This is a response to Chris' (5747) about the key passage from Section 4 of Chapter 1 that he and Nicky and I have been discussing. This passage once again is: "Political economy has indeed analysed value and its magnitude, however incompletely,[1] 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. [2]." (C.I: pp. 173-74; numbers in brackets refer to footnotes to this passage that will be discussed below.) Chris began his post by making the following distinction between two different meanings of the terms content and form in Marx's theory: > First there is that between the ahistorical concretelabour/usevalue > 'matter' (as I would prefer at this level) and its historically specific > social form, namely value. So the focus here is the value form *of the > product*; > Second there is that between value considered as a content and the forms > *of value* listed on 174 as commodity, money , capital, and including the > transitions of sec. 3 one assumes. Chris went on to argue that Marx's meaning of content and form in the above passage is the first meaning, not the second meaning. Which implies that the meaning of content and labor in this passage is CONCRETE labor, not abstract labor. Chris, thanks for this clarifying distinction, but I must say that it still seems very clear to me that Marx's meaning of the terms content and form in this passage is your second meaning: the form and content OF VALUE. Which implies that the meaning of content and labor in this passage is ASBTRACT labor, not concrete labor. My reasons are the following: 1. To begin with, as I have already discussed, the second meaning is the meaning Marx gave to the terms of content and value throughout the rest of Chapter 1. Indeed, the content and form of value provides the basic logical structure of Chapter 1 (Sections 1 and 2 are about the content of value and Section 3 is about the form of value). So, if your interpretation were correct, this would imply that Marx is using the key terms content and form in this passage in an entirely different way from the rest of Chapter 1, without alerting the reader that he is doing so. 2. Secondly, you acknowledge that the footnote to the second sentence of this passage (footnote [2] above) also uses your second meaning of the terms content and form, i.e. the content and form OF VALUE. Thus, there is an inconsistency between your interpretation of the meaning of content and form in the text and the meaning of these terms in the footnote to the text. You argue this inconsistency between the text and the footnote was another mistake by Marx. So we can see that your interpretation of the meaning of the terms content and form in this passage is inconsistent, not only with the previous three sections of Chapter 1, but also with this footnote to this passage. You explain these inconsistencies by arguing that Marx made a mistake, or rather two mistakes: failing to alert the reader that he was using the key terms content and form in a completely different way from the rest of the chapter and not noticing the inconsistency between the text and this footnote. However, I think there is a much simpler explanation of these inconsistencies. Marx did not make either one of these mistakes, and your interpretation of the text is mistaken. Content and form in this text mean the content and form OF VALUE, as in the rest of the chapter and in the footnote. I don't think Marx made these elementary blunders, especially in Chapter 1, that Marx rewrote and rewrote many times. 3. Furthermore, there is a second important footnote to this passage (footnote [1] to the first sentence above), which Chris does not mention, and which further clarifies the meaning of the labor that is the "content concealed within these forms" of value in this passage. The first sentence in this passage applauds CPE for having analyzed VALUE and its MAGNITUDE, and for discovering the CONTENT that lies behind these forms of value. You interpret "content" in this sentence to mean CONCRETE labor. In other words, you say that CPE discovered the content of concrete labor behind the forms of appearance of value. I argue, to the contrary, that what CPE discovered was ABSTRACT labor, although incompletely and without a full awareness of its meaning and significance. Please note that this footnote is to the phrase "however incompletely". Therefore, it appears that the footnote was intended to clarify just what the achievements of CPE were with respect to the analysis of value and its magnitude, and what the shortcomings were. This footnote begins as follows: "The insufficiency of Ricardo's analysis of the magnitude of value - and his analysis is by far the best - will appear in the third and fourth books of this work. As regards value in general, classical political economy nowhere distinguishes explicitly and with a clear awareness between LABOR AS IT APPEARS IN THE VALUE of a product, and the same labor as it appears in the product's use-value. Of course this distinction is made in practice, since LABOR IS TREATED SOMETIMES FROM ITS QUANTITATIVE ASPECT, and at other times qualitatively. But it does not occur to the economists that a purely quantitative distinction between the kinds of labor persupposes their quality unity or equality, and therefore their reduction to ABSTRACT HUMAN LABOR." (emphasis added) Thus we can see that the labor that appears as the value of the product is ABSTRACT labor, not concrete labor. Concrete labor appears as the use-value of the product, not the value. The labor that is "concealed within the forms" of value (in the text) is the same as labor "that appears as the value of the product" (in the footnote) - both are abstract labor. Marx argues here that it did not occur to CPE that when they were analyzing value and its magnitude (i.e. the quantitative aspect of labor), they were necessarily, although unconsciously, reasoning in terms of abstract labor. One cannot analyze the quantitative question of value and its magnitude, without reasoning in terms of abstract labor. Therefore, the "content concealed within the forms of value" that CPE discovered, "however incompletely", was abstract labor. This is the meaning of "content" in the first sentence in the text: the content of value, or abstract labor. The shortcoming of CPE was that they did not clearly and explicitly distinguish between abstract labor and concrete labor. They discovered abstract labor, without being aware of it. Surely Marx did not botch up this key passage so much that he added a second contradictory footnote to it! This footnote clarifies the meaning of the text, not contradicts it. 4. This second footnote also sheds additional light on the meaning of the second sentence in the text. The second sentence is about the labor that is "expressed as value" and the quantity of labor that is "expressed as the magnitude of value." We can see from the previous footnote that the labor that is expressed as value and its magnitude is ABSTRACT labor, not concrete labor. Therefore, the meaning of labor in the second sentence is the same as the meaning of labor in first sentence - abstract labor. Therefore, it seems clear to me that Marx's meaning of the terms content and form in this passage is your second meaning: the form and content OF VALUE. Which implies that the meaning of content and labor in this passage is ASBTRACT labor, not concrete labor. Comradely, Fred
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