Kapitalism101

Marxist-Humanist-Initiative has released a video-series of the pamphlet “Resisting Trumpist Reaction (and Left Accommodation)”. So now, in addition to reading the pamphlet, you can listen to it read aloud while you wash the dishes.

Resisting Trumpist Reaction discusses many of the theoretical and political issues important to the struggle for freedom in the age of Trump and Trumpism. It is an important document.

It is also a collectively authored document with a remarkably unified perspective, rooted in Marxist Humanism, while spanning many political, economic and philosophical topics. I am one of the authors and also one of the video-readers.

As Marxist-Humanist Initiative continues the fight against Trump, Trumpism and growing authoritarianism around the world—as well as against the enablers in the so-called left, we are happy to announce our coming events and the newest articles on our website.

Two public meetings in New York City on April 12-14:

“Brexit and the Future of Ireland and Scotland: Beyond the Pro/Anti-Brexit Quagmire”
on Fri., April 12, 7:00-9:00 pm, at Bluestockings Books, 172 Allen St., Manhattan.

The program will feature Chris Gilligan, Scottish/Irish academic, author and Open Borders activist, who will draw attention to the human dimensions of immigration restrictions and highlight grassroots movements for human freedom in existing pro-immigrant campaigns. A second speaker, Adam Plante, will give “Remarks on Marxist-Humanism’s Challenge to the ‘Left.,” emphasizing the need to reject commonly “given” alternatives and to ground action in liberatory philosophy. See more information here.

An MHI-sponsored panel at the Historical Materialism conference April 13-14, at James Baldwin School, 351 W. 18^th St., Manhattan.

We don’t yet know the day or time of our panel, entitled “Fighting Trumpism and Left Accommodation: Marxist-Humanist Perspectives.” Speakers include Andrew Kliman, Brendan Cooney, and others.

Everywhere, via Skype, beginning Sun. April 7:

A study group on Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1973 book, Philosophy & Revolution, from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao. We will do a close textual reading of this foundational work of Marxist-Humanism. Meeting every 3 weeks, 11 classes.

You need to apply to join by writing to MHI and telling us why you want to participate. Write mhi@marxisthumanistinitiative.org

Please see our newest posts and much more:

• • MHI Statement on the white terrorist massacre of 50 Muslims in New Zealand. We stress Trump’s influence on the increasing white nationalist terrorism world-wide.

• • Report by a Spanish friend on the elections in Spain’s Andalusia region, shows that the election results do not represent a growth of the far right, but instead a crystalization of its support under the banner of a single new far-right party, Vox.

• • Seth Weiss’ article on France’s Yellow Vests offers a trenchant and insightful critique of a widely circulated but extremely troubling article by Richard Greeman. He asks: “Is today’s left more concerned with championing populism than with fighting neo-fascism and advancing a genuinely liberatory politics?”

• • Andrew Kliman’s follow-up article on those Obama voters who “flipped” to Trump confirms the hypothesis that emerged from his descriptive account of their attitudes and demographic characteristics, published in WSS last August: these voters’ flip to Trump was driven by their Trumpian attitudes; in contrast, no measure of personally-experienced economic hardship proved to be a determinant. The article also critiques an Institute for New Economic Thinking study that tries to rescue the widely discredited anti-neoliberal “left” claim that “economic distress” is what drove Trump’s victory.

• The 219 Women’s Marches reports and reviews the January marches in the US and London, and condemns anti-Semitism that arose in part of the march movement.

Please send us your comments and articles—and join us in the struggle.

— Marxist-Humanist Initiative

I will be participating in some panels at the Left Forum in New York City on June 2 and 3rd. I encourage folks to come if they are in the area.
Combating White Nationalism: Lessons from Marx
Sat. June 2, 12 noon to 1:50 pm –room 1.89

Has “the Left” Accommodated Trump (and Putin)? A Debate
Sat. June 2, 4:00 to 4:50 pm –room 1.77

Can Marx’s humanist philosophy of emancipation assist the Resistance and other battles
against Trumpism? If so, how?
Sun. June 3, 2:00 to 3:50 pm—room 1.129

All three panels are sponsored by Marxist Humanist Initiative. They develop some of the ideas argued in MHI’s 2018 Perspectives.

MHI is also hosting a discussion in NYC on June 6:

Assisting the Self-Development of #TheResistance to Trumpism and to
Authoritarianism in Europe
with Ravi Bali, London-based activist and writer, andAndrew Kliman, author
of “Reclaiming Marx’s Capital, and “The Failure of Capitalist Production”
Trumpism and resurgent authoritarianism have generated a tidal wave of opposition
around the globe. In the U.S., a movement of millions of people in active revolt against
Trumpism—known as #TheResistance—has emerged.Its self-development requires
that we support its independence from the Democratic Party and from “leftists” who
would co-opt or derail it.We must also combat the idea that the left can somehow win
over the “base” that supports Trump and other authoritarians and turn white nationalists towards revolutionary socialism. That is a pipe dream of a segment of the “left” that wants power for itself and which acted in ways that helped Trump win the 2016 U.S. election.
Wednesday, June 6th, 2018
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.(promptly)
Jefferson Market Library
(Willa Cather Community Room)
425 Avenue of the Americas, New York City
(on the corner of W. 10th St. & 6th Ave.)
Presented byMarxist-Humanist Initiative
http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org

For a forthcoming book…. comments welcome.

Abstract Labor

Brendan Cooney

Introduction.

As established in a previous chapter, if a coat and a quantity of linen are equal in value this means that both are products of an equal amount of labor time. However, the tailoring labor of the coat-maker is different in many respects than the weaving labor of the linen producer. If we look at the concrete motions of the tailor and weaver it is rather difficult to compare or equate the two in any meaningful way. However, if we abstract away all of the concrete details of both workers’ labor we are left with nothing but an expenditure of human effort over a period of time. Viewed this way, abstractly, both labors are qualitatively the same, allowing us to say that one hour of tailoring is equal to an hour of weaving.

One might object that the above abstraction, in which we set aside all concrete details of the labor process and view each labor merely as an expenditure of human effort over time, would not make sense if the tailor expended more energy, or was more productive in an hour than the weaver. But if we subject this objection to scrutiny we see an even more difficult conundrum: How can we compare the productivity of weaving to the productivity of tailoring? If the weaver makes 5 bolts of linen an hour and the tailor makes 1 shirt an hour is there any meaningful way of saying one is more or less productive than the other? Just as we cannot compare or equate different use-values, we also cannot compare or equate concrete labors in any meaningful way.

However, in a society governed by the imperative to produce at the socially necessary labor time, we know that each hour of work, regardless of whether it is tailoring, weaving, or any other concrete form, is held to a standard level of efficiency. Even if a worker is less efficient than average, her product is valued at the socially necessary labor time. Thus, in this sense, we know that an hour of tailoring, done at the socially necessary labor time, is equal to an hour of weaving or any other work done at the socially necessary labor time. Through the mechanism of socially necessary labor time all labors appear as equal expenditures of abstract human effort over time.¹

This abstract expenditure of human labor over time is what Marx calls “abstract labor.” While the tailor performs abstract labor, this abstract expenditure of effort has a specific concrete form. The concrete labor corresponds to the particular labor process of tailoring. Concrete labor produces use-values. Abstract labor produces value. Labor is both concrete and abstract at the same time.

At first glance, reading through the opening pages of Capital, one might get the impression that abstract labor is a purely theoretical short-cut designed to let Marx equate completely heterogeneous labors. But, as we have already seen, labor is not just treated abstractly in thought. It is treated abstractly by society itself, in reducing all labors to an equal expenditure of energy. This makes abstract labor an important concept in Marx’s theory of the capitalist labor process. Rather than just an academic category, abstract labor is real work that people actually do. As such, an understanding of abstract labor illuminates all of the dehumanizing ways that capital dominates the worker in production, reducing her work to an abstract, cog-like activity.

Since abstract labor creates value, and since value is objectified abstract labor, the concept is also central to Marx’s value theory. It is upon this framework that Marx develops the theory of exploitation, of crisis, and all of the other critical observations of his value theory.

Marx’s critique of capital is a radical critique aimed at penetrating the inner-most categories of capitalist production. Abstract labor is such a category. It is an essential aspect of capitalist social relations and thus also an essential aspect of Marx’s critique of capital. For this reason it is often the subject of much debate and criticism. This chapter attempts to sketch the main contours of Marx’s concept of abstract labor as well as address some of the main areas of criticism which have arisen in response to the concept.

What does Marx mean by abstract and concrete labor?

For Marx an idea is concrete if it encompasses all of the interrelated aspects of the thing which the idea describes. “Concrete labor” refers to a particular type of labor in all of its complexity and detail. The concrete labor of shoe-making involves all of the interrelated tasks required to make a shoe from cutting leather, to making patterns, to sewing, etc. The concrete labor that makes shoes is very different than the concrete labor that makes pianos. However, there are some common aspects that both shoe-making and piano-making share. They are both a “productive expenditure of human brains, muscles, nerves, hands, etc., and in this sense both human labor.”² But we can only see these common aspects if we abstract away all of the differences between the two types of labor. For Marx, an idea is abstract if it represents only part of the thing it is describing. An abstract idea is a partial, incomplete picture of reality. When we say that both labors are an expenditure of human brains, nerves and muscles we abstract away all of the concrete differences between the two labors and are left with only the most abstract, partial dimension of the labor process.

Labor is both concrete and abstract. A particular labor, shoe-making for instance, is concrete in that it consists of a certain combination of activities that produces shoes and not pianos. But at the same time, considered abstractly, shoe-making is a “productive expenditure of human brains, muscles, nerves, hands, etc.,” and it shares this abstract quality with piano manufacturing and all other labors. The concrete aspects of labor correspond to the distinct use-values of commodities. Abstract labor, the aspect common to all labor, is what produces value.

In some ways this presentation might not seem so different than other common uses of “abstract” and “concrete”. For instance, we might use a similar process in defining a ball. All balls have a common quality: they are a sphere that can be thrown. Each concrete ball is different in size, weight, color, etc. Each individual ball is a concrete object but also a member of a class of objects that we designate with the abstraction “ball”.

But if we look a little closer at Marx’s presentation of abstract labor we begin to see ways in which the way “abstract labor” is abstract differs from the way in which”ball” might be considered abstract. “Ball” is a term used to classify a group of objects by their common properties. “Ball” is a linguistic construct that describes a class of objects. It is another matter with abstract labor. Abstract labor is not just a mental or linguistic abstraction made for the purpose of classification. The force of socially necessary labor time, in the real world, reduces labor to an abstraction. This abstraction emerges from a social process and not just a mind contemplating objects. Individual balls have no necessary relation to each other. They just share common properties. Abstract labors have a necessary, intrinsic connection to one another because socially necessary labor time is the result of a social process in which all labors participate.

If this seems odd it may help to note that Marx’s notion of abstract and concrete are somewhat different than the way these terms often appear in everyday use. It is not uncommon to hear abstract/concrete as a stand-in for mind/matter, where abstract ideas exist in the mind and concrete things exist in reality. Marx’s use of the terms comes from a philosophical tradition inherited through Hegel in which ideas can be abstract or concrete and aspects of reality can be abstract and concrete.³ An idea is concrete if it captures a concept in all of its interrelated determinations while an idea is abstract if it only considers one-side of a thing in isolation. The same is true for the real world, outside of the mind of philosophers. Things exist concretely in a complex tapestry of interrelations which all create and define the concrete thing in question. But sometimes a thing itself can exist abstractly when it is developed one-sidedly, partially. As we will see below, capitalism develops the abstract aspects of labor, degrading work to an abstract expenditure of effort over time, in order to rid itself of its dependency on the concrete skills of workers. By developing labor as an abstraction, capital is able to achieve mastery over the worker, diminishing the worker to an abstract input in an objective production process.

Abstract labor, then, is both a concept and a real thing. It is a concept that describes a real material phenomenon, the abstract labor that workers perform in a capitalist society.

“Physiologically Abstract”?

Some critics charge that Marx’s notion of abstract labor is problematic if it is interpreted as referring to physiological aspects of the labor process. Several times in Capital and the Critique of Political Economy Marx refers to abstract labor as a “productive expenditure of human brains, muscles, nerves, hands, etc.”⁴ These abstract elements of labor are a “physiological fact” to Marx. There is a line of criticism directed at Marx’s “physiological” definition of abstract labor. We find this critique in its classic form in the writings of the Soviet economist Issac Rubin who argued that a physiological definition of abstract labor implies that all labor throughout history has been abstract, thus “naturalizing” and “reifying” a category of capitalist social relations.⁵

It is tempting to agree with Rubin. After all, Marx is constantly critiquing bourgeoise economists for projecting categories like “capital” and “labor” back in time in a way that makes the elements of capitalist production seem like eternal, natural aspects of all social orders for all of time. It is true that all labor, regardless of the mode of production, is an expenditure of effort over time. This could make it appear as if all labor throughout history is abstract and therefore all labor has produced value.

However, as explained in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, what allows us to say that the abstract expenditure of human brains, muscles and nerves of the tailor is equivalent to that of the weaver is the fact that both are subjected to the same social process, socially necessary labor time, which disciplines workers to produce at the social average and which only counts their product as social to the extent that it meets this social average. While we can use our powers of mental abstraction to see that the labor of cavemen, Roman slaves, etc. were all expenditures of human energy in the abstract, it is only in a capitalist society that society, not philosophy, performs this abstraction. It is only with capitalism that the abstraction “labor in general” becomes a “practical truth”⁶. Thus labor can be physiologically abstract and at the same time abstract labor can be a historically contingent category, the result of specific social relations, and not an eternal category of all human history.

Rubin’s difficulty in understanding how a physiological category can be abstract is a product of an artificial division which he erects between social aspects of capitalism and “material/technical” aspects of capitalism.⁷ For Rubin, social relations between people are the subject of value theory while the technical aspects of production are the subject of science. From this arbitrary dichotomy comes the conclusion that physiological aspects of labor cannot produce value because they are technical aspects of production and not a social phenomenon between people. Rubin’s arbitrary dichotomy of social/technical is similar to the above mentioned dichotomy of mind/matter. Both assume that material things can only be concrete and that abstraction belongs to the mind or to social reality. This way of dividing up philosophy short-circuits the power of Marx’s method, making it impossible to see how a physiological reality can be abstract, social and historical.

Lest the reader think that such debates are purely for the realm of obscurantist philosophers it should be noted that Rubin’s social/technical dichotomy is reflective of the Soviet approach to socialism which treated the development of the forces of production as a purely technical issue while ignoring the fact that the Soviet worker was just as degraded, alienated and exploited as her counterparts in capitalist society. To truly free workers from the tyranny of abstract labor we need an understanding of abstract labor that does not reduce abstractions to purely mental activity and does not treat the labor process purely as a technical process unshaped by the mode of production. We will return to this theme later in the chapter.

Abstract Ideas and Practical Truth

“The simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society.”⁸

Of course, for all of human history, labor has been “a certain productive expenditure of muscles, nerves, brain, etc.” However, human labor has not always produced value nor have all societies considered all human labor to be qualitatively the same in an economic sense. While the labor of a feudal serf and a guildsman may have both been productive expenditures of muscles, nerves, brains, etc. these societies did not have a notion of “man in general” or of the qualitative equality between labors. An hour of serf labor was not qualitatively equal to an hour of guild labor. While it may have been possible to form a mental abstraction of human labor in general in past societies, it is only in capitalism that such an abstraction becomes a “practical truth”. This is why the notion of labor in general as the source of economic value only emerges with the development of capitalism.⁹

When Marx says that abstract labor attains a “practical truth” in capitalism he means that labor is treated abstractly in actual social practice.¹⁰ Capitalists and workers, as personifications of the economic categories of capital and labor, treat labor abstractly. They do this not because of an idea they have of abstract labor, but because such social practice is an essential part of capitalist production.

There are several overlapping ways that labor is treated abstractly in capitalist production. While socially necessary labor time assures that an hour of work is a uniform expenditure of abstract energy, this occurs within a complex of interlocking social relations which allow for such a practical abstraction.

To start with, the fact that workers are separated from the means of production through the institution of private property means that an individual has no permanent relation to a particular type of labor. Workers in a capitalist society do not own the means of production but instead sell their labor to a capitalist who owns the means of production. Rather than workers being in control of the objects upon which they labor, workers are denuded, empty subjects with no objective connection to any specific labor process. They could be hired by any capitalist to perform any type of concrete labor. Divorced also from their means of subsistence, workers seek a job not to fulfill themselves as productive, creative beings but in order to make money to buy their subsistence in the market. The specific concrete labor they do has no particular bearing on the goal of earning money to buy subsistence goods. All jobs make money and so any job is as good as another, from this perspective, as long as it allows one to purchase the same subsistence goods as any other job. The result is a society in which workers are relatively indifferent to the type of labor they perform. People pass with relative ease from one occupation to the next and society educates the entire workforce in a general set of skills that prepares workers to do a variety of interchangeable jobs. The capitalist mode of production only arises historically when capital “confronts the totality of all labors potentially, and the particular one it confronts at any time is an accidental matter.”¹¹

The skeptical reader may object that, subjectively, workers have a range of attitudes about their work, not all of which reflect an utter indifference to their occupation. It is unlikely that when Marx speaks of abstract labor being characterized by an indifference to concrete labor he is making a claim to describe all subjective feelings about work.¹² Rather he is describing certain objective conditions which cause the particular concrete type of work to be a matter of relative indifference to both capitalists and labors. Subjective attitudes exist within what might be termed an “objective indifference” to the particular concrete form of labor. Compared to the rigid class-systems of pre-capitalist society, capitalist society shows a high degree of mobility between concrete labors. People in feudal Europe did not have “jobs”. They were born into a class and performed the labor associated with this class until they died. The relative mobility between occupations in a capitalist society is a reflection of the fact that workers are not tied to a particular means of production and are thus treated as abstract units which can be applied to any production process.

More importantly, separated from the means of production workers do not own the product of their work, nor do they control the labor process. As denuded subjects, all they can do is perform labor at a pace and content dictated to them by the objective organization of production that they confront. This makes it impossible for workers to have an experience of work in which their labor is a true process of fulfilling their creative potential as social beings. Instead work is a task, an imposition, a job, a drag, something to get through in order to survive. Though workers work with means of production these means of production are the property of someone else, a capitalist whose material interest is to control the labor process for the purpose of maximizing exploitation. The means of production confront the worker as an alien being and thus concrete labor appears to the worker as an alien process imposed upon her. With no intrinsic relation to a concrete labor process the worker enters production as an abstract subject.

The imperative to produce at the socially necessary labor time enforces a tendency toward uniformity of production norms. An assembly line worker at Ford might easily replace an assembly line worker at Chrysler because the pressure to produce at the average level of efficiency creates a tendency for the spread of technologies and labor practices across an industry so that work is virtually identical from one job to another. The particular worker is highly expendable, easily replaced by another. This is true between industries as well, as the cog-like activity of labor becomes increasingly similar from one type of work to another.

Socially necessary labor time dictates that an hour of concrete labor performed at the socially necessary labor time is an hour of abstract labor.¹³ If the socially necessary labor time to make a widget is 1 hour and it takes me an hour to make a widget then I have performed an hour of abstract labor. If I take 2 concrete hours to make the widget then I still have produced an hour of abstract labor. This mechanism imposes a uniform efficiency on all labor so that all labor is valued equally as an abstract expenditure of human energy. By valuing commodities in this way capitalism erases the differences between workers so that any one worker’s labor is just an anonymous input in a giant mass of social labor, the individual pieces of which are indistinguishable from on another.

The imperative to produce at or under the socially necessary labor time is the prime motivator in the mechanization of work and the scientific management of the labor process. Value is measured in hours and thus the vast majority of changes to the production process revolve around the need to decrease the time it takes to carry out tasks. The less control the worker has over the the labor process the easier it is for the capitalist to increase the speed and intensity of work. Machines and scientific management of the labor process are the prime weapons of capital in its quest to take control of the labor process away from workers. Machines free capital from its dependence on the concrete skills of the worker.¹⁴ By dictating the pace and intensity of work through a machine the worker becomes a cog in the machine, an abstract input into the production process with no space for the exertion of will or creativity.

Lastly, it should be noted that capitalist production has one goal and this is to extract the maximum amount of surplus-value from workers. The capitalist’s only concern is to invest money in order to make more money. In order to increase surplus-value capital must pass through the stage of concrete labor. Commodities with use-values must be produced. But the specific type of commodity and the specific labor process required to produce this commodity are a matter of indifference for capital. It is the accumulation value for its own sake, abstracting away from use-value and concrete labor, that is the reason for capitalist production. To the capitalist all labor is the same as long as it produces surplus labor time. This absolute indifference to concrete labor contributes to the degradation and domination of the labor process, as discussed above.

Simple and Complex Labor

As we have seen, one of the most crucial ways in which labor is treated as abstract in practice is in the drive to produce at the socially necessary labor time. Socially necessary labor time assures capital that despite the different use-vales made by workers in different industries, each hour of work is an hour of abstract labor expended at the socially necessary labor time. Thus, an hour of one person’s labor is equal to an hour of anyone else’s, allowing capital to confront the totality of labors as one homogenous, abstract mass.

However, the above claim would be more correctly stated as, “an hour of simple labor is equal to any other hour of simple labor.” Simple labor is “the labor-power possessed in his bodily organism by every ordinary man, on the average, without being developed in any special way.”¹⁵ It is what might commonly be referred to as “unskilled labor”, though the term “simple” is perhaps more appropriate than “unskilled” since all labor requires some degree of skill, no matter how basic. Simple labor is the labor that any average citizen of a society can perform. This average set of common skills changes over time and varies between societies, “but in a particular society it is given.”¹⁶

Simple labor stands in contrast to complex labor. Complex labor is labor that embodies a specialized skill-set that allows it to produce more value in an hour than simple labor. While one hour of simple labor produces the same amount of value as any other hour of simple labor, an hour of complex labor produces more value than an hour of simple labor.

Some critics have argued that the fact that complex labor produces more value than skilled labor contradicts the idea that one hour of abstract labor is equal to any other person’s hour of abstract labor.¹⁷

Marx addresses the issue of complex and simple labor with brevity. In social practice complex labor is treated just as abstractly as simple labor. The difference between the two is not a difference of quality (concrete and abstract) but of quantity (how much abstract labor). Complex labor counts as multiples of simple labor. For instance, a doctor’s complex labor might produce five times more value per hour than the simple labor of a barista. But both the barista’s simple labor and the doctor’s complex labor are abstract because both are subject to the imperative to produce at the socially necessary labor time. An hour of doctoring done at the socially necessary labor time is, in this case, equal to five hours of barista labor done at the socially necessary labor time. The quantitative relation between complex labor and simple labor is determined by social processes carried out “behind the backs of the producers”.

Most of the controversy that has surrounded Marx’s reduction of complex labor to simple labor stems from a misunderstanding of what Marx claims. Marx is sometimes misread to be arguing that complex labor is only abstract once it is reduced to simple labor.¹⁸ This leads to the charge that Marx should have specified a precise formula for how complex labor is reduced to simple labor. However, this line of thinking immediately sets Marx’s theory up for failure because there is no way to reduce one concrete labor to a multiple of another concrete labor. Like use-values, concrete labors are incommensurable. There is no meaningful way of comparing or reducing the concrete work of a doctor to that of a barista in a quantitative sense. A thing can only be a multiple of another if both are of the same quality. Complex labor can be reduced to simple labor because both are abstract. Both are abstract because both are subject to the imperative to produce at the socially necessary labor time.¹⁹

Marx’s comment that the reduction of concrete labor to simple labor is carried out by social forces “behind the backs of the producers”, likens this reduction to all of the other laws of capitalism like socially necessary labor time and the tendential fall in rate of profit which exert themselves without the conscious intervention of society. Primarily, the existence of complex labor is the result of the time it takes to train skilled workers. An hour of this complex labor is a concentrated expenditure of this stored-up energy.²⁰

The Value-Form, Particular-Universal, and Abstract Concrete

The following section of this chapter discusses the relation between Marx’s concrete-abstract labor argument and the particular-universal argument that he makes in the value-form section of Chapter One of Capital. This section would not necessarily be so crucial to include here were it not for the great deal of misreadings on this topic that one finds in the secondary literature. The argument Marx makes about the difference between particular expressions of value and universal expressions of value is often conflated with Marx’s argument about concrete and abstract labor. This section endeavors to make a few constructive points that may help the reader find clarity about the relation of the “value-form” to abstract labor.

In the “value-form” section of chapter one of Capital Marx endeavors to explain how the abstract labor objectified in a commodity expresses itself in exchange-value. It may be helpful to remember that abstract labor is an activity that workers do, that it is objectified in commodities as the substance of their intrinsic value, and that this value must be expressed in exchange-value. While any commodity can express the value of any other commodity through a simple equation (A=B), Marx shows how this process results in one commodity becoming the universally recognized expression of value for all other commodities. This is the money commodity. Money is the “universal equivalent”.²¹

Commodities have a “natural form” and a “value form”. The natural-form is the physical body of the commodity itself. The “form of value” or the “value-form” refers to the form taken by the intrinsic value of commodities when this intrinsic value, this abstract labor time, is expressed in the physical form of another commodity. This happens whenever we equate one commodity with another. Any commodity can be the value-form of any other commodity. Linen can be the value form of coats. Sweet peas can be the value-form of linen. Bicycles can be the value-form of sweet peas, and so on, in an endless series of expressions of the “simple form of value”. It is easy to imagine the difficulties that would arise if society were to attempt to organize commodity production and exchange only using this method of valuing commodities. When each commodity measures its value in a different commodity there is no one commodity that can stand as a universal expression of the abstract labor embodied in commodities. The abstract labor in coats is expressed in the particular form of linen, in the physical body of the linen. The abstract labor in the sweet peas is expressed in the particular physical body of bicycles. Though these commodities are all commensurable because they embody abstract labor, no one commodity serves as a universal measure of abstract labor. Instead we just have a series of particular expressions of value, each in the form of a different use-value corresponding to a particular concrete labor.

The defects of the simple-form of value lead to the emergence of the money-form of value. When money stands as the general-equivalent of all other commodities, it becomes a universally recognized expression of abstract labor. Abstract labor is expressed in a universal form, as general social labor. Rather than abstract labor being expressed in this or that particular use-value, it is expressed in one commodity.

This move from the particular to the universal is an important theme in Marx’s discussion of the value-form. Marx’s argument about money becoming the universal expression of value is sometimes conflated or confused with Marx’s argument about concrete and abstract labor.²² Since the abstract labor in commodities cannot be expressed as universal social labor until it is expressed in money this has caused some readers to believe that it is the exchange of commodities for money that retroactively turns the labor embodied in a commodity into abstract labor. In this reading, the labor of a coat-maker remains concrete until the coat is exchanged for money. The act of exchanging the coat for money makes the labor that had been expended on it abstract. This line of thinking has spawned a sprawling body of thought loosely lumped together under the moniker “value-form approach”. The Soviet economist Isacc Rubin is generally considered the intellectual originator of this line of thinking. The “value-form approach” has some key differences with the value-form argument that Marx makes in Capital.

It is not hard to see where this confusion might creep in. For instance, when discussing the defects of the simple form of value Marx says, “the specific, concrete, useful kind of labor contained in each commodity-equivalent is only a particular kind of labor and therefore not an exhaustive form of appearance of human labor in general.”²³ A sentence like this seems to equate particular and concrete labor so that each person’s particular, private labor remains concrete even in the simple form of value, only becoming universal and abstract in the money form where particular labors are equated with the universal symbol of labor in general. However, a closer reading might catch the crucial phrase “form of appearance” in the above sentence. These three words make all of the difference. They clue us in to the fact that Marx is not discussing a process of concrete labor becoming abstract labor. Rather, he is discussing the inadequacy of the simple form of value as an expression of, a form of appearance of value.

Value must be expressed. It must appear. The form of its appearance depends on what the commodity is equated with. If the coats are equated with linen then coats have a particular expression of value in the form of linen. If coats are equated with money then coats express their value in a universal form. This ability to express value in a particular or universal form is only possible because all commodities are already products of abstract labor, already contain intrinsic value, and are thus commensurable. The “value-form approach” , on the contrary, leads us to the conclusion that labor is solely concrete before commodities exchange and that therefore value doesn’t exist until exchange happens. (The “value-form approach” is often referred to as a “circulationist approach” since it implies that value arises in circulation rather than production.) This eliminates the concept of intrinsic value, so crucial to Marx’s value theory, as argued in a previous chapter.

The debate over the value-form leads to an important question: Is capitalism fundamentally characterized by market exchange or by commodity production? If money is what makes labor abstract, if exchange produces value, then we can eliminate capitalism by replacing the market with state planning. But if abstract labor is rendered abstract by the practical truth of the role of the worker in production, and by the disciplining of production by socially necessary labor time, then a state plan does not necessarily constitute the overthrow of capitalism. This puts an understanding of abstract labor and the value-form at the center of any analysis of 20th century “communism” as well as discussions of how to supersede capitalism in the future.

Marx developed his explanation of the value-form very carefully in order to counter the popular theories of Proudhon and his anarchist-mutualist followers who blamed money for distorting the natural laws of commodity production. Marx wanted to show that money, the universal equivalent, was just a developed form of the simple-form of value and that the form of value was an expression of the intrinsic value already existing in commodities. Thus, money is an inescapable part of any commodity-producing society. The social ills of capitalism are the result of the contradictions of the commodity form, not of some monetary distortion imposed on the natural order of things.

When Rubin and the so-called “value-form school” argue that labor is rendered abstract in exchange, and that therefore value is created in exchange, they undo Marx’s value-form argument against Proudhon. Capitalism is given its distinctive form by exchange and not by commodity production. This point of view produces a politics which focuses on eliminating markets with planning rather than eliminating the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s view suggests a much more radical vision in which we are challenged to create a society in which work is not an alienated abstraction.

Abstract Labor and Communism

As this chapter has argued, although labor can be considered abstractly in any mode of production, it is only in a capitalist society that labor is treated abstractly in practice. This understanding is then crucial for the project of specifying what would be necessary to break with the capitalist mode of production and construct a new society based on the needs of people rather than the needs of capital.

As discussed more fully in the chapter on Indirectly Social Labor, labor in a capitalist society is only counted as social labor to the extent that it is socially necessary labor. In a communist society each individual’s labor would be counted as social labor immediately and fully without having to be mediated through a process of social averaging. Thus, it would not be the case that labor was only counted as social labor in the most abstract sense. Rather, a communist society would treat concrete labor as social labor.

With this understanding that a communist society would treat concrete labor as social labor, we can then ask what sort of social relations, and what organization of production would be necessary for this to be the case. For one, labor must cease to be a matter of indifference to the worker. This implies that workers are not divorced from the means of production, only encountering the means or production when they sell their labor to capital. Rather, workers must be in control of the means of production and shape the labor process in a way that makes their work meaningful and easier. Society must not be geared toward the production of abstract value for its own sake. Rather, communism must aim to provide use-vales for people and to organize the labor process in such a way that work becomes life’s “prime want”.²⁴

The picture of a communist society without abstract labor which begins to emerge when one accepts Marx’s notion of abstract labor as real work rendered abstract by the peculiar sociality of capitalist production contrasts starkly with the picture of communism that can be deduced from the “value-form” interpretation of abstract labor in which labor is rendered abstract in exchange. In the latter case it is the market that is the defining feature of capitalism and thus a planned society which eliminates markets also eliminates abstract labor. This says nothing about the nature of work itself. A planned society could be just as degrading for workers, workers could still be compelled to work at the socially necessary labor time, and labor could still be treated abstractly in the sense that labor is only counted as social to the extent that it is an average expenditure of physical work. The difference in these two notions of abstract labor plays a big role in the debate over whether the 20^th century “communism” of the USSR, China, etc. constituted an actual break with the capitalist mode of production or whether these societies were just planned-capitalism.

In the context of a very long critique of the Proudhonian idea that commodities should exchange for their exact labor content, Marx comes to this bit in which he contrasts the directly social labor of communal production with the indirectly social labor of commodity production.

“…The communal character of production would make the product into a communal, general product from the outset. The exchange which originally takes place in production — which would not be an exchange of exchange values but of activities, determined by communal needs and communal purposes — would from the outset include the participation of the individual in the communal world of products. On the basis of exchange values, labour is posited as general only through exchange. But on this foundation it would be posited as such before exchange; i.e. the exchange of products would in no way be the medium by which the participation of the individual in general production is mediated. Mediation must, of course, take place. In the first case, which proceeds from the independent production of individuals — no matter how much these independent productions determine and modify each other post festum through their interrelations — mediation takes place through the exchange of commodities, through exchange value and through money; all these are expressions of one and the same relation. In the second case, the presupposition is itself mediated; i.e. a communal production, communality, is presupposed as the basis of production. The labour of the individual is posited from the outset as social labour. Thus, whatever the particular material form of the product he creates or helps to create, what he has bought with his labour is not a specific and particular product, but rather a specific share of the communal production. He therefore has no particular product to exchange. His product is not an exchange value. The product does not first have to be transposed into a particular form in order to attain a general character for the individual. Instead of a division of labour, such as is necessarily created with the exchange of exchange values, there would take place an organization of labour whose consequence would be the participation of the individual in communal consumption. In the first case the social character of production is posited only post festum with the elevation of products to exchange values and the exchange of these exchange values. In the second case the social character of production is presupposed, and participation in the world of products, in consumption, is not mediated by the exchange of mutually independent labours or products of labour. It is mediated, rather, by the social conditions of production within which the individual is active. Those who want to make the labour of the individual directly into money (i.e. his product as well), into realized exchange value, want therefore to determine that labour directly as general labour, i.e. to negate precisely the conditions under which it must be made into money and exchange values, and under which it depends on private exchange. This demand can be satisfied only under conditions where it can no longer be raised. Labour on the basis of exchange values presupposes, precisely, that neither the labour of the individual nor his product are directly general; that the product attains this form only by passing through an objective mediation by means of a form of money distinct from itself.

“On the basis of communal production, the determination of time remains, of course, essential. The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. Just as in the case of an individual, the multiplicity of its development, its enjoyment and its activity depends on economization of time. Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself. Society likewise has to distribute its time in a purposeful way, in order to achieve a production adequate to its overall needs;just as the individual has to distribute his time correctly in order to achieve knowledge in proper proportions or in order to satisfy the various demands on his activity. Thus, economy of time, along with the planned distribution of labour time among the various branches of production, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production. It becomes law, there, to an even higher degree. However, this is essentially different from a measurement of exchange values (labour or products) by labour time. The labour of individuals in the same branch of work, and the various kinds of work, are different from one another not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. What does a solely quantitative difference between things presuppose ? The identity of their qualities. Hence, the quantitative measure of labours presupposes the equivalence, the identity of their quality.”
-Marx, Grundrisse 171-172

This passage is helpful in understanding the categories of directly and indirectly social labor. The labor of individuals engaged in communal production is directly social because the labor does not need to pass through a mediation in order to be part of the social labor of society. Commodity producing labor must produce a product that people want at the socially necessary labor time in order to be considered social labor. All other labor is wasted labor and is not social. The particular labor, represented by a particular commodity, is only social to the extent to which it measures up to the average labor of society. The particular commodity must show its equality to all other commodities through its relation to money, in order to be part of the social labor of society. Workers in a commodity producing society must purchase their stock of consumption goods with the money they get from selling their labor time. In communal production workers have no product to sell. They do not exchange one product for another. Instead they participate in social consumption to the extent in which they participate in production. Their product is immediately social from the outset because their labor does not have to measure up to the social average to be social. To say that a worker participates in social consumption to the extent to which they participate in production means that an hour of work earns one an hour of consumption goods, regardless of the efficiency at which one works. This same idea is repeated in the Critique of the Gotha Program and in the fetishism section of chapter one of Capital.

Another common theme between this passage and Capital, as well as the Critique of Political Economy, is the notion that a quantitative comparison between products implies a qualitative equality of labors. Though labors are heterogeneous, even within the same branch of production as Marx says here, they are considered qualitatively homogeneous from the standpoint of capital. This is because capitalism values all commodities at their socially necessary labor time, thus only counting labor as social to the extent to which it measures up to this average. Thus the equivalence between labors, their qualitative equality.

This passage is also helpful in demonstrating that a communist society which makes labor directly social by eliminating socially necessary labor time need not do away with labor-time accounting or with the goal of minimizing the time it takes society to do some tasks. There are certain aspects of social production which are a-historical, universal, aspects true in all modes of production.  There is only so much social labor to organize at any given time so there are always trade-offs. Increasing efficiency always makes room more labor to go into other areas of production. Society has to organize all of this social labor some way. A communal society needs to know how much labor time society requires to achieve certain tasks in order to plan production. Marx says here that the “economy of time” becomes “law” in communal production to an even higher degree than in capitalism. I assume that by this he means that because economy of time becomes a conscious aspect of planning by society, rather than a diffuse reaction of various firms to competition, that economy of time becomes “law” to a “higher degree”.

A few thoughts on the concept of Indirectly Social Labor in The Critique of Political Economy

As far as I know, Marx does not use the term “indirectly social labor” at all in the Critique of Political Economy. However much of the first chapter deals with the unique way in which private labor becomes social in a capitalist economy. In this post I hope to extract the key points from the first chapter in relation to this unique form of social labor.

In the first few pages Marx establishes that when commodities pass as equivalents (when A stands as the equivalent of B) that they therefore represent the same entity. This entity is materialized social labor. Since value is a homogenous substance differing only in number but never in quality so must the substance of value, labor be uniform and homogenous. Though the labor that creates use-values is heterogeneous, corresponding to the different type of work required to make different products, the labor that forms exchange-value is homogenous, resulting in a homogenous value substance.

What is this totally homogenous, divisible substance which labor has? It is time, labor-time. Time is the “natural” measure of labor. Labor-time is the “vital” substance of labor. Regardless of the concrete nature of work, all work can be measured in time.

Still the reader might object various things: Skilled labor produces more value in an hour than unskilled labor. Lazy workers don’t produce as much value in an hour as hard-working workers, etc. Marx addresses such concerns. He says that in order to understand how value (or “exchange value as he says here”) is determined by labor time we must understand three things:

1. The reduction of skilled labor to simple labor

2. The specific ways in which commodity producing labor becomes social labor

3. The difference between use-value producing labor and exchange-value producing labor.

Point 2 is what primarily concerns me in this post. However, much of the first point pertains directly to the second so I will start there.

The reduction of all labor to a uniform, homogenous quality seems an abstraction but it is “an abstraction which takes place daily in the social process of production.” Se we are not dealing with some philosophical ideal abstraction but with a real material process which treats all labor as uniform and homogenous. The result is a system in which “the various working individuals appear as mere organs of labor.” “Human labor in general” is what produces values. Marx doesn’t spell out for us, here, what the material process is that reduces all labor to human labor in general. But he does point out that this general human labor does exist, virtually, in the labor that an average individual can perform. This is unskilled labor.

This is important. The process by which private labor becomes social treats all labor as if it is this average labor. A few paragraphs later when Marx comes to the concept of socially necessary labor time, we see a more explicit demonstration of the material process by which all labor is treated as average labor.

It is in the next paragraph that Marx starts to talk about point 2, the “special sense” in which labor becomes social in capitalism. The private labor of individuals is only social, is only represented in exchange value, to the extent to which it is a “relation of equality with all other individuals”.  If the SNLT to produce a widget is 1 hour, and it takes me 2 hours to make a widget, only 1 of my hours of labor is counted as social. This is capitalist equality. It is equality via inequality.

SNLT tells us how our labor is counted as social. In the next paragraph Marx goes on to explain how this sociality is expressed. “Furthermore, in exchange-value the labour-time of a particular individual is directly represented as labour-time in general, and this general character of individual labour appears as the social character of this labour.” When a commodity exchanges for another commodity, or for money, the private labor that made the commodity is expressing itself in an equation with all other labor. It is expressing its value in relation to this general, average, universal labor time. By expression value in price, by private labor expressing itself as universal labor, labor manifests its social character.

I tend to use the phrase “labor becomes social” when talking about private labor realizing its social value in exchange. Here, Marx uses the term “manifest” rather than “become”. I like “manifest” better because it makes it clear that the social value of the labor existed before exchange, only manifesting its social worth in exchange. I wonder if Marx ever uses the phrase “become social”….

So private labor is expressed as universal labor. This is the unique way in which labor is social, or indirectly social, in a capitalist economy. The exchange value of a commodity represents the labor time that went into it but only in a way in which that labor time is indistinguishable from all other labor time. It is socially necessary labor time. This labor time is represented with the general equivalent, money, which stands for labor in general.

Marx then goes to contrast this unique sociality with other modes of production. The comparisons are quite similar to the comparisons he makes in the Fetishism section of Chapter One, Volume One of Capital. In the patriarchal family of the past labor is also social but it doesn’t need to take the form of universal homogenous abstract labor in order to be social. It is immediately social. The same is true for the middle ages where the particular forms of labor constitute the social ties between people, not some universal form. In communal labor there is no private product and therefore no private labor. Each person’s labor is immediately part of the social organ. It is only in commodity production where private labor must take the form of its opposite, universal labor, in order to manifest its sociality.

Indirectly Social Labor notes. Capital Fetishism section

In the Fetishism section of chapter one, volume one of Capital Marx makes a comparison of different modes of production, arguing that the fetishism of commodities only arises in the capitalist mode of production. I think that the same logic which Marx uses in these pages also applies to the concept of “indirectly social labor”. A comparison of different modes of production reveals how labor is only indirectly social in a capitalist society in which most production is commodity production. Though Marx is only explicitly dealing with fetishism in this passage I think it is quite reasonable to see his arguments applying equally to indirectly social labor, so that when he says, “The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production….” the same logic holds for indirectly social labor.

The reason the two categories map onto each other is that it is only in a society of indirectly social labor that the social relations between producers are mysterious and not immediately apparent. It is only because private labor must take the form of commodity value in order to be social that we have commodity fetishism. “Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the same thing, with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society in the same absurd form.”

Thus, Marx’s comparison of modes of production allow us some insights into how we can better understand the concepts of direct and indirectly social labor.

Commodity fetishism and indirectly social labor vanish in non-capitalist social formations. Marx moves through several examples of directly social labor, an isolated Crusoe, medieval production, the patriarchal peasant family, and a communist society of free individuals. One point he makes is that in each mode of production labor time is still used as a measure of one’s input into the total social labor. Each mode of production uses some form of what might be called “labor-time accounting”. Yet this alone does not make labor indirectly social.

The Robinson Crusoe example, in addition to serving as a parody of bourgeois writers, shows that Crusoe’s activity contains all of the determinants of value yet there is no value creation, all of his labor is directly part of the total product, and there is no fetishism of commodities. Crusoe plans:  “His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him.” There is labor-time accounting and this planning happens through a consideration of average labor times, yet there is no value creation and thus no indirectly social labor. Why is this the case? The reader might at first assume that this is because Marx is dealing with an economy of one person and thus his labor is automatically directly “social”, or directly counted as part of the total product, because he does not exchange his labor with a larger society.

But in the examples that follow Marx shows that this is not the reason. In the relations of personal dependence that characterizes the European middle ages labors are just as well measured by time. Yet these labors do not take the form of objectified value in the form of commodities. “Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour.” By this Marx means that each individual’s labor, just like each of Crusoe’s different forms of labor, immediately counts as part of the social product without needing to take the form of money, the general abstract social form of value, in order to be validated as social labor. If a peasant works 5 days on the landlords land, and 2 on his own, those five days of work are directly part of the landlord’s wealth. The peasant’s labor does not have to be related to a socially necessary labor time and then take the money-form of value in order to be social. It is immediately social in its concrete, particular form.

The interior relations of the peasant family also serve as a social unit, the individual labors of which are all directly social, not needing to be mediated through socially necessary labor time and money in order to be socially valid. That means that if Peasant A produces corn less efficiently than Peasant B this doesn’t mean that Peasant A’s labor is wasted, or that some of his/her labor does not count as social. Everything that Peasant A creates is part of the total product consumed by the family. “The labour power of each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labour power of the family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of individual labour power by its duration, appears here by its very nature as a social character of their labour.”

The labor of the members of the communist society in Marx’s last example is directly social for the same reason: Each person’s labor is immediately counted as a portion of the total social labor rather than the averaging that is required for private labor to become social in a capitalist society. “All the characteristics of Robinson‘s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual.”

To further clarify Marx points out that labor-time accounting could take two roles in a communist society in both planning of production and serving as a way of distributing consumption goods. Though distribution could be handled different ways Marx shows an example in which an hour of work entitles one to an hour of consumption goods: ” On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption.”  Of course, in a capitalist society an hour of work does not directly entitle us to a proportionate share of the social product. Rather, on a socially average hour of work does so. Marx makes this clear earlier in the chapter in his discussion of the English hand loom weavers.

This last examples is very much in the same spirit as Marx’s discussion of the lower phase of communist in the Critique of the Gotha Program. There he says:

“Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society — after the deductions have been made — exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another….”  “Hence, equal right here is still in principle — bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.”

Just as Crusoe uses average labor times as a basis for planning his work so too a communist society with directly social labor would use averages to plan production. But this averaging is not the same as the averaging that happens with socially necessary labor time in a capitalist society. In the latter case sub-average labor does not count as fully social. If the SNLT is 1 hour and it takes me 3 hours then only one of my hours counts as social. In the directly social labor of a communist society all 3 my hours would be social because I have the right to an hour of consumption goods for every hour that I work. My labor time has cost society more because all of my labor is social.

This also means that labor in a communist society is not abstract but rather only concrete. An hour of one person’s labor is not the same, is not interchangeable with another’s, in the way it is in capitalism.