Use value is a property of things, whether for one person the specific properties constitute utility or not. If society, in aggregate, does not find the properties of particular products useful, then it does not expend labour in their production. But, for those products it does find useful, the more of them it can have, the richer the society is, and it can have all the more of these products the more efficiently it can produce them, i.e. the more it can produce with a given amount of labour. Consequently, the value of these products is not a property of the product, but is a social magnitude, which rises or falls as a result of changes in social productivity. Not only does a given use value represent X amount of value today, and X + 1 amount of value the day after, or X – 1 amount of value the day after that, but the same quantity of value may be represented by a larger or smaller quantity of use values.
“Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not manifest themselves as “values” of “things”. Exchange of products as commodities is a method of exchanging labour, [it demonstrates] the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others [and corresponds to] a certain mode of social labour or social production.” (p 129)
Commodity fetishism arises precisely because, in a system based upon commodity exchange, value appears to be a property of "things" rather than something created by labour. In a society that does not produce and exchange commodities, whether it is a primitive mode of production based upon communal labour, or a postcapitalist, communist society, commodity fetishism does not arise, because the manifestation of value in its indirect form, its relative form of exchange-value, or price does not exist. Instead value is expressed in its direct, immediate form, as the expenditure of labour. So, Robinson formed his own society, his individual labour was immediately social labour. He could not fall victim to commodity fetishism, precisely because he could see that the value of the things he produced was not intrinsic to the products he created, but directly the product of his own labour. The value of fish, for him is directly determined by the labour he expends catching fish, and the value of rabbits the time he expends catching rabbits, so that he can compare directly these two values, and, thereby, dependent upon his preference for fish or rabbits, as use values, allocate his available labour-time accordingly.
As Engels puts it in Anti-Duhring,
“As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.”
And, the situation presented by Robinson is not changed where labour is "communal", as Marx states above, i.e. where a village commune produces cooperatively to meet its own needs, rather than producing commodities for exchange. The only difference here is that the individual labour of each member of the commune becomes subsumed in its aggregate labour. It is now this aggregate labour, not the labour of individuals that determines the value of the products it produces, that enables it to again compare these values one to another, and thereby to compare those values with the use value it obtains from different types of product, and so to allocate its available labour-time accordingly. It is what leads it to introduce a division of labour so that those individuals with the greatest aptitude for different types of concrete labour can be so allocated to tasks, thereby maximising the amount of use values the commune can produce, with the least amount of value expended.
And, this situation, as Engels states above, applies under communism. The category of exchange-value disappears, because it is no longer necessary to measure value indirectly, on the basis of exchange values, or prices, because society can measure value directly, in terms of labour-time, though to do so in a modern complex economy is not as easy as Engels suggests, even with the assistance of today's supercomputers, when the billions of inputs involved in the production of end products is taken into consideration. As Marx puts it,
“… 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.”
“… 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.”
(Capital III, Chapter 48)
Value, therefore, is not a property of the product. It is not something “embodied” within it, as an intrinsic property, like weight, length, sweetness, hardness etc. Value is always relative, and changing, as a consequence of changes in social productivity. And, because value is the fundamental basis of exchange-value, so too exchange-value is always relative in this dual sense. It is relative because value itself is relative (changing as productivity changes), but it is relative because, by definition, it is the value of one commodity expressed in the form of a quantity of some other use value. Not only may 1 coat exchange for 1 gram of gold, but also 10 metres of linen, but also because, not only the value of the coat may change, the value of gold or linen may also change, so that these relative proportions are thereby altered.
In exchanging commodities, including services, what is actually being exchanged is equal amounts of social labour-time. And it's because of that that A is able to beneficially exchange 10 metres of linen, which, for them, has no use value, for a coat, in the possession of B, which has no use value, for B, whilst neither A nor B are thereby cheated. Both improve their welfare by obtaining an item, which, for them, has use value, whereas the commodity they gave up did not, but neither are cheated, because both exchange these commodities at their value. It is as though A were commissioned by B to spend 10 hours of labour producing 10 metres of linen for them, whilst, in return, B is commissioned by A to spend 10 hours of labour producing a coat for them. And, research from across the globe, shows that this is precisely the kind of social relationship that did underlie the basis upon which such exchanges were conducted. If B could only produce 10 metres of linen in 12 hours, and A could only produce a coat in 12 hours, then both gain an absolute comparative advantage via this exchange. Both increase their welfare, because both obtain the use values they desire, whilst saving themselves 2 hours of labour each, which can be used for the production of some other use value.
“The fact that the exchange-value of the commodity assumes an independent existence in money is itself the result of the process of exchange, the development of the contradiction of use-value and exchange-value embodied in the commodity, and of another no less important contradiction embodied in it, namely, that the definite, particular labour of the private individual must manifest itself as its opposite, as equal, necessary, general labour and, in this form, social labour.” (p 130)
No comments:
Post a Comment