File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-07-31.000, message 202


Date: Sat, 30 Jul 94 21:00:41 EDT
From: Eugene Holland <eholland-AT-magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: a critical labor theory of value



I've been receiving messages without being able to respond for two 
weeks now because of a glitch in the e-mail system here, but I still 
haven't seen one interpretation of the LTV that I find most 
persuasive.  On this interpretation, the LTV is neither "positivist" 
nor metaphysical, but *critical*.  Not positivist in the sense that it 
does not purport to predict or explain pricing; not metaphysical in 
that it does not construe labor as the source of value in any 
ontological sense, but only in a relative sense I will now try to 
explain.  (I believe that this version of the LTV is "in" Marx, but 
doubt that it is the only one.) 

I take it as axiomatic that the LTV is of interest *primarily* (if not 
indeed exclusively) as an explanation of surplus-value and hence of 
exploitation; this is what I mean by its being "critical," part of a 
*critique of political economy* rather than political economy per se.  
As Carl Dassbach insisted (some time ago now), the distinction between 
necessary and surplus labor is crucial here, and is linked to the 
peculiarity of labor-power as a commodity that it can produce more 
value than is necessary to reproduce itself (to return to work the 
next day and to supply future workers). 

First caveat: this does not mean that Marx or this version of the LTV 
ever specifies the actual "amount" or "content" of "necessary labor" 
(and there is thus no "anthropology of needs" in Marx): the line 
between "necessary" and "surplus" labor merely designates (without 
measuring) the difference between the "accepted standard of living" at 
a given place and time and the surplus-value appropriated by the 
capitalist.  This "standard of living," by the way, also includes the 
inculcation of whatever skill level is required by the production 
system at that time and place.  (This is the sense in which the LTV is 
"relative" rather than ontological.) 

This understanding of the difference between necessary and surplus 
labor enables us to solve the problem (invoked by Carl himself, among 
others) about machines and the creation of value.  The short answer, 
according to this understanding of the LTV, is that machines don't 
produce surplus-value because they don't consume *value* (even while 
they do process raw materials): only human beings produce surplus-
value because that surplus arises only from the difference between 
what workers produce and what *they* consume in order to return to 
work (and raise children).  Surplus-value only becomes visible, then, 
in the expanded cycle of production-consumption/reproduction-
production -- because it is a strictly differential (relative) amount.  
Machines have no level of "necessary" labor; they don't consume less 
value than they produce (because they don't consume value at all): 
they do not produce surplus-value. 

I called this a *critical* LTV because it identifies the source of 
surplus-value in an appropriation of surplus from workers by owners: 
it has political rather than empirical implications.  On this view, 
Marx was less a social scientist than a revolutionary. 


Hoping this finally gets through,

Gene Holland

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