From: "Joseph Green" <comvox-AT-flash.net>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 01:39:23 +0000
Subject: Re: M-I: Work in Progress


RE: Work in Progress

     I found Nancy Brumback's "Work in Progress" interesting 
and related to issues about value that I have been looking 
into. I believe however that her work goes astray.
     Brumback begins by distinguishing between material 
value or use-value and exchange value. But her critique of 
the labor theory of (exchange) value appears to be, in part, 
that the Marxist theory of value mistakenly neglects the 
role of nature, of the unpaid work in raising the next 
generation, and so forth. In so doing, she ends up 
identifying exchange value with useful value. As a result, 
she ends up apparently holding that a better theory of 
value, which took into account the various factors that 
Marxism ignores, would provide a basis for a better society 
in which exploitation is eliminated.
     In regard to this, I would suggest the following 
theses:
     1) The Marxist theory of value is supposed to represent 
not how a good society should operate, but how capitalist 
society does in fact operate. If the theory of value 
therefore implies that the environment is devastated and 
that many useful forms of labor are unpaid, it has therefore 
successfully explained a good part of capitalism. This is 
not a proof that it is faulty, but a proof that it is 
accurate.
     2) Marx and Engels were of course aware that 
capitalists cheat the workers as well as each other, force 
wages below their value whenever possible, and use whatever 
force, trickery or deceit will serve their purposes. They 
believed, however, that in order to explain capitalism it is 
necessary to show how exploitation arises even when 
everything is paid for at its value. Brumback's theory, on 
the contrary, assumes that exploitation can only arise on 
the basis of the failure to pay for labor or other things at 
their true value.
     3) There is no doubt that Brumback wants to see a 
society far different and superior to the present one. But 
her apparent critique of the theory of value--that surplus 
value and various ills take place because things aren't paid 
at their true value--is unwittingly a *conservative* theory. 
It is a conservative theory as paying for things at their 
true value is a capitalist idea; any society that did so 
would stay within the realm of capitalism. Marx and Engels' 
theory of value is a revolutionary one, because it implies 
that one must abolish exchange value--that is, create an 
economic system that is not based on exchange.
     4) No doubt, some confusion arises because "value" is 
such a positive word. No doubt, it is natural to want to 
increase the real "value" in the world, or to have things 
measured by their true "value" etc. It is thus easy to 
forget the distinction between useful values and exchange 
value, even when one starts by writing at some length on 
this distinction.
     5) Moreover, while a classless society would not be 
based on exchange and not have exchange value, a 
transitional society would still have a certain amount of 
exchange value left. If workers are paid according to the 
amount of work they have done ("from each according to 
ability; to each according to work"), then the measure of 
things according to their "value" still has a role in this 
society. But Marx and Engels' assumed that, in this case, 
inequality will still exist to some extent in 
such a society. They held that distribution according to 
such a standard was "bourgeois right" and hence a right to 
inequality.
     6) Brumback assumes that Marx believes that nature 
doesn't create value, and that this neglect of nature is 
part of the labor-theory of value. Actually, Marx not only 
stressed that nature creates use-values (not exchange value), 
but it was crucial to his theory. His famous "Critique of 
the Gotha Program" begins by criticizing the view that 
"Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture". He 
wrote that:
     "Labor is *not the source* of all wealth. *Nature* is 
just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of 
such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself 
is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor 
power. The above phrase ["Labor is the source of all wealth 
and all culture"--JG] is to be found in all children's 
primers and is correct in so far as it is *implied* that 
labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and 
instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such 
bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the *conditions* 
that alone give them meaning. And in so far as man from the 
beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all 
instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her 
as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use 
values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very 
good grounds for falsely ascribing *supernatural creative 
power* to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor 
depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no 
other property than his labor power must, in all conditions 
of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have 
made themselves the owners of the material conditions of 
labor. He can work only with their permission, hence live 
only with their permission." (the emphasis and first 
parenthetical remark are Marx's)
     7) From Brumback's view that surplus value only arises 
when things are not paid for at their value, she derived 
that only workers paid below their value will play a role in 
building the new society, and that the working class per se 
is hence not the revolutionary class. That is, she held 
that various sections of the working class are 
revolutionary, but not as part of the working class, but as 
something else, and so she directly denied that the working 
class itself will be the revolutionary agency that will 
bring a new society. (Earlier today, she added that she only
wanted to stress that organizing the working class shouldn't 
mean negating the struggle against the oppression of women,
against racism, etc., which is true. However, from the
theoretical point of view, her critique of the
theory of value centers on the view that 
that those workers who are paid the value of their labor
aren't exploited and so actually implies what she originally
stated.) I believe that, in her original interpretation of 
dependency theory (world-systems theory) as negating the role 
of the working class, she had correctly understood the 
implications of world-systems theory. However, her 
conclusions seem to me to go against present-day realities:
     a) if the labor of "heterosexual" "able-bodied males of 
the correct age and race" does not produce surplus value, it 
is difficult to understand why the capitalists bother to 
employ them.
     b) it is true that the working class movement in the 
industrialized countries is in crisis, but it is also true 
that the working class movement in poor and dependent 
countries is also in crisis. Indeed, so are the movements of 
the various sectors of the working class and other oppressed 
people that Brumback regards as the revolutionary sectors. 
What is notable is that, despite the immense differences in 
living standards and political conditions, the overall 
crises of orientation facing the workers' movement in 
various countries around the world show remarkable 
similarity. World-systems theory to the contrary, the 
working class really is an international class.

     Joseph Green, comvoice-AT-flash.net
     CV web site: http://www.flash.net/~comvoice


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