“When we think about this potential, we often don’t fully recognise that it is somehow been enacted in some specific way in human practice. In other words, we often don’t say (a): “We suddenly started treating the products of labour as… “products of labour”, and thereby – quite by accident, initially – showed ourselves that it was possible to equate vary dissimilar things”. Instead, we tend to say things more like (b): “We suddenly discovered that commodities all share a common property – that of being material things that are the products of human labour – and that all humans share a common property – that of being creatures with a common material or biological form. This underlying, pre-existent similarity explains why we can treat these things as similar in our social practice.”

Given that Marx thinks he can show (a), this leaves him with a specific theoretical problem: why do so many competing forms of theory say (b)? If we are actively creating or enacting certain potentials in our own collective practice, why would we perceive ourselves, instead, to be “discovering” intrinsic properties of material nature, which we then interpret as a kind of “material ground” for our own social practice?”

I can t think of a better pedagogical formulation of one of your main questions and arguments in your thesis. Such beautiful lucidity does also exist in larvalsubjects blog. The first part of meillassoux’s after the finitude is also like that. Constant attempt to re-formulate your problem so that it becomes both more meaningful and solvable. the (a) and (b) are simply brilliant. perfect distillation!

Just a few quick things on the run today:

First, it’s obviously not going to trouble me, if we get far away from the labour theory of value as normally understood. I agree absolutely that value is, not simply a macroeconomic category, but a category of the “totality” – of the entire workings of the capitalist system. I wasn’t sure, when you were speaking above about Marx’s treatment of value in volume one leaving open the possibility (which he then seems to have intended to close off later) that value might be interpreted in terms of price of production: I think there are already passages in the first chapter that make clear that you can’t equate value with price (although the issue of price of production isn’t raised this early) – there are these long passages that look quite simplistic, where Marx will go, basically, “relative price (or the proportions in which commodities exchange, or similar expression) can stay the same if x goes up while y goes up, if x and y stay the same, and if x and y go down at the same time”, etc. – these passages (and there are a number of them in the first chapter) already make it clear that, whatever the hell else Marx is trying to do with the category of value, he isn’t deriving it from price (and, in fact, he says this explicitly several times in the first chapter as well). More significantly, the first chapter already sets up a puzzle in the form of suggesting that value can’t really be empirically deduced from shifts in prices (which are positioned in the first chapter as aspects of phenomenological experience that, if attended to in exclusion, actually seem empirically to suggest random fluctuations). So all of this sets up a puzzle about “not knowing where to have it” – about what the ontological status of “value” could conceivably be, how the theorist could become aware of such a thing, and how such a thing could be said to “structure” aspects of phenomenological experience that are empirically observable. I think we’re meant to come out of the experience with a certain element of “what the fuck?”

My personal impulse is to think that “value” becomes perceptible empirically only diachronically – that it captures a pattern unfolding over time. And that the puzzle then becomes one of understanding how social actors, who are trying to do quite mundane things like focus on price, somehow manage to generate this overarching historical pattern that no one intended to create. It’s because I see the argument this way, that I suspect – although I won’t make any kind of strong claim here – that it’s not ultimately a problem for Marx to bracket certain things (the skilled/unskilled distinction, etc.): although an analysis of these issues might be important for other reasons, I don’t specifically see them raising problems for what he’s doing with the concept of value.

Most of my work doesn’t require me to come to terms with the potential quantitative dimensions of the argument – I’ve been mainly interested in pointing out some implications of the argument (even if the argument might then be wrong in various details) for how we can connect up widespread forms of perception, with widespread forms of collective practice, so that the connects between what we “do” collectively, and how we perceive and think about ourselves, nature, and society, become a bit easier to perceive. But I’m interested in how Marx understood the apparent quantitative claims in his work – whether and to what extent these are “his” claims, and whether and to what extent these sorts of claims cause problems.

But this is all much too abbreviated – and I’m probably not really ready to write on such things at this point in any event, even if I had adequate time… Feel free to correct or elaborate as needed, with the caveat that my responses may be very delayed for the near future…

Many thanks…

Well you really got me working on this one! Apologies for the essay-length reply, and I only get on to skilled labour at the bottom. I should say in advance that I don’t see Capital as a self-contained, consistent theoretical system, so the whole thing doesn’t stand or fall together. Most total attacks on Marx’s economics are based on the premise that if you pull out one pin the whole thing collapses – this is rubbish. And anyway I think, as I say, that there are possible solutions to ‘the skilled labour problem’ that are quite consistent with Marx’s overall approach.

(Oh and I realise you weren’t replying to my comment with your post. But I wanted to clarify anyway.)

In the first chapter, Marx is trying to establish the form of value, against those who argued it was only determined by exchange. In early vol 1 (I’m a little hazy on which chapters exactly) Marx shows that we can speak of value as something seemingly inherent in the commodity only because of the social structure of production and exchange. The need to sell in competition with other producers rationalises the labour process but there is some minimum labour time necessary to produce a particular kind of commodity, and this will determine its value relative to other commodities, including money.

This was a simplification of what actually determines relative prices. Marx talks in vol 1 (and vol 2 for that matter) as if value is relative price. But he was well aware that commodities did not in fact exchange at rates determined entirely by the labour time required to produce them. (There is some dispute as to whether he thought that in reality labour-time gave a rough guide to relative prices, or whether there would be wide divergences.) He was well aware of this while writing vol 1, Engels urged him to clear this up at the beginning, but Marx deliberately left it to vol 3. (Though of course the later vols were never completed for publication, we only have drafts predating the final version of vol 1.)

I think the reason he left it out in vol 1 was that he first wanted to establish the social dimension of value – that it is determined by competition enforcing certain efficient production processes in a given historical context where one class monopolises ownership of the means of production. This is fundamental to Marx’s whole work and he needs to establish that before anything else. But he starts out simple because it would confuse people to introduce everything at once. The real nature of how relative price is determined cannot be explained until competition is investigated (vol 3), which first requires a comprehensive investigation of ‘capital’ (vol 1, 2 and 3), which in turn requires a rough concept of value.

When Marx finally deals with the detailed workings of competition, it modifies the simplistic vol 1 explanation of how the relative prices of commodities are determined. Marx continues to use the term ‘value’ in the original sense related to labour-time. He adds a new term, ‘price-of-production’, for actual relative prices, still denominated in value as measuring unit (rather than being observable money-prices). But in fact price-of-production is what most people think of as value, so it can be confusing.

Value then becomes a macroeconomic unit of labour-time, only relevant in talking about commodity relations as a whole. It is still useful in considering vol 1 concepts like surplus value, but only macroeconomically – i.e., it tells you the shares of the total product going to labour and capital, but not at the level of individual or firm. Price-of-production is the microeconomic concept for discussing relative prices – and for discussing concepts like the circuit of capital at the level of the firm.

The transformation problem (of labour-values into prices-of-production) is not a real issue. Except that Marx stuffed up the arithmetic – easily fixed. I think the Sraffians are right that prices-of-production can be determined for empirical work without reference to labour-time. But the Sraffians then leave indeterminate the rate of profit and the distribution of the social product. And good old concepts like ‘value’ and ‘surplus-value’, ‘labour-time’ and ‘the value of labour-power’ are useful for investigating the determinants of distribution. At a macro level, of course.

The trouble with this interpretation is how to treat skilled labour. Marx only treated skilled labour in value terms, and did not return to it later. In fact, it is treated very early in the piece indeed; as Isaak Rubin writes: “In the theory of value, when he explains the value of commodities produced by qualified labour, Marx analyses the relations among people as commodity producers, or the simple commodity economy; at this stage of the examination, the value of labour-power in general, and of qualified labour in particular, do not yet exist for Marx.” [Ch 15 of Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value]

But skilled labour can create commodities of higher price-of-production than those created by unskilled labour independently of the price-of-production of capital involved. How do we investigate this, and how do we deal with the resulting unequal distribution among the working class?

I think Rubin is on the right track in dealing with it as competition in the labour market (and the commodity market) – between workers; between labour and capital; and between capitals. This is consistent with the vol 3 discussion of competition, and it is realistic. But it must be admitted that we are now some distance from a ‘labour theory of value’ as is commonly understood. But then I don’t think Marx held a labour theory of value in that sense anyway.

I’d be curious to hear you develop your point about the treatment of skilled labour, and how you see this to contradict what Marx is after with the labour theory of value. (My impulse has generally been that the “transformation problem” perhaps results from a misunderstanding of the strategic role that the concept of “value” plays within the theoretical system, although I’m probably not prepared, at this point in the reading I’m unfolding, to substantiate this argument fully.)

I’m interested in the issue of quantification in Marx – but also not completely decided what Marx was intending to assert in his comments about quantitative relationships constituted within capitalism: portions of the text seem, to me, to point in somewhat different directions – but I think I’m too tired tonight even to explain what I mean by this… I’d also like to say more about the issue of classifying forms of labour as value- and non-value-producing… Apologies for not being able to do anything with these issues right now – I’m exhausted, and the next several days are quite bad for me… But I mention my interest basically because these are sorts of things I’d like to discuss – if you feel like saying more, that would be great (with the caveat that I may not respond adequately) – otherwise, I’m sure the issue will come up at other moments, as the discussion keeps trundling through the text…

Take care…

But as soon as you admit that, it becomes more difficult to work out ‘how much’ each individual labourer is contributing in value terms. At a newspaper, say, what part of the product is produced by the journalist, the printer, the ad rep? Competitive pressures are felt on the commodity and the production unit as a whole.

I tend to argue that each kind of labour is necessary, and each labour process is rationalised by capital because of competition between capitals, so it seems reasonable to say, if you want to look at it on an individual level, that each person contributes equally.

Things are complicated by the treatment of different levels of skill, etc., and they have always been complicated so. I’m not conviced by Marx’s treatment of skilled labour, I think it’s inconsistent with the theory of value, and more of a problem than the so-called ‘transformation problem’. But my point was that the problem did not arrive with ‘immaterial labour’ – it was there all along.

Obviously I didn’t mean that all collective labour is value-producing, only that all value-producing labour is collective. Not just at the level of the firm, but at the level of the whole society. You don’t have a ‘unit of value’ unless you are considering a whole society – this is a pretty basic assumption of people who have developed macroeconomics out of Marx, but maybe not so important if you are not thinking quantitatively.

I agree with you that it is commodity-producing labour that produces value. Remember also that for Marx not all labour necessary for the reproduction of the economy was value-producing. Not just necessary housework, but also labour carried out in capitalist firms. He excluded, for example, commercial labour, eg. people who work in shops. I think this is wrong, but there is no denying Marx held this view.

Sorry for the scattered nature of this comment, I’m bloody tired this morning! Daylight savings!