From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: AUT: labour theory of value (was: basic income)
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 22:20:09 +0200



From: "Lowe Laclau" <lowe.laclau-AT-gmail.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 4:18 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: basic income



1. Sorry if I misunderstood when you wrote: "For still at the
individual level I think that one can quantify the value-
added ... "

One obviously mistake I made was reading the above as the
value of the commodity produced and not the value added,
as you actually wrote. Still, my conviction has always been
that you neither can quantify, if we are talking in terms of
a degree of exactitude, the value-added on an individual
level, and certainly not if this is supposed to mean, added
by an indivudual worker. In this sense value might said to
be beyond measure. In theory perhaps, such a calculation
might be carried on, aposteori, if you first freeze every
factor in a particular moment of time, and have a God-
like overview. But this whole perspective is pretty absurd.
I am not suggesting you disagree on this, just trying to
clarify my own perspective a bit, as it is related to other
things you objected to. (See further down)
 The only thing critical involved here for the
aspect of the labour theory of value in question, is that
increased productivity of labour decreases the value of
the commodity, and vice versa, whatever the factors
are that brings about the change in productivty, and
whatever the levels of maediations.  In so far as this is
a dynamic immanent tendency within capitalist
commodity production, the labour theory of value, of which
quantitative relations is only one aspect, must be
said to be valid. 


2.I interpretate that the stopwatch being put in use as an
indication of that there simultaneously, "behind
the backs of the producers," is a dynamics of equalisation
working as a *tendency*over time; not as some
kind of exact measure imposing itself. But what the
stopwatch measures is not a changing average of
socially necessary labour time, even if the stopwatch
are among the the forces that perpetually works to
change what is socially neccessary. These are inter-
connected phenomenom but not identical. That is how
I see it. After wrting this, I glanced through Harry
Cleaver's Reading Capital Poltically, and found he
makes the same argument there. To this it might be
objected that similar means existed within feudal
societies, but this would in my opiniom again over-
look the particular role of the market within capita-
lism as a driving force, even if in interaction with
the class struggle.

[ 3. The crumbling of the economy in former East Europe
when the gates opened, surely must be understood as an
hour of measure. No? ]

4. My reference to the Critique of the Gotha Program was to
the part where Marx talks about what he assumes to be the
characteristics of the first phase of communism, where "the
individual producer gets back from society -- after the
deductions -- exactly what he has given it. What he has given
is his individual quantum of labour."

Apart from my political objections to this, I do not believe
that the labour theory of value has much relevance outside of
capitalism and the market, and see it as an illusion to think one
could measure exactly what the individual producer "has
given to society". Here I entirely agree with Kropotkin, as well
with what is *my understanding* of the volumes of Capital as
a whole on this matter, whether Carlos would have seen it
the same way or not.

4. To the following, and now we are on to something essential:
"Capital doesn't need use values. Its all about exchange value. "

Is it? To my understanding, and if we are to take him on
his words, also according to Marx, capitalists buy labour
power for its particular *use value*. That human beings as
individuals, but above all together, have qualitative capacaties
that ultimately are beyond measure, is precisly the basis for
their particular use value for capital. But only in so far, and
to the extent that these capacities are put in use in a
way that produces exchange-value. 

I have a friend who is a very good cook, and spends
far more time and energy -- including cognitive labour -- in
making food than I do. Something I very much appreciate
when I visit him. But he has never worked as a cook, and it
is far from given that he is more productive than I am in
capitalist terms, as this particular capacity of his has never
never become a use value for capitalists, or in others ways
been tranformed into a commodity. (It is not even given
that he uses more money on food than others who earns
about the same as he does. Maybe less. He just prepares
and combines what he buys better than most , and
gets pleasure out of it.)  

[That capital do not need use values, is also more in general
self-evidently wrong. For instance, when factory X sells
machinerey to used in production to factory Y, they become
a use value for the latter, and when I buy a hammer for
practical purposes at home, it  becomes a use value in
my hands.]

5. But back to the particular use value of estranged labour-
power and the question of creativity. For we agree on
that certain developments within capitalism in the last
decades has put such qualities in a new perspective, and
that this also calls for the  questioning of old theories.

There are at least certain spheres of waged work where
creativity might be said to be a more prominent factor than in others. 
But again, it is only to the degree that these qualities are
not only turned into a commodities, but also if we are talking
in terms beyond petty-commodity production, employed to
this end by a buyer of the use value in question, that it can gain
significance for a discussion of the labour theory of value
The question then arises, if such a transformation can take
place on any large scale without the imposing of measure,
and further, without also turning much of what is measured into
routine work through the imposition of division of labour. 
The question also is if much of such work can only become of
any economical signifigance to the degree to that it can be
materially reproduced, and on some scale? 

 
6.  The idea of "the general intellect" is set forth prior to
writing the volums of Das Kapital, and in my opinion does
not negate the labour theory of value. Not that it is too
interesting today what Marx meant on the subject, but
he was actually in Grundrissse referring to a phenomenom
that already had taken place in 1857-58; such things as
machines, locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-
acting mules, etc something which quite obviously did not
make him refute labour theory of value. This in no way
implicates that 1) he could not have been wrong all along,
or that 2) the tendency he discerned may have evolved in
a way which has made the volumes of Capital mostly
irrelvant in the world of today, only maintaining a historical
interest.

As for "the degree in which large-scale industry develops,
the creation of real wealth becomes less dependent upon
labour time and the quantity of labour employed than
upon the power of the agents set in motion during labour
time. And their power --- their POWERFUL EFFECTIVENESS --
-- in turn bears no no relation to the immdediate labour
time which the production costs, but depends, rather, upon
the general level of science and the progress of technology,
or the application of science to production," this is
obviously true, in similar, if far from identical way, that
agriculture depends on rain, or as a minimum, water.

Kropotkin made similar observations as Marx did above, the
later in direct reference to factory-production, so that this
is said.  But what conclusions that sould be drawn from this
*within the framework of capitalist realtions*, is less certain.
What is sure is that it is argument that has been used against
the labour theory of value from the very beginning.
 As for machines etc... that is the easy part, as far as
they are nothing but dead labour, and in this are in
principle no different than a stone axe.
 As for new scientific inventions, which also rely on
the products of past recorded labour, it is more than doubt-
ful that these are more important for *increased* produc-
tivity today than under the industrial revolution. It is hard
to underestimate the importance the railway and
telegraph had in this respect for instance.

It would of course be interesting if there within capitalist
relations had existed an immanent tendency to redistribute
all wealth to the "scientific community" which  it might be
said to have produced according to such a reasoning. But it
there is nothing to point to this being so.
  Despite various legal protections for the intellectual
property throughout most of the history of capitalism, by
and large, the important practical productive effects of scientific
developments have not taken long before becoming shared
(amongst capitalist entrepreneurs), and it is hard to see how
technological developements could have gone as fast, had this
not been the case. The owners of the factories where such
"powerful effectiveness" is produced will as a rule sell it to all
who are willing to pay the price. (The most obvious objections
to this viewpoint is of course concerns the uneven geographical
development of capitalism, apart some from more directly
political-military motivated restrictions. )

8. As for the Reseach and Development units within for instance
pharmaceutical industry, if we are to assume that the likes of
Einstein have become the driving force of capitalism
in general, much the same could be said that has earlier been
written about manufacture and the factory of old as regards
the combination of forces. And there surely exist a competion
between companies to bring down the socially nescessary
labour time needed to bring a new product to the market.

That the combination of forces may increase the productivty
of each was an observation already made by Adam Smith (and
numerous others before him back to the beginnings of human
kind), and an increased division of labour is of course the
basis capitalism always operated on. Why this is made into an
argument against the labour theory of value now, and
presented almost as it was something new, is a bit curious.
Even if it might be argued that this has now been driven to
a point that has brought about a radical qualiative
change.

My general claim would however be that there is no  contra-
diction between capitalism becoming increasingly social and
the labour theory of value. On the contrary, it is relative
isolation, whether due to combined geographical,
transportation and communication reasons, different
monetary zones, or political reason, that will make it
less valid.

9. And at last, you ask me: "Is not the entire point of so much of
his [ that is Negri's] work to develop an understanding a life
beyond capitalist representation?"

It is not his intentions I am throwing in doubt, but "when the
entire time of life has become the time of production" for
capital, which is precisly what is implied by biopower in
Negri's usage, this cannot be reconciled with any under-
standing at all of a life beyond "capitalist representation",
as you call it.
  Or to put in another way, there is a reason for
why, should a 72 hours normal workweek ( 12 x 6), or even
longer, be imposed tomorrow, hardly any would find it to be
an insignificant  measure, to put it mildly, even if Negri's
theory would suggest the opposite. I think you would have
seen a genuine revolt. The avoidance of such simply, but all
too obvious questions, or the continued relevance of lines
such as "praise boss when morning work-belI chime," or
the  question of *intensity* of labour, which surely is of utmost
importance for this whole question, I find astonishing. 
And there still is for the vast majority a qualitative difference
between waged time and playing football for fun, an
instrument for joy or sorrow, going to the pub to meet
friends, or fishing in a river for to get away from it
all, listening to the silence and your own thoughts.
  And there is nothing particular new in that
many experiences, knowledge and skills acquired outside
waged time is put in use for for alien purposes by
capital. If you looked for it, a study of the kind of unskilled
workers organized in the IWW in the first decades of the
20th century, who often went from job to job, each
requiring different skills, however much unskilled they
were in name, would almost certainly revealed the same.
What is more, on average, the son or daughter in an
affluent New England family, if suddenly thrown into
such a life, would have been disadvantaged, for all they
did not know, even if they met the physical
qualifications.
 Unskillled women used to (or do) take with them
skills and knowledges they obtained outside wage work,
however, in this instance obtained through work in the
home which is fundamental condition for capitalist
production, and not only as a potential.

Hope this clarified my perspective a bit, at least. It is
a potenially huge subject, so the most must remain
unsaid. Nor am I the above necessarily all the time
arguing against you. It is still quite unclear to me exactly
what you perspective are on many of these
issues. I suspect that works both ways.

Harald



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