Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 13:10:18 GMT
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-I: LOV and labour time vouchers


Lew,

Thank you for crossing swords with me on this issue and for
providing me with quotes and context for your remarks.

On Tuesday 25th March you wrote:


>>
 Marx believed that, because of the low
level of the productive forces (in the 1870s) consumption would have to
be rationed, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers similar to
those advocated by Robert Owen. 
<<

I have spliced your quotes from Marx in with the 
references:


"Owens labour-money, for instance, is no more money than a ticket
for the theatre. Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of
production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of
commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part
taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a
certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption."
(Capital, Vol. 1).

Capital, Volume One, Part 1, Chapter 111, Section 1: Money, Or The
Circulation of commodities. First footnote.


"These producers may... receive paper vouchers entitling them to
withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity
corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They
do not circulate"
(Capital, Vol. 2).
Capital, Volume Two, Part 2, Chapter XV111, 11: The Role of Money
Capital. Last page.

"Within the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the
means of production, the producers do not exchange their products"
(Critique of the Gotha Programme).
Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1, 3.


I do not think they support your case if read in context of the
other passages. I accept your point that Marx and Engels regarded
the process of wage labourer as fundamental to human oppression
and exploitation under capitalism, and calls for its abolition.
I accept that there are many critical references to the market
but Marx was a sharp critic and I do not think that means a 
political programme of abolishing the market. On closer examination 
of your quotes I think Marx appears even less utopian on this
question than might at first be imagined. 

Just before the beginning of your quote from the footnote in Capital
Volume 1, he writes 

"I have elsewhere examined thoroughly the Utopian idea of 
'labour money' in a society founded on the production of 
commodities (l. c., p 61, seq.)"

This appears to me probably to be a reference to the criticism
of the ideas of 'Honest John' Gray, at the end of the section
entitled "Theories of the Unit of Measure of Money" in Critique
of Political Economy. [This is the New York 1903 translation]

"He makes a National Central Bank ascertain through its branches
the labor-time consumed in the production of various commodities. 
The producer receives an official certificate of value in 
exchange for his commodity, ie. he gets a receipt for 
as much labor-time as his commodity contains, and these
bank notes for one week's labor, one day's labor, 
one hour's labor, etc., serve all the time as a check
for an equivalent in all other commodities stored in 
the bank warehouses.

...[Gray argues that it would be possible to dispense with
the precious metals as special units of money]...

"Labor-time being the intrinsic measure of value, why should there
be another external measure side by side with it? Why
does exchange value develop into price? Why do 
all commodities estimate their value in one exclusive 
commodity, which is thus converted into a special 
embodiment of exchange value into money? That was the problem
which Gray had to solve. Instead of solving it, he 
imagined that commodities could be related directly to each 
other as products of social labor. But they can 
relate to each other only in their capacity of
commodities. Commodities are the direct products of isolated
independent private labors, which have to be realized as 
universal social labor through their alienation in the process
of private exchange, that is to say, labor based on 
the production of commodities becomes social labor only
through universal alienation of individual labors. But
by assuming that the labor-time contained in commodities
is *directly social* [Marx's emphasis] labor-time,
Gray assumes it to be common labor-time or labor-time
of directly associated individuals.... 
*Products are to be produced as commodities, but 
are not to be exchanged as commodities* [Marx's emph].

"What remains concealed in Gray's writings and hidden from
himself as well,

that labor-money is a well-sounding economic phrase for the
pious wish to get rid of money, and with money, 
of exchange value, and with exchange value, of commodities, 
and with commodities, of the capitalistic mode of production,

was clearly expressed by some English socialists of whom
a few preceded and others followed Gray."


So the footnote in Capital that Lew quotes, begins

"The question - Why does not money directly represent labour-
time, so that a piece of paper may represent, for instance,
x hours' labour, is at bottom the same question why, given 
the production of commodities , must products take the 
form of commodities?  This is evident, since their taking
the form of commodities implies their differentiation into
commodities and money. Or, why cannot private labour - labour 
for the account of private individuals - be treated as its
opposite, immediate social labour? " 

There is then the reference to the Critique of Political Economy,
then the 3 sentences Lew quotes. Then:

"But it never enters into Owens' head to presuppose the 
production of commodities, and at the same time, by 
juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary 
conditions of that production.


If time permits I will comment on Lew's  other quotes from Marx,
especially the one from Crique of the Gotha Programme on the
trasitional situation after the working class has taken
state power.

Chris Burford
London



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