Surplus Value: Animal Labour vs. Human Labour [Archive]

Zanthorus

17th June 2011, 14:10

Pretty much any human is capable of filling pretty much any job given appropriate training. This is why we talk about abstract labour..

No it isn't. This would make abstract labour a common feature of all human societies, and since abstract labour is the source of value, it would make value an eternal property of wealth. This would mean that abstract labour and value would continue into socialism, which is clearly contrary to what both Marx and Engels believed. You seem to be falling into the error of thinking of abstract labour as a mental abstraction. In fact Marx himself realised that the attempt to reduce all concrete labour down to labour in the abstract through a mental abstraction was incredibly difficult especially given problems like how to compare the hours of skilled workers against unskilled workers. However, he did not concieve this to be a problem:

Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone. The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity’s sake we shall henceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction.To reiterate, the problem about making the mental abstraction is not a problem, because the reduction itself is constantly being made in everyday life, by a social process. What is this social process? Marx reveals in the section on the value-form that it is the act of exchange:

We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commodities has already told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon as it comes into communication with another commodity, the coat. Only it betrays its thoughts in that language with which alone it is familiar, the language of commodities. In order to tell us that its own value is created by labour in its abstract character of human labour, it says that the coat, in so far as it is worth as much as the linen, and therefore is value, consists of the same labour as the linen. In order to inform us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its buckram body, it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and consequently that so far as the linen is value, it and the coat are as like as two peas.In the exchange of commodities a real abstraction is made from their bodily forms. They are equated as products of human labour in the abstract through social practice. The section on the General Form of Value (Which is just a more primitive version of the money-form) specifies further how this occurs:

The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power.In the everyday process of production, the products of varying concrete human labours are really reduced to human labour in the asbtract through the social practice of equating them with and exchanging them against certain quantities of money. This is a real abstraction which occurs everyday. Abstract labour, like value, is not something physiological or mental but social.

Commie73

17th June 2011, 15:33

Surely the relation of animals to capital is closer to that of machines than human labour. How do we answer the animal liberationists who try and argue that animals are alienated from profit that they create?

Is the answer really as simple as: Animals do not create surplus value?

Can we talk of animals being exploited, because in the economic sense, they are not exploited. If we say they are exploited in the fact their material conditions are crappy, surely that is a moral point and makes animal liberationist completely wrong and animal liberation is no the same as human liberation.

ar734

17th June 2011, 15:47

Can a horse act as a programmer, a statistician or a bank teller? That's the problem - they can't fill all the roles of labour that are necessary. They can assist much in the way mechanical tools assist - they can add physical power for only particular concrete tasks.

Pretty much any human is capable of filling pretty much any job given appropriate training*. This is why we talk about abstract labour.

* Obviously there are caveats, but it is true to first approximation.

A horse can be a part of production, e.g. can be used to pull a plow. A human driving the horse can produce surplus value, but the horse cannot. Why is this? If the answer is that, by definition, humans produce surplus value and horses cannot, then I don't think we have answered the question why animals cannot produce surplus value.

Feodor Augustus

17th June 2011, 15:57

I was wondering what makes Human Labour such a sure source of surplus value while animal labour is not.

An animal, at least in economic terms, seems like something between a piece of machinery and a raw material. (Perhaps a raw material that requires constant upkeep and maintenance?) The key point, however, is that value (in all its forms) is a human creation. Human labour is thus the 'ultimate origin' of exchange-value, the absolute standard by which we can measure it; and as an animal can do no more than be put to work in the service of human ends, animals do not produce anything of exchangeable value independent of human inputs. A fish is only valuable upon capture, a chicken only once its eggs have been collected and transported, etc., etc. Agriculture is an industry: however at times its natural state can lead us to think of its produce as being independent of human labour, like air and water. (Both of these, of course, have use-value without having exchange-value.)

That human labour is the 'ultimate origin' of all value does not mean that it is its sole determinant: rather this shows value to be a product of human social relations, and individuals evaluations of these relations. As Zanthorus pointed out, abstract universal labour is not a mental abstraction, but a product of social processes. Value is determined not only by the total inputs of labour into a product, but within the context that this labour takes place: hence why products differ in price across both time and space, and also why something must have social use-value (use for others) in order to have exchangeable-value. (I could, e.g., spend a whole year making a chair, yet the standard of my labour may be so poor that I would be unable to exchange my chair for anything: the chair thus has use-value, but only for me.)

Surplus value is a reflection of a particular social relation: the amount of a workers' labour-time that remains unpaid. It is not possible to underpay an animal in this way. Whereas reduced costs, - e.g. less food for the animals, - may lead to a short-term increase in profits, within time the margin would readjust and prices would fall downwards. There would be no actual increase in the amount of surplus generated: we would be getting less for less, not more for less. (In principle, if machinery leads to diminishing returns, then perhaps animals lead to static rates of return?) The difference in price between factory farmed and free range eggs is a perfect example here, and the relatively cheaper price of the former is a reflection of the smaller amounts of labour embodied in the production of the final product; and moreover, of the way in which value itself is a wholly human creation.

They are not paid wages...?

While all wages are costs, not all costs are wages; moreover, while all surplus value is profit, not all profit is surplus value. As it is only wages that are flexible, surplus value can only come from unpaid labour. Animal labour does not vary over time and space in the same way that human labour does, and therefore should not be equated with human labour in such ways. That cod is more expensive than mackerel, merely shows that it requires more human effort to catch cod.

However I would concede that to think of animals purely as economic units, and not as sentient beings, is problematic; and that some conception of decent compensation for animals (i.e. a 'fair wage') may help to prevent an ecological disaster. (Such as the depopulation of fisheries caused by over-exploitation.) However as free range eggs show, greater compensation for animals would mean greater labour inputs. It is also an indication of the way social processes effect value. What, however, should not go unnoticed, is that all these things are exclusive to humans, and determined solely by human interactions.

Zero put it quite well: 'Animals do not engage in social labour because they are not individuals in human society.' Wages are a reflection of this human process, and the only way for animals to receive wages would be for them to be part of human societies. Thus whilst from a moral and ethical position it may seem somewhat poor to treat animals as economic units, they lack the capacity to act as human agents. The only way they can become agents in any real sense is, as is the case with the free-range factory farmed division, through changes in human evaluations.

It is no coincidence that the great gains of the last century accompanied the almost total mastery (at least in the advanced economies) of the food supply. Animals are slaves in this process. However they are also slaves that will never (and can never) be manumitted if humans are to continue in their privileged position. In effect, all we can ask for is for a better kind of paternalism: a kinder and fairer master-slave relationship.

Feodor Augustus

17th June 2011, 16:08

Commie73, I only saw your post after I had posted my own comments; but still I think the latter part of my post anticipated some of the things you brought up. I would add now, having seen your post, that animals cannot be exploited (i.e. have surplus extracted from their labour) because this is an exclusively human phenomena. They are, however, quite clearly alienated from their species-being. This is an inescapable fact, and the answer to animal liberationists is that this is an absolute necessity, regardless of its negatives. In this sense the mastery of food supplies is akin to the development of heavy industry: it carries with it obviously detrimental consequences, but is nevertheless essential to the forward movement of humanity.

This is not progress in the one-dimensional linear view of progress as advanced by liberals; but rather historical movement as understood within the framework of the Marxist dialectic. Thus while for liberals the progress of modern capitalism improves the lot of humanity, for Marxists it also produces capitalisms grave-diggers: the proletariat. Perhaps we could suggest, with this perspective in mind, that the mastery of food supplies also brings with it a potential grave-digger: widespread ecological disaster. However the solution to such problems is not to turn back the clock, so to speak. (The solution could, however, be to consider animals less as economic units and more as sentient beings: raw materials that need to be used responsibly. This could require a wholesale change in human economic thinking, whereby animals would now be considered more akin to human labourers who should be entitled to a fair wage, however we may define this. However such a change in thinking, alongside recognition of such social facts, - as is the case with organic produce, - merely reflects that all these things are products of human consciousnesses and structures.)

Rowan Duffy

17th June 2011, 16:10

No it isn't.

Actually it is. Why don't we pay horses wages?

Abstract labour, like value, is not something physiological or mental but social.

It is social, but that social role requires the ability to perform abstract labour.

Zanthorus

17th June 2011, 16:19

If things have no operational meaning and can not be explored they are equivalent to nonsense.

And yet your first paragraph was:

Wealth is the ability to command labour and labours product. Capitalism is a particular social mechanism for this command. Abstract labour was always a human activity. What has changed in capitalism is the circuit of capital as the mechanism by which labour is allocated and exploited.

Well, how are we supposed to empirically verify any of this? The answer is that we can't, because you've just given us a series of definitions, rules for the use of concepts. I believe you and I have had this discussion before, but your conception of what counts as science is impoverished. Science does not just involve testing hypotheses. Before we even begin getting into the business of empirical testing, we have to have some grasp of the object which we're studying in the first place. This creates a need for new concepts for the understanding of the object in question, a new language-game or series of language-games to meet our language needs. Think of how useful, for example, Newton's equation F = ma is in physics. That equation cannot be tested empirically, it is a definition of the variable 'force', but with that concept of force we can go on to explain and understand a lot of things. Similarly with the concept of value. Yes Marx's understanding of 'value' may not be empirically verifiable, but that's not the point. The point is that the concept opens up new avenues for exploration, which then can lead to empirically testable hypotheses, such as Marx's theory of the reserve army of labour.

On the other hand the way you have defined the concepts like abstract labour does not give us any help, because they are so general that they apply to every concievable society, but what is under question is not society or production in general, but a historically specific form of society - capitalism. To understand capitalism, we need to understand the social relations and practices which are specific to it. Talking about production in general gets us no closer to understanding it's historically specific capitalist form than talking about the 'animal' in the abstract gets us any closer to understanding the workings of the specific form of animal known as a dog.

Why don't we pay horses wages?

Because wage-labour is a specific social organisation of human labour. Horses aren't humans, hence don't get paid wages.

Kotze

17th June 2011, 16:25

What is abstract cheese.

Making the mental abstraction is not a problem, because the reduction itself is constantly being made in everyday life, by a social process. What is this social process? Karl Maus reveals in this section on the value-form that it is the act of exchange:
We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commodities has already told us, is told us by the cheese itself, as soon as it comes into communication with another commodity, where it betrays its thoughts in the language of commodities. In the exchange of commodities a real abstraction is made from their bodily forms. They are equated as being equal to specific amounts of my favourite cheese through social practice.In the everyday process of production, the products, even inedible ones, are really reduced to cheese in the abstract through the social practice of equating them with and exchanging them against certain quantities of money. This is a real abstraction which occurs everyday. Abstract cheese is not something physiological or mental but social.

Rowan Duffy

17th June 2011, 16:35

Well, how are we supposed to empirically verify any of this? The answer is that we can't, because you've just given us a series of definitions, rules for the use of concepts.

We can look to see if labour time correlates with price, so the answer is, we can.

I believe you and I have had this discussion before, but your conception of what counts as science is impoverished. Science does not just involve testing hypotheses. Before we even begin getting into the business of empirical testing, we have to have some grasp of the object which we're studying in the first place.

You're confusing the map with the territory. We don't have to "have a grasp" of anything. We need to guess a model (usually by abstraction from instances) and test it.

My concept of science isn't impoverished, it's grounded in testable reality. Any model which is untestable is indistinguishable from mysticism. Explain to me how it's any different from assigning the cause to god.

Think of how useful, for example, Newton's equation F = ma is in physics. That equation cannot be tested empirically, it is a definition of the variable 'force', but with that concept of force we can go on to explain and understand a lot of things.

This is wrong. There is an operational definition of mass, an operational definition of acceleration, and force is simply defined as the product of these two operational measures. The utility of the definition is given in the first, second and third laws of motion. F then becomes an internal signifier grounded out in operational definitions. It is in fact an internal definition of the model which is used to predict the outcomes in terms of an operational definition of the acceleration of bodies.

Similarly with the concept of value. Yes Marx's understanding of 'value' may not be empirically verifiable, but that's not the point. The point is that the concept opens up new avenues for exploration, which then can lead to empirically testable hypotheses, such as Marx's theory of the reserve army of labour.

You can define things anyhow you like, that's clear. If you make your arguments circular however, you've said absolutely nothing. Explain to me where this grounds out to operational measures. Otherwise it's indistinguishable from nonsense.

On the other hand the way you have defined the concepts like abstract labour does not give us any help, because they are so general that they apply to every concievable society, but what is under question is not society or production in general, but a historically specific form of society - capitalism.

We can measure, on average, how long it takes a human to do some task. That's an operational definition which has specific utility for a model of capitalism because we can look at the impact on price.

Because wage-labour is a specific social organisation of human labour. Horses aren't humans, hence don't get paid wages.

It's true that they don't, but why don't horses do wage-labour?

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 18:07

Wages are not the issue, self employed workers or workers in coops add value too.

Rowan is right the key is that animals, although they can engage in cooperation with us, can only do so in a single role, or very limited set of roles. A sheepdog can not choose to raise her pups as tailors or decorators rather than as guards, retrievers or guides. A human mother's children can, social circumstaces permiting, move into any productive role.

But if another intelligent species with hands existed say in Australia when humans arrived there, some intelligent kangaroo. Humans could then have engaged in trade with them - the intelligent kangaroo's labour would, given equal flexibility to ours, count as value creating.

Feodor Augustus

17th June 2011, 18:23

But if another intelligent species with hands existed say in Australia when humans arrived there, some intelligent kangaroo. Humans could then have engaged in trade with them - the intelligent kangaroo's labour would, given equal flexibility to ours, count as value creating.

Moreover, if the kangaroo could produce certain products more efficiently than humans, the unit of kangaroo's labour would be used as the absolute standard by which to determine labour: if the kangaroo could do in one hour what human hands took four hours to do, the exchange-value of the product would reflect the inputs needed to sustain production by kangaroo labourers. However as no animal can engage in human production in this manner, it is something of a moot point - but still, a very illuminating example that makes the 'thank' function a very good idea.

Rowan Duffy

17th June 2011, 18:24

A horse can be a part of production, e.g. can be used to pull a plow. A human driving the horse can produce surplus value, but the horse cannot. Why is this? If the answer is that, by definition, humans produce surplus value and horses cannot, then I don't think we have answered the question why animals cannot produce surplus value.

Horses aren't paid wages at all, so they can't be paid a lower wage then the value added.

Zanthorus

17th June 2011, 18:27

We can look to see if labour time correlates with price, so the answer is, we can.

You seem to be incapable of reading your own writing. What you just wrote was a series of definitions. Or to put it in much simpler terms, this:

"Wealth is the ability to command labour and labours product."

Is a definition, and incidentally not the same definition as Marx used, and not one that would come to the minds of many people if you asked them what wealth means, but that's besides. This:

"Capitalism is a particular social mechanism for this command."

This is also a definition, and even these last two points:

"Abstract labour was always a human activity. What has changed in capitalism is the circuit of capital as the mechanism by which labour is allocated and exploited."

Rely on definitions.

But please inform us all how we are supposed to 'empirically verify' that 'wealth is the ability to command labour and labours product'? Can you tell us what instance could ever falsify such an assertion?

Any model which is untestable is indistinguishable from mysticism. Explain to me how it's any different from assigning the cause to god.

Your thinking here seems to be riddled with conceptual confusions. We are not talking about models here, we are talking about foundational concepts. The theory of value is not a model of cause and effect, it is a description of capitalist social relations. You're confusion comes from mixing up value with price. Marx does have an empirically verifiable theory of prices - he posits in Volume III that prices fluctuate around prices of production (cost-price plus average rate of profit). This is not what the theory of value is about though.

There is an operational definition of mass, an operational definition of acceleration, and force is simply defined as the product of these two operational measures. The utility of the definition is given in the first, second and third laws of motion. F then becomes an internal signifier grounded out in operational definitions. It is in fact an internal definition of the model which is used to predict the outcomes in terms of an operational definition of the acceleration of bodies.

My point was not about operationalisation, the concept of value does not need to be operationalisable because we are not doing physics, we are doing social theory. Social theory doesn't deal with data like the data of physics, it deals with social relations. My point was about the usefulness and practical need for inventing new concepts when embarking upon science. We can't do economics with concepts taken from physics. Perhaps psychology would be a better example, since it is also not a science akin to physics. It is also racked with conceptual confusions that have lead some to argue that it is still in the stage of a pre-science. Psychologists still believe that they can solve these disputes through endless empirical testing because the culture of the enlightenment and the impoverished thinking of scientism still pervades, but the fact is that psychology isn't getting anywhere until it's proponents stop treating questions like 'free will vs determinism' as empirical ones and start treating them as conceptual ones. The same issues pervade in the science of economics and in social science in general. As Paul Mattick Jr noted, the social sciences have despite years of attempts failed to reach the level of rigour 'hard' sciences like physics (Except for Marx, because he understood the importance of forging a new language-game). Only when we stop treating conceptual questions as empirical ones will there be any progress in these fields.

If you make your arguments circular however, you've said absolutely nothing.

But I'm not arguing for a proposition, I'm defining a concept. Definitions are by their very nature 'circular'.

We can measure, on average, how long it takes a human to do some task.

But this completely evades the whole difficulty of abstract labour which is, how do you compare qualitatively different types of activity and their qualitatively different products? How do you compare the labour of the physician to the labour of the carpenter or the miner? How do you compare the skilled labour of the master to the trivial tasks he makes his apprentices perform?

It's true that they don't, but why don't horses do wage-labour?

I believe I just told you that.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 18:59

Your thinking here seems to be riddled with conceptual confusions. We are not talking about models here, we are talking about foundational concepts. The theory of value is not a model of cause and effect, it is a description of capitalist social relations.The whole analysis, by Marx, of capitalist exploitation rests on the idea that prices correlate closely with values. If it was actually the case that there was no relationship between exchange value added
and labour expended, then the analysis of the lengthening of the working day and production of absolute surplus value make no sense. Thus there is a causal theory behind it -- the theory that labour causes exchange value.

You're confusion comes from mixing up value with price. Marx does have an empirically verifiable theory of prices - he posits in Volume III that prices fluctuate around prices of production (cost-price plus average rate of profit). This is not what the theory of value is about though.It is empirically testable, and it has been tested recently. The evidence shows that production price theory is only marginally better than labour values at explaining prices. The improvement in correlations is not statistically significant. The assumption of equal rates of profit in different industries turns out to be wrong. Occams razor thus suggests that we only need the simple labour theory of value.

Labor Shall Rule

17th June 2011, 19:04

The famous coal miner's story goes something like this: "When I started working, the foreman told me to watch out for slate falling on the mule. I said, 'the mule? what about me?' He said: 'I can hire another man but I have to pay for another mule.'"

Hun doe!? Very well said Red Track.

OP, look at Rethinking Marxist Anthropology for your question to be answered.

Humans, like all other animals, must expend energy to satisfy their needs. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the structure of energy expendinture of humans and non-human primates. In contrast to all other primate species, in which needs are satisfied through direct, individual appropriations of use values, humans satisfy their needs through production.

This is the difference. We have powers of reasoning, bipedalism, and linguistic ability, which is syptomatic of a society that produces shit on it's own. So when capitalism rolled around and goods and services were made for exchange, human labor is always available for sale. It's a variable input that could be stretched and made to do what the boss wants. The exception to that rule are slash-and-burn, fishing, and/or hunter gatherer societies, or the Planet of the Apes, where the apes could engage in production themselves.

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 19:05

The whole analysis, by Marx, of capitalist exploitation rests on the idea that prices correlate closely with values.So then you would hold to the common position that Marx contradicted himself with his analysis of price in volume III, correct?

Marx does have an empirically verifiable theory of prices - he posits in Volume III that prices fluctuate around prices of production (cost-price plus average rate of profit).Technically speaking, he was identifying an immanent tendency, not putting forward an empirical proposition for inductive testing.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 19:10

We can't do economics with concepts taken from physics.
Dont be so sure:
http://21stcenturysocialism.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-physics-is-validating-labour-theory.html

Perhaps psychology would be a better example, since it is also not a science akin to physics. It is also racked with conceptual confusions that have lead some to argue that it is still in the stage of a pre-science. Psychologists still believe that they can solve these disputes through endless empirical testing because the culture of the enlightenment and the impoverished thinking of scientism still pervades

This is a fair representation of the reactionary idealist phiilosophy of Hayek, but has little to do with Marx who thought he was discovering the 'laws oof motion' of capitalism. You borrow the concept Scientism from him.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 19:14

In Volume III Marx was attempting to address the issue that had been the downfall of the Ricardian school, attempting to reconcile equal rates of profit with labour values. This was a necessary part of a critique of political economy. Scientifically though, both he and Ricardo were wrong about the equalisation of profit rates, so they were addressing a pseudo problem not a real problem.

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 19:16

Zanthorus isn't borrowing the concept of scientism from Hayek, no.

In Volume III Marx was attempting to address the issue that had been the downfall of the Ricardian school, attempting to reconcile equal rates of profit with labour values. This was a necessary part of a critique of political economy. Scientifically though, both he and Ricardo were wrong about the equalisation of profit rates, so they were addressing a pseudo problem not a real problem.This doesn't answer my question, though, if that's what you were responding to.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 19:25

Zanthorus isn't borrowing the concept of scientism from Hayek, no.
As far as I am aware the concept of Scientism originates with Hayeks book 'The Counter Revolution in Science'.

This doesn't answer my question, though, if that's what you were responding to.
I was responding to it. I will try to be more direct, no I do not think Marx contradicted himself, but I do think that the theoretical project he was addressing in prices of production was based on a mistaken assumption.

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 19:37

I was responding to it. I will try to be more direct, no I do not think Marx contradicted himself, but I do think that the theoretical project he was addressing in prices of production was based on a mistaken assumption.If the basis for his analysis of capitalist expropriation is the near-correspondence of individual prices and values, and he later went on to reject this (well, he did reject it in the first volume as well in his comment about average prices, but yes), then wouldn't this come into contradiction with his earlier analysis and its ultimate basis?

As far as I am aware the concept of Scientism originates with Hayeks book 'The Counter Revolution in Science'.I don't believe that the concept does, and I'm not sure that it would be accurate to refer to the word 'scientism' as referring to any single concept insofar as it has been used in quite a few contexts since its birth. If I recall correctly, the term does, although from then it caught on quite quickly in other circles. What I was referring to was the fact that Zanthorus is probably referring to the thought of another 20th Century thinker, which would seem to be suggested by their post.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 19:48

If the basis for his analysis of capitalist expropriation is the near-correspondence of individual prices and values, and he later went on to reject this (well, he did reject it in the first volume as well in his comment about average prices, but yes), then wouldn't this come into contradiction with his earlier analysis and its ultimate basis?
No it would not be in contradiction provided that the deviation between prices of production and values was small. It was however both a scientific and political mistake to introduce the concept, as it laid proletarian economics open to the bourgeois critique that the labour theory of value was a theoretical redundancy -- Samelson was particularly strong on this lien.

I don't believe that the concept does, and I'm not sure that it would be accurate to refer to the word 'scientism' as referring to any single concept insofar as it has been used in quite a few contexts since its birth. If I recall correctly, the term does, although from then it caught on quite quickly in other circles. What I was referring to was the fact that Zanthorus is probably referring to the thought of another 20th Century thinker, which would seem to be suggested by their post.
Well as Keynes remarked, people can be unconsciously repeating the thoughts of long dead economists without knowing where they came from.
The idea of scientism was invented by Hayek to attack the science of historical materialism.

ar734

17th June 2011, 20:06

Abstract labour is commodity producing labour performed as part of a commodity producing society.

How does that explain why a horse cannot produce surplus value. A horse perfoms as part of a commodity producing society, although not as a human.

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 20:25

How does that explain why a horse cannot produce surplus value. A horse perfoms as part of a commodity producing society, although not as a human.A horse does not perform labour as part of a society and as a social individual whose subjective essence reflects the ensemble of social relations, no. If a horse could talk, we could not understand it.

ar734

17th June 2011, 20:25

Horses aren't paid wages at all, so they can't be paid a lower wage then the value added.

Actually one might say that a horse is paid the wages it needs to live or reproduce itself: Oats, etc. It would be the same as a slave who gets "paid"
what it takes to keep him/her alive.

However, if you have a surplus of slaves, you can brutalize them for additional profit.

ar734

17th June 2011, 20:31

We can look to see if labour time correlates with price, so the answer is, we can.

Labour time certainly does correlate with price; the problem for workers is that price doesn't correlate with wages. The difference between price and wage or labour time is profit

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 20:43

No it would not be in contradiction provided that the deviation between prices of production and values was small.
Is that necessarily the case, though? I'm fairly sure that there's a theoretical possibility of a pretty large deviation (certainly as much as the deviation between values and most other proposed determinants of price if we are to assume a wide range of compositions of capital), and in that case there would exist a theoretical contradiction. It would certainly come into conflict with the labour theory of value insofar as this is seen as proposing that prices necessarily approximate values, as it rather states that they don't necessarily do so.

ar734

17th June 2011, 20:46

A horse does not perform labour as part of a society and as a social individual whose subjective essence reflects the ensemble of social relations, no. If a horse could talk, we could not understand it.

I think that is saying that a horse is not a human, therefore it cannot produce surplus value. Isn't that a circular argument?

Why is it only in human society that abstract labor can exist?

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 20:49

Why is it only in human society that abstract labor can exist?It isn't, I'm pretty sure that an alien society could have capitalism and hence abstract labour as well.

I think that is saying that a horse is not a human, therefore it cannot produce surplus value.No, it's referencing Marx's early work and not going through with an explanation of it due to general lethargy. To be brief, we don't share social language-games with the horse (which isn't necessarily much clearer. But it is more brief.)

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 20:56

ar734

17th June 2011, 21:03

It is empirically testable, and it has been tested recently. The evidence shows that production price theory is only marginally better than labour values at explaining prices. The improvement in correlations is not statistically significant. The assumption of equal rates of profit in different industries turns out to be wrong. Occams razor thus suggests that we only need the simple labour theory of value.

I agree 100%. When I first read about Ricardo's labour theory of value and how Marx extended it, it seemed pretty straightforward. Obviously bourgeois economists have a huge interest in denying that labor determines value.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 21:04

I think that is saying that a horse is not a human, therefore it cannot produce surplus value. Isn't that a circular argument?

Why is it only in human society that abstract labor can exist?

Of the societies existing today on this planet, only human society has abstract labour.
In the future perhaps other species will arise whose societies have abstract labour.
Termite society has a division of labour between the tasks of defendiing, farming, reproducing, but these are behaviours that are genetically determined and to which individuals are assigned by morphogenesis. A soldier termite is physically incapable of doing the work of a constructor termite -- they lack the appropriate jaws. Abstract labour requires individuals to be dynamically assignable to a variety of different roles so that they all have this abstract ability to fill any role.

This can not be done in species where behaviours are all biologically determined rather than learned and passed on by culture.

Paul Cockshott

17th June 2011, 21:10

I agree 100%. When I first read about Ricardo's labour theory of value and how Marx extended it, it seemed pretty straightforward. Obviously bourgeois economists have a huge interest in denying that labor determines value.

Yes that is why they attacked it again and again from the early part of the 19th century.

I feel that some Marxists lack confidence in our own theories and start adopting the language and slippery evasions invented by reactionaries -- ideas like scientism.
Marxists have nothing to fear from the scientific method and should be the most fearless proponents of it, I have just published a polemic on the topic here:
http://www.imavo.be/vmt/110213-Cockshott.pdf

ZeroNowhere

17th June 2011, 21:17

You are right, that theoretical possibility is certainly there in the abstract. Once one starts doing a probabalistic analysis you can see that this theoretical possibility would be very improbable though. If, according to Marx, there were a theoretical possibility of a capitalism which undermined Marx's analysis of value and expropriation, that would be fairly notable whether or not it was likely. In any case, while it may be very improbable, it is nonetheless the case that according to Marx there can be a tendency for prices to depart noticeably from value, while capitalist expropriation remains unscathed, although if the theory of capitalist expropriation is based upon the opposite then it's not clear how it could do so.

Feodor Augustus

17th June 2011, 21:45

I feel like the smelly man of this thread: the debate rages on, but no one takes any notice of me. :lol:

Actually one might say that a horse is paid the wages it needs to live or reproduce itself: Oats, etc. It would be the same as a slave who gets "paid"
what it takes to keep him/her alive.

On the face of it, this does indeed seem correct: however it is not. The key point is that the animal is an object of labour, while the worker is labour power itself. Thus the inputs needed to sustain the horse should not be seen as means of subsistence, - which they are, but only in a secondary sense, - for the primary function of these inputs is to transform the object of labour into a commodity. This is the process that imparts value, and it is for this reason that an uncaught fish is worthless.

However, if you have a surplus of slaves, you can brutalize them for additional profit.

Yes, but this works on the very solid assumption that whilst you are paying the slaves less, they are still able to produce at a steady rate: hence the extra surplus, or additional profit. Whereas, and by way of an example, if you underfed your prize cow, it would end up smaller, and thus its value would be less. Reduced costs in agriculture do not lead to higher surpluses: less is less, not more.

Animals have no social use-value without human inputs. The closest example I can think of is a chicken that lays eggs, but even here human labour is required to make something of this, and eggs do not appear freely as does air and water. Furthermore, the difference in price between free-range and factory-farmed eggs quite clearly shows that the chicken is an object of labour, and not labour itself. The chicken does not produce eggs for human consumption independent of human influence, which makes it akin to a raw material.

Profit on raw materials can only come from sales of said material over its market price, which is a temporary phenomena caused by limited knowledge; and thus the only place surplus value can logically derive from, is the difference between wages and prices. The animal has no wage, for the primary function of human inputs that could be seen as wages, - but only, as I mentioned above, in a secondary sense, - is to transform the raw material (i.e. the object of labour) into a commodity.
_ _ _ _ _

I seem to recall that G. A. Cohen's (v. good) Karl Marx's theory of history: a defence deals with the question under discussion here, and I will try to get hold of a copy and type up some short extracts. (The preview on Google Books only allows you to look at the front cover.) One of the points I do remember, that should help with our current discussion, is that it is only labour that is both a productive force and a productive power. Everything else is a productive force, but has productive power.

This underscores the point that value is a product of human labour, as it is labour power that unlocks the productive power of all other objects. The animal cannot be a productive power without human direction.

ar734

18th June 2011, 00:56

If, according to Marx, there were a theoretical possibility of a capitalism which undermined Marx's analysis of value and expropriation, that would be fairly notable whether or not it was likely. In any case, while it may be very improbable, it is nonetheless the case that according to Marx there can be a tendency for prices to depart noticeably from value, while capitalist expropriation remains unscathed, although if the theory of capitalist expropriation is based upon the opposite then it's not clear how it could do so.

Here is a quote from Marx, Capital Vol III, ch. 1:

"Hence, if a commodity is sold at its value, a profit is realised which is equal to the excess of its value over its cost-price, and therefore equal to the entire surplus-value incorporated in the value of the commodity. But the capitalist may sell a commodity at a profit even when he sells it below its value. So long as its selling price is higher than its cost-price, though it may be lower than its value, a portion of the surplus-value incorporated in it is always realised, thus always yielding a profit."

Zanthorus

18th June 2011, 01:09

This is a fair representation of the reactionary idealist phiilosophy of Hayek, but has little to do with Marx who thought he was discovering the 'laws oof motion' of capitalism. You borrow the concept Scientism from him.

It seems you can't even put a single word in against the almighty 'scientific method' around these parts without being slandered as being against science. Yes Marx did discover 'laws of motion' of capitalism, but that is not what this thread about. And no my concept of 'scientism' does not come from Hayek, it comes from a particular reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Paul Cockshott

18th June 2011, 09:14

Sorry, did not know Witgenstein used the idea, where?

Paul Cockshott

18th June 2011, 12:11

Rowan Duffy

18th June 2011, 12:53

But please inform us all how we are supposed to 'empirically verify' that 'wealth is the ability to command labour and labours product'? Can you tell us what instance could ever falsify such an assertion?

Like I said before, we are free to define things in any way we want. The important thing is that it has some grounding in observations and predictions.

I'm perfectly willing to be flexible about definitions as long as they have some such basis. I contend that the value-theorists are in real danger of creating a circularity with no observables. If you feel this is incorrect, I'd like you to point out the observables.

Your thinking here seems to be riddled with conceptual confusions. We are not talking about models here, we are talking about foundational concepts. The theory of value is not a model of cause and effect, it is a description of capitalist social relations.

We should be talking about models here. It's not a conceptual confusion, it's an opinion that we should be scientific rather than mystical.

You want to invent a new category of science which doesn't require any of the rigors which separate science from religion.

You're confusion comes from mixing up value with price. Marx does have an empirically verifiable theory of prices - he posits in Volume III that prices fluctuate around prices of production (cost-price plus average rate of profit). This is not what the theory of value is about though.

I'm well aware of prices of production and additionally know that we can observe empirically that the equalisation of profit rates is wrong. Marx was not a prophet. He made useful contributions to political economy. We can't discover the truth from exegesis.

My point was not about operationalisation, the concept of value does not need to be operationalisable because we are not doing physics, we are doing social theory. Social theory doesn't deal with data like the data of physics, it deals with social relations.

If social relations are not observable, how do you know they exist?

What you are actually attacking is the scientific method. You want to include religion (in this case Marxian mysticism) in science. I'm contending strongly that we shouldn't do that.

Only when we stop treating conceptual questions as empirical ones will there be any progress in these fields.

Explain to me how we are to evaluate the quality of "conceptual" theories.

But this completely evades the whole difficulty of abstract labour which is, how do you compare qualitatively different types of activity and their qualitatively different products? How do you compare the labour of the physician to the labour of the carpenter or the miner? How do you compare the skilled labour of the master to the trivial tasks he makes his apprentices perform?

We can just measure the time. If you want, you could look at the time required in training as well - this might obtain better or worse estimations of price to value correlation. It would in fact be an empirical question.

REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL

18th June 2011, 12:59

Sorry, did not know Witgenstein used the idea, where?

In about 1000 Rosa threads. :cool:

Paul Cockshott

18th June 2011, 13:09

I am interested in whether it was common currency in reactionary philosophical circles in Vienna.

Zanthorus

18th June 2011, 14:16

Sorry, did not know Witgenstein used the idea, where?

Well it is pretty much implicit in the idea of philosophy as therapy rather than as a branch of knowledge which puts forwards propositions. This puts Wittgenstein in stark contrast to philosophers who believed that philosophy was a branch of knowledge like physics which we could derive truths about the world from. More specifically, off the top of my head in §18 of the Philosophical Investigations he notes that chemistry required additions to our language:

Do not be troubled by the fact that languages (2) and (8) consist only of orders. If you want to say that this shews them to be incomplete, ask yourself whether our language is complete;—whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

More explicitly towards the end of the book there are a number of remarks on the grammar psychologists use and conceptual confusions in psychology. There is a very interesting paper on that online here (http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/docs/Relevance%20of%20W's%20phil.%20of%20psychol.%20to% 20science.pdf).

Like I said before, we are free to define things in any way we want. The important thing is that it has some grounding in observations and predictions.

Would you like to inform us what 'grounding in observations and predictions' the words 'obvervation' and 'prediction' have? Or to go about it another route, what 'grounding in observations and predictions' does my naming of the thing in front of me a 'computer' have? What if someone showed me something which is absolutely unlike that which I have previously called a computer, and then said to me 'this is a computer'. Would I think that I should now revise my definition of 'computer', because it had now been shown 'empirically' to me that such a thing as I would not have previously called a 'computer' was now being called a 'computer'? In fact, the natural response in such a situation would be to say to the person, 'that is not what a computer is', which is another way of saying 'that is not how the word computer is used in our language'. The meaning of the word does not derive itself from the physical world, it derives itself from the language-game and it's rules, our social practice.

If you feel this is incorrect, I'd like you to point out the observables.

Well it's not clear entirely what this means. The 'observables' in this case are the fact that the labour of the individual does not form a direct component part of the total social labour, but this labour is in fact private labour, yet at the same time this private labour is carried out to satisfy social wants, and so we have the issue that private labour wants to become it's opposite, directly social labour, which it achieves by being exchanged against money. In this exchange against money we make an abstraction in practice from the concrete useful character of labour, the products of labour all become stamped with the character of human labour in the abstract. The commodities in being placed into relation with one another thus take on a life of their own, the social relations between people become material relations between people and social relations between things. The distribution of social labour is not performed according to a conscious plan of society, and thus becomes something achieved behind the backs of the producers through the mediation of value. This is the concrete, observable, tangible situation which the theory of value purports to describe.

What you are actually attacking is the scientific method.

I think I have been quite clear throughout this thread and my previous writing that I am not against 'the scientific method', I am against having an idealised and static view of 'the scientific method' which ignores how scientists actually have worked through history, and I am against the idea that rigorous empirical testing is the only way we can have knowledge of anything, or that by itself and without conceptual clarity it can produce clear and unbiased results.

We can just measure the time.

In other words, we can just ignore the problem of abstract labour and pretend for our own convenience that it doesn't exist. Who is supposed to be the religious mystic here again?

S.Artesian

18th June 2011, 15:50

Is that necessarily the case, though? I'm fairly sure that there's a theoretical possibility of a pretty large deviation (certainly as much as the deviation between values and most other proposed determinants of price if we are to assume a wide range of compositions of capital), and in that case there would exist a theoretical contradiction. It would certainly come into conflict with the labour theory of value insofar as this is seen as proposing that prices necessarily approximate values, as it rather states that they don't necessarily do so.

The problem with Cockshott's analysis, IMO his identification of the direct [almost] immediate [almost] eternal [almost] correspondence of value in price is that it offers no account, no explanation for the deviations of price from value at any particular moment in capitalist reproduction. Other than "supply and demand," that is, and we know what Marx said about supply and demand, don't we?

In the end, IMO, all Cockshott is saying is what Marx said-- essentially over the long term the sum of prices, the sum of average prices will correspond to the value extracted and pushed into the markets.

And as important as that is, there is more to the story, or the history of capitalist accumulation.

For example, it would be interesting to see an account of the cyclical changes of the prices in semiconductor fabrication explained by the analysis that these price changes reflect actual changes in value, in labor-time of the dominant producers, or that in fact that there is a "counter-correlation" where introduction of more "productive" semiconductors, and more efficient semiconductor production drives prices, initially UP, only to lead to overproductin and the collapse of prices.

What Marx is struggling with, and so doggedly, in his analysis of prices of production is the distribution, the apportionment of the total social value. Marx is adamant that the capitalist does NOT obtain his or her "own" surplus value in the markets, but only a portion of the total surplus extracted by capital as a social organization. I think Cockshott's analysis leads to, and inexorably, that the capitalist in fact obtains his or how "own" surplus value.

Paul Cockshott

18th June 2011, 20:19

In the end, IMO, all Cockshott is saying is what Marx said-- essentially over the long term the sum of prices, the sum of average prices will correspond to the value extracted and pushed into the markets.

No, I and some other empirical Marxist economists are saying something much stronger. We are saying that the actual price of outputs from different industrial sectors ie, the monetary expression of their values, correlate to over 95% with the embodied labour in output of these industries. This is not the sum of all prices equaling the sum of all values, that would indeed be of no interest, it is saying that the labour theory of value explains 95% of the variation in final prices. We can never expect it to explain 100% of the variation in final prices since economies undergo change and the figures we use for the calculations include only current labour and current flows of raw materials. We do not have figures for the embodied labour in long lasting capital goods, we have to approximate these with the labour in current flows of replacement capital goods which, in different phases of the business cycle will not exactly coincide. But the 95% to 97% correlations we get are quite remarkably strong as economic evidence goes.

Paul Cockshott

18th June 2011, 20:26

Is it just a matter of definition that labour is the source of value?

Well within the labour theory of value yes it is, but the question we have to ask is whether this theory is a correct account of what actually happens.

One can construct a different theory of value and surplus value -- one could say that value and profit arose from the natural fertility of farming which allows many ears of corn to be harvested for every one sewn. Or we could say that energy is the source of value, and that the source of profit is the fact that the oil industry produces more energy than it consumes.

Corn, horsepower and energy theories of value are internally consistent, and can give rise to consistent systems of social accounting, but the question is are these theories right or is the labour theory of value right as an explanation of the actual economy?

The key issue is which explains the variation in prices better. Empirical data show that the labour theory out-performs alternative value bases.