2. The General Relations of Production, of Distribution, Exchange and Consumption a) Production and Consumption - Part 1 of 3

a) Production and Consumption

Production is simultaneously consumption, just as consumption is simultaneously production. Marx details this at more length in The Grundrisse. Even if we take Nature, it produces, say, a tree. However, to produce a tree, Nature consumes nutrients from the soil, water and sunlight. In any kind of production, material and energy is consumed, as is labour-power. Similarly, the labourer must live, and consumes to live, but the consumption of the labourer is, at the same time, an act of production of the labourer, and, thereby, of labour-power. Indeed, in consuming labour-power, in the act of production, the labourer themselves also produces labour-power, because the repeated act of production increases the skill and productive capacity of the labourer.

“The act of production itself is thus in all its phases also an act of consumption. The economists concede this. They call productive consumption both production that is simultaneously identical with consumption, and consumption which is directly concurrent with production. The identity of production and consumption amounts to Spinoza's proposition: Determinatio est negatio.” (p 195)

This definition of identity separates this productive consumption from personal consumption, which is seen as the ultimate aim of production, and, thereby, the destructive antithesis of production. Production creates new use values, and consumption destroys them.

“In the first type of production the producer assumes an objective aspect, in the second type the objects created by him assume a personal aspect. Hence this consuming production – although it represents a direct unity of production and consumption – is essentially different from production proper. The direct unity, in which production is concurrent with consumption and consumption with production, does not affect their simultaneous duality.” (p 196)

Production and consumption are opposites, and yet form poles of a single whole. This is a point that Marx deals with, at length, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, in his theory of crises. They form opposite poles of a single whole, because there can be no consumption without production, and there is no point of production without consumption. Indeed, the things that are produced only become real as a result of that consumption.

“For example, a dress becomes really a dress only by being worn, a house which is uninhabited is indeed not really a house; in other words a product as distinct from a simple natural object manifests itself as a product, becomes a product, only in consumption. It is only consumption which, by destroying the product, gives it the finishing touch, for the product is a product, not because it is materialised activity, but only in so far as it is an object for the active subject.” (p 196)

For all forms of direct production, this is apparent, because use value and value are inextricably united in the product. Value is labour, and labour is only expended (value created) to create products to be consumed, i.e. new use value. Even where direct producers specialise in production, and exchange some of their surplus products, for others, this remains true, because they only expend their labour in one form, for the purpose of obtaining the products of labour in some other form.

This is where, Mill, Ricardo and Say went wrong in adopting Mill's Law of Markets (Say's Law) that supply creates its own demand. Whilst this is true in relation to the conditions of direct production, and barter, it is not true as soon as money arises, and inserts itself into the circulation of commodities. Now, there can be production and sale for money, but money is not consumed. It exists as currency, to be continually circulated, and, as money, to be hoarded. So, consumption no longer necessarily follows from production, and a general overproduction of commodities can result, i.e. the two opposing poles of the whole – production and consumption – fall apart.

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