The commodity is the cell form of capitalist society. It contains the social substance which is described as human labour. This gives it Value. The amount of human labour is not measured over single commodities or groups of them, and this is not possible. The commodity is a social product, and the substance of Value is social: one uniform, or homogeneous, labour-power embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society under normal conditions of production.
Individuals or groups produce commodities, but not the Value of commodities. Society determines the Value of a commodity, and the Exchange-Value of a commodity, through the process of determining the amount of socially-necessary labour involved in their production, i.e. the labour-time socially necessary for their production.
The Value of commodities will fluctuate according to the productiveness of social labour at any given time. It is not fixed or intrinsic. The law of Value lies behind every exchange of products, but the exchange relation is a relation between products. Human labour-power creates Value but is not in itself Value unless it is congealed or embodied in objects of Value, which can be used to express the Value of other objects of Value.
The social relation of Value comes into being at that point in social production when Use-Values are produced for the purpose of exchange, and this form has become dominant. Value is inseparable from its magnitude, and the social relation is basically an exchange relation. Exchange-Value has no existence separate from Use-Value (but Use-Value can exist without Exchange Value). The productive relations of men in a Socialist society will result in the production of Use-Values, articles of utility specifically produced for consumption and not exchange. The social relation of production will be a direct relation between individuals consciously producing for each other and not producing for an anonymous market. The social powers of production will also be under the direct control of society. The point is that there will be relations between people manifesting themselves as relations between things.
Obviously this description of Value cannot stand on its own, and requires explanation. The Marxist position is that labour-power has a two-fold character: on one hand it produces articles of utility, and at the same time it produces Value; that is, concrete labour becomes the form under which its opposite abstract labour manifests itself.
- The substance of Value.
- The magnitude of Value.
The twofold character of labour power cannot exist in a Socialist society — the subjects of labour will not come into the Exchange relation because wealth will not assume the commodity form.
We have always stressed the need to abolish production for exchange, together with the monetary system which is the highest manifestation of the Value relation. In doing this we have always pointed out that men stand behind all forms of social production and distribution, and that wealth need not take the commodity form. We claim, with Marx, that when the products of labour are brought into the exchange relation of Value we are equating the different kinds of labour embodied in them. We are, in effect, exchanging one man’s labour for another man’s labour, and that all commodities, as social products, are the material expressions of the human labour spent in their production. To endow inanimate objects such as commodities with powers outside of the human agency is absolute nonsense.
The historical development of Value as a social relation is completed when the amount of labour spent in the production of useful articles is socially expressed as a quality belonging to the article. In section III of Capital on commodities, Marx makes the following statement:
“If however we bear in mind that the Value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they assume this reality only insofar as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical substance, viz. human labour, it follows as a matter of course that Value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.”
Capitalism has separated persons from their products, and the social relation of Value is a monetary relation between things of Value.
Marx was always concerned to separate the discussion of political economy from philosophical propositions, although inevitably there is some overlap. To this extent he was concerned with the social relations between things. “The relations of the producer to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation existing not between themselves but between the products of their labour” (Capital, Vol. I, p.85, Kerr edn.) Exchange establishes the direct link between the products, and indirectly through them, the producers. “The relation connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appears not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but what they really are, material relations between persons, and social relations between things”, (p. 78, Lawrence & Wishart edn.)
One thing emerges, and that is that Marx considered that social relations existed between things. Any investigation of capitalist society would have been impossible had he taken any other view. Marx obviously knew that human labour stood behind all production in all stages of society. It was only through the analysis of prices that the Value relation was discovered.
Jim D'Arcy
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