“The superior produce of the one class, however, does not render the other barren or unproductive” ([Wealth of Nations O.U.P. edition, Vol. II, pp. 294-95], [Garnier], l.c., t, III, p. 530).” (TOSV 1, p 163)
But, the basis upon which he makes this argument itself falls into the Physiocratic error, because he also writes that the agricultural labour is superior, in other words it produces a surplus value, whereas the manufacturing labour is productive because it merely reproduces value. As Marx points out, in using this argument, Smith also effectively abandons his own definition of surplus value itself as surplus labour-time, and sinks back into the Physiocratic definition of surplus-value as a surplus of use values.
In other words, it is the agricultural labour which produces a surplus of use values, and this surplus enables a proportion of society to engage in manufacturing labour. Provided this manufacturing labour merely creates sufficient new value to equal the value of the commodities it consumes as wages, therefore, it is considered productive. For the Physiocrats, the value added to production was not determined by the value of the labour-time expended, but by the value of the labour-power itself, and this value was itself measured in terms of use value rather than labour-time.
If a farmer grew sufficient food to meet their necessary requirement, any food they produced above this was a surplus value. This surplus food could then sustain a number of manufacturing workers. The value of the labour-power of those workers was equal to this quantity of use values. It was only this value – their wages – which they added to any production. If they took a quantity of say flax from the farmer, and spun it and wove it into linen, which they then sold back to the farmer, for the Physiocrats, the value of the linen was equal to the quantity of flax used in the production, plus the quantity of food consumed by the manufacturing worker.
The latter, thereby, only reproduced in the linen the use values required for its production – a quantity of flax and a quantity of food for the worker. Smith, in his argument, basically accepts this conception – which is also one reason why he gets into a muddle over labour and labour-power, himself concluding that the value of the commodity is comprised of the value of material and the value of wages, which makes it then impossible to derive surplus value.
But, because Smith conceives that manufacturing labour is productive – in part because he recognises that the Wealth of Nations, particularly Britain, has arisen on the back of a massive expansion of this manufacturing production – he has then to include this false definition of productive as merely reproductive of value, rather than productive of surplus value.
“He therefore drops the definition by social form, the definition of what a “productive labourer” is from the standpoint of capitalist production; and asserts, in opposition to the Physiocrats, that the non-agricultural, industrial class reproduces its own wages, that is, it does after all produce a value equal to the value it consumes, and thereby “continues, at least, the existence of the stock of capital which employs it”. Hence arises, under the influence of and in contradiction to the Physiocrats, his second definition of what is “productive labour.” (TOSV 1, p 163)
No comments:
Post a Comment