File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism_15-28Aug.94, message 78


Date: Fri, 19 Aug 94 15:03:17 EDT
From: Eugene Holland <eholland-AT-magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>


Steve:

I've just received your articles, for which I thank you and which I 
intend to read soon.  In the meantime, list-organizer Jon Beasley-
Murray forwarded me your most recent post -- for which I thank him 
(my e-mail system lost it somehow), and in response to which I have 
just a couple of comments, for now. 

Any close reading of Marx's voluminous writings has at least one 
pair of pluses and minuses: (+) one can dispel others' misreadings 
of Marx (e.g. Sweezy's), but (-) one can oneself seize upon one of 
Marx's own less fortunate formulations and base an interpretation 
on it. 

In this vein, I don't think that your interpretation of the phrase 
"daily expenditure in work" as *necessarily* meaning something 
quantitative in and of itself --

>the use-value of labor-power [is] its daily expenditure in work. 
>To me that looks quantitative. 

 -- leads to the best interpretation of Marx's version of the LTV.  
Such an interpretation is, however, consistent with the other 
sentence from _Capital_ that you quote: 

>the value of labor power, and the value which that labor power 
>creates *in the labor process*, are two entirely different 
>magnitudes; and this difference of the two values was what the 
>capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labor power..." 

I have added the emphasis on the phrase "in the labor process" 
because it is one of those "unfortunate formulations" open to 
misinterpretation: an example of what I called a kind of "short-
hand" for the *entire* production-consumption-production process. 
As I have suggested before, it is in *and only in* this enlarged 
view of the process that "two entirely different magnitudes" become 
comparable as such.  It is this enlarged view of the process that 
capitalists must have in view when hoping to *realize* the 
difference *in magnitude* between the exchange-value of the labor-
power purchased and the exchange-value of the goods produced by 
(the qualitative use-value of) that labor.  It is *this* 
application of Hegelian logic or dialectics -- not only the 
interaction of opposites, but also the movement of conflicting 
forces in the entire system over time -- that I think distinguishes 
Marx's LTV from others (including, as you rightly point out, those 
of many self-proclaimed Marxists, Sweezy and Cohen among them).  
And this is the answer I offer to your question as to 

>How an always qualitative thing [the use-value of labor-power] 
>could be the explanation of a quantitative entity [surplus-value].

[BTW, it may be true, as you suggest, that Marx sometimes seems to 
"denigrate" use-value (though you've shown convincingly that he 
knows he shouldn't).  But the sentence from early on in _Capital_ 
that you quote --

>the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterized by a 
>total abstraction from use-value... 

 -- refers *specifically* to the act of exchange: the abstraction 
of use-value in acts of exchange is different from the 
subordination of use-value to exchange-value and surplus-value in 
the system as a whole.  No-one should (and I don't) deny that use-
value remains important in Marx, even though it's subordinate under 
capitalism).] 

To return to my opening comment: Marx's writings are voluminous, so 
much so that quoting isolated passages runs the risk of "missing 
the forest for the trees".  Though several interpretations of the 
LTV in Marx's writing are no doubt possible, the best one seems to 
me to be the one that is consonant with his most concise 
formulations viewed in the context of his dialectical exposition of 
the capitalist system, and with his aim of identifying the source 
of surplus-value in the exploitation of labor-power -- which is 
what gives point to his contribution to the critique of political 
economy and to his revolutionary critique of capitalism as a whole. 

My thanks again to Steve for sending the articles and to Jon for 
forwarding the waylaid post. 

Gene Holland 


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