We return, at this point, to Marx's opening remarks that, while he was going to set out the theoretical fallacy of Weston's argument, and the conclusions drawn from it, about workers not demanding higher wages, he was doing so whilst not disagreeing with Weston's motivation, and solution to workers' problems. Weston was wrong that commodity values are determined by wages, and that higher wages lead to higher prices. He was also wrong that there was no point in workers forming unions, and fighting for higher wages. However, he was right, in concluding that, in the end, workers could never succeed, by such means, in getting the better of capital, or resolving their problems. Weston supported the views of the Owenites, who sought a transformation of society, and creation of cooperatives, through which these issues could be properly addressed.
Marx too, agreed that workers could not win, inside the constraints of capitalism, and the wages system. He too argued that the solution could only come from a transformation of society, of which, as he set out, in Capital III, Chapter 27, the socialised capital of the cooperative and joint stock company represents the transitional form.
“... as with all other commodities, so with labour, its market price will, in the long run, adapt itself to its value; that, therefore, despite all the ups and downs, and do what he may, the working man will, on an average, only receive the value of his labour, which resolves into the value of his labouring power, which is determined by the value of the necessaries required for its maintenance and reproduction, which value of necessaries finally is regulated by the quantity of labour wanted to produce them.” (p 85)
However, as previously noted, the value of labour-power is not exactly like that of other commodities, though it might be compared with say the value of a 1950's TV, as against that of a 2020's TV. Both are TV's, but the use value of one against the other is considerably different. The value of labour-power comprises two separate components. On the one hand there is the physical minimum component of just that quantity of food etc., required for workers to live and work. The proponents of immiseration, such as with the Lassallean Iron Law of Wages, argue that this is the level that capital is always driving wages towards.
But, there is also another component of the value of labour-power, which Marx calls the historical, cultural or social component.
“Its ultimate limit is determined by the physical element, that is to say, to maintain and reproduce itself, to perpetuate its physical existence, the working class must receive the necessaries absolutely indispensable for living and multiplying. The value of those indispensable necessaries forms, therefore, the ultimate limit of the value of labour.” (p 85-6)
In fact, even in terms of this physical minimum, there is an historical and social component. How could workers, today, function, unless they could read and write, for example, if only to be able to catch a bus or train, or learn to drive a car, to get to work? As Marx sets out, in The Grundrisse, in relation to The Civilising Mission of Capital, it is this role of workers, also as consumers, and members of society, that determines even this physical minimum.
“...likewise the discovery, creation and satisfaction of new needs arising from society itself; the cultivation of all the qualities of the social human being, production of the same in a form as rich as possible in needs, because rich in qualities and relations -- production of this being as the most total and universal possible social product, for, in order to take gratification in a many-sided way, he must be capable of many pleasures [genussfähig], hence cultured to a high degree -- is likewise a condition of production founded on capital. This creation of new branches of production, i.e. of qualitatively new surplus time, is not merely the division of labour, but is rather the creation, separate from a given production, of labour with a new use value; the development of a constantly expanding and more comprehensive system of different kinds of labour, different kinds of production, to which a constantly expanding and constantly enriched system of needs corresponds.”
(The Grundrisse, Chapter 8)
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