Did Marx Hold a Labor Theory of Value?

[anticap]

I've read only the Conclusion (reproduced below), but I'm wondering if any of you have read this paper by Peter King and Arthur Ripstein, and what you have to say about it. (You can get the PDF here (http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/unpublished/LTV.pdf).)



One popular apologetic view has it that Marx began by accepting the labor theory of value he inherited from Smith and Ricardo when he wrote the first part of Capital, but abandoning it after getting bogged down in the details of its application. This view does not stand up well to historical scrutiny; Marx had drafted all three volumes of Capital before Volume I went to the printer. A more plausible view is that the labor theory of value served two purposes: to emphasize the fact that the worker sells labor-power to the capitalist, who then owns the product of that labor-power, and to account for the antagonism between worker and capitalist, with the resulting struggle over the length of the working day -- both of which needed simple explanations for a non-specialist audience.

Marx's rejection of the labor theory of value in Volume III was prefigured in a much discussed but little understood part of the first section of the first volume of Capital, the section on "Commodity Fetishism." Marx points out that it is a peculiar feature of capitalist economies that the social relations involved in production assume in the eyes of the producers "the fantastic form of a relation between things." Exchange ratios confront producers as a natural force, independent of human will. "Value converts every product into a social hieroglyphic." The discussion of fetishism appears immediately following Marx's introduction of the labor theory of value. Yet if the labor theory of value were true, it is hard to see why commodity fetishism would be a problem; exchange ratios really would be a natural form, the reflection of objective features of the world, rather than of social relations between persons.

In the labor theory presented at the beginning of Capital, exchange is explained in terms of a natural feature of commodities, the amount of labor-power required for their replacement. Exploitation is also conceived of in terms of a natural feature, the difference between the value of labor-power and the value it produces. Only appropriation is treated as the outcome of a social process.

By the end of the final volume of Capital, though, both exchange and exploitation are recognized for the social processes that they are. Each depends on the capitalist's ability to appropriate surplus, rather than on any objective feature of the labor process or the commodities produced. It is because exchange is a social process that its confrontation of those involved as a natural process is a fetish. All commodities are made commensurable by capitalist appropriation, not vice-versa. The subtitle of Capital is 'a critique of political economy': as critique, it investigates the conditions and limits of exchange. It turns out that exchange is conditioned not by prior exchangeability, but by the appropriation of surplus by those who control the means of production. That is why "the products of labor acquire a uniform social status." It is also the answer to the question that "political economy has never thought to ask," i. e. "why labor is represented by the value of its product and labor time by the magnitude of that value." Labor is measured by the value of its product because the capitalist buys it for what it can produce. Labor-power is the source of surplus value because it is purchased on the basis of its ability to produce not physical surplus, but surplus value. Labor, initially the shared feature of commodities, turns out to be 'abstract' in capitalist production not because it is all interchangeable, but because capitalist social relations make it so.

[BAM]

I read this paper a while ago but I don't remember thinking it was any good. For a start, Marx didn't abandon the labour theory of value in Vol III. It is modified to take account of the tendency to equalisation of profit rates (through prices of production) but still at the total social level, total price = total value.

As for Marx's explanation in Vol I being for a non-specialist audience (and hence the difference between the presentations in Vols I & III) this is nonsense. Marx's treatment of surplus value in Vol I is to show its formation independently of its different forms as profit, interest and rent - all of which are explored in Vol III - but which all come from the unpaid labour of the working class.

There are other things wrong with that paper, but I haven't got the time to go into detail.

[KC]

Just read the part you quoted and I don't see how they are arguing that Marx abandoned the LTV. Am I missing something or just really out of it?

[BAM]

Just read the part you quoted and I don't see how they are arguing that Marx abandoned the LTV. Am I missing something or just really out of it?

Beginning of 2nd para:


Marx's rejection of the labor theory of value in Volume III ...


they aren't using the standard explanation, which holds that Marx abandons the labour theory of value when it comes to the transformation of values into prices of production. Rather they locate it in Marx's theory of rent. Using the example of a waterfall, they claim that this produces surplus value:



Because he does not need to pay for coal, he can make a ‘surplus profit’ by selling his product at the regular price. Assuming that waterfalls are in limited supply and cannot be created by investment, there is no danger of competition from other capitalists also using water-power. The rent of the waterfall is equivalent to the amount of surplus profit it makes possible ... [T]he waterfall is ‘a natural production agent.’ It creates value equivalent to the value of the coal it produces. It creates that value ex nihilo, for it has no value of its own to transfer. Therefore Marx does not hold that labor-power is the only commodity capable of producing value and surplus-value; that is, he does not hold the central claim of the labor theory of value.

However, this is wrong. Waterfalls do not disprove the labour theory of value. Rather, they alter the natural basis of the productivity of labour. In much the same way, the production of, say, wine would be improved in a sunnier climate as opposed to a temperate one. But no-one would say that the sun produces surplus value!

The authors then turn to machinery:



The point illustrated by the example of the waterfall is not isolated. We find this same peculiar social feature in the case of technical innovations in manufacturing. If one capitalist introduces an innovation before her competitors do, the replacement cost of the commodities produced reflects their typical replacement cost rather than the specific cost in the case of the innovator. Thus the innovator earns a surplus profit because her innovation itself is capable of producing surplus value, that is, of producing more social resources than are consumed in its production. As soon as her competitors catch up, the innovation will cease to produce surplus value because it will set the replacement cost of the commodities produced.


But this is based on a confusion of concepts. Machines transfer their value into the final product. In so doing they displace more labour than the equivalent in cost, thus reducing the value of the end product. This enables the capitalist to sell at a market price under their competitors and under the prevailing price of production in that branch of production, which means that the capitalist can reap a super-profit over and above his/her competitors. Once the competitors catch up, however, the capitalist in question loses his/her competitive advantage and the race begins anew.

[anticap]

I've been skimming several things at once... don't these authors also try to make hay of the "beasts of burden" argument? or was that something else I've been skimming?

I must admit that I still have trouble with that one. Surely the dairy farmer exploits Bessie the cow when he provides her with only the bare necessities to keep her producing milk. She is the sole producer of the milk, he produces none of it; she fills the role of proletarian, he the capitalist. She is entitled to have her stall luxuriantly outfitted with satin pillows and whatever else the value of her milk will provide, if that's what she wants -- but therein lies the difference: she can't voice her wants, at least not in the same detail as a human; nor does she even have wants in the same sense. But that doesn't refute the argument to my satisfaction; our unique ability to formulate wants and desires, and to verbalize them, does not magically transport us onto a higher plane whereupon we attain the unfortunate ability to become exploited proletarians -- it is the fact that we produce above and beyond our wants, to support non-producing parasites, which conveys that status onto us. And the same appears to hold true for Bessie.

But then, I haven't read much on that argument; and I have trouble remembering what I read anyway.

[S.Artesian]

I've been skimming several things at once... don't these authors also try to make hay of the "beasts of burden" argument? or was that something else I've been skimming?

I must admit that I still have trouble with that one. Surely the dairy farmer exploits Bessie the cow when he provides her with only the bare necessities to keep her producing milk. She is the sole producer of the milk, he produces none of it; she fills the role of proletarian, he the capitalist. She is entitled to have her stall luxuriantly outfitted with satin pillows and whatever else the value of her milk will provide, if that's what she wants -- but therein lies the difference: she can't voice her wants, at least not in the same detail as a human; nor does she even have wants in the same sense. But that doesn't refute the argument to my satisfaction; our unique ability to formulate wants and desires, and to verbalize them, does not magically transport us onto a higher plane whereupon we attain the unfortunate ability to become exploited proletarians -- it is the fact that we produce above and beyond our wants, to support non-producing parasites, which conveys that status onto us. And the same appears to hold true for Bessie.

But then, I haven't read much on that argument; and I have trouble remembering what I read anyway.

Bessie is equivalent to a plow, a machine, or the hay used to feed her. She is "constant" capital not variable, and more specifically, a fixed portion of constant capital in that she transfers her value piecemeal to the circulating capital, in this case milk, over numerous cycles of production.

Bessie creates no exchange value as her milk would never leave her udder, much less the farm to begin the process of exchange without human labor.

It's a question of commanding the labor of others; of creating the social conditions where a person has no use for his or her own labor save its use in exchange for an equivalent, a mechanism for obtaining means of subsistence.

The cow has no such need, no socially generated need, to exchange her milk for the means of subsistence.