The reference is to page 706 of the English translation, Vintage Books. At
some level the distinctions between wealth, value and capital may be
straightforward but they're not so at the margins. Marx, as I read the
passage, quotes approvingly of the notion that "real wealth" is disposable
time *outside that needed in direct production*. Therefore only a portion of
value -- that which is directly consumed -- would count as wealth. And use
value includes more than value. The blackberry I pluck from the roadside
bramble and eat has use value even though I would hardly describe my
activities of plucking, chewing and swallowing as labor. But I would add
that wealth is more than the stock of use values in that it also includes
_potential_ use values, which may only be potential in some remote and
unknown way and thus, for all we know, unlikely to be used. Maybe I'm
splitting hairs by distinguishing between recognized use values and
potentialities that we don't and may never know about, I don't think so.
Are you taking account of the developmental aspect of Marx's definition of "wealth" i.e. wealth as "the development of all human powers"? I pointed to this connection some time ago.
I think Marx adopts as the ultimate end the "realm of freedom" - a community of universally developed individuals creating and appropriating beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition.
This requires "free time" i.e. time free from instrumental labour. This is time both for the activities which are ends in themselves and for the individual development these activities require. This individual development would also work to expand free time because it would improve productivity - "efficiency" - in the realm of necessity.
These ideas serve to tie together Marx's various definitions of wealth. In particular, they connect wealth as universal development to wealth as free time.
"What is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's own nature? The absolute working out of his creative potentialities, with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick? Where he does not reproduce himself in one specificity, but produces his totality? Strives not to remain something he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? In bourgeois economics - and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds - this complete working-out of the human content appears as a complete emptying out, this universal objectification as total alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end. " Grundrisse p. 488
"The real wealth of society and the possibility of a constant expansion of its reproduction process does not depend on the length of surplus labour but rather on its productivity and on the more or less plentiful conditions of production in which it is performed. The realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of material production proper ... The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it [the "realm of necessity"], though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite." Capital vol. 3 pp. 958-9
"The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the masshas ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few,for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of [706] penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them. Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition - question of life or death - for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations - two different sides of the development of the social individual - appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high. 'Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time' (real wealth), 'but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society.' (The Source and Remedy etc. 1821,p. 6.)" Grundrisse pp. 705-6
"Real economy -- saving -- consists of the saving of labour time (minimum (and minimization) of production costs); but this saving identical with development of the productive force. Hence in no way abstinence from consumption, but rather the development of power, of capabilities of production, and hence both of the capabilities as well as the means of consumption. The capability to consume is a condition of consumption, hence its primary means, and this capability is the development of an individual potential, a force of production. The saving of labour time [is] equal to an increase of free time, i.e. time for the full development of the individual, which in turn reacts back upon the productive power of labour as itself the greatest productive power. From the standpoint of the direct production process it can be regarded as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital being man himself. It goes without saying, by the way, that direct labour time itself cannot remain in the abstract antithesis to free time in which it appears from the perspective of bourgeois economy. Labour cannot become play, as Fourier would like, [5] although it remains his great contribution to have expressed the suspension not of distribution, but of the mode of production itself, in a higher form, as the ultimate object. Free time -- which is both idle time and time for higher activity -- has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then enters into the direct production process as this different subject." Grundrisse pp. 711-2
"Time of labour, even if exchange value is eliminated, always remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which - unlike labour - is not determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one's inclination.
"It is self-evident that if time of labour is reduced to a normal length and, furthermore, labour is no longer performed for someone else, but for myself, and, at the same time, the social contradictions between master and men, etc., being abolished, it acquires a quite different, a free character, it becomes real social labour, and finally the basis of disposable time -- the time of labour of a man who has also disposable time, must be of a much higher quality than that of the beast of burden." Theories of Surplus Value Collected Writings, vol. 32, pp. 301-2
Ted
