Paul writes: “And if value is non-measurable
(Althusser claims this also), then it is hard for me to understand what exactly
we are supposed to be offering theoretically to the working class, e.g., as to
what surplus value is when it cannot be measured”.
By accepting this statement, I wonder if we can work as Marxist economic historians and claim that the ancient Greek-Roman societies were indeed class societies in which the slaves were subjected to exploitation, as they worked both for themselves and the slave-owner, who appropriated a surplus product, i.e. the product that the slaves produced during surplus labour time, beyond the labour time necessary for the production of their own means of subsistence. Since it seems to me that it is impossible to measure the surplus labour time in slave-ownership societies in general, and more so in those that actually existed in the past, eg. in Pericles’s Athens. Does this mean that there cannot be enough theoretical foundation of the thesis that class exploitation did actually exist in those societies, (and so ancient Athens or Rome shall be regarded as classless societies)?
Besides, I believe that Marxist
economic theory contains much more than the simple idea that in all class
societies there is production and appropriation (by the ruling classes) of a
surplus product, i.e. surplus labour. It is not enough to stick to this idea,
then identify labour expended with value, further consider one hour of labour
(with socially average characteristics of productivity and intensity) to be the
measure of value and (in case that one feels that a further empirical
verification is needed) devote oneself in proving (by direct measurement or
mathematical calculations) that the sum of values equals the sum of prices and
simultaneously the sum of surplus values equals that of profits. Marxist
economic theory exceeds this point by focusing on the specific historical
forms of surplus product and surplus labour; this is indeed what
distinguishes capitalism from any other society of surplus product appropriation
(i.e. from any other class society). To stick to the idea of surplus labour (and
its measurement) means, I think, to miss Marx’s main
point.
As
Marx writes, “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, whether this proprietor be the Athenian καλός κ’ αγαθός (kalos k’
agathos), an Etruscan theocrat, a civis Romanus, a Norman baron, an American
slave-owner, a Wallachian Boyard, a modern landlord or a capitalist” (Marx 1990
[Capital, Volume one, Penguin
Classics, London]: 344-45). “The essential difference between the various
economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on
slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this
surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the immediate producer, the
worker” (Marx 1990: 325). The notion of surplus value does not simply refer,
therefore, to a quantity of surplus labour expended. It is a complex key notion
which deciphers the structure of the capitalist relation of class exploitation
and domination.
In this context, Marx’s theory of value constitutes a monetary theory of value. We do not have “two worlds”, on the one hand value and on the other money (as a means of measurement or a means of circulation of values). The “two worlds” picture is typical not only for Classical and Neoclassical theory, but also for some interpretations of Marx. However, I believe that it fails to conceptualise the Marxian notion of value.
Value is
determined by abstract labour; however, in my comprehension of Marx, abstract
labour does not constitute an empirical magnitude, which could be measured by
the stopwatch. It is an abstraction, which is constituted (it acquires a
tangible existence) in the process of exchange. ITS DIRECT AND SOLE FORM OF
APPEARANCE IS MONEY. Value can be expressed only by means of money.
In the 1859
CONTRIBUTION… , in the GRUNDRISSE, and in Parts 1-3 of Volume 1 of CAPITAL Marx
illustrates the tenets of his monetary theory of value, which constitutes a
radical critique of Ricardo’s non-monetary approach of “labour
expended”.
On the empirically non-tangible (by
itself non-measurable) character of value Marx writes: “The reality of the value
of commodities differs in this respect from Dame Quickly, that we don't know
‘where to have it’. The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse
materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its
composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in
so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. (…) Value can only manifest itself in the social
relation of commodity to commodity” (Marx 1990:
138-39).
On money, as the exclusive form of
appearance of value he notes: “It is the adequate form of appearance of value,
that is a material embodiment of abstract and therefore equal human labour”
(Marx 1990: 184). “It has become apparent in the course of our presentation that
value, which appeared as an abstraction, is only possible as such an
abstraction, as soon as money is posited” (Marx 1993 [Grundrisse, Penguin Classics, London]:
776). “(…) value requires above all an independent form by means of which its
identity with itself may be asserted. Only in the shape of money does it possess
this form. Money therefore forms the starting-point and the conclusion of
every valorisation process” (Marx 1990: 255). In Marx’s system of thought, all
forms of barter (or the non-monetary equilibrium systems of barter between
“production sectors”, like the Sraffian “linear production systems”) should be
rejected, as all exchange transactions are made up of separate acts of exchange
of commodities with money, which means that commodities are by definition price-carrying
products. Prices are determined in the process of commodity production, i.e. in a
historically unique process of (capitalist) production-for-the-exchange, a
process which unites immediate production (in the narrow sense) with
circulation: “Commodities do not then assume the form of direct mutual exchangeability. Their socially validated form is a mediated one. Conversely: through
the relation of all other commodities to linen fabric as the form of appearance
of their value [the supposed by Marx general equivalent at that point of his
analysis, J.M.], the physical form of linen material becomes the form of direct exchangeability
between these commodities and all other commodities and as such their direct or general social form” (MEGA II, 5 [Das Kapital, Erster Band, Hamburg 1867
(1983), Dietz Verlag, Berlin]: 40). “The social
character of labour appears as the money
existence of the commodity” (Marx 1991 [Capital, Volume three, Penguin Classics,
London]: 649).
Even
when he starts developing his theory of the value-form, he notes that in the
simple value form we do not have two commodities of pre-existing (i.e. measured
independently, eg. by the quantity of “labour expended” for their production)
equal value exchanging with each other, but only ONE COMMODITY (relative form),
whose value is measured in units of a use value (equivalent form, serving as the
“measurer of value” of the commodity in the relative form): “But as soon as the
coat takes up the position of the equivalent in the value expression, the
magnitude of its value ceases to be expressed quantitatively. On the contrary,
the coat now figures in the value equation merely as a definite quantity of some
article” (Marx 1990: 147).
It is
however true, that in order to illustrate surplus-labour as the portion of the
total labour, (the portion which is appropriated by the capitalist), Marx refers
(from Chapter X, Part 3 of Volume 1 onwards) to value of a commodity as if it
was in itself an empirically measurable figure, e.g. “value created by n hours
of labour of average intensiveness”, “forgetting” that the labour deployed in
this instance is abstract labour (a concept not to be counted
among empirically tangible measures), and also “ignoring” the fact that value is
measurable only by means of another “thing”, as it can be manifested (appear)
only in the form of, i.e. through, the general equivalent – in other words
through money, and so measured not in hours of labour time but in units of
the general equivalent – precisely in units of money.
This simple presentation of surplus-value as
surplus-labour does not mean, however, that one shall put aside Marx’s monetary
theory of value (as developed, e.g., in Parts 1, 2 & 3 [Ch. I-VII] of Volume
1 of Capital) and to treat Marx as a critical exponent of the Classical
theory of value (as “labour expended”). Marx’s monetary theory of value
demonstrates that value and prices are not situated at the same level of
analysis. They are not commensurate i.e. qualitatively similar (and so
quantitatively comparable) entities. Money is the necessary form of appearance
of value (and of capital) in the sense that prices constitute the necessarily
“distorted” (and only) form of appearance of the value of commodities. The
difference between values and production prices (i.e. prices ensuring the
average general rate of profit for the whole capitalist economy) is thus not a
quantitative one, assuming that the latter simply arise from the former through
a “redistribution of value among capitalists”. It is a difference between two
non-commensurate and so non-comparable
quantities, which are, though, intertwined in a notional link, which
connects causal determinations (values) and their forms of appearance (prices).
In Vol. 1, Marx utilised the notion of surplus labour in general (as equivalent
to surplus value and in “abstraction” of money) only to sidestep the concealment
effects of exploitation created by the money-relation. He did not adhere to the
Classical notion of value as “labour expended”, at least in his great
self-published work, Volume 1 of Capital.
At this
point I may deal with a comment made by Jerry [OPE-L:8270], who writes: “Even if one
challenges whether value is measurable (as Milios et al
apparently do) it
does not follow that the social relation itself is intangible”. I agree that the
social relation itself is “tangible”, however through (ideological and social)
forms which conceal the “flow of cause and effect”, i.e. the exploitative
character of this (capitalist) social relation. The reason for Marx’s analysis
in Vol. 1, Ch. X onwards, of exploitation on the basis of surplus-labour, (a
notion which does not reflect the specific difference of the specific
mode of production under examination), and not in relation with the specific
forms under which this surplus labour appears in capitalism (profit and money
relations), is not a supposed “measurability” of “labour expended” in the
capitalist mode of production, but the existing in it self-generating
consequences of concealment of class exploitation: The subordination of labour
to capital imposes the capitalist as the producer of commodities and regulates
exchange ratios between commodities in accordance with production costs. Profit
is thus presented as proportion of the advanced capital, so that
“surplus-value itself appears as having arisen from the total capital, and
uniformly from all parts of it” (Marx 1991: 267). In all modes of production
there exist self-generating consequences of concealment, but their tendencies
might be in opposite directions, as Marx noted with regard to capitalism and
slave ownership: “In slave 1abour, even that part of the working day in which
the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which he
therefore works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the
slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even
surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. In the one case, the
property-relation conceals the slave’s labour for himself; in the other case
the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.
(...) All the notions of justice held by both the worker and the capitalist, all
the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production, all capitalism’s
illusions about freedom, all the apologetic tricks of vulgar economists, have as
their basis the form of appearance discussed above, which makes the actual
relation invisible, and indeed presents to the eye the precise opposite of that
relation” (Marx 1990: 680). In both cases (capitalism, slave ownership) there
exist in the mode of production necessary self-generating consequences of
concealment, but their tendencies are in opposite directions. This is of
particular importance for the political relations of domination and the
formation of ideological constructs in each mode of production.
It is thus
a problem of a different order when Marx at certain points of Volume 3
(“transformation of values into prices of production”, “ground rent”)
distances himself from the implications of his own
theory (non-commensurability between value and price) and draws a quantitative
comparison between values and production prices and through mathematical
calculations “transforms” the former into the latter. In this way, albeit
tacitly, he adopts (he retreats to) the Classic viewpoint that values are
entities that are qualitatively identical and therefore quantitative comparable
(i.e. commensurable) with prices.
Concluding,
I may say that the discussed book (KARL MARX AND THE CLASSICS) argues that in
Marx’s work (mainly in Vol. 1, but also in all his major writings of the period
1857-67, etc.):
a) There exists a system of notions
which shapes a monetary theory of value; this theory constitutes a radical
critique of (a rupture from) the Ricardian theory of value (conceived as “labour
expended”). It consists the Marxian economic theory par excellence, which shall
be further developed by Marxists, as it is the only theory that can critically
interpret contemporary capitalism (crises, speculation, the endogeneity of
money, the expansion of the monetary sphere, etc.).
b) The dominant interpretation of Marx’s theory
by Marxists is “Ricardian”, in the sense that it ignores Marx’s monetary
approach, it misinterprets Marx’s elaborations on the basis of “surplus labour”
(forgetting Marx’s warning that “capital has not invented
surplus-labour”) and focusing on weak points of Marx’s argumentation, such as
the “transformation of values into prices of production”.
c) Marx himself retreats in the theoretical system of (Ricardian) Political Economy at several points of his work, especially when he deals with the “transformation of values into prices of production” and with “absolute ground rent”. Such ambiguities or contradictions should be expected not only for Marx but also for any attempt to create a new theoretical discipline on the basis of the critique of an established system of thought.
d) Finally, the book claims that “Marxian
theory is attenuated when Marxists do not comprehend Marx’s ambivalences towards
Political Economy, i.e. the existence of conceptual contradictions and, much
more important, of a second, non-Marxist, discourse in his writings. Every
‘sanctifying’ attitude towards Marx, presenting him, as the inculpable master
who never made a single false step, practically blurs the scientific and
heuristic kernel of Marx’s analysis, as it identifies it with the Ricardian
element, present in some of his elaborations” (p. 208).
In solidarity,
John.