Marx describes in his value form analysis how exchange develops through various stages. Firstly, there is exchange based upon the relative form of value. Different communities exchange a range of commodities with each other, and the exchange relation between each pair of commodities is determined separately. But, some commodities tend to be traded more frequently, and the labour-time required for their production tends to be more generally and accurately known. As a result, the value of other commodities comes to be calculated as a quantity of these regularly traded commodities, even if they are not part of the actual exchange. For example, if the value of cattle is well known, the price of wine may be given in cattle, as might the price of linen. Traders exchanging wine and linen can then do so using this common metric of cattle. This is exchange on the basis of the equivalent form of value.
Eventually, one single commodity comes to fulfil this function. It becomes the money commodity, and represents the universal equivalent form of value. Now, the labour required for the production of this commodity becomes the proxy for abstract labour. All other labour is now measured against it.
The qualitative nature of the labour-power employed to produce each type of use-value is clearly important, in relation to the production of that use-value. An employer will not employ a weaver to produce iron, for example. However, when it comes to the creation of value, this qualitative nature of the labour-power is irrelevant. All that is relevant then is its quantity. A producer of linen must employ weaving labour to produce the linen they sell, because, to be a commodity and possess value, the linen must first be a use-value that buyers wish to buy, but what gives the linen its value is the quantity of abstract labour required for its production. It may be that, if the specific weaving labour employed is of very high quality, producing very high quality cloth, then this labour will itself be considered as producing more value than an hour of other weaving labour, but this amounts to the same thing that the higher value of the cloth is in consequence of it containing a larger quantity of abstract labour.
“This reduction appears to be an abstraction, but it is an abstraction which is made every day in the social process of production.” (p 30)
Complex labour is then simply a multiple of this simple abstract labour.
“The laws governing this reduction do not concern us here. It is, however, clear that the reduction is made, for, as exchange-value, the product of highly skilled labour is equivalent, in definite proportions, to the product of simple average labour; thus being equated to a certain amount of this simple labour.” (p 31)
In a primitive commune, a group of its members take part collectively in production of, say, cloth, pottery or food. Each of these producers has different skills/strengths etc., so that were they to engage in labour as individuals, they would produce different quantities of products, in any given time, or, put another way, their products would have different individual values. However, they do not engage in production as individuals but as a collective, forming one single collective worker that determines the individual value of their product.
Similarly, as seen earlier, with independent commodity producers, the market value of the commodity is determined by the average for all producers of that commodity. This average is arrived at by competition on the basis of the process described earlier of continual adjustments of supply and demand.
“First, the different individual values must be equalized at one social value, the above-named market value, and this implies competition among producers of the same kind of commodities and, likewise, the existence of a common market in which they offer their articles for sale...
Second, to say that a commodity has a use-value is merely to say that it satisfies some social want. So long as we dealt with individual commodities only, we could assume that there was a need for a particular commodity — its quantity already implied by its price without inquiring further into the quantity required to satisfy this want. This quantity is, however, of essential importance, as soon as the product of an entire branch of production is placed on one side, and the social need for it on the other. It then becomes necessary to consider the extent, i.e., the amount of this social want.”
(Capital III, Chapter 10)
No comments:
Post a Comment