The Law Of
Value states that Value
is determined by the labour-time required for production, and this
Law applies as a Law of Nature for all societies. The amount each
society Values any particular
Use Value,
is determined by the proportion of Social labour-time devoted to its
production as opposed to all other uses of that labour-time. This
Law, Marx states, as a Law of Nature is not changed by the particular
methods by which different societies go about the process of
producing in order to meet its needs. Only its form of manifestation
is altered.
This is made
clear in Marx's letter to Kugelmann, where he writes,
“As
for the Zentralblatt, the man is making the greatest possible
concession in admitting, that, if one means anything at all by value,
the conclusions I draw must be accepted. The unfortunate fellow does
not see that, even if there were no chapter on "value" in
my book, the analysis of the real relationships which I give, would
contain the proof and demonstration of the real value relation. The
nonsense about the necessity of proving the concept of value arises
from complete ignorance both of the subject dealt with and of the
method of science. Every
child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but
let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child
knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the
differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively
determined amounts of society’s aggregate labour. It
is self-evident
that this necessity
of the
distribution
of social labour
in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific
form of
social production; it can only change its
form of manifestation.
Natural laws
cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under
historically differing conditions, is the form
in which those
laws assert themselves. And the form in which this
proportional distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of
society in which the interconnection of social labour expresses
itself as the private exchange of
the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange
value of these products.”
In Capital, Marx elaborates on this.
He sets out the way in which Robinson Crusoe maximises his utility by measuring the labour-time required for producing different items,
“Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme
with political economists,let us take a look
at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he
has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various
sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and
hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they
are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much
recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his
labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of one and the same
Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but different
modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his
time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind
occupies a greater space in his general activity than another,
depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to
be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend
Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch,
ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born
Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the
objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary
for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite
quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the
relations between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of
his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible
without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations
contain all that is essential to the determination of value.”
He goes on to describe how the Law of Value manifests itself in the
peasant society of medieval Europe.
“But
for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of
society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume
a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape,
in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in
kind. Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in
a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract
form is the immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is
just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but
every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is
a definite quantity of his own personal labour power.”
And then of
a community of free individuals,
“We have one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a
peasant family, that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing
for home use. These different articles are, as regards the family, so
many products of its labour, but as between themselves, they are not
commodities. The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle
tending, spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the
various products, are in themselves, and such as they are, direct
social functions, because functions of the family, which, just as
much as a society based on the production of commodities, possesses a
spontaneously developed system of division of labour. The
distribution of the work within the family, and the regulation of the
labour time of the several members, depend as well upon differences
of age and sex as upon natural conditions varying with the seasons.
The labour power of each individual, by its very nature, operates in
this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labour power of
the family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of
individual labour power by its duration, appears here by its very
nature as a social character of their labour.”
In a society where production has become one based on commodity
production, the form in which the Law of Value manifests itself is
through Exchange Value. Such societies are still constrained by the
fact that what can be produced is determined by the amount of
available social labour-time, and the Value the society places on
these Use Values can still be gauged by the proportion of social
labour-time devoted to their production. But, the means of
allocating this labour-time is no longer based on overt relations
between human beings, but is mediated by Exchange Value. The
dominant Use Value of commodities becomes not that they fulfil useful
functions, but that they possess, Exchange Value. Production is
organised not to maximise wealth, through the maximisation of the
production of Use Values, but so as to maximise Exchange Values.
But, in a socialist society, the Law of Value continues to operate too, for the reasons set out above.
Products produced by a Socialist economy will not be commodities, but will have Value. As Marx puts it, in fact, Value will be even more significant then.
“Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.”
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