Re: [Marxism] Socially Necessary Abstract(?) Labor Time

["Ed George" <edgeorge1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

I think I understand what you want to do but I do not really
understand why you want to do it. You want to pose abstract labour as
an abstraction that exists in reality (a 'real abstraction') that is
brought about by the conditions of capitalist production. Abstract
labour must exist then, in reality, independent from and distinct from
actual, really-carried out labour (abstract labour is not, for
example, physiological). Since concretely carried-out labour is a
human act, carried out in time, it can be measured in time; since
abstract labour is ontologically distinct, it cannot, and is measured
in money.

Now, maybe it is because I am stupid, but I can see nothing other than
mystification here. What is unique to labour, as it is actually
carried out, as a human activity is that it fashions use-value. This
is true independent of the social conditions under which it is carried
out, i.e. independent of mode of production. Under capitalist social
organisation, however, what is produced, i.e. use-value, is
necessarily produced in order to be exchanged, i.e. the producer needs
to exchange in order to consume. Hence the use-values that are
produced are produced as commodities. And they exchange in accordance
with the labour socially necessary for their production.  Now, the
labour which forms the substance of the value embodied by the
commodity is a quantitative magnitude, and it is irrelevant, other
than that it produces use-value of some kind, what its technical
specificities are. So when we talk about labour in this way we are
talking about it independently of certain of its features, those that
differentiate acts of it among themselves. We are only considering it
as labour, as the expenditure of human labour-power, and nothing more.
 This is what I understand by abstract labour, labour â
really-existing, really-carried-out labour â considered abstracted
from its qualitatively differentiating qualities.

The value of the commodity to be exchanged is the quantity of
socially-necessary labour expended in its production, and the quantity
of socially necessary labour is measured in time. [1] This is an
absolute magnitude: value, socially-necessary labour time, is not
relative â if the value of commodity y is x units of
socially-necessary labour time then its value is x units of
socially-necessary labour time independently of the value of anything
else. But to say that the value of commodity y is x units of
socially-necessary labour is tautological, since labour is not the
measure of value, it is the substance of value: the value of a certain
quantity of commodity y = x units of socially-necessary labour is the
same as saying that the value of a certain quantity of commodity y =
the value of a certain quantity of commodity y.

Value can thus only express itself in exchange, can only be
ascertained, can only manifest itself, when a commodity enters into an
exchange relation with another commodity. Here is the distinction
between the magnitude of value â socially-necessary labour measured in
time â and its manifestation: the quantitative relation between
commodities in exchange. The form in which value can be grasped, its
actual manifestation, is, and can only be, in the form of given
quantities of other commodities in exchange; and, in a money
commodity, this form is the commodity's price.

But what happens in exchange? Commodities exchange in accordance to
their exchange-values, which is the real manifestation of value, of
socially-necessary labour time. But under capitalist conditions labour
â really-existing labour, whether considered as abstract or concretely
â is carried out privately, and only becomes social through exchange.
Thus social necessity, being social, cannot be determined in and by
production but only after the event in and through exchange: the
labour socially necessary for the production of a commodity is imposed
on the producers ex post facto by the market. Thus value â socially
necessary labour time â which can only manifest itself in exchange, is
incommensurate, necessarily and intrinsically, in magnitude with the
form in which it does manifest itself. This, it seems to me, is
crucial. The magnitude of value, and its manifestational from, are not
the same: it is intrinsic to commodity production that commodities do
not exchange at their values, i.e. it is intrinsic to commodity
production that value and price do diverge. This is what you are
losing sight of in your presentation.

Thus abstract labour is not called into being by commodity production;
abstract labour is a conceptual tool we use to understand what happens
to commodities in conditions of commodity production. It exists,
because it is a facet of really-existing labour; but it is inherently
ungraspable in isolation because it can only manifest itself in a
social relation in which the magnitude of its substance and its form
are at variance. That is why the question of whether or not abstract
labour exists in pre-capitalist production systems is an irrelevance.

Is this what Marx says? This is what, in my modest efforts, I
understand him to say. But then you say this: 'If you want to allege
that Marx is wrong, then say so, but don't pretend that your
understanding of abstract labour is actually Marx's.' I pretend no
such thing; in fact I gave up trying to speak on Marx's behalf a long
time ago, and, if I may be frank, I would suggest that you would
appear rather less ridiculous if you did the same.
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