by capitalism "perverted" from the outset - the contradictions are immanent to it and inseparable from it - hence his swipe at Proudhon in the footnote to Ch1 I referred to above.
Dave B
The "apostasy"? Seriously? Dude... you're the one trying to not only justify a Proudhonist reading of Marx, but further, to say that Marx was truely a Proudhonist all along. Catch yourself on.
Dave B
Really. This is just von Mises type stuff. There's no difference between "the market" in capitalism and mediaeval markets, cos they're called by the same name and people do buying and selling there. Bourgeois economic relations are eternal... And this in the name of Marxism? Good grief Charlie Brown!
And I have to agree with
And I have to agree with everything in Ocelot's post.
The whole point is the immanent contradictions of the law of value in capitalist commodity production.
The immanent contradiction is determined by the contradiction between labor and the conditions of labor.
This does not, cannot, exist "trans-historically" as the determinant of pre-capitalist commodity production because labor is not yet organized, socially, as wage-labor, value and surplus-value yielding labor.
For Jura; Engels, and
For Jura;
Engels, and Kautsky's, transhistorical theory of the law of value in the preface to volume III; as opposed to the intellectual gibberish and revisionism of German 1970’s bourgeois intelligentsia and academia
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
So the question is when Karl was talking in chapter one of volume one (in collaboration with the ‘absent’ minded Engels in 1867) of the embodied labour and value/exchange value of linen etc etc.
Was the linen being produced by unwaged ‘private labour’ (simple commodity production) ?
Eg
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm
Or is Jura going to tell us that Karl and Fred started their analysis of the “capitalist” law of value by analysing the value of commodities produced by unwaged non captitalist ‘private labour' (simple commodity production)within capitalism.
And are we going to be told again by Jura that these little Proudhonist (albeit potential capitalist) who employ and exploit no one or 'thieve' surplus value through the ownership of ‘property’ or capital were capitalists?
For the others, if there are any, we haven’t got onto the passage in chapter one on private labour yet but Jura has demonstrated that he can work the search engine unless he has an impressive recollection of Grundisse.
By the way S Artisan can you get those quotes on ‘necessary product’ for me. Many thanks in anticipation.
Dave B wrote: So the
Dave B
If David Harvey is to be believed Marx was talking about the free market utopia set forth by political economists and poked holes in it. I'm not enough of a Marx nerd to come up with a concrete quote where Marx explicitly stated that though.
But as Hagendorf showed here, the labor theory of value is valid in a market under perfect competition, which would be perfectly compatible with "simple commodity production" not as a transhistoric theory but as a theory of capitalist utopia. Now the question is whether the law of value is still valid under non-perfect competition, a question raised when looking at the transformation problem but I guess that's a different question.
I'm not exactly sure what the problem here is though. That Marx went against his own beliefs regarding historical materialism?
Speaking very loosely you
Speaking very loosely you could argue that the free market utopia argument was the one being put forward by the “syndicalist” Duhring, and to a certain extent Proudhon.
Although Proudhon, once a simple commodity producing peasant always a peasant , to his credit, factored in conditions and criteria to prevent exploitation by the accumulation of the means of production or capital by individuals.
And thus avoiding resetting the clock, clearing the board and starting a new game of Monopoly (or capitalism)
Proudhon was a champion of simple commodity production of private individual (sic anarchist) producers.
I think Karl was a bit hard on him.
I am bumping really
Dave, you fail to see that
Dave, you fail to see that the "simple circulation" (which, unlike "simple commodity production" is a term which Marx actually used) of the first three, four chapters of Capital is a theoretical abstraction from capitalism, and not a description of a pre-capitalist epoch. This abstraction is necessary to develop the more concrete bourgeois form of wealth "capital" from the more abstract bourgeois forms of wealth "commodity" and "money" (do you think that the functions described in the chapter of money, i.e., world money, apply to anything else but capitalism?). As such this procedure is the application of the methodological program set out in the method chapter of Grundrisse.
In other words, the first sentence of Capital about societies in which the bourgeois mode of production prevails explains precisely with what Marx is dealing with from start to end. Commodity as a universal form of the product is a specifically capitalist phenomenon.
I'm sorry if this upsets you.
And Railyon is, of course,
And Railyon is, of course, correct: simple circulation as a "necessary abstraction" in the sense outlined above is also a tool of Marx's immanent critique. Because he goes from simple circulation to capitalist production, it allows him to do this:
Marx
And then, much later on:
Marx
What this does is to show that the presuppositions of classical political economy – freedom, equality, property, Bentham – are necessarily inverted in the very society championed by classical political economy as conforming to these ideals.
Quote: This makes clear, of
Except of course, Marx does not proceed from simple commodity production in the first chapters of vol 1. He starts with the discussion of the commodity, with the commodity as a totality of the facets of value.
More than a mere technicality.
Will try to find those references to "necessary product"-- but right now I'm in Cairo on business. Back in NYC 26/5.
In Hegelian simple =
In Hegelian simple = abstract, complex = concrete. Thus when Marx refers to simple circulation, it is, as Jura says,
On this Parvus (in the Neue
On this Parvus (in the Neue Zeit, though I don't find it) was the first to object to Engels and Bernstein ran with it. I should look for a response from Kautsky, but apparently he didn't think Engels was mistaken.
In the appendix of Rubin's Essays on value he allows for abstract labour to exist in the phase of simple commodity production, but not "fully". iirc he even sees a third scenario (typical him) operating in Marx's analysis, besides theoretical abstraction of capitalism and pre-capitalist historical period.
What upsets me Jura, and I
What upsets me Jura, and I speak honestly and from the heart, is what I perceive as, real or imaginary, elitist intellectualism.
Which can appear to me as individuals attempting to set themselves up as a witch doctor priest-class within the domain of ‘Marxist’ theory.
Justified with deliberate esoteric mumbo-jumbo, the more unintelligible the better.
As can be established from archived posts when I first approached and read Marx. I did it to debunk it as a load of intellectualised shamanic crap.
Starting from an extremely sceptical position, after reading the original material I realised that it was sort of OK; but my basic intuitive starting thesis is I think still correct.
I often ask myself what does it matter if people don’t understand Das Capital ‘properly’ or not?
Arrogating to myself that I do, it hasn’t changed my political outlook one jot.
Some people do want to understand it however for completely different reasons to the ones that motivated me to look at it.
And it is painful to watch them struggle with it through and being misdirected and confused by intellectuals that clearly don’t.
Even if it has no consequence other than them wasting their time on a comparatively pointless intellectual exercise.
What I ‘want’ is for ordinary people to understand it properly so I can bail out and leave it to them, so I can get on with the more interesting pursuits and topics of interest.
So then back to the tedious topic.
"simple commodity production"; ‘a term that Karl never used’.
I tried to make this debate simple by suggesting that the term "simple commodity production" was in fact the same thing and idea as the ‘term’; ‘private labour’ which Karl did use.
Kautsky defines "simple commodity production" as;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_a.htm
So I ask the question, yet again, is "simple commodity production" as a concept or reality just another expression for what Marx mean by ‘private labour’?
Or does;
"simple commodity production" = ‘private labour’
like, as a in string of words ;
‘Mehr verte ’ = surplus value
You would think I was mad if I said that Marx never used the term surplus value as he only used ‘Mehr verte’ or whatever,
I don’t know or care whether he wrote that kind of stuff in English or not.
But lets slow things down, we know, thanks to Kautsky, what "simple commodity production" is as he defines it in 'simple' terms.
I like Kautsky, in as much as he was not as much as an arrogant intellectual elitist bastard as he could have been.
And ‘ethically’ attempted and wished to express himself in terms that ‘workers’ could have a hope of understanding.
And he does it here with his; well so much for the fluffy intellectualised philosophical abstract definition; what does "simple commodity production" look like when it is home.
It is the self employed ‘peasant or handicraftsman’, the handloom weaver like ‘Silas Marner’.
It was probably clearer a hundred years ago than now what a ‘peasant or handicraftsman’ was then than it is now, so there is no modern shame for others in going over that again.
I think the term ‘private labour’ is a philosophical wanky term although I can appreciate it.
Private labour is ‘my’ labour that hasn’t been sold to someone else as a something they can use.
As something I am doing it is under my own control and possession, as is the product that results from it, a bit like sex, unless you are sex worker.
The origin of the substitution of the term of "simple commodity production" for ‘private labour’ would be interesting.
Engels drops it into the preface as if he assumed that the substitution is already a given and an acccepted ‘colloquialism’, which had been already originated from elsewhere.
I am speculating on Kautksy himself
In that Engels doesn’t feel it necessary to define it, you have to assume that the meaning is already a given.
Again you have lost me; are you saying that ‘world money’ assumes or somehow automatically proves or ‘presupposes’ the existence of capitalism?
But back to the simple question before we can move on,is;
"simple commodity production" = ‘private labour’
.
I already answered that
I already answered that question: no, they're not the same thing. I won't bother banging my head against your walls of text and Kautsky quotes anymore, though, because the whole thing was explained and argued for very clearly by others on this very thread over a year ago. Fair enough if your opinion was not changed by that, but I cannot do more than S. Artesian, ocelot and others have done above. The important thing to me is that you're about the only person around who still sticks to the traditional interpretation.
BTW the "I'm a working-class autodidact" schtick is kinda cheap.
Quote: Kautsky defines
Ah yes, the pastoral utopia, where we are all peasants, or artisans, living our bucolic lives. Except, just as Marx dos not begin Capitalwith the history of the commodity, with a history of commodity production, but rather with the nature, the "powers" the expressions of the commodity in the current mode of production, industrial capitalism, this supposed identity between private labor and "small producer Eden," doesn't exist anywhere in Marx.
As a matter of fact, it is one of the insights of Marx that no such substantive"equality" of producers be maintained where commodity production and the law of value are dominant.
We might want to look at the difference between the way markets function in non-capitalist, but commodity exchanging actions in an economy as opposed to how the markets function, and what they achieve in capitalist commodity production.
And the difference is simply this: in the non-capitalist commodity exchanges, ONLY those goods that are surplus, AFTER the producer has reserved or consumed the product necessary to his/her own needs of reproduction, are brought to market for exchange.
In the capitalist market exchanges, the producers have NO way of satisfying their needs of reproduction other than through offering for exchange ALL the product of his/her labor.
It is this crucial social distinction that in fact is both product and producer of the law of value.
Do you know what I always had
Do you know what I always had a feeling that Karl really had used the expression “simple commodity production” and it was in volume IV somewhere.
Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3
[Chapter XVII] Ricardo’s Theory of Accumulation and a Critique of it. (The Very Nature of Capital Leads to Crises)
[1. Adam Smith’s and Ricardo’s Error in Failing to Take into Consideration Constant Capital. Reproduction of the Different Parts of Constant Capital]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch17.htm
I think Karl in chapter one deals with the matter of ‘mere barter of products, of simple use-values’ as something that immediately precedes the actual exchange of ‘commodities’ or products as values and the manifestation or practical ‘stamping' of exchange value, as value and embodied labour blah blah.
Starting to sound like Jura now.
I have spent the last two days re-reading the bloody thing!
And I have been busy at work and going out and stuff. Moan, moan and sad bastard.
I also have a vague recollection that I am now more happy to mention that one of the many other economic theorists had used it as well.
I have not read them all obviously who has?
I might respond to your post latter S Artisan, it is interesting enough, and clearer than your usual material; just a bit knackered at the moment.
It would be helpful if ‘we’ could reach some kind of agreement on what ‘private labour’ is first even just as a 'hypothetical, idealised or abstract concept'.
I am fairly OK with the MIA glossary definition, and I think Mandel for what he is worth had a similar take on it.
I still remember when I first read the private labour section, it was one of those where I had to stop and re-read it a couple of times
Still waiting for the 'necessary product' thing. I have done enough heavy lifting for the time being without dragging my sorry arse through economic and political manuscripts as well.
I want it if it exists to bash Trotsky.
As I said, I'm in Cairo and
As I said, I'm in Cairo and don't have access to my library.
Flash back, a bottle of wine
Flash back, a bottle of wine loosens the mind, Jesus what crap I have read!
Rosa Luxemburg The Accumulation of Capital (1913)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/index.htm
I am looking for the early Lenin stuff now.
Read your Rosa please!
That’s OK S Artisan I can wait.
The Left Narodniks
The Left Narodniks (again)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/14.htm
Got the Rosa stuff from the following, which was quite interesting I thought at the time.
V I Lenin
Comments of V I Lenin concerning
Rosa Luxemburg's book Accumulation of Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/apr/rl-acc-capital-notes.htm
They way simple commodity production of say tayloring interfaces with the capitalist production of trousers when the two exist side by side is another SNLT matter but I am tooled up on that one now thanks re-reading volume IV.
Thanks guys!
Stop making an ass of
Stop making an ass of yourself Dave B. In the German original of the Theories of Surplus-Value, it reads "bloße Warenproduktion" ("mere production of commodities"), not "einfache Warenproduktion" (Engels's term for "simple commodity production"). You would have known this if you had read the article by Chris Arthur I've linked to.
Again, the issue is not whether commodity production existed before capitalist production. Noone disputes that, and the bit from the TSV only confirms that neither did Marx. But that's not the problem here at all.
Turns out the TSV quote you
Turns out the TSV quote you "discovered" was already discussed on libcom, in this very thread.
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/abstract-labor-vs-concrete-labor-06042011?page=5#comment-424452
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/abstract-labor-vs-concrete-labor-06042011?page=5#comment-424457
This is fucking hopeless.
I will give that one as a hat
I will give that one as a hat tip to Noa, don’t remember it or skipped over it at the time.
Again, what is ‘private labour’?
Does Rosa use mere or simple for waht it matters
Apart from this thread (or
Apart from this thread (or the other where this discussion started), I offered an explication of "private labor" here: http://libcom.org/forums/theory/capital-vol-1-reading-group-chapters-1-2-22092008?page=4#comment-437805
Dave, We've been over this
Dave,
We've been over this before. Look at the thread title-- abstract labor vs. concrete labor. What is it that distinguishes human labor under capitalism? What characteristic is it of labor under capitalism that endows with the "aqua regia" that dissolves all the distinct characteristics of any product into one big pool of exchange>
Abstract labor-- labor as time.
All economy is the economy of time, Marx wrote.
That doesn't mean all economy is the economy of the capitalist organization of time.
Under capitalism "Time is everything,man is nothing; or at most time's carcass."
Marx iterates and reiterates this, saying that it's not that one man's hour is equal to another man's hour, but rather than one man during an hour is equal to another man during an hour.
None of these insights are "realizable" until the social organization of labor is for the reproduction of value, for the reproduction of itself as value.
The law of value cannot dominate a society where production is not for value, get it? "Simple commodity production" or whatever [mistaken] term you want to use was/is not production for value. You yourself acknowledge that when you talk about every producer owning his/her own tools/land. Under those conditions, production cannot be for the reproduction of value.
Geez...
What is private labour? What
What is private labour?
What does it look like?
What does what "look like"?
What does what "look like"? It looks like use-values, maybe? It looks like commodities, maybe. Depends on the actual social relations of production doesn't it?
The handicraft utopia, where everybody is a little crafts person with his or her own leather working kits, doesn't exist, can't exist, never existed. That's the point. There's no force, again social relation, organizing a division of labor in this little never-neverland of talking giraffes, little Willie Wonkas, and salt of the earth tillers of the land.
S. Artesian wrote: The
S. Artesian
That's true, but I'm going to stand up for 'simple commodity production’ as a sometimes useful conceptual tool for looking at certain forms of commodity production on the margins of the capitalist system. While ‘simple commodity production’ is a terrible way of looking at how pre-/non-capitalist societies and value systems operated in their own terms, it does give a sense of how they appear from the standpoint of capital, especially as it expands into non-capitalist spheres of activity. C-M-C describes the way the capitalist market appears to be from the 'inside', but it is also how non-capitalist commodity production appears from the standpoint of the M-C-M circuit of capital, which is part of how capital is able to interpose itself into these markets and subordinate them to its own logic of accumulation (keeping in mind that other value systems can also resist this process--hence the frequent need for state violence to ensure proper property relations are imposed through dispossession and enclosure).
No. "private labour" !=
No. "private labour" != "simple commodity production".
§4 The Fetishism of Commodities
Even if we take an alternative view to Marx's use of "private labour" to that advanced by Jura above (i.e. that private labour is a category historically specific to capitalism, whereby it is social labour in the mode of its sociality being denied), and read Marx's usage as compatible with a less specific interpretation - i.e. productive labour carried out in isolation (as counter-posed to collective labour, for e.g.), that still doesn't make it synonymous with "simple" commodity production.
If "private labour" were to be merely labour carried out independently, then the non-commodified, subsistence production of the pre-capitalist peasantry could be considered as "private labour". But nothing to do with commodities here.
As regards the "bloße Warenproduktion" of artisans in pre-capitalist society, such as Spinoza grinding his lenses, clearly they are engaging both in "private labour" and at the same time producing items not for direct consumption, but for sale to obtain the money to buy the means of subsistence (C-M-C). But this does not make them part of a "simple commodity production" mode of production governed by the law of value. This last point is the crucial one. There is a clear rupture between the productive relations of pre-capitalist society, in which a small amount of "mere" commodity production is going on, and capitalism itself. In the latter case, the commodification of labour - the establishment of a value of labour power - is the ground on which the law of value is constructed. Without a price for labour power, there is no anchor in relation to which all other production prices are calculated/commensurated.
I agree with ocelot, but I am
I agree with ocelot, but I am more wary of viewing medieval artisans in general as "private producers". They were subject to all kinds of regulation and coordination and I'm not sure they were autonomous in deciding what they will produce, how much, for whom, how etc.
Absolutely. If we were to
Absolutely. If we were to backwards-project the kind of market relations of contemporary commodity production onto mediaeval artisanry, we would completely mis-represent the real economic relations of that time. Both "vertically", in that whether ranging from a condition of outright retainership (where the artisan producer was effectively an extension of a particular exploiter-class household) to more intermediate relations of patronage - the idea of the artisan mainly producing goods for unknown buyers in an anonymous market, would be incorrect. On a "horizontal" level, we have the relations of mutuality between the different practicioners of the same trade, whether formalised in guilds, or spatialised in a given trade all occupying the same street or urban quarter - as you still find in Istanbul or some of the old Italian mediaeval cities. Your fellow tradesmen were often your collaborators, as much as your competitors. In general, operating in a society dominated by a mode of production where personal and economic ties were intertwined, the economic relations between artisans and the purchasers of their products was quite different than that of today.
Incidentally, I discovered
Incidentally, I discovered this letter in my trawls, which I hadn't come across before. In which Karl, writing to Fred in '67, gives him a bullet point summary of Ch 1. Kinda cool...
edit: whoops, the last 3 points are actually alpha, beta and gamma in the orig. to show them as sub-points to c. the peculiarities of the equivalent form. Greek letters not in the code page for comment boxes, I guess.
I knew we would return back
I knew we would return back again to ‘simple’ or ‘mere’ (more on that later) Narodnik commodity production never existed, despite the fact that Engels, Kautsky, Rosa and Lenin said it did.
Nobody ever suggested it was idealised or worked in an unadulterated manner anymore than capitalism ever did, as with Adam Smith in his day.
Anyway to start;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm
a lift from Karls footnote in chapter one.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch19.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1924/labour/ch03_a.htm
[As with Adam Bede and Silas Marner]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1912/03/cap-ancient.html
So simple commodity production is quite simple; if a commodity is being produced for sale (a tautology admittedly) without wage labour* it is by definition ‘simple commodity production’.
Is a commodity being produced for sale?
If yes go to.
Does it involve wage labour.
If No.
Then it is ‘simple commodity production’.
Did Silas Marner produce his priavately produced weaved linen for sale in Das capital?
Yes.
Does it involve wage labour. No.
Then Silas Marner is a simple commodity producer.
But pure simple commodity production never did exist, well for long at least.
Almost as fast as it was evolving out of one system it was evolving into another, capitalism.
Theoretically simple commodity production evolved out of the communities of primitive communism.
With the pernicious evolution of petty bourgeois Proudhonists notions of to each according to work done supplanting from each according to ability and social obligations of ‘duty’ etc in all its daft forms; it was progressively supplanted.
Even during the medieval epoch of 'simple commodity production' in Europe the exploitation, protectionism and Mafia like extortion system was superimposed on it and thus the feudal peasants produced surplus value like Karl said they did.
The feudal simple commodity producing peasant worked two days a week making stuff he consumed himself, one day a week making stuff that he didn’t to sell in the market on Saturday.
And another 3 days a week being exploited producing surplus products for the local Don.
And we could go on; with the later effects of inter penetration of advanced capitalism, developed internationally elsewhere in places were it hadn’t etc.
Call it capitalist imperialism if you like
And the economic shock of the effects of the power loom on India were probably no less palpable than heathens turning up with guns.
Now it can be said by social ‘scientists’ that this model is idealised but that is because they are not scientists and can’t begin to comprehend the scientific method of the "model".
The 'ideal gas law' wasn’t called 'ideal' for nothing, it didn’t work most of the time.
Nor did the idea of a falcon feather falling to the ground as fast as a hammer.
But social scientist have never made a constructive contribution to the material world and remain to this day a dead weight of pointless intellectual sophistry.
But just to show that I can do it I will jump into their own vat of tripe and on their ground; ‘mere’ versus ‘simple’.
In fact both words can in fact mean the same thing under certain circumstances, the context is of course crucial
Mere; nothing more; absolute
bald, bare, blunt, common, complete, entire, insignificant, little, minor, plain, poor, pure, pure and simple, sheer, simple, small, stark, unadorned, unadulterated, unmitigated, unmixed, utter,
And then for simple in one of its specific contexts as in sheer;
a : unmixed simple honesty b : free of secondary complications a simple vitamin deficiency: having only one main clause and no subordinate clauses a simple sentence (2) of a subject or predicate : having no modifiers, complements, or objects d : constituting a basic element : fundamental e : not made up of many like units a simple eye.
So ‘mere commodity production’ is unmitigated, unmixed and unadulterated by the complexities of wage labour and the rate of profit.
Complexities which pre-occupied not only Ricardo and Smith but Karl as well.
‘Mere commodity production’ was the pure and simple situation; a bod produced a commodity with his own labour and sold it, like you do with commodities.
And just as you can have a ‘simple’ vitamin deficiency you can have a ‘mere’ vitamin deficiency.
I still haven’t been given any idea from others what ‘private labour’ is.
This is crucial as the linen in chapter one was produced by ‘private labour’.
Is it some in-palpable metaphysical woolly concept that only whirls around in the heads of non materialist social scientists?
SECTION 4 THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES
AND THE SECRET THEREOF
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
*Un-waged slaves could produce commodities and it was mainly in mining in 'Roman' times but was agricultural products in the new world a phenomena which was in fact in part a consequence of peasant ‘simple commodity production’ going head to head with capitalism and winning.
Karl discussed it in volume one.
At first the wage workers in the new world, what there was of them, were itinerant ne’er do wells.
But as soon as they learned the game went they AWOL and set up on their own. Which wasn’t that difficult as the ‘means of production’ was aboriginal land and there was plenty of that.
Kidnapping workers from Africa was the prefect economic solution for the capitalists when there was money to be made.
Further North the less greedy European peasants emigrating to the US took to simple commodity production in Nebraska and Minnesota like ducks to water.
The Scandinavian peasants settled in places like Minnesota because it was nice and cold and snowed in winter and reminded them of home.
Well that is what and very old American communist told me about his grandfather.
Others like the Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, now there is some good old fashioned simple commodity production and private labour for you, went elsewhere.
As was the racist Abraham Lincoln.
The American civil was undoubtedly a result of a compound of issues and an alliance of common interests between the modern capitalists in the North and their historical friends, when their economic fields of interest didn’t clash, the simple commodity producers.
But both respected private property in the means of production.
One of the triggers apparently was slave owning capitalist agricultural producers encroaching into the economic sphere of the simple commodity producers.
And tensions were the highest as you might expect on Missouri-Kansas border area.
The capitalist class were also a pissed off at having to rent slaves off slave owners to work in their factories in the south admittedly.
Turning them into free wage workers would cut out the middle man.
Quote: One of the triggers
Above is complete nonsense, and displays a truly calamitous ignorance of US history.
It's not even smart enough to qualify for "The US Civil War For Dummies."
Tell me which Northern capitalists, which capitalist class, was renting slaves for its factories in the South, and.......complaining about it?
The free soil farmers who were mobilized against the South were not "simple commodity producers." They were free-soil capitalistfarmers.
The "tensions" in the Missouri-Kansas border were a result of the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854[?]which effectively abolished the Missouri Compromise, and allowing territories to "self-determine" the existence of slavery.
The slaveholders did not encroach into Kansas, creating plantations, etc., they simply launched a war against the free-soil element who were in the vast majority, using Missouri as a base of operations.
Dave B wrote: I knew we would
Dave B
They were wrong. Get over it.
As for the rest of your post, what can I say? I'm in awe, basically. Point after point, every one of them wrong. If there was a medal for wrongness - the Revolutionary Order of the Invisible Sun, say - then your persistent, epic and heroic services to wrongness should be officially recognised by such.
I suppose I should pick out 3 or 4 examples of particularly egregious wrongness for dissection, but it's just so hard to choose a select few out of such a vast array. Maybe later.
guess S Artesian and Ocelot
:lol:
guess S Artesian and Ocelot don't think much to your argument, Dave B!!! Can't say I do either but all bases pretty much been covered
I thought for instance it was
I thought for instance it was in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
I appreciate it is a fictional account but a fairly accurate one as that.
It appears elsewhere, certainly slaves working and being rented out to ‘other capitalists’ anyway.
I think it as part of the plot involved at least two characters one of whom may have been Uncle Tom’s wife.
It is a long time since I read it
Not suggesting it was widespread as industrial capitalism was not particularly dominant in the South.
There is a story that a slave invented the cotton gin or cotton engine and that character was included anecdotally in Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well 'I think'.
I suppose it is a bit of a fuzzy area in between when agricultural production morphs into industrial ‘capitalist’ production.
Karl said somewhere in Volume III that the slave owners in the South had a capitalist outlook.
There is the hazard with this of deflecting the debate and that occurred to me when I wrote it.
The implications of my opponents position is really quite serious I think as far as they are concerned.
If they are correct then Marxism and Das capital is a load of bollocks and a massive intellectual fraud.
If the person who co-wrote the book, and at least chapter one which is the issue, ie Engels and the generally recognised authority on Marxist theory after him Kautsky, a contemporary of Marx.
Either didn’t understand it, which is absurd to the ridiculous, then the only other conclusion is that they were revisionist frauds and pathological liars.
Not only that but the entire early twentieth century intellectual Marxist community were frauds or dupes including Lenin and Rosa.
It would probably eclipse Freudianism as academic intellectual gibberish; although I read that before Karl and never fell for that.
I have asked the question before several times as to the origin of this counter argument and have been told that it originated from German professors in the 1970’s.
I can go along with that; but would be really more than happy to be better informed.
I am totally non partisan on this and had no idea whatsoever of the trans-historical debate before I read it.
I kicked off with it with my party comrades on it when I was half way through volume two I think.
As I am sure ALB at least remembers that to this day.
The southern slave owners intellectuals kicked off immediately to discredit Beechers book in anyway possible, so you would be in excellent company if you followed suit.
I am not saying there is not any fanciful stuff in it , and she did write some rubbish not only in it but elsewhere.
There was an excellent radio four series a few years ago on America over that period. I was quite impressed with it as it took a distinctly Marxist economic or historical materialist analysis.
I really, really don’t want a debate on the American civil war, you are free to have the last word on it.
If you decide to attack
If you decide to attack Little House on the Prairie (TV series) or the as a fictional account of idealised reality then the gloves will come off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_House_on_the_Prairie_(TV_series)
I think Bernstein using
I think Bernstein using Parvus' objections to Engels was the first: On the Meaning of the Marxist Theory of Value, Dave. Kautsky's reply (which isn't in English online I fear) is here, where he writes that it rests on a mistaken belief that value is determined by wages, so he asks, is the value of labor-power determined by the wage?
Dave, Yes slaves were rented
Dave,
Yes slaves were rented out... to other slave owners in both cities and countryside. Slaves worked in mines, workshops, etc. but Northern industrial capitalists were not renting slaves in the South and certainly not bitching about the cost of renting slaves, no more than US Steel, the owner of Tennessee Iron and Coal bitched about paying the rent to the local and state prison officials for the use of prison labor in the first half of the 20th century.
There's no fraud going on with Marx's analysis-- the material basis that facilitates Marx's penetration of the veils of value is the actual organization of labor that capitalism achieves, and reproduces, that is to say abstract labor, abstract labor as the social determinant of value.
Yes, commodities exist before industrial capitalism; yes value exists-- a genius like Aristotle was almost able to tease out the threads of value, but the emphasis is on the "almost."
The law of value does not dominate, does not organize production, is not both product and producer of a specific social relationship of production unless and until labor has been dispossessed of its specific, useful, characteristics to its individual owners, and only has a use in exchange for the means of its reproduction, or their equivalent. That's the whole point of Marx's discussion of value.
Less Beecher Stowe and Little Houses on the Prairie. More Grundrisse and Economic Manuscripts 1857-1864.
Private labour Well we are
Private labour
Well we are really making progress now after much flip flopping.
We seem to agree that there is a model, I hope.
First we have primitive communism; as perhaps in the ‘Indian village’, the Russian Mir and, heading west, the Scottish Clan system.
There was division of concrete labour with these communities as there was in the communist Shaker communes. But everybody threw into the social pot, or Gerald Winstanley’s common store, all the products of their individual concrete labour to be taken back out again on the basis of to each according to need.
Into this society appeared petty bougiouse renegade Proudhonists, labour voucher theorists and their ilk and the beginning of retrospective Gotha programme ‘bourgeois limitations’.
And the idea of to each according to work done and, in this case moving forwards, the dividing up of the not so significant and as yet ‘limited means of production’ into the private property of individuals.
No wage labour as each individual would still be a producer or labourer and work only with their own means of production.
Or in other words, private labour, private production with the exchange of private products of the self-employed, simple or mere commodity production without the complications of wage labour, exploitation or the theft as profit based on the ownership of property or capital.
Looking backwards; an “older form of production”.
As somebody elsewhere queried my identification of Marxist private labour and private production etc with Proudhonism I provide the following just because it rolls it all up in one sentence.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/letters/59_02_01.htm
And then this simple and mere (without wages etc) commodity production evolves into capitalism.
To re-use the quote from Karl that we have had before;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch01.htm
It is worth noting that it is even possible even for all three systems to co-exist alongside each other. And it is certainly true that simple (mere) commodity production or private production with its private labour can or does still co-exists with capitalism.
It depends on what spheres of production capitalism ‘takes root’ into first and what it leaves alone to penetrate later. Simple commodity production in agriculture ‘tended’ to be the last. In fact even today in Europe it is not extinguished completely and we still have small farmers or economic peasants.
In fact we have one in the SPGB and one of my friends relatives in India are still almost model, if not in fact, simple commodity producing peasants.
Still even producing products for their own consumption.
Given that simple commodity production evolved into capitalist commodity production in dealing with subject of commodities; you would have to be a complete chump not to start with that as its historical premise, in the opening chapter or two.
Or in other words to
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/pref.htm
As S Artisan doesn’t want to tell us what private labour is, if it isn’t already obvious from the expression itself. Karl tells us
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
So if private labour is not what peasants and artisans do in simple and mere commodity production what is it?
We have already established from the appendix to chapter one that the all-important value bearing linen, or was it the coat, is produced with ‘private labour’.
And in the first chapter of the first German edition of Capital.
What kind of arsehole seamlessly switches from a peasant family producing a coat or linen in simple commodity production to acapitalistically modified commodity on the same page?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
I can understand why our Bolshevik ruling priest class don’t like clear examples like Silas Marner and the Ingalls; as clarity is not what they are interested in.
They would rather randomly throw their spellbinding words on a page like the witch doctors with their magic sticks and bones.
For information only there is stuff below on the renting out and "living out," of slaves;
The Pearl
A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac
By Josephine F. Pacheco
The University of North Carolina Press
Copyright © 2005 Josephine F. Pacheco
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8078-2918-
Slaves were very valuable property. According to an advertisement in the Sun of Baltimore, the reward for the return of an apprentice was six and a half cents; for a runaway slave, $200. A Richmond dealer listed among his expenses "25" for "Arresting runaway."
Nevertheless, as agriculture in the Upper South declined or changed its character, demand for farm labor decreased. Owners found it increasingly difficult to make a profit employing their slaves on farms and plantations.
They had three choices: (1) they could migrate to the newly opened territory along the Mississippi River or in Texas, carrying their slaves with them; (2) they could sell off their surplus property to willing dealers and make trading in slaves a profitable business; or (3) they could rent their unneeded slaves in places such as the District.
Some southerners followed the first alternative; one traveler encountered whole families, children, in-laws, and many slaves, on the move from the Old South to the New South. Historian James Oakes has shown the importance of the westward and southern movement of slave owners who hoped for a fresh start in a new region. Family migration probably accounted for about 30 percent of slaves traveling from the Upper to the Lower South. The third alternative, slave rental, appealed to Virginians and Marylanders who did not want to leave the area but needed additional income.
The practice of hiring out unneeded slaves demonstrated the flexibility of the institution: it survived in areas where it should have died out because it was otherwise unprofitable. An owner, while retaining title to a slave, rented out the bondman or bondwoman and received payment for the enslaved person's labor. By deriving a profit from property they could not directly use, owners managed to perpetuate the institution of human bondage.
In the neighboring Virginia county of Fairfax, owners unable to find gainful employment at home for increasing numbers of the enslaved could sell them or, while retaining title, rent them out for a profit. Virginians did both, and though the District was the closest and most convenient place for renting, historians of the county have found evidence of the hiring out of Fairfax slaves as far south as Mississippi.
Hiring out took two forms. The master could negotiate a contract whereby a worker would be leased for a designated period in return for a set amount of money and other terms such as housing and food. For the fifteen years before the Civil War the average annual hire for an unskilled male slave was $85 to $175. Alternatively, the slave himself carried on negotiations with an employer and arranged the amount he paid his owner. In either case the slave was outside the direct control of his master, and in many instances he could find his own housing, often with free blacks and working-class whites. Historian Ira Berlin sees hiring out as so popular that by 1850 "few slaves in the Upper South escaped being hired at one time or another, and some lived apart from their owners for most of their lives."
According to another estimate, by the late 1840s one out of six slave households was "living out," often without any white supervision. By providing profit through rental, these semifree bondmen made it possible for their owners to continue to hold property they might otherwise have lost; thus they helped the institution of slavery to survive. But their ability to live on their own made a mockery of claims that presumably childlike slaves required close direction in order to survive. The frequent use of middlemen and the introduction of contracts significantly altered master-slave relationships.
For the most part, hired slaves ignored the District's strict regulations about where they could live; in other words, they were not enforced. The same was true in Richmond, 100 miles to the south, where, in spite of the mayor's best efforts, he was unable to separate free blacks from slaves and to limit the mobility of hired slaves.
Frederick Law Olmsted thought that most of the slaves in the District were brought into the city to work for people who had rented them. E. S. Abdy, an Englishman, said that his waiter at Gadsby's in Washington was the property of someone living in Alexandria; the same was true for many of the hotel staff. Gadsby rented out his own slaves when business was slow in his hotel; at least one Washingtonian found that they made excellent house servants. Tavern keepers also hired slaves, paying a monthly fee to the owners and providing food for the workers but not clothing; that was the responsibility of the slaves. No wonder they were shabbily dressed.
Rented slaves provided much of the labor during the construction of a canal on the Potomac River. One contractor reported hiring "a gang of sixty or seventy slaves, paying for each at the rate of seventy-five dollars a year." He claimed that he fed them well, never flogged them, and in return received good work; the men, it seems, were reluctant to return to their owners. The contractor believed that most slaves were "half-starved" and that if they stole, it was because they were always hungry.
Many of those aboard the Pearl had been rented out. All of the children of Daniel Bell were sent out to work as soon as they were old enough and provided their owner, Mrs. Armstead, with almost her only income. Six members of the Edmondson family who fled aboard the Pearl were hired in the city, though born and raised in Maryland. After the capture of the Pearl, there was a delay in handing over some of the fugitives to their owners because they did not live near the jail.
The Washington Navy Yard was a favorite place to rent out slaves, especially skilled artisans. Visitors such as Emmeline Stuart Wortley reported seeing "coloured people acting as artisans" and "making chains, anchors, &c., for the United States navy." Charles Ball, hired out to the Navy Yard, was made ship's cook on a frigate, where he enjoyed plenty of food and money and wore clothes given him by the ship's officers. On Sunday afternoons he was free to wander through the city, where he saw other slaves walking around. Historian Herbert Aptheker claimed that southerners worried about the reliability of the army and the navy in case of servile revolt. That is probably why Abel P. Upshur, secretary of the navy, said in 1842 that there were no slaves in the navy; he was mistaken.
Slaves performed such menial tasks as cleaning the Capitol, but they also worked on public projects. Opponents of slavery lamented that "a great portion of the labor on the different public works in this city is performed by slaves" whom the owners had rented out.
This is where there is no
This is where there is no point to the discussion. Dave B blithely ignores the fact that his great historical examples are in fact works of fiction, literally; that his understanding of the conflict between slave-owners and capitalists in the US was not based on the "rent" extracted by the slaveowners... etc. etc. etc and simply carries on with his nonsense interpretation of history, citing... as some hotbed of conflict... Washington, DC!
Hey Dave, here's a news flash. DC was a Southern town, a slaveholding town. The US capital was moved to DC to assure the Southern slaveholders that they would always be able to exert a disproportionate influence over the national government.
No "simple commodity production" did not just "evolve" into capitalist commodity production.
"Private labor" is NOT, as been shown before, "simple commodity production." The social conditions you and Kautsky are so taken with for simple commodity production did not exist. Commodity production existed, but commodity production did not exist as the dominant mode of production, organizing labor in its own image, as value.
"Simple commodity production" can NEVER be the dominant organizing principle of an economy.
On the flip side, you can, as others have done and written, write a whole book claiming the Louisiana sugar plantation owners were capitalists, because, after all, they kept accounts, they ran their operations for a profit, they utilized technology, they depended on market returns for their commodities-- EXCEPT they were not capitalists--- they did not reproduce labor in the image of capital, as "alienable," "exchangeable" as a cost to be expelled from the production process, to be reduced relatively in order to relatively expand the value aggrandized by its engagement.
That's kind of why the South grows so much more slowly; why the means of communication and transportation are not intensively developed.
On both sides of this coin is the question of the conditions of labor, the social conditions under which labor is performed, aggrandized, circulated.
I'm done with this.
Kautsky did add that simply
Kautsky did add that simply commodity production was mostly found in the colonies with large free space, but I agree with what Waslax wrote a year ago on this thread, that it's silly to deny that petty commodity production existed (and still exists).
Rosa Luxembourg Anti-Critique
Rosa Luxembourg Anti-Critique Chapter 1; The Questions At Issue
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/anti-critique/ch01.htm
I am no Luxemburgist by the way, but she didn’t talk complete twaddle all the time, few do, that takes real genius.
For some reason was under the impression that there were some on this forum.
Even Lenin supports you Dave,
Even Lenin supports you Dave, how will you cope with this?
consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.
Let us enumerate these elements:
(1)patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;
(2)small commodity production (this includcs the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);
(3)private capitalism;
(4)state capitalism;
(5)socialism.
Russia is so vast and so varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific feature of the situation.
The question arises: What elements predominate? Clearly, in a small-peasant country, the petty-bourgeois element predominates and it must predominate, for the great majority—those working the land—are small commodity producers.
http://marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm
In the meantime, Marx uses
In the meantime, Marx uses the term "necessary product" in the Grundrisse: Notebook VI
I think someone already found
I think someone already found that one before.
The closest I got from Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, was
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch25.htm
(I just speed read through what I thought would be likely places.)
Which is OK for me and doesn’t set any alarm bells off.
Trotsky used the term ‘necessary product’ in one of his rare and ill advised forays into Marxist theory.
It was complete gibberish of course even more so than his usual stuff.
He was a real genius in my opinion.Lenin was quite right to call him a wind bag.
Jesus I am agreeing with Lenin again!
I assume that other convincing charlatan Mandel picked it up from Trotsky.
I really don’t think Lenin had read Das Capital either but he could get by on it I think, just.
Rosa in fact was one of the better ones as was Otto Ruhle and of course Holferding and Anton Pannekoek.
Well, thanks for all that.
Well, thanks for all that. As long as we're classifying Marxists, let's include you-- a real idiot. Nothing personal of course. This is just my political-economic evaluation of your missives.
The exchange of commodities
The exchange of commodities at their values, or approximately at their values, thus requires a much lower stage than their exchange at their prices of production, which requires a definite level of capitalist development.... Apart from the domination of prices and price movement by the law of value, it is quite appropriate to regard the values of commodities as not only theoretically but also historically antecedent (prius) to the prices of production. This applies to conditions in which the laborer owns his own means of production, and this is the condition of the land-owning working farmer and the craftsman, in the ancient as well as in the modern world. This agrees also with the view we expressed previously, that the evolution of products into commodities arises through exchange between different communities, not between the members of the same community. It holds not only for this primitive condition, but also for subsequent conditions, based on slavery and serfdom, and for the guild organization of handicrafts, so long as the means of production involved in each branch of production can be transferred from one sphere to another only with difficulty and therefore the various spheres of production are related to one another, within certain limits, as foreign countries or communist communities."
Noa, I wonder if this is
Noa, I wonder if this is actually in Marx's original manuscript (published in 1992 IIRC). Other than that, it justifies neither the interpretation of the first three chapters as being about simple commodity production, nor Engels's views from the supplement (conscious carrying out of the law of value by the producers themselves, without any fetishism whatsoever).
Well capitalist commodity
Well capitalist commodity production is a particular case of commodity production, so it's a false dichotomy. The passage to "full" capitalist production occurs I think from accidental/elementary to expanded form of value;
OK, now you're just trolling
OK, now you're just trolling with a historical reading of the secion on the value-form :).
How "full" capitalist production could do without a general equivalent is also beyond my understanding...
Much more interesting, I think, are the conundrums of Engels's Supplement:
Engels
Fetishism, abstract labor, socially necessary labor time, "behind the backs of producers", huh... Edit: In other words, if Engels is right, why is the section on fetishism a part of the first chapter?
I think he didn't want to
I think he didn't want to give the impression that value is just an abstract hypothesis (since the law of value doesn't operate in capitalism; commodities are sold at production price); it would be similar to concepts like utility. I don't think he wrote that exchange value existed prior to capitalism.
Dave B wrote: Private
Dave B
That's just a blatent untruth. You know very well no-one agrees with the nonsense you're putting out.
But let's cut to the chase...
Dave B
Now, compare and contrast the original from which the above, highly-selective quote comes from:
[italicised: selective quotations from Dave B; bold: qualifiers that make it clear that the full passage conveys entirely different sense than the selectivity implies]
Meaning what? Well it answer the question of stupidity or malignant mendacity clearly in favour of the latter.
Dave B
There is one. And it's you. But S. Artesian is wrong, this heroic and consistent wrongness is not a case of some "idiot savant", but clearly a case of deliberate attempt to deceive. In service of some obscure agenda I neither know nor care about. Stupidity is a human frailty that deserves our consideration and aid. Mendacity is a crime which no amount of "understanding" can change. I call troll.
Again the argument isn't
Again the argument isn't whether or not commodity production exists prior to industrial capitalism, the argument is whether such production is governed, organized, and reproduces the law of value.
Clearly, it does not, it did not. There can be no penetration of value without the organization of production according to value; there can be no organization of production according to value without organizing labor in the image of value, without the "liquidation" of all the peculiarities of useful labor by and into the aqua regia of [i]time[/i, without abstract labor.
Quote: In the totality of
Translation; there are lots of different types of commoditites that can be classified by what they are for or useful for eg linen, coats and horseshoes. Each require different ‘deployments’ of ‘useful labour’ eg weaving, tailoring and blacksmithing
Translation; you need to have different ‘deployments’ of ‘useful labour’ or social division of labour eg weaving, tailoring and blacksmithing for there to be commodity production.
[If we only lived by bread alone and that is all anybody made, then you wouldn’t be selling bread to buy someone else’s bread, that would be daft; it hardly needed saying]
But it is not the case that just because you have weaving, tailoring and blacksmithing or 'division of concrete labour' then you have commodity production.
Eg in primitive communism and shaker communes etc.
Thus
Translation; the labour within a factory is divided but not on the basis that I sell my chemical analytical work to the canteen workers. This was before the introduction in some places now out of fashion however of the idea of internal markets within large enterprises.
Translation; Eg a peasant and a moonlighting part time weaver exchanging their linen with a peasant and a moonlighting part time taylor or coat maker. Specialisation and practice makes perfect and a jack of all trades is master of none etc etc.
Translation; purposeful productive linen weaving makes, or ‘lurks’! in the commodity of useful linen
Translation; you can’t exchange.. oh forget it.
Translation; in a peasant society for example where each peasant for part of his working week independently specialises, part time, develops into a multi-faceted system of producing either linen, coats, goose eggs or what not which get sold and bought at Stourbridge market.
This is a model.
To go further with stamping of values and producers "equatng" their labour time with other etc everybody in this feudal village and beyond keep an eye on each other.
If the guy making the blue suede shoes manages to get by as well as everyone else on 10 hour labour a week because the product of his labour time sell s at a higher exchange value than everybody else’s labour time or embodied labour then envy kicks in.
Lets say that goose eggs are oversupplied just as blue suede shoes are under supplied and that is reflected in their relative exchange value of their products etc.
Then the goose herder decides to sell up and turn to blue suede shoe production.
Prices equilibrate to their ‘natural price’ or value according to Smiths supply and demand in exactly the same way as Karl described that in capitalism in his muppets guide of ‘wages price and profit’.
The ease and simplicity of peasants moving from one type of labour or productive activity to another is facilitated by the relatively low level ‘private property’ required at this technologically low level of production otherwise conceived as anachronistically organic composition of “capital” etc etc.
This also happens in the labour market. Thus when computer programmers where earning £50 per hour contracting or £100 in London; lorry drivers or their male lovers of said computer programmers trained as computer programmers. And successfully entered the market with forged CV’s .
Eventually just as with feudal blue suede shoes and goose eggs things tend to equilibrate.
These same computer programmers are really down on their luck now and are slumming it with the rest of the not so ‘disguised employees’ workers[UK-IR45 British Labour party and marxist theory] and are taking permanent work at less than 40K per annum.
I told them so and how they laughed.
But it is still better and a long way from the private peasant labour of helping your mother roll up buffalo dung to dry in the sun for cooking fuel.
And is a long way from sequel server data base analysis and C++ programming and all that gibberish they go on about.
I am just trying to get across the basic idea and attempting to respond as was requested in the spirit of the opening post.
I found Parvus's critique of
I found Parvus's critique of Engels. It's a 3 page footnote in Der Weltmarkt und die Agrarkrisis (1896, with also criticism on another of Engels's comments in Volume 3 about groundrent). As it appeared in Kautsky's Neue Zeit without comment, Kautsky perhaps agreed with the critique (in his reply later to renegade Bernstein, he doesn't respond to this point exactly).
Also Lenin reviewed the work by Parvus in 1899, full of praise and he didn't raise an objection to Parvus's critique.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/feb/parvus.htm
And as Parvus was a staunch defender of orthodox Marxism, with an influence on Trotsky, Luxemburg, etc. who am I to disagree with the guy.
Dave B wrote: Quote: Only
Dave B
Waffle. real translation: other deployments of private labour that are neither self-sufficient nor independent (nor, by extension and textual context, take place within the framework of generalised commodity production - i.e. the specifically capitalist system of production relations) do not produce commodities. That is, "private labour" is not a synonym of "commodity production" (of any type, whether the mere commodity production that occurs in a pre-capitalist framework, or the commodity production within the framework of generalised commodity production - the locus of the analysis of chapter 1).
Further, Engles' phantasy of a "nine thousand year reich" of the law of value, in the guise of a "simple commodity production" mode of production, is in complete contradiction to the analysis of the historical specificity of the law of value to the capitalist mode of production given by Marx in Capital. By extension, all those who seek to advance a political project of overcoming capitalism while retaining the law of value (mutualism, market socialism, etc) are objectively defenders of capitalist social relations, however "socialist" they may consider themselves to be.
Quote: all those who seek to
Did somebody say Cockshott?
S. Artesian
S. Artesian
Don't engage him. It is bad enough having JR drop in every now and again.
S. Artesian wrote: Did
S. Artesian
lol. His friend Klaus Hagendorf is an interesting one, I consider him a decent economist (mainly because of his contribution towards a rigid application of the labor theory of value (not necessarily Marx's but makes use of his categories) in microeconomic theory that makes all the neo-Ricardian BS fly right out the window - there's obviously loads of problems associated with this but Hagendorf explicitly points out that in his model the "law of value" only operates in a perfect market and that's not the situation under capitalism at all1 ) but his politics of "crowding out capitalism" (an economist stage-ist view, founded on much the same elements as Mutualism) is pretty stupid and he seems to see the USSR and the PRC as genuinely socialist so I dunno...
Dave B wrote: I assume that
Dave B
I was going to let this rest and move on to more interesting things until I remembered that I had done a disservice to Bukharin by leaving him out.
And some of his stuff is really quite good.
So for the left Bolshevik community
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/01.htm
Actually I was criticised earlier on for proposing this exact same ‘simple’ model of competition between simple commodity producers leading to capitalism. The actual process is in fact more complex and the influx and effects of accumulated merchant and usury capital need to be considered also.
………………
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/01.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1933/teaching/3.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1924/impacck/ch03.htm
On the BBC TV today in the programme 'country tracks' on the history of the Derbyshire Peak District they briefly discussed the simple commodity production of lead mining, pretty much as described below elsewhere;
Rubin on simple commodity
Rubin on simple commodity production
It was this guy I was thinking of before Rosa popped into my head.
I. I. Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value Chapter Eight BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF MARX'S THEORY OF VALUE
http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch08a.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch11.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch15.htm
And just for a laugh from Trotsky!
Stalin Discloses the Un-Marxian Village!
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/03/stalin.htm
There is also some stuff on
There is also some stuff on the mythical simple commodity production from August Thalheimer who I believe was the theoretician of Rosa’s party.
Maybe that is where she got it from.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/thalheimer/works/diamat/12.htm
So in one corner we have the ‘Idiot Savants’; Engels, Kautsky, Rosa, Dave B(still living), Thalheimer, Bukharin, Rubin, Pannekoek, Preobrazhensky, Paul Mattick, Lenin, et al.
And in the other the notable sages; S Artisan and Ocelot, German professors from the 1970’s, and ‘nearly everybody else’.
Dave B wrote: So in one
Dave B
So in other words, you're not interested in correct arguments, but in citing the proper authorities.
The "argument from authority" is one of the first fallacies a philosophy professor would beat out of your head in an introductory course.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, by mentioning philosophy courses, I assume I've offended your proletarian authenticity, you righteous autodidactic son of the toiling masses!
Again, what are the
Again, what are the issues:
1. Marx never used the term "simple commodity production." Marx's name is missing from Dave B's list of notables.
2. "simple commodity production" was production governed, organized around, and reproducing, the law of value.
3. "simple commodity production" was itself the result of "abstract labor."
Dave B, disingenuous/dishonest/self-serving to a degree I haven't encountered since listening to Trump announce his candidacy for the US presidency, will produce mountains of fog about everything except these three issues in order to obscure the molehill of his actual evidence.
I am an auto-didactic son of
I am an auto-didactic son of the toiling masses!
My father was an electrician (and shop steward) in a factory making tin cans and my mother was a machine operator in a spark plug factory.
I am a factory worker myself; who is going to educate the educators if it isn’t the working class?
As to S Artisan I thought the whole argument was whether or not the law of value operated in a pre-capitalist, un-waged simple commodity production economy.
Is S Artisan objecting to or now accepting;
I don’t like they way he has expressed either point but if he means what I think he does I can go along with both.
On;
Well I have done that before as regards ‘mere commodity production’ and ‘simple commodity exchange’; both of which were clearly given in the clear context of un-waged commodity production.
And if un-waged commodity production isn’t what was later clearly referred to as simple commodity production or simple commodity economy etc then what was it.
How many types of un-waged commodity production are there?
[Apart from slave labour]
I have argued that ‘private labour’, as used by Karl in chapter one, was simple commodity production and that the linen was produced by the simple commodity economy of un-waged ‘peasant’ labour and that he ‘proceeded’ from that first to the capitalistically modified commodity.
Which was why he said “wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation”.
But I can only do so much as there are non so blind as those who will not see.
Yeah that was your claim;
Yeah that was your claim; that the law of value organized production in pre-capitalist, "simply commodity" societies.
You've provided no evidence-- absolutely none, rather you've lined up a bunch of quotes about "simple commodity production" which have absolutely no bearing on that central issue.
Private labor is not simple commodity production; or not always simple commodity production.
And you don't have a clue what Marx is analyzing in chapter 1, vol 1. His analysis has nothing to do with "simple commodity production."
But we've been down this road so many times before...
Dave B wrote: I have argued
Dave B
simple is a logical category, not historical. Whenever any Hegelian or Marxist uses the word simple or complex, one should always remember that simple=abstract and complex=concrete. So "simple commodity production" can only mean the most abstract functioning of the law of value, but since the law of value only exists in the capitalist mode of production the sentence can only refer to an idealized presentation of commodity production. Now Marx never used the term in the first three chapters of Capital, but he did use simple commodity circulation. In any case, when Rubin refers to Marx describing "simple commodity production" he is not referring to anything historical (and the quotes you selected above there is no reference to actual history), but to Marx's logical presentation of the workings of value.
Rubin uses the term "simple
Rubin uses the term "simple commodity production" but he is very clear that he means this as an abstraction of capitalist economy, not as an historical epoch.
See www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch18.htm#h5 for a discussion on this.
I. I. Rubin
I think when looking at what
I think when looking at what Rubin and others were saying post volume III it is necessary to see the context; which was the criticism of Karl’s theory.
[Which as far as Rubin was concerned at the time was that of Böhm-Bawerk.]
Some of which can also be seen in Engel’s response to it elsewhere in his much-maligned supplement to volume III.
It is difficult to summarise and roll out all the criticisms into one post but the essence of it was thus;
Karl starts off ‘logically’, or abstractly if you like, rather than empirically as things were in reality (capitalism), with the idea that commodities exchange at their labour time value.
Then ends up concluding that; through his own deductive reasoning that commodities don’t exchange at their value at all and the law of value is ‘defunct’.
And that the exchange value of commodities in capitalism as a new historical stage is dependent on the rate of profit.(amongst other things, there were several different lines of criticism).
This was why Engels emphasised in the supplement, using hyperbole, that they were fully aware that the law of value ie that commodities exchange at their labour time value, ‘broke down’ in capitalism and only operated up until capitalism.
In fact a criticism was that there were not aware of the problem at the time of writing volume one which is not true as can be seen from the letters and it was mentioned in volume one eg
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch11.htm
The point was; was there an essential and fundamental truth in the labour theory of value that could be used to explain exchange relations in capitalism or prices of production etc or did it no longer operate or have any reality at all.
Could the labour theory of value explain and even predict or anticipate its own ‘negation’?
There is a parallel in science with the ideal gas laws, which only work within a narrow area of pressures and temperatures (and gases).
Do you abandon it because it only appears to operate as perhaps a peculiar and coincidentally neat set of correlation’s and relations within a physical ‘epoch’?
Just as well they didn’t as by sticking to it it led to the kinetic theory of gases, van der Waals forces, the unravelling of the Sudoku puzzle of the periodic table of elements and chemistry itself.
And why the ideal gas laws didn’t operate perfectly outside certain conditions and its own ‘negation’
The fundamental and essential truths, as well the kinetic theory of gases, are that.
All products are labour (time) or contain work. WE as members of the productive working class still say a ‘load of work has gone into that’.
And the amount of our life force and human effort, that time we spend outside the realm of freedom (or leisure time) has value, albeit deducted.
Because it is a sacrificed or possibly enforced loss of free or leisure time
---------------------------
The realm of freedom is enhanced by the use values produced outside of it which is why ‘all’ humanity works.
I am convinced that the ordinary members of the productive industrial proletariat understand this better than most.
That is not to say the best things in life necessarily come from outside the realm of freedom.
I am pleased to hear that one of our Crypto-Fascist Bolsheviks, Angelus Novus, advocating German ‘professors of philosophy’ beating ‘truths’ into the heads of autodidactic members of the working class.
No doubt I am struggling to break out of a limited ‘trade union consciousness’ and need some ‘physical’ help from the ‘bourgeois intelligentsia’.
As to Khawaga I am doing all
As to Khawaga
I am doing all the real work both here and in my necessary labour + surplus labour time; as usual.
So don’t attack me have a pop at dizzy Rosa for instance;
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/anti-critique/ch01.htm
Felix and Noa have gone a little beyond the ‘no it isn’t’ line of argument.
And escaping and hiding behind the fog of the anything but concrete witchdoctor mumbo jumbo of ‘abstract labour’.
Dave B wrote: I am pleased
Dave B
2 things.
1) The only person here quoting Bolsheviks to support his (orthodox Marxist) position is you. Everybody else is arguing for the rejection of the Bolshevik reading of Marx.
2) "Crypto-fascist". Quite apart from the violation of anti-flaming posting guidlines, I fail to see on what grounds you apply this label to AN. I can speculate as to your reasons, but none of them are even remotely acceptable.
Dave B wrote: And escaping
Dave B
Because, of course, abstract labour is not a category Marx was really interested in. :wall:
What do you call the elitists
What do you call the elitists ‘educators’ who want to beat things into the heads of the masses?
Rubin and Kautsky were
Rubin and Kautsky were Bolsheviks?
Pray tell, is it all the
Pray tell, is it all the people who disagree with you that are "crypto-fascists" or only the German ones?
No just elitist who want to
No just elitist who want to beat things into my head.
Having professors of philosophy wanting to beat things into my head is just twice as bad.
Nothing is more hilarious and
Nothing is more hilarious and pathetic than Dave B's misrepresentation of the relations, the reciprocity, the manifestations of the law of value and the exchange of commodities at their production prices; of the relations, reciprocity, the manifestations of the law of value in production prices.
What is that connection, that mediator? Why capital's exchanges themselves where the general or average rate of profit is established, and capitals of equal size, because the totality of their commodities contain equal amounts of labor, dead and living, garner or appropriate equal profits.
What Dave B distorts, misrepresents is the very expression of abstract labor, and the law of value by industrial capitalism.
double posting
double posting
Funnily enough, it's you,
Funnily enough, it's you, Dave B, who is passively-agressively trying to beat things into our heads by religiously quoting Past Masters.
Oh I see! So after being
Oh I see!
So after being called an idiot by you and S Artisan I think, not that that actually bothered me much at the time.
I was then treated to the arrogant condescension of a professor of philosophy who said I needed things beating into my head.
Well that was a red rag to a bull so I called him a crypto- Fascist, which I am quite happy to justify, and now we are having a good cry about it are we?
At least you know what buttons to press now.
I have nothing against Germans and obviously have met loads of them; and generally like most of them.
Dave B wrote: As to Khawaga I
Dave B
What has that Luxembourg quote got anything to with what I wrote? Nothing. It's about something completely else. In that quote she doesn't say that the law of value functioned prior to the capitalist mode of production. What she is saying is that even with commodity production being close to generalized, there are pockets of non-capitalist production and exchange, which is a pretty unproblematic statement.
And the mumbo-jumbo you refer to Marx saw as his greatest discovery. Abstract labour is central to Marx (shouldn't be lost on you since you're fond of citing Rubin), without that category there is no capitalism.
And what you're doing is rather unnecessary labour btw. Stringing together a series of quotes without understanding what they actually mean. It takes more effort to actually read something critically than using ctrl+C.
Dave B wrote: All products
Dave B
The main issue here seems to be that you don't accept the distinction between concrete and abstract labour.
You are of course free to think that abstract labour is a load of "witchdoctor mumbo jumbo", but you should be aware that Marx thought of this distinction as one of his greatest theoretical achievements, so this fits rather badly into your claims to represent the authentic Marx...
I think you missed my point,
I think you missed my point, which is fair enough, I wasn’t disputing the existence of abstract labour as a concept.
What I was trying to get across is the habit of opening the pages of das capital randomly picking out a few phrases and stitching them together to produce some impressive sounding gibberish.
Abstract labour being a favourite.
What is
If it isn’t abstract labour or what work means to everyone once its specific nature ie linen weaving or computer programming is taken out of it?
Dave B wrote: What I was
Dave B
You just described your own method there.
It's not what it "means to everyone", but the function it has in the self-valorization of value.
Two guys from different
Two guys from different 'concrete' workplaces in a pub called the Realm of Freedom for a quick pint before going home.
A) Jesus I have a hard day, I am knackered more overtime again to pay the lecky bill.
B) Me to, never seem to have a quality time to spend with the kids and wife, she is working her tits off as well.
A) For real!
What are talking about that they have in common?
The “self-valorization of value”? great more magic bones and sticks!
Holy shit. You really don't
Holy shit. You really don't get it do you? For some reason you assume, just because I use Marx's terminology, that I assault workers with such language. You do realize that we were having a philological discussion, right? If you want a discussion about how to talk to workers about Marx, then please start another thread. But in a thread called "abstract vs. concrete labour" it is decidedly on-topic to refer to abstract labour and the self-valorization of value.
Edit: and your discussion between the two workers is how they experience capitalist social relations, not a direct phenomenological experience of abstract labour, which is impossible. You're right that the closest thing a worker will come to this is the issue of the working day, but still it's is impossible to directly experience abstract labour.