But, Roberts' position, like that of Proudhon and Duhring is worse than that of the Classical Economists, because he argues in the sentence above – which also misstates the position of the Classical Economists – that it is not labour that creates value, but labour-power! So, in which case, thirdly, therefore, Roberts should tell us, which labour-power this is that creates value. Is it the value of the carpenter's labour-power, of the weaver's labour-power, of the computer programmer's labour-power? All of these different labour-powers have different values, because they each require different amounts of labour-time for their reproduction.
For example, they may require different amounts of food, depending upon the amount of physical or mental exertion undertaken by the labourer, they will require different amounts of labour-time of teachers and instructors required to educate and train the labourers in these very different skills. As Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20, this was also a problem for the Ricardian School, in trying to determine some unchanging commodity value, which could act as the equivalent measure of value/money, a fool's errand as Marx describes it, which enabled the subjectivist theorists, such as Samuel Bailey to attack the Labour Theory of Value itself.
Or, perhaps, like Proudhon and Duhring, Roberts thinks that each different type of labour-power is the determinant of the value of the specific commodity it produces. In essence, that is also a cost of production theory of value, which, in the past, I have argued is what the TSSI lapses into. So, the labour-power of the weaver determines the value of the woven cloth, of the carpenter for the value of furniture, and of the computer programmer, the value of computer software and so on.
It leaves Roberts in the same contradiction faced by the Classical Economists, but in the same form as that faced by Proudhon and Duhring. If the value of cloth – setting aside the value of the materials and wear and tear of fixed capital – is determined by the value of the weaver's labour-power, how then can a surplus value arise? It can't. If the value of the 8 hours of labour performed by the weaver is equal to the value of the weaver's labour-power, then the weaver's wages, i.e. the value of their labour-power, will be equal to the new value created by that labour-power, leaving nothing as surplus value!
What this cost of production theory does is to treat labour-power/variable capital in the same way as constant capital. In other words, it treats the value of labour-power as a cost of production of the commodity, which is transferred into the value of the commodity. That is what happens when you confuse and conflate labour with labour-power. But, it, then, leaves you with the contradiction of explaining where the surplus-value/profit comes from. It can only come from the capitalist imposing a rate of profit on top of their costs of production, to determine the price of the commodity. For Duhring this is a manifestation of his “force theory”, and basically amounts to a “profit on alienation”, resulting from unequal exchange, and monopoly power. Not surprisingly, therefore, we find Roberts also, explaining recent inflation on the basis of monopoly profits too! It removes the locus of the source of surplus-value from production, to the realm of exchange, which is also, then the foundation of all the vulgar economics, and vulgar socialism of the social-democrats and reformists.
As I've said, before, this can be seen in the way the TSSI, treats variable-capital, and confuses the value of labour-power, and the new value created by that labour. Roberts, in his article, repeats this same error. He says,
“He (Savran) rebuts the neo-Ricardians’ claim that Marx’s theory of value is inconsistent, in that it led to ‘negative values’. As ‘negative values’ are pure nonsense, this was the basis for the neo-Ricardian proposition that Marx’s theory should be consigned to history.”
I will deal with this particular error, later, but, the way that Roberts and the TSSI deal with this claim of inconsistency in Marx's theory, by the neo-Ricardians, is basically, to abandon Marx's theory itself, much as McCulloch and others did, in order to defend Ricardo against his critics, who also charged him with a similar contradiction. The argument of the TSSI, starts by accepting, in essence, the claim about the production of “negative values”, but, then, answers it by replacing Marx's theory of value based on current reproduction costs, with a cost of production theory of value, based upon historic prices. In the process, as Roberts does in his article, it confuses labour that is productive of new value, with productive-labour, i.e. productive of surplus value/capital.
The problem also involves a confusion of profit/loss with capital gain/loss, as Marx describes in Capital III, Chapter 6, and in dealing with the same error of the TSSI, made by Ramsay, set out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, i.e. the question of the tie-up and release of capital.
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