From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sat May 10 2003 - 09:49:22 EDT
(Was: "is value labour?") I found Howard's post yesterday, as it related to semiotics and signs, to be quite interesting. What he didn't mention was the role and status of *metaphors* in Marx's theory of value. I think it is more likely that he referred to embodied and crystallized labor metaphorically (which, I would add, shouldn't be taken too literally!) than as things to which a sign refers to. If understood more narrowly as metaphors -- and an exercise in artistic license -- then such formulations aren't as objectionable. Let us go on to consider the distinction between living and "dead" labor. We know what living labor is -- although it is clearly a redundant expression since labor by its very nature is an activity that can only be performed by laborers. We know what dead laborers are -- i.e. corpses. What, then, is "dead labor"? Well, of course, we know the context in which Marx refers to living and dead labor. We know that he refers to means of production as _representing_ "dead labor" and, since only "living labor" can create value, the value of the means of production can only be transferred in the production process. Understood metaphorically _and_ very loosely _and_ with a large grain of salt, this formulation -- while imprecise and hinting of metaphysics -- should not be particularly objectionable. What _would be_ objectionable is to literally and scientifically consider that means of production "contain" dead labor. Marx also refers -- again imprecisely and metaphorically -- to *capitalists* as dead labor. E.g. in Volume 1, Ch. 10 of _Capital_ he wrote that: "Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks" (Penguin ed., p. 342) Here the presence of literary and cultural metaphor is evident. Clearly, Marx didn't believe in vampires! But, it was a literary and cultural expression that helped him to forcibly articulate a point -- I think we should understand the expressions "dead labor" and "crystallized labor" in the same way. In solidarity, Jerry
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