Summarising the works of the three writers, Marx notes that the author of the first pamphlet draws the correct conclusions from Ricardo, and reduces surplus value to surplus labour.
“This is in contrast to Ricardo’s opponents and followers who continue to adhere to his confusion of surplus-value with profit.” (p 266)
In opposition to the followers of Ricardo, Ravenstone identifies rising social productivity as the basis of relative surplus value. Ricardo himself, though he never analyses the source of surplus value, arrives at the same conclusion, but Ravenstone, unlike Ricardo, recognises that the consequences of this expanding relative surplus value, is an expanding mass of capital that then confronts the workers as an alien power.
Hodgskin, on the back of Ricardo's theory, proclaims that as only labour creates value, capital is not productive. This is in contrast to Torrens, Malthus and others who turn the Ricardian theory on its head, and proclaim that capital is the creator of value.
“The pamphlet, moreover, disputes the statement—which recurs in all of them, from Smith to Malthus, especially in the latter where it is elevated into an absolute dogma (ditto in the case of James Mill)—that labour is absolutely dependent on the amount of capital available, as this is the condition of its existence.” (p 266)
25 comments:
«Hodgskin, on the back of Ricardo's theory, proclaims that as only labour creates value, capital is not productive. This is in contrast to Torrens, Malthus and others who turn the Ricardian theory on its head, and proclaim that capital is the creator of value.»
This may sound like heresy :-) but Marx etc. *define* value as a *synonym* of labour. That is indeed a mere proclamation, not an argument and even less of an explanation. See Sraffa :-)
The great debate among political economists of the past was about *explaining* value, that is explaining why use-value can increase even if physical quantity decreases.
Consider the case of corn: you plant 100 seeds and you reap 5,000 seeds, there physical quantity has increased, even if the use-value of each seeds is the same.
Consider the case of iron-ore and coal: the use-value of those is much smaller than that of a resulting shovel head, even if the resulting quantity is much smaller (most of the weight of the ore is discarded and the coal is burned).
In the corn case it is pretty obvious that the main factor is the fertility of "land", that multiplies quantity, but in the shovel head case what is main factor that adds most of the use-value even if the quantity shrinks substantially?
"Obviously" it is the labour (labourer's muscle power times time) put into turning the ore an coal into the shovel head. But that's both true and just a special case: the general answer is "energy", of which labourer-time is just a special case. Basically what increments use-value even if quantity shrinks is "food", that is "fuel" in general, or rather the energy liberated from that. Whether it is bread for the human labourer, hay for the oxen, petrol for the engine.
The main reason to give primacy to labourer-time is that labourers are people and we value, in an entirely different sense, people more than oxen or engines; yet consider ploughing a field by bread-powered human hand, by hay-powered oxen, by petrol-powered tractor, as in this example from "The Economist" of 2016-05-21:
«poor Andean farmers. They grow quinoa because little else thrives on their steep, barren plots. Their new competitors, tilling better soil with modern farming equipment, manage yields that are up to eight times higher. An ox takes six days to plough land a tractor can handle in two hours»
That enormous difference is not due to the human driving the ox or the tractor, nor to the ox or the tractor wrt to tilling by hand (which can also be done), it is due to the petrol containing much more energy than the hay. That is matters to political economy, rather than our conceit that it is our labour that really matters.
Up to the days of Marx it was human muscle power that performed the miracle of adding value in most cases, and the role of animal muscle power or even coal power was not as clearly understood.
Consider also the labour of worms or bees...
«The great debate among political economists of the past was about *explaining* value, that is explaining why use-value can increase even if physical quantity decreases.»
Just to be clearer, "explaining" is also quantitative: which aspect of production contributes how much of the increase in use-value.
When some “proclaim that capital is the creator of value” the argument is that “labour is absolutely dependent on the amount of capital available” and this is a scarcity argument: if capital commodities are scarcer than labour, they are in some sense more critical to production, but that in effect is an argument about price arising from rent.
Using that type of argument capital commodities and labour both depend on "food"/"fuel" to generate the thermal or motive force needed to transform larger inputs with lower use value into smaller outputs with higher use value, so it is the owners of "food"/"fuel", and neither the owners of other capital or wage commodities, or labourers, add as much "use-value".
but the argument should be really quantitative: what adds the most use-value during production? An extra lathe? An extra day of labour? An extra kilowatt/hour of energy?
I'll deal with some of your points individually, as I have time to get to them. Firstly, you say,
"The great debate among political economists of the past was about *explaining* value, that is explaining why use-value can increase even if physical quantity decreases.
Consider the case of corn: you plant 100 seeds and you reap 5,000 seeds, there physical quantity has increased, even if the use-value of each seeds is the same."
This is a misunderstanding of what Marx and the Classical Economists define as Use Value.
If the use value of each seed remains the same, let us call it x, then 100 x has less value than 5,000 x, so your first assumption is disproved by your own example. Moreover, as Marx sets out in his analysis of Torrens, this additional use value, whereby 100 seeds/use values becomes 5,000 use values is not some magical increase in use value from nowhere. Marx points out that the additional 4,900 use values is actually the result of other use values (nutrients from the soil, water from rainfall, energy from sunlight, nutrients from fertiliser) which are absorbed by the initial 100 seats, and thereby participate in their transformation into plants, and thereby the 5,000 seeds.
Maybe you misspoke and meant that Value rather than use value increase, when quantity declines, but the value that increases in that case, if we assume the same amount of labour, both congealed labour and immediate is consumed, is not the total value, but the unit value. In other words, if 100 hours of labour is expended, and produces 100 seeds, the value per seed is 1 hour, whereas if that same labour-time produces 1,000 seeds, the value per seed is 0.10 hours. But the total value of output in either case remains 100 hours.
In fact, this example again speaks against your argument and supports Marx and the Classical Economists argument that value is labour.
You say,
"Consider the case of iron-ore and coal: the use-value of those is much smaller than that of a resulting shovel head, even if the resulting quantity is much smaller (most of the weight of the ore is discarded and the coal is burned)."
Who says the use value of iron ore and coal is much smaller than that of a resulting shovel head. How are you measuring the relative amounts of use value. Again you seem to misunderstand the meaning of use value. The term use values can refer to the actual things - products either of Nature or of human labour, or both - in which case if we take say coal, we can say that 500 tons of coal represents more use vales than 100 tons of coal, i.e. 5 times as many. But the term use value, used as an adjective rather than a noun means essentially utility.
Its quite possible that a shovel head may represent more utility than a ton of coal and a ton of iron ore, both of which go into its production. But, the question of utility here is not objectively determinable, it is a subjective measurement provided either individually via consumers in the market place, or collectively by some form of economic planning. That is why theories of subjective value such as that put forward by Bailey, or by neoclassical economics, which attempt to derive value from use value/utility always fail, because it is impossible to quantify the relative utility of apples v oranges.
Cont'd
Cont'd
Value is the basis for supply, whilst use value is the basis for demand. There is absolutely no means of saying that the use value of a shovel head is greater than the use value of a quantity of coal or iron. For example, in a society, which has a plethora of shovel heads, they may have zero use value, i.e. no one wants any more of them, whilst coal may have great use value for heating homes, providing energy for trains and so on.
As Marx says,
“Here a great confusion: (1) This identity of supply, so that it is a demand measured by its own amount, is true only to the extent that it is exchange value = to a certain amount of objectified labour. To that extent it is the measure of its own demand -- as far as value is concerned. But, as such a value, it first has to be realised through the exchange for money, and as object of exchange for money it depends (2) on its use value, but as use value it depends on the mass of needs present for it, the demand for it. But as use value it is absolutely not measured by the labour time objectified in it, but rather a measuring rod is applied to it which lies outside its nature as exchange value.”
(Grundrisse p 411-12)
One of the great mistakes of Marxist economists after Marx has been precisely this failure that Marx points out to take into account the question of use value, and thereby of demand. The consequence, as Marx points out, is to effectively fall into the trap of accepting Say's Law, that supply creates its own demand, and that so long as the quantity of exchange value on one side of the equation equals the quantity of exchange value on the other side of the equation, the system must be in equilibrium. But, for the reasons Marx sets out, that clearly need not be the case, precisely because simply because use values of a given exchange value are produced, and potential consumers have an equal amount of exchange value to spend, resulting from the sale of their own commodities, it does not at all mean they will.
"“The same value can be embodied in very different quantities [of commodities]. But the use-value—consumption—depends not on value, but on the quantity. It is quite unintelligible why I should buy six knives because I can get them for the same price that I previously paid for one.” (TOSV, Chapter 20)
If A produces 100 knives with an exchange-value of £100, and B produces 1,000 metres of linen also with a value of £100, they may both exchange their output. If A as a result of rising productivity produces 200 knives with an exchange value of £100, whilst B increases their output of linen to 1200 metres, again with an exchange-value of £100, there are equal exchange values on both sides of potential demand and supply, but whilst its quite possible that A might be prepared to consume all of B's 1200 metres of linen, there is absolutely no reason why B will want to buy all of the 200 knives produced by A. They may prefer to buy the same 100 knives, and use the rest of their money to buy some other commodity which has greater use value for them, or else simply to hold on to the general commodity money, for that same reason.
Here is a further example of your misunderstanding of the nature of use-value. You say,
"In the corn case it is pretty obvious that the main factor is the fertility of "land", that multiplies quantity, but in the shovel head case what is main factor that adds most of the use-value even if the quantity shrinks substantially?
"Obviously" it is the labour (labourer's muscle power times time) put into turning the ore an coal into the shovel head. But that's both true and just a special case: the general answer is "energy", of which labourer-time is just a special case."
But, what has most use value, water or a diamond? Clearly, the answer is water, because without water humans die, whereas they can quite easily survive without diamonds. But far more labour is involved in producing diamonds than in producing water, which falls freely from the sky as rain. Indeed, water requires far less expenditure of energy too, than diamonds to produce, as it requires both labour and energy in the form not just of human energy, but also energy in the form of mechanical energy to power machines to dig mines and so on.
Indeed, its because diamonds require more labour for their production than does water that the value of diamonds is high and the value of water is low, as I have explained some time ago, in my post Water and Diamonds.
And, of course, your argument in relation to energy falls, because itself is largely the product of labour too, but I will come back to that in some later response.
«If the use value of each seed remains the same, let us call it x, then 100 x has less value than 5,000 x»
But it still has 50x the "use value". We use/consume "use values" not "values". What is the "value" of a product or commodity matters only as to whether we can *afford* the "use value", or whether extracting surplus value from workers is profitable.
«There is absolutely no means of saying that the use value of a shovel head is greater than the use value of a quantity of coal or iron.»
But the task of the political economist is to explain why in the example where in the vast majority of cases a shovel head has indeed a greater "use value" than a quantity of coal or iron, a reduction in physical quantity does result in greater "use value"; the case where the coal and the ore have a greater "use value" is simply not relevant.
Because *obviously* we would not be reducing a large amount of ore and coal to shovel heads unless the use value increased.
«Value is the basis for supply, whilst use value is the basis for demand.»
But this goes back to terminology, not to "explanation": if "value" is the cost of supply, it is sort of not very enlightening to say that subjectively the cost of everything is the (cumulative) effort we expend to obtain it, so that we only extract or make the commodities whose "value" in terms of (cumulative) human labour is less than the "use value" for which we want them.
Now consider some other related example: let's assume the normal case where the "use value" of ploughing is greater than the "use value" of its inputs, and we have three cases:
#1 A farmer with two peasants (powered by corn) pulling a plough do the job in 120 hours, for a total "value" of 360 hours.
#2 A farmer with an ox (powered by hay) pulling a plough do the job in 80 hours, for a total "value" of 80 hours.
#3 A farmer with a tractor (powered by gas) pulling a plough do the job in 4 hours, for a total "value" of 4 hours.
We can add in the cumulative "value" of raising the ox and farming the hay, and that of building the tractor and extracting the gas...
But in what way is the labour of the ox in case #2 different from the labour of the two peasants in case #1? Except in the essentially arbitrary way that we don't care about the exploitation of the ox but we care about the exploitation of the peasants?
«100 seeds/use values becomes 5,000 use values is not some magical increase in use value from nowhere. Marx points out that the additional 4,900 use values is actually the result of other use values (nutrients from the soil, water from rainfall, energy from sunlight, nutrients from fertiliser) which are absorbed by the initial 100 seats, and thereby participate in their transformation into plants, and thereby the 5,000 seeds.»
But that's the description of a physical/chemical/biological process and not a process in the political economy. The 100 seeds to 5,000 seeds is indeed, as far as political economy is concerned, a magical increase in "use value", as i just "happens", just as air and light just "happen".
For some early economists that magical increase in quantity and presumably in "use value" did not need to be explained, it was just obvious; what was not obvious, and the object of the classical political economists, was the explain the case where a reduction in quantity still resulted in an increase in "use value" (the case where it did not being irrelevant).
For the obvious reason that in nature that does not happen spontaneously, and that since it is of great practical interesting, figuring out what explains it may lead to increase it; and this plus ideology would lead to the confusion of product/use-value and commodity/exchange value.
When the "classicals" thought of "value" they were thinking of "value added", that is the increase of "use value" even if quantity decreased, while the neo-classicals thought of "exchange value gained", that is the increase in "exchange value" from buying low and selling high.
The marxian distinction betweeen "value" *defined* (not explained!) as the labour cost involved in production, and "use value" and "exchange value", seems to me directed to the *distributional* aspect of the political economy, rather than to "value added" problem.
That also was part of the thinking of the "classicals", who wanted to solve indeed two problems: how "use value" is created, and how "use value" is distributed.
The argument from Marx is that "use value" seems to me that it should be distributed according to "value" *defined* as human labour, because in a direct-production political economy that's how it works (human labourers don't regard animal labour or machine labour as "value"), but that workers have to surrender part of their labour to rent the commodities needed to create "use value".
The reason why I am following this line is that it explains the apparent inversion of marxian logic in some authors, where all "value" is done by the capitalists: they don't regard the human labour of mere workers any more than animal labour, so they define "value" accordingly.
Please re-read the initial quote:
«Hodgskin, on the back of Ricardo's theory, proclaims that as only labour creates value, capital is not productive. This is in contrast to Torrens, Malthus and others who turn the Ricardian theory on its head, and proclaim that capital is the creator of value.»
Is the word "value" here used in the sense of "cost of production", "labour contribution to production", or in the sense of "use-value added?" In my understanding it is used in the latter sense, because that's what the "classicals" were investigating.
Again, far too much here, and far too much confusion and misunderstanding to deal with in one go, given the amount of other work I have, so I will respond to bits as I get to them, when I have time.
First,
"But it still has 50x the "use value"."
I have absolutely no idea what this means. Again you seem to have confused "use value" with "use values." 5000 widgets, as use values represents 50 times as many use values as 100 widgets. If the use value of each widget remains the same then the 5000 will represent also 50 times as much use value as does 100, but, for the reasons Marx sets out in TOSV, i.e. essentially diminishing marginal utility, there is no reason to believe that the 5,000th widget will represent as much use value as the 100th. It may represent no use value at all.
Secondly,
"But the task of the political economist is to explain why in the example where in the vast majority of cases a shovel head has indeed a greater "use value" than a quantity of coal or iron, a reduction in physical quantity does result in greater "use value"; the case where the coal and the ore have a greater "use value" is simply not relevant."
On what basis do you claim that "in the vast majority of cases" a shovel head has indeed a greater use value"? There is absolutely no objective basis on which to make such a claim! Moreover, investigation of what constitutes more or less use value falls outside the scope of political economy, precisely because it is not economically measurable. Bourgeois economists have spent literally billions of dollars with all sorts of attempts to determine measures of cardinal utility, and resort to psychology to provide such a basis without any success.
"Because *obviously* we would not be reducing a large amount of ore and coal to shovel heads unless the use value increased."
Why not? The aim of capitalist producers in such processes is not to increase use value, but to produce additional value, and thereby surplus value. The two things are not related. Moreover, because the coal and iron are different use values to each other and to shovel heads they are not comparable when it comes to measuring use values, as opposed to use values.
To say that 1,000 kilos of coal represents less use values than 100 shovel heads is meaningless. Its like saying 1,000 oranges is less use values than 100 apples, but worse. At least an apple and an orange are similar discrete units, whereas a kilo of coal is an artificial unit of measurement. And to say in any of these cases that there is less of one type of use value than another has absolutely nothing to do with the quantity of use value that any of them represent, which is a purely subjective assessment.
"if "value" is the cost of supply, it is sort of not very enlightening to say that subjectively the cost of everything is the (cumulative) effort we expend to obtain it, so that we only extract or make the commodities whose "value" in terms of (cumulative) human labour is less than the "use value" for which we want them."
This is totally meaningless. It is impossible to say that the value of a ton of coal is less than the use value of a ton of coal, because value and use value are two completely things. Its like saying that the temperature of a pile of horse shit is less than the weight of the horse shit.
You again then in your ploughing examples confuse use value and value in the same way. But, let's look at the examples.
In your first instance, three labourers (including the farmer) take a total of 360 hours to produce corn, giving it a value of 360 hours. In the second, you fail to state what the value of the ox is, i.e. how much labour-time is required to reproduce the ox that the farmer uses to raise the productivity of their labour. The new value created by the farmer is now just 80 hours, as opposed to where the three labourers required to 360 hours to produce the same amount of corn. Let us say, it requires 40 hours labour for the reproduction of the ox, so that then the total value of the grain is 120 hours, as the ox transfers its own value, as constant capital to the value of the grain, and is reproduced out of it. Incidentally, as Marx points out, this has absolutely nothing to do with it being an ox or a machine as opposed to a human being, because, as Marx says, the same applies with a slave or a serf, who stands in exactly the same position as a pack animal. In other words, the slave owner must reproduce the value of the slave in the same way that they must reproduce the value of the ox. But neither slave nor ox create an new value.
In the last example the farmer produces the corn with the aid of a tractor in just 4 hours so the new value created is just 4 hours. Again the fact that different forms of energy/use value are used to fuel these different means of carrying out work is irrelevant. The answer to your question is quite simple, and given by Marx in The Grundrisse. When did you last see a tractor buy the things it produces? It doesn't any more than does the slave or the ox. The owner of the slave, ox or tractor has to buy the commodities required for their reproduction. But, an independent peasant producer has to buy the commodities required for their own reproduction, as does the wage labourer, and the value is determined by the labour required for their production, including any surplus labour that is performed in that process.
Just additionally on the question of the ploughing, the ox, the machine, the slave and the peasant. The example used by Marx of Robinson Crusoe is instructive.
Robinson, when he examines the value of say fish considers how much labour-time he must expend to produce a given amount of fish. If he produces a net, which he simply leaves in the water during the day to catch passing fish, he is not at all concerned to value fish, on the basis of the time the net spends in that activity. He is only concerned with the value of the net, determined by the amount of labour-time he must expend on its reproduction, that could otherwise have been spent fishing or in some other activity.
Similarly, if he turns Friday into his slave, and Friday likewise spends the day, chained to a rock catching fish, he is not concerned to value fish on the basis of the time that Friday is occupied in that activity, but only in the labour-time that he, Crusoe, must spend enslaving Friday, and ensuring his reproduction.
I hadn't actually finished dealing with your initial set of comments, before you posted your next set of comments. Let me return to the first set, then, and I will also, when I have time, continue to deal with your last set of comments.
You said,
"Basically what increments use-value even if quantity shrinks is "food", that is "fuel" in general, or rather the energy liberated from that. Whether it is bread for the human labourer, hay for the oxen, petrol for the engine."
That is not true. A skilled labourer who produces shovel heads basically requires no more food than an unskilled labourer who digs coal. In general, it would usually be considered that the former's labour-power, i.e. their concrete labour, creates a product containing more use value than the latter.
Moreover, as Marx points out, whilst the amount of value created depends upon the amount of abstract labour undertaken that is not the case in relation to use value. For example, a labourer who works with a spinning machine may process 100 kilos of cotton per day, and thereby produce 100 kilos of yarn, whereas a labourer who works with a spinning wheel might process 10 kilos of cotton into yarn, and a labourer spinning cotton by hand might process only 1 kilo per day into yarn. The value of output in each case is 1 day, whilst the quantity of use value is in the proportion of 100:10:1. Yet, the labourer working with a spinning machine might use less energy than the other two, and thereby require less food, i.e. less input of use values to reproduce their labour-power.
The same thing can be seen in other applications. A modern personal computer uses less energy than a 1970's mainframe computer, and yet the latter processes far more data. A horse drawing a train of carriages along a rough road makes slow progress whereas on a smooth road it proceeds more quickly. The latter uses less energy and yet produces a greater quantity of use value (freight per mile).
You say, in relation to Andean farmers,
"They grow quinoa because little else thrives on their steep, barren plots. Their new competitors, tilling better soil with modern farming equipment, manage yields that are up to eight times higher. An ox takes six days to plough land a tractor can handle in two hours"
Now tell us which of these produce quinoa at the lowest value? Is it the former, whose poor fertility soil, and whose lack of equipment means that they require more labour to produce a given quantity of quinoa, or is it the latter, whose labour productivity is much higher due to those factors, and who thereby require far less labour to produce a given quantity of quinoa.
It is clearly the latter, which is why the value of commodities has continually fallen as labour productivity has risen. What conclusion does a rational person draw from that observable fact about whether value is created by labour, or by land, machines, or animals?
You then say,
"it is due to the petrol containing much more energy than the hay."
Are you sure? So, in that case, if we just fed the peasant or the ox petrol rather than food or hay, their productivity would rise? Do you not think that the real basis of the increase in power and output is down to the technology of the ox compared to the human labourer, and the tractor compared to the ox?
What about a steam engine that uses 1 ton of coal and produces say 10Kw of energy, and another more efficient, more advanced steam engine using multiple condensers, a higher pressure boiler, possible due to better engineering, which uses the same 1 ton of coal but output 100Kw of energy? Nothing to do with more or more powerful fuel, and everything to do with the technology that utilises the fuel.
You then say,
"Up to the days of Marx it was human muscle power that performed the miracle of adding value in most cases, and the role of animal muscle power or even coal power was not as clearly understood."
That seems an extremely ignorant (meaning lack in basic knowledge of history) comment. use of animals as motive power goes back almost to the dawn of Man's history itself. Use of water wheels, and windmills itself went back centuries before Marx's time as a means of powering machines whether to raise and pump water, or to drive mill wheels to grind cereals, or to power machines in factories. Steam engines themselves had already become widespread in British industry by the time Marx was born, let alone by the time he was writing his economy analysis 30-40 years later!
And in your final statement, in your first original comment you say,
"Consider also the labour of worms or bees..."
As though this was something new. Well let's consider the "labour" of bees and worms, how much value do you think it creates? The answer is none. Even bourgeois orthodox economic theory accepts that bees and worms create no value. The work done by bees in pollinating the flowers of the horticulturist whilst providing the honey for the beekeeper is the class case of externalities and of free goods taught to Economics undergraduates.
The bees undoubtedly contribute to producing use values (pollinated plants and honey) but they create absolutely no new value in the process of having done so, any more than the rain by falling into the well, which is drunk by the villagers has created any new value, whilst providing them with a great deal of use value.
You say in your second original comment,
"The great debate among political economists of the past was about *explaining* value, that is explaining why use-value can increase even if physical quantity decreases."
Er, no it wasn't, because the political economists such as Smith, Ferguson, Ricardo and Mill all understood the difference between use value and value, which I'm afraid you don't seem to understand and repeatedly conflate.
The Physiocrats who also conflated value and use value, saw that a quantity of use values went in one end, which were used as means of production and to reproduce labour-power, and a greater quantity of the same use values (agricultural products) came out the other. But not even the Physiocrats confused this increased quantity of use values, with an increased quantity of use value in the way you seem to do.
But, the confusion of the Physiocrats was cleared away by Adam Smith, who identified that value is labour, and from that time on, essentially that conflation of use value with value did not form part of the concern of their study, which was about the source and expansion of value itself, not use value.
In fact that is clear in looking at the analysis of rent by Ricardo, but it can also be seen In Smith, Anderson and others, as well as, of course Marx. Ricardo, of course, examines the extent to which more fertile soils enables a given quantity of labour and capital to produce a greater quantity of corn (use value) than is possible on a less fertile soil. Marx and Engels in Capital III, and in TOSV produce long lists of tables, setting out what essentially amounts to a marginal productivity analysis of how output varies depending upon increments of capital on soils of different degrees of fertility.
Continued
Cont'd
But, nowhere, either in the case of Smith, Ricardo or Marx is the change in this change in the marginal physical product confused with changes in the value of the output. The whole point of both Ricardo's and Marx's analysis is that if a given quantity of capital/labour is applied to a piece of land, the value of output is determined by that applied capital. But, the quantity of output/use values will vary depending on whether the land is more or less fertile.
Suppose, the rate of surplus value is 100%, and a capital is applied as follows:
c 200 + v 100 + s 100, so the value of output is 400.
The output is 400 kilos of corn, so that the value per kilo is £1.
The same capital applied to a more fertile land produces 800 kilos. The additional quantity of use values is clearly a consequence of the more fertile soil, it enables the labour to be more productive, in the same way that a horse enables a labourer to plough more productively, or a windlmill enables a miller to produce flour more productively. But this additional productivity, i.e. the ability for a given amount of labour to produce a greater quantity of use values makes absolutely no difference to the amount of value produced.
The corn produced on the more fertile land does not have a value of £800, because the value per kilo is halved. It has a value of £400. The farmer on this land is able to sell it at £800, i.e. £400 above its value, only because it is sold at its market value, not its individual value, which requires that demand be sufficient to require the less fertile land to contribute to supply. The surplus profit is taken as rent by the landlord. But, if demand for corn were to fall, so that the output of the less fertile land was not required, the market value of corn would fall to £0.50 per kilo, the value of corn produced on the more fertile soil.
In other words, there is a difference between the additional use value resulting from more fertile soil and more value resulting from it. Additional use value only results in additional value, if the market value/price of the output is given, and fixed. But, that is an invalid assumption, precisely because any rise in output resulting from the use of more fertile lands, a more efficient machine etc., necessarily reduces the value, and market value of the commodity. For example, if in the example above production was initially undertaken on the less fertile soil, and the more fertile soil is cultivated later - perhaps because access to it is opened by a new transport link - even with no change in demand, the output from the original land becomes redundant, and the market value/price of corn would fall to £0.50, the value of output from the more fertile land.
In your second original comment you say,
"Using that type of argument capital commodities and labour both depend on "food"/"fuel" to generate the thermal or motive force needed to transform larger inputs with lower use value into smaller outputs with higher use value, so it is the owners of "food"/"fuel", and neither the owners of other capital or wage commodities, or labourers, add as much "use-value"."
I'm afraid this is largely unintelligible. To the extent I can understand what you are trying to say, in it, I have already demonstrated that it is fundamentally wrong, and obviously so, even with a cursory examination of reality. It seems to have a sort of Malthusian apologism for the landlord class ring to it, in the claim that it is "the owners of "food"/"fuel"" that add use value. Except, of course, that the landlords do not own "food or fuel", because both food and fuel is a product of capitalist production, and it is capital that owns those commodities.
Your narrative about a larger quantity of inputs being transformed into a smaller quantity of of outputs with greater use value, is as I have already demonstrated totally meaningless, because it is comparing apples with oranges, and attempts to make use value something which is objectively measurable, whereas it is subjectively determined.
But, more importantly, as I have set out in several replies an increase in use value, whether it comes in the form of a large quantity of use values of one type that are metamorphosed into a smaller quantity of use values of some other type, or of a small quantity of use values metamorphosed into a larger quantity of the same type (e.g. seeds into grain, breeding livestock into a greater herd of livestock etc.) is totally irrelevant in terms of any change in or creation of value, in respect of that output.
Indeed, it is precisely because a given amount of labour can produce varying quantities of any particular type of commodity, depending upon varying conditions of productivity, whilst the value of output is unchanged (resulting in the fall in the unit value of output) that the clearest practical evidence that value is labour, and new value is created by labour can be found.
Finally, in your second original comment you say,
"but the argument should be really quantitative: what adds the most use-value during production? An extra lathe? An extra day of labour? An extra kilowatt/hour of energy?"
This follows from your previous statement, and my response likewise continues my response to it. If the issue is value, which is what your initial argument was about, and your contention that value is created by machines, land, slaves, animals etc., then the question most certainly is not about what adds most use value. Firstly, its impossible to know what adds most use value, because use-value/utility is purely subjective. Putting chocolate, caramel etc. together to form a Mars Bar for you might result in a great increase in use value, but for someone who does not like chocolate, none at all.
But, secondly, as I have set out the increase in the quantity of use values of a particular type, as opposed to an increase in use value, which is unmeasurable, has nothing to do with an increase in value. 200 kilos of corn grown on fertile land A, has the same value as 100 kilos of corn grown on less fertile land B, if both are produced by an equal amount of labour. 200 kilos of flour produced by a miller using a windmill has the same value as 100 kilos of flour produced by a miller who has to grind by hand, if both require the same amount of labour to produce. The difference is in the value per kilo, with the former having half the value of the latter.
If we examine any sphere of production, the quantity of capital in the form of machines used in production has increased significantly, whilst the quantity of labour has declined significantly, and the quantity of output (i.e. quantity of use values of that particular type) has risen astronomically. If machines/capital created new value, then this increased quantity of machines in production, alongside the increase in output would have resulted in a corresponding rise in the value of output, and of the unit value of output, but the opposite has occurred.
The total value of output has risen (in inflation adjusted terms) only because the total quantity of output has risen so massively, which means that a greater quantity and value of material is processed. But, the value of total output has risen by only a fraction of the rise in the total mass of output resulting in a continual fall in the unit value of output, corresponding with the continual reduction in the amount of labour-time required for production. Again that is evidence of the validity of the Labour Theory of Value, and a refutation of the idea that value can be created by land, or capital.
That concludes my refutation of your original comments. I will complete the refutation of your later comments as and when I have time.
Returning to your second set of comments, you say,
"But that's the description of a physical/chemical/biological process and not a process in the political economy. The 100 seeds to 5,000 seeds is indeed, as far as political economy is concerned, a magical increase in "use value", as i just "happens", just as air and light just "happen"."
Again, to be honest, I really have no idea what this is supposed to mean. AS Marx explains in his response to Torrens, the increase in use values is not a magical process, but a matter of a determinable mechano-chemical process of metamorphosis of use values in one form to use values of another.
You then say,
"For some early economists that magical increase in quantity and presumably in "use value" did not need to be explained, it was just obvious; what was not obvious, and the object of the classical political economists, was the explain the case where a reduction in quantity still resulted in an increase in "use value" (the case where it did not being irrelevant)."
Which early economists do you have in mind? I know of none that would fit the bill. What I find perplexing is your comment here in relation to the Classical Economists, which follows on from similar comments you have made. Your assertion about the Classical Economists concern with use value is made with conviction and certainty of the kind that one would expect to find coming from someone who is an expert in the view and ideas of Classical Political Economy. Yet, the truth is that anyone with even a passing knowledge of the ideas of Classical Political Economy, or even someone who has read Marx's Critique of that Classical Political Economy, knows that they were not at all concerned with an analysis of use value, which stands outside the realm of study of Political Economy, and were instead, as is Marx, concerned with the study of Value. So, to be honest, I am puzzled as to how someone can make statements with such conviction about the views of Classical Political Economy, as part of advancing their argument, when in fact those very statements illustrate an almost complete lack of understanding of Classical Political Economy.
You say,
"For the obvious reason that in nature that does not happen spontaneously, and that since it is of great practical interesting, figuring out what explains it may lead to increase it; and this plus ideology would lead to the confusion of product/use-value and commodity/exchange value."
Again, more or less unintelligible. What confusion between product/use value and commodity/exchange value are you referring to. Both products and commodities are use values, both also have value, and unless that is the case a commodity cannot be a commodity, because as Marx says, the fundamental requirement is to be a use value, and nor could it have an exchange-value, because exchange-value is merely the proportional relation of the values of two commodities, i.e. the value of one measured in terms of a quantity of the other.
How changes in the use value of products or commodities arises is irrelevant to any of that.
You say,
"When the "classicals" thought of "value" they were thinking of "value added", that is the increase of "use value" even if quantity decreased, while the neo-classicals thought of "exchange value gained", that is the increase in "exchange value" from buying low and selling high."
This is just another example of where you make a bold assertive statement, from which one would presume some in depth knowledge, but which simply illustrates that you have no idea about the ideas you are discussing. Exactly which Classical economist are you referring to when you claim that when they talk about value added they were meaning an increase in use value. The truth is that none of them made an such argument.
Moreover, your claim in relation to the Neoclassical economists is equally wrong, and shows no understanding of neoclassical theory either. The neoclassical theory develops out of vulgar economy. In fact, it is Neoclassical Economy that is concerned with use value, not Classical Economy as you claimed. Neoclassical economy posits the idea that separate factors of production Land, Labour, Capital and Entrepreneurship each contribute to use value by adding to the marginal physical product, and that given the price of the product this enables a marginal revenue product to be determined, such that if the price of each factor is equal to the MRP for that factor, there is equilibrium, and an optimal combination of factors.
Presaging the debate between Cambdige, Massachusetts and Cambridge England over this matter, Marx notes in TOSV that this latter model in which factor prices are determined by commodity prices, and commodity prices are simultaneously determined by factor prices - which is what is involved in General Equilibrium Theory - is internally consistent, but that the assumptions that are required for such a model are themselves completely removed from the real world.
"The marxian distinction betweeen "value" *defined* (not explained!) as the labour cost involved in production, and "use value" and "exchange value", seems to me directed to the *distributional* aspect of the political economy, rather than to "value added" problem."
Sorry, but again largely unintelligible. What do you mean by "labour cost"? Do you mean quantity of labour-time, or do you mean wages, as on occasion Smith slipped into? The distinction between Value and Use Value is clear, one deals with the labour required for production, the other with whether anyone feels that the product of that labour has utility for them or not. Lumping together exchange-value with use value here again shows a lack of understanding of basics, because exchange-value is a function of, and derivative of value not use value.
In what way do you think it refers to the distributional aspects? Given that you are totally mistaken in your view about the concerns of the study of Classical Economics being about added use value, rather than the nature of value, I'm not surprised that you are totally confused about this further issue.
You say,
"That also was part of the thinking of the "classicals", who wanted to solve indeed two problems: how "use value" is created, and how "use value" is distributed."
No it wasn't. Study of use value forms no part of the study of Classical Political economy or of Marx's analysis.
"The argument from Marx is that "use value" seems to me that it should be distributed according to "value" *defined* as human labour, because in a direct-production political economy that's how it works (human labourers don't regard animal labour or machine labour as "value"), but that workers have to surrender part of their labour to rent the commodities needed to create "use value"."
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. In a direct production economy, in fact, the independent labourers do not rent means of production in order to produce use values. They own the means of production themselves. The rent they pay to landlords is simply a transfer of surplus value, based upon the social and hierarchical status relations that exist within a feudal or peasant economy. Under capitalism, workers do not "rent" means of production from capitalists, but hand over unpaid labour as the price of being able to work, so as to live.
As Marx demonstrates in Capital I, if it was a case that workers rented the means of production, or borrowed them paying interest on the loan, they would own the final product of their labour, and be able to sell it, and pay the rental or interest out of it, which would be far less than the unpaid labour they are forced to hand over to capital. But, it is quite clear that the workers do not rent or borrow the means of production, which remain firmly in the hands of capital. Nor do they own the products of their labour, which again remain firmly in the hands of capital.
"The reason why I am following this line is that it explains the apparent inversion of marxian logic in some authors, where all "value" is done by the capitalists: they don't regard the human labour of mere workers any more than animal labour, so they define "value" accordingly."
Which authors? How does it explain it? It seems to me that it is you that is making the argument for capital to be value creating!
Finally, you say, in relation to the following quote,
"Hodgskin, on the back of Ricardo's theory, proclaims that as only labour creates value, capital is not productive. This is in contrast to Torrens, Malthus and others who turn the Ricardian theory on its head, and proclaim that capital is the creator of value."
"Is the word "value" here used in the sense of "cost of production", "labour contribution to production", or in the sense of "use-value added?" In my understanding it is used in the latter sense, because that's what the "classicals" were investigating."
It is used neither as cost of production, nor labour contribution to production nor use value added. It means Value, i.e. the quantity of labour-time required for production. And that is because that is what Classical Political Economy was investigating, and not use value, as you repeatedly, but incorrectly have claimed.
That concludes my refutation of your second set of comments. I'm afraid I have no further time for discussion, and feel that the time required would not be beneficial. I would suggest that you spend some time reading what the Classical Economists like Smith (Wealth of Nations), Ricardo (Principles of Political Economy and Taxation), and James Mill (Elements of Political Economy) actually did say, as well then as Marx's critique of that Political Economy.
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