The subjectivists raise the objection that not all labour is the same, but that is ridiculous, because its like saying you can't measure length by feet, because all feet are a different length. Yet, originally, distances were measured by individual human feet – and sometimes still are – as well as by individual human strides (yards), arm length (cubit), fingers (hand for horse measurement) and amount of land that could be ploughed in a day (furlong). All of these measures were reduced to a standard by taking an average, and, thereby, abstracting from the original individual measure.
When early human communities first began exchanging products on a regular basis, and so these products began to be produced as commodities, the problem similarly arose of how to compare them, and so determine this rate of exchange. Initially, because what is exchanged are accidental surpluses that basis is also random, and determined by supply and demand, and utility. The labour used in production can only be viewed as that specific concrete labour, used in the creation of products. But, the very process of regular exchange of these commodities, and of the deliberate production of them for exchange, changes that condition.
The value of products remains individual value, precisely because those products are never brought into a social relation with other products, and so the labour used in their production remains individual labour, rather than social labour. That is true even when it is the collective labour of a community. A commodity remains merely a product, for as long as it is not brought to market, to have its value compared to that of others of its class.
But, as soon as these products are brought into a social relation with other products, via exchange, i.e. become commodities, the labour used in their production is also brought into a social relation with that used in the production of these other commodities. As Marx describes, in The Poverty of Philosophy, it is competition between different producers of these commodities that reduces the individual concrete labours used in their production to an abstract average, universal labour, as the measure of value.
It is no more the case that the individual value of the product disappears than that the different sizes of human feet disappear, when, as a unit of measure, an abstract foot is used. The market value of a commodity is nothing other than an average of all the separate individual values of those commodities, produced by different producers. It is competition between them, to be able to sell all of their output, that results in that average, market value, and so also reduces all of the specific concrete labour that each employs to the one single, abstract, universal labour, as the measure of value, and so basis for comparing different commodities, and determining the exchange-value of one to another.
“As a self-sustaining producer he has nothing to do with society. But to produce a commodity, a man must not only produce an article satisfying some social want, but his labour itself must form part and parcel of the total sum of labour expended by society.” (p 43)
If we take society, then, as Marx sets out in his Letter To Kugelmann, describing The Law of Value, it has only a given amount of social labour-time at its disposal, to produce all of the use values it requires. If we think of Robinson Crusoe, as a proxy for this total social labour, he has only a given amount of time he can labour, whether he is fishing or hunting, or constructing shelter, or making clothes. He may be better at some of these tasks than others, just as, in society, some will be better at certain tasks than others. But, taken as a whole, it forms one average labour that is divided into these different uses.
Each labour “must be subordinate to the division of labour within society. It is nothing without the other divisions of labour, and on its part is required to integrate them.” (p 43)
No comments:
Post a Comment