Chris: "Now further reading of the Chapter 1 of Capital suggest to me that the content of value for Marx is more properly called human labour in the abstract, rather than "labour time". That is, abstracted from the conditions of commodity exchange that make the "form" of value "exchange value"."
I agree with this. The *abstract* character of the labor that produces value is all-important. Marx calls abstract labor a peculiar "social substance." It belongs to a particular type of society. It is not universal throughout all societies.
Chris: "The sarcasm in this footnote by Marx against the bourgeois economists is stressing the continuity of economic processes across different economic formations: "The economists have a singular way of proceeding. For them, there are only tow kinds of institutions, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions.""
I don't see how you get this. The sarcasm is directed against the idea that the social forms of capitalist society -- particularly that the products of labor take the form of value and the duration of labor-time takes the form of the magnitude of value -- are "self-evident and nature-imposed." (p. 175) The point of the footnote, just like the text, is that the bourgeoisie is wrong to think its institutions are natural. They are social forms peculiar to this one society, nothing immutable. Marx is therefore stressing the exact opposite of what you say, the DISCONTINUITY of capitalist society from earlier ones. Note that only a few pages earlier, he indicates that the categories of bourgeois economics are "absurd," not because they fail to correspond to bourgeois reality, but precisely because they do correspond to this inverted reality: "They are forms of thought which are socially valid, and therefore objective, for the relations of production belonging to this *historically determined* mode of social production, i.e., commodity production [emphasis added, p. 169]."
Chris: "He is saying that exchange value is peculiar to commodity exchange. Therefore it is more correct to say above "in his view, labour time is not always expressed as *exchange*-value"."
No. As I indicated in my analysis of the paragraph, it is clear that he is referring to value, not exchange-value. For instance, he refers to "why labour-time is expressed in value," NOT "why value is expressed as exchange-value."
I had written:
>
>Moreover, in the prior footnote (34), he writes, even more
>clearly: "The value-form of the product of labor is ... the
most
>universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by that fact
>it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind
>of social production of a historical and transitory character."
>This does not seem ambiguous to me. The only problem, perhaps,
>is that "value-form" (wertform) is used elsewhere to refer to
>exchange-value, i.e., the value of one commodity having a second
>commodity as its form of appearance. But that is not how it is
>used here. Here it refers to the product of labor having value
>as its form of appearance. I should also note that the above
>"formulas" likewise concern value, not exchange-value.
Chris responds: "We read the same passage differently. IMO Marx is indeed writing about Wertform here."
Yes, of course. "Value-form" is the translation for _Wertform_. The point is that he uses _Wertform_ to mean two different things. Sometimes, as in section 3, it means the form of appearance of value, i.e., exchange-value. But here, it is very clear that it does not mean form *of value*, but rather value itself as a form of the product of labor. Exchange-value is not a form *of the product of labor*. Please note the following:
"A commodity is a use-value or object of utility, and a 'VALUE'. It APPEARS as the twofold thing it really is as soon as value possesses its own particular form of manifestation .... This form of manifestation is exchange-value, and THE COMMODITY NEVER HAS THIS FORM WHEN LOOKED AT IN ISOLATION, but only when it is in a value-relation or exchange relation with a second commodity of a different kind [p. 152, emphases added]."
In contrast, products of labor, when they are commodities, do have VALUE as their form when looked at in isolation. The two "factors" (p. 125) of the commodity are use-value and VALUE (not exchange-value).
Chris: "There are many many different products of labour throughout history. Marx has to use this wider phrase to use this expression, because only a subset of them are commodities. It is under conditions of commodity exchange that the products of labour have a value form, namely exchange value."
And it is only under conditions of commodity PRODUCTION that the products of labor take on the form of VALUES.
Chris: "But the wider set of products of labour all require human labour, and stripped of the actual concrete conditions that is human labour in the abstract, the sum total of which is deployed to maintain and perpetuate the social life process of any society."
Does this mean that, "stripped of the actual concrete conditions, human labour is labour in the abstract"? If so, I disagree. And I disagree with the "of any society" in any case. Abstract labor, as Marx uses the term (and it is his term) is specific to commodity production and, practically speaking, specific to capitalism. Keeping in mind that, when he refers to the "twofold" or "dual" character of labor (p. 131ff), he means abstract and concrete labor, please note the following:
"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" (emphases added, p. 166).
This is quite clear. Labor becomes abstract (i.e., not solely concrete) when products are "produced for the purpose of being exchanged." This is because value now arises, not in exchange, but already in production. Since the goal of production is now not to produce useful things, but to produce VALUE (and the labor that produces value is abstract labor, not concrete useful labor), this is "taken into consideration during production." His subsequent analysis of capitalist production makes clear what this means: the production process is revolutionized in order ever more adequately to extract labor from workers, and it is this *dehumanization* of production (deskilling, degradation of the worker to an appendage of the machine) that renders labor abstract.
Chris: "The title of Chapter 1, Section 3 of Capital Vol 1 is "The Form of Value or Exchange Value". That means they are virtually synonymous."
No. See above.
I had written:
>
>There are other passages that say much the same thing. See p.
>167: "Something which is only valid for this particular form of
>production, the production of commodities, namely the fact that
>the specific social character of private labours ... consists
in
>their equality as human labour, and, IN THE PRODUCT, ASSUMES THE
>FORM OF THE EXISTENCE OF VALUE ...." (emphasis added).
Chris: "I would contend that the passage highlighted by the use of the word existence in translation does not illuminate the content of value, only once again the form, under conditions of commodity exchange."
No. Exchange-value does not exist in the products. Value does. Exchange-value is just a *relation between* commodities, not a "property" of commodities as value is. Marx is quite clear about this. His argument on pp. 126-128 is precisely about this. Exchange-value is only the form of appearance of a content, property, common element, "third thing," that commodities all have, and that third thing is value. "... a common element of identical magnitude EXISTS IN two different things .... (p. 127, emphasis added).
Chris: "In all situations, the labour time it costs to produce the means of subsistence must necessarily conern mankind, although not to the same degree at different stages of development. And finally, as soon as men start to work for each other in any way, their labour also assumes a social form." So human labour in the abstract is found in all societies.
I'm afraid I see nothing about abstract labor in the passage.
I had written:
>Also, pp. 138-39: "commodites possess an objective character as
>values only in so far as they are all expressions of an
identical
>social substance ... their objective character as values is
>therefore purely social." Again, this is not something
>transhistorical. It arises in a particular kind of society.
Chris: "This is not discussing value specifically but values. That means bearers of exchange value. That is what is specific to commodity society."
No. In the phrase "MATERIAL bearers of ... exchange-value" (p. 126, my emphasis), it is *use-values* that are the bearers, not values. They are material objects, whereas value is a non-material "social substance." Moreover, even the use of "exchange-value" in this phrase is "strictly speaking, wrong" (p. 152), as Marx later explains. (On p. 138, just above the part I cited, Marx writes that commodities are objects of utility and "bearers of value.") You've turned the relation between value and exchange-value upside-down. Instead of exchange-value being the manifestation of value, you are making value the manifestation (bearer) of exchange-value!
In any case, the distinction between value and values is not clear to me. Commodities have value, commodities are values -- Marx uses these interchangably.
So the passage is about the historical specificity of value.
I had written:
>
>And, for my finale, perhaps the clearest statement of all, on
pp.
>153-54: "The product of labour is an object of utility
>[use-value] 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 labor becomes transformed into a
>commodity" (emphases added).
Chris: "I would say that here the expression "its" value implies its own exchange value which must be in relation to other exchange values."
You shouldn't. Again, EXCHANGE-VALUE IS NOT -- I S N O T -- A "PROPERTY" OF A USEFUL ARTICLE. VALUE *IS*. This is the most elemental point of the distinction between value and exchange-value.
Chris: "The second paragraph of Chapter 1 Section 4 summarises the argument about where the mysterious nature of the commodity comes from:-
"The mysterious character of the commodity does not arise, therefore, from its use value. No more does it spring from the content of the determinations of value. For in the first place, however varied the useful labors or unproductive activities might be, it is a physiological truth that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or its form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, sense organs, etc."
"So here Marx dismisses the content of value as being the source of the mysterious character of the economy. And he hereby states what the content of value is - human labour. This is indeed not too mysterious. Except that it is so simple we may overlook it, in our efforts to grasp the technicalities of Marx's dialectical analysis."
I agree of course that the content of value is human labor. But it is abstract human labor, which is specifically capitalist.
I do not agree that he is referring to the mysterious character of the economy. He is referring to the mysterious character of the *commodity*. I agree that this does not arise from the content of value. It rather arises, as he says immediately below that, from the COMMODITY-FORM itself. Social relations take on a physical form (commodity). That is his argument. It is NOT exchange that creates the fetish. The commodity itself, as a thing possessing value, is the fetish. This social form must be smashed, and to do so requires that the mode of *production*, value *production*, be smashed. You can do away with the anarchy of the market, as in Russia and China, but if you are still producing values, you are still a capitalist society.
Chris: "I do not think my usage is at variance with normal usage. I think it gives expression to a whole number of quality of life issues that are plainly being ruined by the onward march of commodity exchange. I also think there is a continuum about how contributions to the social life process are valued as part objects for their contribution to the making of commodities that can help realise surplus value, and how much they are valued as whole objects (contributions)."
I can't make sense of the last sentence. With respect to the second sentence, commodity exchange is just an epiphenomenon. Commodity production is the problem.
I had written:
>This, however, begs the question. Whether there's a
>transhistorical "value" of which exchange-value is the form
under
>conditions of commodity exchange is PRECISELY the question under
>discussion. In other words, it isn't permissible to impute a
>meaning to "form" that presupposes the answer is yes.
Chris: "I do not understand this line of reasoning. Words must be read to see how well they fit reality, and Andrew and I are united that Marx describes a wide context of social labour of which commodity exchange is only one subset. It is a question of looking at different models of reality, and of Marx's description of reality and deciding which fits best. "isn't permissible" seems to presuppose a model of logic which might take precedence over reality, but perhaps I have misunderstood Andrew's point of view about what we are wrestling over."
Commodity exchange is not a subset of labor.
What's at issue between us is what Marx's work means, not what is "reality." Marx could be wrong. You may disagree with him. So it is not permissible to read into what he wrote in order to make it conform to one's own view of "reality."
I dont know anyone who thinks begging the question is an acceptable method of argument. If one wants to argue for a certain conclusion on the basis of some premises, the conclusion needs to follow from the premises. When one begs the question, it doesn't: the conclusion is already contained in the premise. In the present case, you want the conclusion that "form" means exchange-value. But instead of making an argument for that conclusion, i.e., *showing* that "form" in a certain passage in fact means exchange-value, you simply assert that this is what it means. So the conclusion has already been smuggled into the premise. (First premise: Marx says "form." Second premise: by "form," he means exchange-value. Third premise: If "form" means exchange-value, it does not mean value. Conclusion: by "form," Marx means exchange-value, not value. The conclusion is already contained in the second and third premises, taken together.)
In several other cases, above, I think you've done much the same thing. It is an invalid method of argument. What that means is that the argument does not compel me to accept the conclusion.
I had written:
>"Form" can of course refer to many things. As my message to
>Chris notes, even Marx's expression "value-form" refers to two
>different things, (a) the form of appearance of value, i.e.,
>exchange-value, AND (b) the social form of the product of labor
>(as in "The value-form of the product of labor is ... the most
>universal form of the bourgeois mode of production").
Chris: "I have not grapsed the distinction that Andrew is making here. I wonder if he can amplify it and then put the challenge to me again in the paragraph in which we agree "formula" should read "form"?"
Well, my comments above on why exchange-value is not a form of the labor-product may help.
Chris: "Well I feel the pressure of the argument but would reply that where the word "value" is used in the second sentence (I concede the German also has the word "Wert") nevertheless that sentence and the next one describe this as a form, in other words the value form, not value in general (do I mean value qua value?)."
Again, I'm afraid that this begs the question.
I had written:
>
>Moreover, it is very important to note that, in calling the
>magnitude of value a form of the duration of labor, Marx means
>value proper, intrinsic value, not exchange-value.
Chris: "I think that is OK from my point of view, that magnitude of value refers to value in general, ie homogenous human labor."
No. Magnitude of value does NOT refer to homogeneous human labor. It refers to a FORM of the duration of labor. That's the whole point. "Form" here is not form *of value,* but *of (the duration of) labor*.
Chris: "By arguing that here value is a form, Andrew does not really accept the concept of the substance of value, alongside the form of value and the magnitude of value."
No, I accept the concept of value-substance (or content). But the substance of value is not value, just like the substance of a sculpture (e.g., marble) is not a sculpture. The thing only is what it as as a unity of form and content. It always takes labor to produce things. That content of value is transhistorical. But without the form -- the value-form of the labor-product -- there is no value.
Moreover, the actual content of value is ABSTRACT labor, which is specifically capitalist.
Chris: "This concept is put more simply in the first German edition of Capital Chapter 1, just before what is in the later editions, the final fourth section on the Fetishism of Commodities:
"As one sees, the analysis of the commodity yields all the *essential* determinations of the *form of value*.... It was of decisive importance however to discover the inner necessary connection between the *form* of value, the *substance* of value, and *magnitude* of value, i.e., expressed ideally, to prove that the *form* of value springs from the *concept* of value." [emphasis as in original]"
I don't get the point.
I had written: "Moreover, Marx does not distinguish among
societies
>according to market/mon-market, but according to the "form" (his
>phrase) in which surplus-labor (not surplus-value) is pumped out
>of the direct producers."
Chris: "Well I am not so sure of that. In other places Marx is painstaking to make clear that the process of extracting surplus value under capitalism is fundamentally through the fair application of the principles of commodity exchange - in the market place.
Well, I can provide the citation is you wish. Anyway, he does not say that surplus-value is extracted through exchange. He says it is extracted in production. He also says that this can be done without violating equal exchange, but that is very, very different from "extracting surplus value ... through the fair application of the principles of commodity exchange." Think about it. If exchange were the process in which surplus value is extracted, and if exchange is exchange of equal values, then there simply couldn't be any surplus-value.
Chris: "I understood that production and exchange are two sides of a single contradiction, however carefully Marx would analyse each in their own right."
I'm not familiar with any notion in Marx of production and exchange constituting a contradiction.
I had written:
>I agree that the context is different modes of *production*.
It
>is not the process of exchange that Marx says has mastery over
>menschen in our social formation, but the process of production.
Chris: "This may not be a fundamental point between us; I certainly accept that the private ownership of the means of production deprives menschheit of mastery over the social formation."
It is a very fundamental point between us. I'm saying (along with Marx) "process of production"; you're saying "private ownership," which is certainly not a process of production. In Russia, China, etc., the process of production also had mastery over people, because production was for value and the production process was turned into a means to produce value.
I had written: "I am aware of no reference to "general value" whatever, except as a critique (e.g. of Adolph Wagner)."
Chris: "Nor am I. But what then is the substance of value? I am not sure that Marx called it "intrinsic value" either. Do we mean value qua value? Wert?"
The substance of value is abstract labor, but I don't understand the import of the question. For "intrinsic value," see p. 126. Yes, Wert.
Thanks, Chris, for the German re footnote 34. I got nothing new from it. I think the key is that the bourgeois economists think of exchange-value as "something external to the nature of the commodity itself" because they do not see that VALUE is a property of the commodity itself. They think of the commodity as just a use-value, and exchange-value therefore tells them nothing about the nature of commodities.
Chris: "I suppose if I tried to redefine my position to be on strongest ground I would say the substance of value is found in all societies. For me that is effectively to say that value is found in all societies. In the first edition of Chapter 1 Marx wrote in the introductory paragraph to what in later editions is Section 2,
"We know now the *substance* of value, It is *labor*. We know the *measure of its magnitude*: it is *labor-time*. Its *form, which is what makes the *value* an *exchange*-value remains to be analyzed. But first the determinations which we have already found must be developed a little more closely." (emphasis in original)"
Well, he made this much clearer in later editions by emphasizing that abstract labor is the substance of value. And that is specific to capitalism. In any case, to say that its substance is always there means value is always there is, again, rather like saying all blocks of marble are sculptures.
Again, I'm very sorry for the delay, but this was a massive amount of stuff to respond to.
Ciao
Andrew
Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman Home: Dept. of Social Sciences 60 W. 76th St., #4E Pace University New York, NY 10023 Pleasantville, NY 10570 (914) 773-3951 Andrew_Kliman at msn.com
"... the *practice* of philosophy is itself *theoretical.* It is the *critique* that measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular reality by the Idea." -- K.M.