I happen to be one who believes that there exists a difference in
articulation - not substance, between Frederick Engels and Karl Marx approach
to "value" and embrace the reshaping of the "theory of value" in the hands of
Marx. Nevertheless, both were revolutionaries approaching the emancipation of
labor from its status as a commodity and why society moves in antagonism;
polarizes and one system of production inevitably gives way to another and
the role of the individual in this social process.
In his Introduction to A Contribution to A Critique of Political Economy,
Marx gives account to the events that led to his and Engels collaboration. It
was Engels conception of the historic trajectory of "value" as a mediator in
social relations - described in The Conditions of The Working Class in
England, that Marx worked out or rather, had come to the same conclusion on
the basis of theoretical postulates. This is stated in a footnote to
Anti-Duhring, which Marx wrote a Chapter for ("From The Critical History")
and corresponded with Engels during the two years it took to write the book.
In criticizing Mr. Durhing Engels states:
"Unfortunately Marx put a short footnote to the passage in Capital cited
above: "The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or
value that the laborer gets for a given labor-time, but of the value of the
commodity in which that labor-time is materialized." Marx, who seems here to
have had a presentiment of the coming of his Dühring, therefore safeguards
himself against an application of his statements quoted above even to the
wages which are paid in existing society for compound labor. If Herr Dühring,
not content with doing this all the same, presents these statements as the
principles on which Marx would like to see the distribution of the
necessaries of life regulated in society organized socialistically, he is
guilty of a shameless imposture, the like of which is only to be found in the
gangster press.
"But let us look a little more closely at the doctrine of equivalence. All
labor-time, the porter's and the architect's, is perfectly equivalent. So
labor-time, and therefore labor itself has a value. But labor is the creator
of all values. It alone gives the products found in nature value in the
economic sense. Value itself is nothing else than the expression of the
socially necessary human labor materialized in an object. Labor can therefore
have no value. One might as well speak of the value of value, or try to
determine the weight, not of a heavy body, but of heaviness itself, as speak
of the value of time, and try to determine it. Herr Dühring dismisses people
like Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier by calling them social alchemists. By his
logic chopping over the value of labor-time, that is, of labor, he shows that
he ranks far beneath the genuine alchemists. Now let the reader fathom Herr
Dühring's brazenness in imputing to Marx the assertion that the labor-time of
one person is in itself more valuable than that of another, that labor-time,
and therefore time, has a value-to Marx, who first demonstrated that labor
can have no value, and why it cannot!
"The realization that labor has no value and can have none is of great
importance for socialism, which wants to emancipate human power-power from
its status of a commodity. With this realization all attempts -- inherited by
Herr Dühring from primitive workers' socialism -- to regulate the future
distribution of the necessaries of life as a kind of higher wages fall to the
ground. . . .
"If the equivalence of labor time means that each laborer produces equal
values in equal periods of time, without there being any need to take an
average, then this is obviously wrong. If we take two workers, even in the
same branch of industry, the value they produce in one hour of labor-time
will always vary with the intensity of their time and their skill-and not
even an economic commune, at any rate not on our planet, can remedy this
evil-which, however, is only an evil for people like Dühring. What, then,
remains of the complete equality of value of any and every labor? Nothing but
the purely braggart phrase, which has no other economic foundation than Herr
Dühring's incapacity to distinguish between the determination of value by
labor and determination of value by wages-nothing but the ukase, the basic
law of the new economic commune: equal wages for equal time-time! Indeed, the
old French communist workers and Weitling had much better reasons for the
equality of wages, which they advocated."
All current production is fundamentally social production in the world in
which we live, as opposed to the still existing forms of scattered production
one-hundred and fifty years ago. Value is the socially necessary amount of
human labor in the production of commodities. From this standpoint - as
opposed to the theoretical framework in which Marx uses the conception of
human labor in the abstract, (although there is no difference in the
historical end of value as a mediator of social relations) one can measure
the ratio between the amount of socially necessary labor (value) borne in the
production of commodities versus fifty years ago. Actually, one can measure
on an industry and section basis, the amount of abstract human labor, or
rather socially necessary labor congealed in the production of commodities
today versus the period of manufacture. One can measure the same under
conditions of scattered commodity producers versus their combination into
industrial enterprises versus the magnitude of living labor used in say - the
production of automobiles today versus the 1930s.
Human being engaging and using a definite state of development of the
productive forces and its instrumentation create value and on this basis
exchange rates (prices) arose historically, with exchange being conditioned
by the reflexes of the mind and the sum total of conditions is life,
including the seller of commodities who understands the purchaser who has not
a clue as to the value of a particular commodity. History always includes
the swindler and pick pocket whose hand remains faster than the eye.
Yet, there is a trajectory that speaks of the boundaries in which all forms
of commodity production operates. The intensifying antagonism - the
polarization and emerging separation, between buying and selling is driven by
the law system that governs what is actually "socially necessary" in
production and technological development rivets "socially necessary" as a
category in production. Marx and Engels approached this matter from many
different sides of the equation.
Value is not a theoretical fiction but rather a summation of human being
producing things as life activity and the conditions under which this life
activity takes place. The conclusion one derives from a look at this activity
varies, and generally speaking the variance can be said to have a broad class
configuration. Every variation or difference is a difference but some
differences are more important than others. The significance of Marx and
Engels conception of value as a mediator in the affairs of human beings -
from my standpoint, is the shifting living labor component in the production
of commodities or the amount of capital allocated (socially necessary) to
living labor in the world total social capital; the necessity for social
revolution.
>From the standpoint of the emergence of the capitalist mold of production and
the establishment of the industrial system of production, - up to today,
living human labor or rather what is socially necessary in the production of
commodities has changed. This change can be measured through the ratio of
what portion of the world total social capital is expended on living labor
versus machinery; the total magnitude of commodities produced (abstract human
labor "quantity" producing more commodities than a previously existing
magnitude) and consequently the magnitude of value borne in commodities.
The exploitation of labor - in all its complexity, consist in the compulsory
law of private property relations, that compels the individual as
representative of a social grouping, to sell their labor potential and engage
the laboring process creating a mass of products appropriated by another
class. And, it is most certainly true that compelling the laborer to produce
an amount of value in excess to that in which he receives is appropriated in
the form of the surplus product - surplus value. However, the significance of
Marx unfolding of the law of value - as stated in the Communist Manifesto and
almost all of their writings, is that society is increasingly reduced to two
classes - capital or owners of property and laborers who increasing own no
property other than their ability to labor, which is being increasingly
rendered superfluous to the production of surplus products - surplus value.
The qualitative improvement of technology and its trajectory renders value
creating living labor increasingly superfluous to the production of
commodities as a law of commodity production, when viewed from the entire
historical process of production. The law governing the buy and selling of
labor-power as the basis of capitalist property relations moves in antagonism
with the law of distribution; distribution appears and becomes an impediment
to continuously engaging production.
Distribution of the social products becomes a barrier to production and the
creations of fresh surplus value. The capacity of the productive forces
outstrip the markets capacity to absorb the totality of that which is
produced, while that, which is produced needs to be distributed to those who
need the products. The result is increasing want in the land of plenty. The
significance of value here, is that the only element of production that can
create value is increasingly faced with the barrier that prevents its from
absorbing - acquiring the created value.
In Marx Theory of Surplus Value Volume 11, be called this phenomenon the
crisis or epidemic of overproduction and explains that this crisis does not
originate in the exchange-value and use-value form, but rather expresses
itself through these forms as the barrier in the market - the limitations
created by running production only on the basis of realizing surplus-value as
expanding profits. "I cannot sell sufficient products to realize a profit so
you must go home and not work," rather than "go and do something else - or
nothing, although nothing is something in society, and receive the
necessities and wants your family need."
Hence, the barrier that exist as the market limitation under private property
relations does not originate in the form of commodities or the "tension"
between price and value, or rather price and use-value or exchange value and
value. The antagonism resides in property relations, which only allows
commodities to be distributed - circulated and realized as profits, as a
compulsory law of capitalist commodity production.
When human society was in transition to mass production technique - not
necessarily the assembly line but before the assembly line technique, the
mass produced commodities competed in the market with commodities produced by
scattered producers and fetched the same price. Although the amount of
socially necessary labor was undergoing change and 50 workers collectively
could produce a greater magnitude of the same commodities - say 20% greater,
than 50 separate individuals the cheaper produced commodity fetched the same
prices as the commodity produced with greater labor as viewed as a magnitude.
This is the meaning of prices arising historically as a form of
exchange-value and general equivalence between them. Yet as a totality in the
world of commodity production value is expressed (realized) through exchange
or price. Such is what is taking place today.
Commodities with less living labor - value, can fetch the same market price
as the commodities produced with a previously greater amount of living labor.
However scattered commodity production was replaced by production methods
combining masses of producers under one roof. Increasingly valueless
production will triumph in society as the trajectory of values ascendancy and
decline and decay - as a mediator of social affairs, plays itself out in
world history.
A law system based on the selling and purchase of labor-power - as a social
system, runs into an absolute barrier which is impossible to overcome, except
through change in the social system, in valueless production. Production
still has value, but the trajectory is undeniable. Classes as property
relations will decline, decay and move from the stage of world history, or
rather lose their relevance as economic categories. Distinctions will still
exist and so will contradictions but the antagonism expressed in the market
will be removed, allowing value to complete is journey.
Marx approach to value is considered by many to the cornerstone of his
viewpoint called the science of society and why it moves in antagonism.
It was Engels incredible power of observation - as the son of a manufacturer,
that articulated this process in 1844 and Marx genius - ability for abstract
totality of process movement, which described the working of the law of
commodity production and capitalist commodity production.
The conclusion both arrived at was, "to each according to their need, from
each according to ability," which to me this sounds like another way of
saying that value loses its force as a mediator of social affairs.
"The realization that labor has no value and can have none is of great
importance for socialism, which wants to emancipate human power-power from
its status of a commodity" and this can only take place on the basis of a
technology that renders the general law system of commodity production - not
simply capital commodity production, obsolete.
Melvin P
