Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 52
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Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 52

Tony Cutler, Barry Hindess, Athar Hussain, Paul Q.Hirst

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Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 52

Tony Cutler, Barry Hindess, Athar Hussain, Paul Q.Hirst

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This volume is concerned with the re-evaluation and criticism of Capital itself. It is in three parts, each covering a specific area of Marxist theory. The first part contains an investigation into Marx's theory of value and considers the types of questions and modes of analysis to which this theory leads. In the second part the nature and implications of necessary economic 'laws of tendency' in the capitalist mode of production are covered. Finally there is an analysis of the role of class structure and economic agents in Marxist theory.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781135025656

Part I
Value

The chapters in this part are devoted to a critical discussion of the concept of ‘value’. In the first chapter the pertinence of labour-time as a measure of the distribution of the social product in capitalism is challenged, and in particular the pertinence of the assessment of the labour contributions of agents to the product as a means of explaining its distribution among different categories of those agents. In the second and third chapters attempts by two leading Marxist thinkers, Rudolf Hilferding and I. I. Rubin, to defend Marx’s theory of value against attacks, notably that of Böhm-Bawerk, will be considered. What makes their discussions of special interest is that they both locate the concept of ‘value’ as a central part of the Marxist theory of history and of the social totality, rather than confining themselves merely to technical economic debates. In consequence certain of the possible implications of the category ‘value’ for the Marxist theory of social relations can be drawn from their work, complementing and reinforcing our analysis of Marx’s Capital. In a short appendix the status of the notion of reproduction as posed in Capital is considered.
A point of caution needs to be made here. Our discussion of the concept of ‘value’ and the notions of a ‘law of value’ in Capital is a critical one and does not attempt to reconstruct all references to ‘value’ in the exposition in Capital. Marx’s use of this concept in Capital is often ambiguous, his various references to a ‘law of value’ involve different possible formulations of this ‘law’ and these references are frequently marginal to the main line of the argument. There is no simple, comprehensive and unambiguous treatment of ‘value’ or of the ‘law of value’ (the form of its operation and its different modes of expression) in Capital. What we have done here is to criticise a definite conception of value and the law of value which is present in the discourse of Capital and to show how it is related to other central concepts in that discourse, notably ‘surplus value’ and ‘exploitation’. This critique leads us to the conclusion that this concept and the concepts and problems dependent on it should be rejected. In consequence we regard a comprehensive review of Marx’s references to value and the subsequent critical literature on this question redundant. The implications of abandoning the concepts ‘value’ and ‘surplus value’ for the analysis of classes are discussed at length in Part III of this volume.
One apparent notable omission needs to be explained at this point. Although the ‘neo-Ricardian’ critique of the Marxist theory of value and the resultant debate have occupied a prominent place in contemporary literature on this question no reference will be found to it in this part of the text. This literature is discussed in a separate chapter in Volume Two which is a critical review of theories of reproduction prices, and in particular of the work of Sraffa.

Chapter 1
Value, Exploitation, and Profit

Marx’s ‘theory of value’ has generated a vast amount of debate amongst economists. This debate has centred on the technical possibility or the empirical validity of labour-time functioning as the measure of the proportions in which commodities exchange one with another. Thus, for example, it has been objected that this measure is in contradiction with the theory of prices of production and the formation of an average rate of profit in capitalism, and that commodities do not in fact exchange in ratios determined by their respective labour-times, that some have negative labour-times, etc. Defenders of Capital have replied to these critiques, in general concentrating on refuting the notion that Marx’s theory of value is primarily a theory of exchange and of exchange-value, and insisting that the concept ‘value’ explains the way in which production-relations govern exchange-relations. Nevertheless, what is central in the theory of ‘value’ is the function of labour-time as a social standard of measurement.
What we will be concerned with in this chapter is not this debate but rather what it has ignored: the theoretical pertinence and conditions of existence of the measure. We will consider why it is that the measure takes this definite form, for what reasons this form is considered to be significant, and why the problem of measurement is considered as significant at all. Why is the labour-time used in the production of commodities (or non-commodity forms of the social product) of theoretical significance? Why should it be more important than, say, the weight of commodities? Why is the labour-time utilised in production employed not merely as the measure of the ratios in which commodities exchange but as a theoretical device to analyse the distribution of the social product between the agents? If these questions have been asked hitherto it has generally been merely to serve as the preface to the repetition of Marx’s own arguments. Here, however, we will examine the discourse of Capital to see why these arguments Marx advances could be considered as answers to those questions. Central to this problem of the way the discourse defines the answers appropriate to it is Capital’s conception of the nature of the operation of measurement which is to be performed by the category of labour-time. ‘Measurement’ (in this case the relation of apparently distinct phenomena one to another as quantities) is not a simple non-theoretical notion or a simple non-theoretical exercise. To comprehend value as a measure in Capital we must understand the conception of exchange in which labour-time is to function as a measure and the theoretical doctrine of measurement adopted in that conception.

Value, exchange and measurement

Marx poses the problem of value-in-exchange in a specific way. Marx conceives exchange as an equation, as being effected through the identity of the objects exchanged. Posing exchange in this way leads directly to a paradox, the apparent absurdity and impossibility of the equation. What is the possibility of the form of equation ‘x commodities A = y commodities B’ (say, 1 cwt of iron = 1 ton of coal)? Why does one hundredweight of iron equal one ton of coal? The equation supposes a definite relation (an identity) between the things which are exchanged, yet that relation cannot be found in the distinct commodities themselves (iron = coal?), or in the ratio in which they exchange (1 cwt = 1 ton?) as such. The relative values of exchange of commodities are definite and yet are inpenetrable as such, as mere relative values:
A given commodity, a quarter of wheat for example, is exchanged for x boot polish, y silk or z gold, etc. In short, it is exchanged for other commodities in the most diverse proportions. Therefore the wheat has many exchange values instead of one. But x boot polish, y silk or z gold, etc., each represent the exchange-value of one quarter of wheat. Therefore [they]
 must, as exchange-values, be mutually replaceable or of identical magnitude. (Capital, vol. 1, Penguin edn, p. 127)
But that magnitude, the unit of measure in which these things count as the same is not given in these equivalences and Marx says:
It follows from this that, firstly, the valid exchange-values of a particular commodity express something equal, and secondly, exchange-value cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the ‘form of appearance’ (Erscheinungsform), of a content distinguishable from it. (ibid., p. 127)
The equation is, in its ‘phenomenal form’ as exchange-proportions, an effect.
Exchange-relations ‘can always be represented by an equation’:
What does this equation signify. It signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things, in 1 quarter of corn and similarly in x cwt of iron. Both are therefore equal to a third thing, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to this third thing, (ibid., p. 127—our emphasis)
The equation (x commodities A = y commodities B) is possible because this phenomenal form is the effect of an identity established between the two distinct qualities (A and B, iron and coal) and their relative quantities (x and y, 1 cwt and 1 ton) in the third term. In this term xA and yB represent equal-identical quantities of the same common substance, and Marx insists that ‘the exchange values of commodities must be reduced to a common element, of which they represent a greater or lesser quantity’ (ibid., p. 127). Marx goes on to say that this common element cannot be identified in any ‘natural property’ of the commodities but only in the ‘property
 of being products of labour’ (ibid., p. 128).
What is interesting here is not that ‘labour’ forms the basis of the ‘common element’ but the notion of the common element itself. Marx conceives exchange as an equation, exchange-values expressing an equality of properties of the things exchanged (identity of their labour-times). Hence the discourse of Capital is organised so as to pose the problem of the possibility of this equality of the things in question and to show it to be a problematical phenomenal form, inexplicable in itself and requiring the category of the third term to render it possible. The third term and the discrepancy of the physical form of the things exchanged thereby create the place for labour-time as an answer.
But it is by no means inevitable that exchange be conceived as an equation. Exchange may be conceived as being equivalent, in the juridical sense, that is, that both parties to it agree to the equity of the terms of the exchange and receive what they were promised, but not as an equation (there not being any substantive identity between the things exchanged). Likewise, in marginalist theories exchange rests neither on the identity of some property of the things exchanged nor on an identity of the estimations of utility concerning them. Exchange is possible because the utility of the things exchanged is different for the parties to the exchange—these different utilities intersect in a definite ratio, say a willingness to part with 1 cwt of iron for the utility of 1 ton of coal and vice versa. The relative values express or measure the utilities, but the exchanges are the product of differing and not equal utilities. Marx’s conception of exchange is not a universal one.
Again, suppose we argue that relative exchange-values are non-pertinent. If one gives a ÂŁ10 note for 1 cwt of iron, or 1 cwt of washing powder, or a gallon of wine, what does this signify? That there is some necessary relation between iron, washing powder and wine, or, the merely incidental fact that ÂŁ10 of money will buy different quantities of all of them. To ask what it is that makes these quantities other than incidental (of theoretical pertinence) is to ask a question about the necessity of the proportions in which commodities exchange, to see exchange-values as representative of something general and which goes beyond them. To seek a general answer to the question of the necessity of these proportions, to insist that they are not incidental, is to postulate a theory of value. Marxism and marginalism, for example, share this problem and the need to answer it.
Exchange as equation and exchange proportionality as necessity are products of definite theoretical conditions, conditions which give certain questions pertinence. Marxists do not regard exchange as equation as anything other than second nature. Economists assume the need for a general theory of prices and exchange-values which assigns them a universal status, a specific function and a definite origin. That these questions are theoretical rather than an inevitable part of the nature of things (and for which answers must be sought) is often forgotten. It is possible to argue that prices and exchange-values have no general functions or general determinants, and that there is in general no necessity for the proportions in which commodities exchange. Such a change of pertinence of problems would put us not only outside of the Marxist theory of value but also conventional economic theory (we will return to these points later in this section and in Volume Two).
Marx’s conception of exchange as an equation follows closely certain important elements of Hegel’s theory of measurement as developed in The Science of Logic (Book 1, section 3). To give a short account of Hegel’s position is by no means a digression. Hegel discusses measure in the context of his doctrine of being. Measure is not a mere formal operation but a relation of definite ontological significance. In measure the attributes of being, quantity, and quality, are reconciled. For Hegel measure is quantified quality. It is a quantitative expression of specificities of existence (specificity in and as quantity). Hegel develops a realist theory of measurement in which the object is definite relations between specific forms of quantity and forms of being. The nature of measurement varies with the different natures and divisions of being: abstract matter, the domain of mechanics (in which ‘qualitative differences
 are essentially quantitatively determined’, Science of Logic, p. 331), organic and inorganic matter, and spirit all have different forms and capacities of measure determined by their form of being (measure is largely indeterminate in the realm of spirit). Quantified quality states the determinative effect of a quantity on specific unities of being thus measured. Unlike a formalist theory of measure (in which differences of application are determined by the purpose of the measurer) this relation does not correspond to every set of possible proportions but only to determinative proportions (that is, those in which quantity defines quality). Thus a man may lose a hair without being bald. However, at a certain point quantitative changes constitute a change of quality, a change in the nature of the thing and therefore of its measure. A man who loses sufficient hairs becomes bald and quantity of hair ceases to be an applicable measure. There is in Hegel’s position no possibility of accepting measure as convention, as a mere standard applied to things for specific purposes. Hegel’s position is quite different from positivist or formalist doctrines of measurement. So is Marx’s theory of measurement in Capital which corresponds in certain crucial respects with the position in Hegel’s greater Logic.
‘In measure, the qualitative moment is quantitative; the determinateness or difference is indifferent and so is no difference sublated’ (Science of Logic, p. 330). This conception of the relation of quality and quantity serves to explain Marx’s conception of exchange as an equation. In exchange the distinct qualities of the objects exchanged are negated in their identity as quantities. Identity in the third term, as quantities of the third term, is the sublation of qualitative difference. It is this negation/sublation of quality in quantity that makes exchange possible. This measure, the third term, is not, however, merely conventional, pure quantity which in numerical identity obliterates difference. The measure between the qualitatively distinct terms is not accidental but expresses a real relation. For distinct objects to be exchangeable they must be real identities, for their difference to be negated their sameness must be expressed in (identical) quantities of a property common to them all. This property must both be quantitative (transcend difference) and yet not be indifferent (it must express real properties of the objects, properties of necessity to their nature as objects, as exchangeable products).
Marx conceives exchange as an equation, as the identity of distinct commodities in a third term which is a property common to both. Why must exchange be an equation? Why must one definite property (labour-time) be the form in which it is attained? To explain why exchange is conceived as an equation is to go beyond any question of the relative proportions in which commodities exchange. Exchange must be conceived as an equation if the discourse of Capital is to produce its particular concept of value and that concept is necessary to the theory of surplus value. Exchange must be conceived in terms of the equation of labour-times if Marx’s concept of value is to be possible. Thus labour-time and value as categories hegemonise in the discourse the analysis of exchange-proportionality. Exchange is conceived as an equation because only in this way can it be conceived as the phenomenal form of an identity of labour-times. The notion of an equation necessitates a third term and hence opens the discursive space for labour-time as that term.
What makes the ratios in which goods exchange against one another necessary rather than incidental? What makes these necessary proportions the forms of equation of labour-times? Here we see that in Capital value is a concept which both explains (gives a definite form to) and goes beyond exchange-reladons. The reason for this necessary proportionality in exchange and this equation of labour times which underlies it is the ‘law of value’ as a law of distribution of social labour. Despite the ambiguity of its various formulations in Capital this ‘law’ is a concept which provides the underpinnings in social re...

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