Re: (OPE-L) is value labour?

[Claus Magno <cmgermer@xxxxxxx>]

Marx divided his exposition on value into the 3 characteristics of it: substance, quantity and form. Since the substance of value is abstract labour, i.e., the expenditure of human productive effort irrespective of its concrete form, one can say that value *is* labour (in the abstract sense), whose quantity is given by the socially necessary time and whose form is the exchange value (= the value form), i.e., value expressed in a certain quantity of the general equivalent of value (or money = gold in the most developed - capitalist - form).

 

It seems to me though that there is a slight difference between saying that labour *creates* value or that value *is* labor. Labour *creates* value in the sense that it is human labour that, through the production of commodities, objectifies itself into them, in such a way that each commodity expresses human abstract labour in a certain quantity. In this case one is stressing labour as the activity. On the other hand, when one says that value *is* labour, one is speaking of a certain quantity of labour time already objectified into a commodity.

 

It also seems to me that there is a clear difference between saying that *value is labour* and *labour is value*. I have not read Mandel or Chris's paper on this, but I also think that, since labour is the activity or labour in process, whereas value is objectified labour, they are different. One can say that *value is labour*, but not that *labour is value*.

 

comradely,

 

Claus Germer
cmgermer@xxxxxxx
Departamento de Economia
Curso de Mestrado e Doutorado em
Desenvolvimento Econômico
Universidade Federal do Paraná
Curitiba - Parana
Brasil

 

Tel: 55 (41) 360-4402 - Universidade
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----- Original Message -----

From: Paul Cockshott

To: OPE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 11:06 AM

Subject: Re: (OPE-L) is value labour?

gerald_a_levy wrote:

Paul C wrote on 5/3: > If one considers that value is labour,  then the value of> money is unproblematic. And on 5/6, he wrote: > What I am saying is that if one takes value either to be
> labour, or even Smith's command over labour, then the
> notion of a decline in the value of money is well founded.

Yet, value is no more labour then labour is labour-power.To say that labour (of a particular form) creates value isquite different from saying that value _is_ labour.

I would say that value is labour, and that value becomes manifest
in commodity producing societies in the form of exchange
value.

Also,to say that the magnitude of value is  determined bysocially-necessary-labor-time is different from saying thatvalue _is_ labour. [As far as Marx's take on this is concerned (happy b-day,btw), note that Chris A took the late Ernest Mandel to task forclaiming that "For Marx *labour is value*".

I would agree with Mandel here.

 Chris argues thatthis is "directly refuted by Marx's own text"  (Volume 1 of _Capital_)where M wrote that "labour is not itself value."   Chris goes onto claim that Mandel "overlooked the importance of the value*form*" ("Value Labour and Negativity" in _Capital & Class_,73, Spring 2001, p. 31).    What is unclear to me, though, iswhen Marx *first* expressed this proposition that labour is notvalue.  E.g. what did he write about this in the drafts of_Capital_?]

I think that Marx was not 100% clear on the distinction between value
and exchange value at first. His clearest distinction between them
comes in Notes on Wagner.

> If one thinks that value is essentially something specific
> to exchange - rather than being founded on something
> prior to exchange - then the idea of a decline in the
> value of money is no longer well founded.

If one believes that there is a unity of the process ofcapitalist production and circulation then value is somethingspecific to the nature of the commodity-form

Why? this is a non-sequitur. How can ones belief about some
particularity of the capitalist mode of production - the unity of
production and circulation ( whatever that  means ), lead to
conclusions about other modes of production - namely that value
is absent from them.

One might as well say that because I believe that all
capitalist economies use coin , coins do not
exist in non-capitalist economies.

 

-- 
Paul Cockshott
Dept Computing Science
University of Glasgow



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