This question <6|9> overall <6|8> Hans: <2|8>.

Question 57: Is value the result of abstract labor?

[7] Hans: Is Ice the Result of Water?   The first thing that needs to be said about Cartman's [3], and I'd like to shout this out so that you all hear it and remember it, is that Cartman uses the wrong concept of “value”! To Cartman, the value of a commodity is “its final value to society.” This is not how Marx uses the word “value”. In the Annotations, at the very beginning of my notes about Chapter 1, I wrote:

The word ‘value’ is used by Marx in a very specific meaning. Value (sometimes Marx calls it ‘commodity value’) is that property of a commodity which allows it to be exchanged on the market. ‘Value’ is not an ethical category, and it also does not indicate a subjective valuation (how much someone values something). Marx uses this word to denote an economic category: it is that intrinsic property of commodities which finds its expression in the market price.

But now let's go to the beginning of Cartman's essay. Cartman begins with a Marx quote. He should have given us the page number (it comes from 129:1) since we are discussing the text here in some detail and readers might want to look up the context of this quote:

“A use value, or useful article has value only because Human Labor in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it.” Clearly, from this statement, we see that Marx believes that value is the result of abstract labor. The quantity of labor required to make or produce a certain article determines that level of value given to it.

I agree that the given Marx quote indeed suggests this interpretation, Cartman therefore has good grounds for the conclusion he is drawing. But I will argue that although roughly correct, the details of this interpretation are wrong. Marx's quote was therefore misleading.

Which details are wrong? Cartman writes: “The quantity of labor required to make or produce a certain article determines that level of value given to it.” This means, society gives value to the commodity based on the labor in the commodity, and this value then in turn determines the exchange value or the price. If a commodity has more abstract labor in it, people value it more, and therefore they are willing to pay a higher price for it.

This mechanism, let me call it mechanism (1), is not what Marx had in mind. Marx was rather thinking along the following lines, which I will call mechanism (2): say one unit of commodity A is customarily exchanged on the market against one unit of commodity B but A contains more labor than B. Then the producers of A will say: instead of producing A and exchanging it for B, I will be better off producing B itself. Therefore, over time more producers will produce commodity B and fewer producers commodity A, therefore the supply of A declines, which drives up its price. There is no subjective valuation involved, but the labor content itself asserts itself here through the blind forces of demand and supply.

Mechanism (2) establishes a much more direct link between labor and the exchange proportions of the commodities than mechanism (1). It is not filtered through what people think of the commodities, but is entirely automatic and independent of the subjective view of anyone. It is a little scary that our economic laws have this automatic inexorable character, but according the Marx's theory this is exactly the situation the capitalist society is in.

In order to emphasize this automatic tight link between labor and exchange proportions, not mediated by human reflection, Marx says that value is congealed abstract labor. Marx does not say value is caused by or is the result of abstract labor, but it is abstract labor. Just as one does not say ice is caused by water, or ice is the result of water, but ice is water.

Let me say a little more how I grade this. Cartman's error regarding the meaning of the word “value” in Marx's writings did lower his grade. But the fact that Cartman missed the difference between mechanism (1) and (2) did not diminish his grade. He took a good shot at it, and backed up what he wrote with Marx quotes. Cartman has a very clear writing style. This is like sitting in a glass house: everyone can throw stones at him because he is not hiding anything. But for the discussion as a whole this clarity has great merits: it allows us to focus on the relevant issues, instead of getting lost in the fog of impenetrable mumbo-jumbo.

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