From: brumback-AT-ncgate.newcollege.edu
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 19:20:52 -0800
Subject: M-I: Work in Progress, Part I


Dear list members: 

The following 23K piece of writing is Part I of an essay I'm working on. It
is a simple summary of Marx's theory of value. The essay starts by reviewing
the theory of value itself, so it can go on to explore some critiques of the
theory in Part II, and finally an alternative theory in Part III.

I apologize for the haphazard state of the citations, but since probably
everything here is not very controversial, maybe you won't mind too much.
Later, after I finish Part II and Part III, I'll clean up the cites.

I will appreciate any feedback anyone cares to give. Looking forward to
hearing from you!

Thanks,

Nancy



    *    *      *       *       *       *       *       *       *



                Labor, Nature, and Value Theory
		
		by Nancy Brumback


Marx's labor theory of value is one of an interlocking set of concepts which
make up his materialist perspective on human history. Since the advent of
the environmental movement and the women's movement, the theory of value has
been criticized by both feminists and environmentalists for failing to
adequately represent the contributions to the material wealth of society
made both by women in the family, and by nature. In what may appear to be a
self-contraction, however, Marx also shows that he appreciates both the
worth of the labor of women in the family, and the worth of nature. 

But the theory of value was never intended to account for "worth." As
economist Joan Robinson comments,

One of the great metaphysical ideas in economics is expressed by the word
"value" ... It does not mean market prices, which vary from time to time
under the influence of casual accidents; nor is it just an historical
average of prices. Indeed, it is not simply a price; it is something that
will explain how prices come to be what they are. What is it? Where shall we
find it? Like all metaphysical concepts, when you try to pin it down it
turns out to be just a word.( Joan Robinson, An Essay on Marxian Economics,
2nd Ed., New York, St. Martin's Press, 1977, 20, quoted in Marilyn Waring,
Counting for Nothing.)

In this essay, I hope to demonstrate that value is indeed, just a word. But
I also hope to show that this word, "value," is exactly that word which
describes the contents of the bank accounts of economists, politicians and
businessmen all over the world. As such, it has meaning above and beyond the
metaphysical. 

The first part of the essay reviews the labor theory of value and the ideas
related to it. Through this review, I hope to establish a baseline for the
second part of the essay, which discusses how (and why) value theory fails
to account for the wealth created by women (as well as other unpaid and
underpaid laborers) and by nature. Finally, the third part of the essay
suggests an alternative definition of value to show that such
unaccounted-for wealth is indeed nothing more or less than the wealth which
accrues every day in the bank accounts of international capital.

	Part 1. A Review of Marx's Labor Theory of Value

Society and Nature. Marx's view of the interaction, or dialectic, between
human beings and non-human nature forms the basis of his perspective on the
history and development of human society. To Marx, human beings are a part
of nature and connected to it in many ways:

Nature is man's inorganic body -- nature, that is, insofar as it is not the
human body. Man lives from nature -- meaning that nature is his body, with
which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That
man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that
nature is linked to itself, for man is part of nature. (Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; Collected Works, Vol. 3:276, London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1975.)

Inextricably so linked in physical reality, nature and humanity can be
separated only by abstraction (Jarvikoski, Timo. 1996. "The Relation of
Nature and Society in Marx and Durkheim." Acta Sociologica, Vol. 39, No. 1,
pp. 73-86); it is only in the process of thought that any distinction at all
can be made between the two. The conceptual distinctions Marx made between
nature and humans incorporate his speculation on the differences between
animals and humans: whereas animals behave instinctively, humans act with
self-awareness:

The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct
from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself
an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It
is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life
activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity (Economic &
Phil ms, part 1, p. 18). 

[Note: As regards the anthropocentric bias of Marx's views on the relations
between animals and humans, I will only observe here that it does exist.
Even though an exploration of the import of this bias on Marx's work would
be very interesting, it would take us too far afield of the present topic.]

According to Marx, this life activity of humans is labor. Marx defined labor
as the process by which humans transform natural materials into things to
meet human needs. And because labor is a human process, it is a conscious
process -- willful and purposeful. To illustrate this point, Marx writes
about how the "best" of spiders does not have the finished project in mind
when she begins her work, whereas the "worst" of architects does (Capital,
Vol. I, Ch. 7, Sec. 1). 

But consciousness is only one characteristic of labor according to Marx;
another characteristic is that beyond the "embryonic animal stage," labor
occurs only "within the framework of a definite social form." (Schmidt, The
Concept of Nature in Marx, London: NLB, 1971:176). In a familiar passage
from The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, l976, p. 49), Marx
contrasts natural phenomena and social phenomena, characterizing social
phenomena as something that (1) involves the cooperation of several human
beings, and (2) corresponds to a particular mode of production:

The production of life, both of one's own in labour and of fresh life in
procreation, now appears as a two-fold relation: on the one hand as a
natural, on the other as a social relation -- social in the sense that it
denotes the co-operation of several individuals, no matter under what
conditions, in what manner, and to what end. It follows from this that a
certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a
certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation
is itself a "productive force."

The development of the mode of production is the basis of the evolution of
human society-- the famous Marxian "flywheel" of history. When the mode of
production changes, so does the mode of co-operation -- the social
relations. Within these social relations, humans act upon nature and change
their environment; in this way, human society changes itself.

Human labor presupposes not only consciousness, therefore; it presupposes as
well the evolution of human society. Burkett, 1996, writes that insofar as
the ability to labor has "evolved to a greater extent for humans than for
other species, this has occurred in and through a process of social
evolution and class struggles" [cf. Engles, 1964, Dialectics of Nature,
Moscow: Progress Publishers; Marx, 1967 (1977 printing), Capital, Vol I, New
York: International Publishers, 372, fn. 3]. It is the peculiar
socioevolutionary character of labor which defines it as human (Capital,
1967, International Publishers, I, 71, 80, 104).

Capitalism. The mode of production under which we in the modern world live
today is the capitalist system of the production and exchange of
commodities, first established in Western Europe in the 16th century.
Capitalism is also the mode of production studied and analyzed most deeply
by Marx.

The establishment of capitalism was a historic event, according to Marx, the
result of "many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of
older forms of social production" (I, Ch. 6, p. 2). The mode of production
which most directly preceeded capitalism in Western Europe was the manor
system of feudalism. Under feudalism, social relations of personal
dependence characterised production as well as the entire ground-work of
society.(I, 1, p. 26) The production of all the necessities of life for all
of society was carried out by a class of serfs who were "bound to the land"
by the feudal relations, as enforced by military power, civil law, and/or
the requirements of the Church. This class of serfs was passed down through
the generations of their masters, the landed nobility, along with the land
upon which they lived and worked. 

Under the manor system, labor and its products took the form of services in
kind and payments in kind. The serfs were required to provide their masters
with so much corn, beef, mutton, yarn, linen, and clothing, etc. In return,
they were given the right to plant certain areas for their own use, to
gather firewood and hunt pigs and rabbits in the forest, to take fish,
birds, and herbs from the marshes, and to graze their animals on the village
commons, etc. According to Marx, the different kinds of labor they performed
- farming, husbandry, spinning, weaving, and sewing-- were in themselves
"direct social functions" based upon the division of labor in the family
according to differences in age, sex, etc. (I, 1, p. 26)

This class of producers, the serfs of the Middle Ages, was gradually
replaced in Western Europe as the manor system was replaced by the
capitalist mode of production. In a slow and wrenching (for the poor)
process lasting hundreds of years, the traditional socio-economic ties
between the serfs and their masters were broken. 

The serfs became a working class of "free" men and women: no longer were
they obliged to provide for the feudal masters. But at the same time,
neither were they entitled to produce their own means of subsistence on the
traditional fuedal lands. Now, instead of working to fulfill their
obligations to the masters, they would sell their labor for a wage if they
wanted to survive, since they had no other choice. Their masters were no
longer the feudal masters, empowered through the feudal bonds of reciprocal
dependence, but the capitalist masters, empowered through their ownership of
land, tools, and money with which to purchase the labor-power of the workers.

This "separation of a considerable number of laborers from all property by
means of which they can produce anything for themselves" was the starting
point of the process of the development of capitalism, according to Marx. It
was the Marxian period of "primitive accumulation": "nothing else than the
historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."
(Ibid) Such a period of "primitive accumulation" was necessary because it
made possible the fundamental productive dynamic of capitalism, i.e., that
situation which arises when two very different classes of people

... come face to face and into contact, on the one hand, the owners of
money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase
the sum of values they posses, by buying other people's labor-power; on the
other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor-power, and
therefore the sellers of labor (Capital I, Ch. 26).

Thus the manor system of social production through mutual dependence and
traditional connections to the land was replaced with an economy based on
the commodity production and exchange. All of the necessities of human life,
which theretofore had been produced on the manor for one's self, one's
family, and one's lord in fulfillment of traditional obligations, became
commodities to be bought and sold for money at the capitalist marketplace.
Similarly, one's labor, whether farming or cloth-making, butchering or
sewing, was no longer a reflection of one's social function as a member of a
family, because under capitalism labor itself was a commodity to be bought
and sold. Production was no longer controlled by the traditional social
relations of feudalism. Instead, it was controlled by the capitalists, who
owned the means of production and produced whichever items they observed to
be most profitable at the market place.

Wealth and Value. According to Marx, since labor is a "necessary condition"
of human existence, and since humans create wealth whenever they labor, all
societies possess wealth. He referred to this wealth as "use-values": useful
things created by human labor for the purpose of meeting some human need. 

On the other hand, value as defined by Marx entered history only with the
development of capitalism. This appearance of value per se could come about
only when a use-value became a commodity, according to Marx. His definition
of the commodity presupposed capitalism: a commodity was a useful thing
which was produced for the capitalist marketplace.

Why was capitalist production so important to Marx's definition of value? It
was because of the transformative effect that he thought that capitalism had
upon the nature of the labor that produced the commodity. In the historic
epoch of capitalism, he theorized, "the labour spent on the production of a
useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective qualities of that
article, i.e., as its value (Capital, I, l, p. 16).

Marx gives an example of what he means by an objective property: the
property of weight, possessed by sugar and iron. But whereas the objective
property of weight is "natural," the objective property of value is
"social." (I, 1, p. 13, Section 3a3, the Equivalent form of value).

Marx further explains that value is a property which is not natural but
social because it manifests only when use-values are considered "in
relation" to one another. For example, in a particular country at a
particular time, a pound of sugar might be equivalent in worth to three
pounds of iron. Marx would say that putting aside any superficial price
fluctuations caused by such conditions as inflation, supply, and demand,
etc., the sugar is worth three time what the iron is worth because it
required the expenditure of three times as much human labor to (1) convert
it from the natural materials from which it is made, and (2) bring it to
consumer in the marketplace. He regarded this labor as "crystallized," or
"embedded," in all commodities.

To Marx, the particular amount of labor which was crystallized in the
commodity became an objective property though which all commodities stand in
definite relation to one another in the capitalist marketplace. Clearly,
each commodity contains a definite amount of labor: maybe more than another
commodity, maybe less, or maybe the same amount. This embedded labor, which
all commodities possesed and through which they might all be quantitatively
ranked, to Marx constituted the social property of value.

Marx further discussed what he thought was the nature of the labor embedded
in commodities. This was "abstract labor," he thought. By abstract, he meant
that when the various commodities were ranked in relation to one another,
this relation was based on the quantity of labor only. The different
qualities or types of labor (whether carpentry or baking, for example),
dropped out of consideration in this mathematical expression which depends
only the length of the duration of time of labor. (Vol. 1, ch. 1. p. 3) 

So, to Marx, value is the generalized representation of labor -- it is
"abstract social labor time" embodied in commodities [Capital, New York:
International Publishers, 1967, Vol I, pp. 43, 177 (quoted in Burkett, p.
64)]. And the presence in commodities of the common abstract element of
labor, varying in quantity but not in quality, is the basis upon which
exchange takes place, i.e., the basis of value. (I, Ch. 1, p. 3).   

But this idea that value is the manifestation of abstract labor is only the
"how" of value. For the "why" of value, for the "value-forming character" of
production under capitalism, we must turn to the particular productive
dynamic which evolves when the major part of human needs satisfaction occurs
through the buying and selling of commodities created for the capitalist
marketplace. Then, the economy as a whole hinges on the market dynamic. 

As Marx observed, commodities enter the market after they have been created
by the labor of private individuals or groups of individuals who work
independently of one another. These producers do not necessarily come into
direct social contact with one another; each form of labor, producing each
kind of commodity, is carried out independently of one another. But,
according to Marx, each society must integrate all its labor into a coherent
whole: it must allocate its labor "among productive activities to reproduce
itself. [Marx to Kugelmann, July 11, 1868, in Marx and Engels, 1975, "Notes
on Wagner." pp. 179-219 in Texts on Method, T. Carver, ed. Oxford: Blackwell
(quoted in Burkett, p. 337)] 

Such a social integration of all the individual bits and pieces of private
labor occurs in the capitalist market place, according to Marx. The
validation of labor as socially necessary, or integration of each portion of
total social labor, is decided in the market place, by the exchange values
the commodities have assumed in relation to one another. Through the
property of value, all labor is integrated into the "whole system of
material reproduction." As Marx put it:

In other words, the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the
labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange
establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them,
between the producers (I, l, p. 23, section 4). 

[Note to Marxist-International readers: I am trying to remember where in
Capital I saw the passage that talks about how, through value, the social
validation and integration of labor occurs after commodities have been
purchased at the market. Can anyone help me here? Thanks. Nancy]

The value of labor. As we have seen, upon the development of capitalism,
labor-power, which is one of the inputs needed for commodity production,
itself became a commodity to be bought and sold at the market, along with
all the other necessities of life. It follows that as a commodity,
labor-power would assumes an exchange-value in relation to the
exchange-values all other commodities.

 The value of this commodity, according to Marx, was to be reckoned in the
same way as all other commodities:

The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other
commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently
also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it
represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society
incorporated in it:

Given the individual the production of labour-power consists in his
reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires
a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time
requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that
necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words,
the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary
for the maintenance of the labourer. (I, Ch. 6, p. 2-3). (Emphasis added.)

What were these "means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the
laborer"? Marx defined them as "the necessaries required to produce,
develop, maintain, and perpetuate the laboring power." (K. Marx, Value,
Price, and Profit (Part VII) Emphasis added.) In other words, "to maintain
in him this capacity for work, and to replace him at his departure, by
reason of age, sickness, or death, with another laborer -- that is to say,
to propagate the working class in required numbers." (Engels, 1891
introduction to Wage-Labor and Capital, K. Marx, 1989.)

These required necessaries, according to Marx, were "natural wants" -- food,
clothing, fuel, and housing -- which would vary according to the physical
conditions of life, such as climate, and according to the "degree of
civilization of a country," e.g., the "habits and degree of comfort in which
the class of free laborers has been formed. (Ibid) The monetary cost of
these items would change, Marx said, "according to time and circumstances"
for "a given condition of society, in a given locality, and in a given
branch of production." (Wages, Prices, and Profit, p. 46;  also Wage Labor
and Capital.)

But regardless of all these fluctuations, thought Marx, the capitalist class
must pay at least a certain minimum cost for labor-power, and that would be
"the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the
labourer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those
means of subsistence that are physically indispensable." (I, 6, p. 4,
emphasis added) Marx was speaking, of course, not about one laborer only,
but about the working class as a whole.

Surplus value. Given the definitions of capitalism, value, and the value of
labor, we are now in a position to understand the Marxian definition of
surplus value, or capital. Capital is that monetary reality which the
capitalist uses to buy labor and other inputs to produce and sell
commodities for the purpose of acquiring more surplus value. 

When when the products of labor are sold, if they are sold at a price
greater than the cost of making them, and the capitalist keeps the
difference. This situation occurs, thought Marx, because of the unique
use-value of labor. Marx said that like no other commodity, labor-power is
capable of providing more value than it possesses itself. It is this
difference between the value of labor, on the one hand, and the value
produced by that labor, on the other, that the capitalist has in mind when
he purchases the labor power (I, Ch. 7, p. 4). 

The capitalist pays the wage; this is the paid portion of the worker's
labor-power. The remainder is the unpaid portion: the portion of the value
produced by labor-power which the capitalist keeps for himself -- surplus
value. Surplus value is the unpaid value of labor-power, and the unpaid
value of labor-power is surplus value.

This unpaid value of labor, or surplus value is capital, that history
monetary phenomena after which Marx named his most important work. Capital
creates surplus value when it is used to purchase labor-power and other
inputs to produce commodities for the market. "Through capital surplus-value
is made, and from surplus-value more capital." (I, 26, p. 1)

Capital assumes its earth-changing character when it is used to consume more
labor and more natural materials to create more commodities for the market,
and thenceforth, more capital. Add to this the fact that because of the
competitive and individualistic nature of capitalism, each capitalist must
make more money than each other just to keep up. Thus capitalist
exploitation and accumulation of wealth begins to snowball, as time goes on,
and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.






     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---