Hello and welcome to the eighth and last session of capsule form of flow. Please, Ray, take it away. Thanks, Zenobio. First of all, I'm worried my connection tonight may not be so good. so let me know if the sound if I start cutting out or if the the quality deteriorates but I hope yeah I hope it's it's it's functional enough so yeah I'm gonna share the screen
of my screen I'm not sure why it's propping up seems to be preventing me from sharing the screen. Can you see the, what can you see on the screen? Nothing, just your name. Okay, yeah, hold on, I'm trying to... okay is that um can you see okay good okay yeah sorry about that right um okay so i'm
going to focus on um basically the opening chapter of capital um the account of the commodity form and the implications of this Marx's account. The thing that's absent from this presentation will be an account of surplus value. So in a way, I'm hoping to do a short, you know, provide a short recording about the nature of surplus value and as a source of its connection to surplus labor and exploitation because in a way that's the one thing I'm not able, I don't have time to cover in this presentation and which I would have had I had more time.
So I'm just going to... Okay, right. So I'll begin with Marx's claim that the commodity has economic self-form. So this is in a way, it's a very important statement at the opening in the Preface to capital where Marx is trying to give an account of the value form the value form as form of social equivalence and his his analysis of the commodity form is central to accounting for the nature of
the value form so Marx writes the value form whose fully developed shape is the money form is very simple and slight in content. Nevertheless, the human mind has sought in vain for more than 2,000 years to get to the bottom of it, while on the other hand, there has been at least an approximation to a successful analysis of forms, which are much richer in content and more complex. Why? Because the complete body is easier to study than it sells. Moreover, in the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance the power of abstraction must replace both but for bourgeois society the commodity form of the product of labor or the
value form of the commodity is the economic cell form to the superficial observer the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but so similarly does microscopic anatomy. So here Marx's claim is that the commodity is the cell form for the capitalist social organism. And if we take this metaphor seriously, It contains or encapsulates the fundamental structure of this social organism or social structure.
It's also the fundamental units for the reproduction of this organism. So in a way, the cellular structure of the capitalist social organism is required in order to understand how this organism reproduces itself. And Marx's claim is simply that capitalism is commodity production. is the mode of production dominated by commodity production, but it also reproduces itself through commodification.
So in a way, the commodity form is both at the origin and at the terminus of the process of capitalist production. And the first significant aspect of the commodity that Marx highlights is that the commodity is sensuous, super-sensuous. So the commodity is contradictory because it is simultaneously sensuous, concretely perceptible, and super sensuous, or abstract and imperceptible.
So Marx writes, it is absolutely clear that by his activity, man changes the forms of the materials of nature in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it nevertheless the table continues to be wood an ordinary sensuous thing but as soon as it appears as a commodity it changes into a sensuous super sensuous thing and here you know this is unfortunately this is um you know the
The German has a sinlich, übersinnliche Ding, and this is lost in the translation, you know, the Penguin translation, which is unfortunate because it's important to realize how for Marx the socialization of speculative transcendence which Feuerbach situated in the interpersonal I-Thou relation, which is mutual recognition by and of self-conscious persons, is alienated in the commodity as sensuous, super-sensuous thing.
So in a way, the commodity becomes the locus of a transcendence in a way which has been which is now estranged from, you know, the from human being, you know, and from the the powers of self-consciousness. And this is why Marx will famously claim that, you know, and the what he calls the fetishism of commodities involves material relations among producers becoming social relations among their products. The commodity form embodies the contradiction for Marx between commodified labor as content of value and uncommodified labor as its substratum. And I'll return to this point
at the end of this presentation. This is why I think that the key distinction is between living labor and labor power and the distinction between concrete and abstract labor is internal to labor power and in fact not doesn't map onto the distinction between living labor and labor power but i'll return to this at the end. Okay so then Marx famously distinguishes between the two aspects of the commodity. First of all, use as a substance of value. So he writes the usefulness of a thing makes it a use value,
but this usefulness does not dangle in mid-air. It is conditioned by the body of the commodity and has no existence apart from the latter. Here again, unfortunately, the English mistranslates this as the physical properties of the commodity. You know, varenkörper, you know, commodity body, body of the commodity, is, you know, mistranslated as physical, you know, as if the body of the commodity is you know the a physical entity which is absolutely is not for Marx's account because a commodity need not be a physical object so the you know the corporeal properties
of the commodity are not physical properties it cuts across the you know the the physical non-physical distinction. So continuing, it is therefore the body of the commodity itself, for instance iron, corn or a diamond, which is the use value or useful thing. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labor required to appropriate its useful qualities. Use values are only realized in use or in consumption. They constitute the
material content of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In the form of society to be considered here, they are also the material bearers of exchange value. So now we come to exchange value. So exchange corresponds to the magnitude of value. If use is a substance of value, exchange is the magnitude of value. Exchange values appear, exchange value appears, first of all, as the quantitative relation, the proportion in which use values of one kind exchange for use values of another kind. This relation changes constantly with time and place. and hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative and consequently
an intrinsic value i.e. an exchange value that is inseparably connected with the commodity or inherent in it seems a contradiction in terms. Let us consider the matter more closely. A given commodity, a quarter of wheat, for example, is exchanged for X amount of boot polish, Y amount of silk, or Z amount of gold. In short, it is exchanged for other commodities in the most diverse proportions. And therefore, the wheat has many exchange values instead of one. But X amount of good polish, Y amount of silk or Z amount of gold each represent the exchange value of one quarter of wheat.
And therefore, X amount of good polish, Y amount of silk or Z amount of gold must as exchange values be mutually replaceable or of identical magnitude. It falls 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 or the form of appearance of a content distinguishable from this. The content distinguishable from it will be value as such.
So exchange value is the form of appearance of value. Let us now take two commodities, for example, corn and iron. Whatever their exchange relation may be, it can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron for for instance one quarter of corn equals x hundred weight of iron and what does this equation signify it signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things in one quarter of corn and similarly in x hundred weight of iron both are therefore equal to a third
thing which in itself is either the one 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 This common element cannot be a geometrical, physical, chemical, or other natural property of commodities. Such properties come into consideration only to the extent that they make commodities useful, i.e. turn them into use values. But clearly, the exchange relation of commodities is characterized precisely by its abstraction from their use values. within the exchange relation one use value is worth just as much as another provided only that
it is present in the appropriate quantity as use values commodities differ above all in quality while as exchange values they can differ only in quantity and consequently do not contain an atom of use value. Okay, so now, having distinguished between the use value and the exchange value, and exchange value and value, value being the third thing, the common element, which unites
two distinct commodities, Marx now argues that the substance of value is what he calls abstract labor, human labor in general. So if then we disregard the use value of commodities, only one property remains, that of being products of labor. But even the product of labor has already been transformed in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we abstract also from the material constituents and forms which make it a use value.
And again, here material, here it's matter as opposed to form and not material in the physical sense. It's not physical materiality, it's simply matter as contrasted was form. So the material of the commodity is whatever characteristics or qualities it possesses that render it useful. or that whatever properties constitute its usefulness. And these can be any types of properties. So the usefulness of a piece of software is obviously part of the is embodied in the commodity.
It's part. It's a corporeal property of the commodity, but it's obviously not a physical property. So, if we abstract from its use value and the constituents and forms which make it a use value, the commodity is no longer a table, a house, a piece of yarn or any other useful thing. All its sensuous characteristics are extinguished and nor is it any longer the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason or the spinner or of any other particular kind of productive labor with the disappearance of the useful character of the products of labor the useful character of the kinds of labor embodied in them also disappears and this in turns this in turn
entails the disappearance of the different concrete forms of labor they can no longer be distinguished but are altogether reduced to the same kind of labor abstract human labor um so let us now look at the residue of the products of labor there is nothing left of them in each case but the same spectral objectivity they are merely congealed quantities of homogeneous human labor i.e of human labor power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure all these things now tell us
all that these things now tell us is that human labor power has been expended to produce them human labor is accumulated in them as crystals of this social substance which is common to them all they are values commodity values so the claim is that abstract labor is the substance of value. And this substance has a spectral objectivity. This is an extremely significant expression of Marx. Spectral objectivity is constituted by
congealed human labor. I mean, human labor in a way, in congealed form, in kind of in... liquefied. All the qualitatively distinct varieties of concrete human labor, in a way, are dissolved and liquefied and turned into this... you know, amorphous gelatinous mass. The German term that Marx uses is analogous to kind of, so the jelly that's, you know, the, the, the jellified residue that is the, you know, the
byproduct of industrial meat production. So abstract Cuban labor is this kind of gelatinous mass, okay, which is labor regarded irrespectively of its qualitative particular qualitative characteristics so this is abstract human labor and this is the substance of value and this this has an objectivity this substance has an objective status but its objectivity is not
empirically perceptible it's spectra in a way I think you know One possibility here is that by spectral here, Marx means a form of objectivity that is neither empirical nor phenomenological nor purely rational. It's a register of objectivity that is not you know either perceptible or intuitable using you know the resources of self-consciousness
or at least it's not it doesn't present itself to self-consciousness so some kind of reflexive distancing is required to make it apparent. Okay. The substance of abstract labor is time, socially necessary labor time. A use value or useful article has value only because abstract human labor is objectified or materialized in it. How then is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the value forming substance, which is to say the labor contained in the article.
This quantity is measured by its duration and the labor time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days, etc. Socially necessary labor time is the labor time required to produce any use value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labor prevalent in that society. So, the substance of value is socially necessary, abstract labor time. And abstract labor time is, again, is not concretely measurable.
It's the average amount of time required to produce a given commodity in specific social circumstances. So it's nobody works for an average amount of labor time. People only work for a concrete amount of labor time, but it's the average amount of labor time that constitutes the substance of value of that is the measure of value for
the commodity. So as Michael Heinrich emphasizes, there's a reduction in the the the equivalence, the abstract equivalence of concretely this distinct species of labor also involves the reduction of differences in the duration of concrete labors and differences in the in the skills deployed in concrete labor and a concrete duration of labor and they're averaging out their reduction to a social average.
So that's why socially necessary labor time is um you know measure in terms of an average degree of skill and an average degree or of intensity of labor okay however the labor that forms a substance of value is equivalent human labor the expenditure of identical human labor power. The total labor power of society, which is manifested in the values of the world of commodities, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labor power,
although composed of innumerable individual units of labor power. Each of these units is the same as any other to the extent that it has the character of a socially average unit of labor power and acts as such that is only needs in order to it only needs in order to produce a commodity the labor time which is necessary on an average or in other words is socially necessary socially necessary labor time is the labor time required to produce any use value. So am I repeating the same slide? I'm sorry. So yeah, that last sentence.
I read the last bit, you read it before what you just read. So sorry. Yeah. So I'm just, I apologize for the repetition because I, it's two different sections anyway I apologize for that repetition so the okay so so what have we seen so far that the abstract labor is a substance of value abstract labor abstracts from you know the concrete heterogeneity of kinds of labor or
different kinds of labor but the the use values, it's concrete labor that produces a use value, and distinctions in use values or different kinds of use values as embodied by different kinds of commodities correspond to different kinds of concrete labor. So in a way, this mass, in a way on one level, this kind of homogenous mass of total social
labour power also envelops a heterogeneous totality of use values and a heterogeneous aggregates of forms of useful labor, which is to say the division of labor. So this is the point of this excerpt. As the coat and the linen are qualitatively different use values, Marx is talking about what you know the conditions under which 20 yards of linen is equivalent to one coat.
forms of labor through which their existence is mediated, i.e. tailoring and weaving. If the use values were not qualitatively different, i.e. the use value of the linen, the use value of the coat were not qualitatively different, and hence not the products of qualitatively different forms of useful labor, i.e. weaving and tailoring, they would be absolutely incapable of confronting each other as commodities because coats cannot be exchanged for coats and one use value cannot be exchanged for another of the same kind the totality of heterogeneous use values or physical commodities reflects a totality of similarly heterogeneous forms
of useful labor which differ in order, genus, species and variety, in short, a social division of labor. This division of labor is a necessary condition for commodity production, although the converse does not hold. Commodity production is not a necessary condition for the social division of labor. So the point here is that the heterogeneity of use values implies the heterogeneity of labors, of varieties of concrete labor which produce different kinds
of use value. All of this is implied by the homogeneity of value as such. And actually, just so although obviously the division of labor pre-exists commodity production, and the form of production which is dedicated to value, to increasing value. I think what Marx is saying here is that the social division of labor in a capitalist society is subordinated.
is the social division of labor corresponds to the variety of use values, which are required to embody different magnitudes of value. So in other words, even though there's a division of labor and a great heterogeneity of use values amongst commodities, there are all sorts of different kinds of useful things or ways in which things are used in a commodity producing society.
Their usefulness and the usefulness of the labors embodied in those commodities is subservient to value to the homogeneity of value. So the heterogeneity of use values and of the kinds of labor is in a way enveloped by the homogeneity of value as such of abstract value. Okay, and here, this is where the distinction between useful work and valuable labour is important. So Marx is saying two things. I think he's saying that the usefulness of a
commodity is subordinated to its exchangeability. That whatever function or use of a commodity utility a commodity has is there serves to embody a magnitude of value. OK, it is a commodity is useful, but it's also valuable. And it's its usefulness is the is always the repository of value of abstract value. Now, that means that although useful work, labor that produces use values obviously predates capitalist commodity production,
in a you know the the characteristic of a capitalist society is that useful labor becomes so useful work becomes subordinated to value creation so that the usefulness of work is subordinated to the value it creates. So this means that there's a distinction between useful work and valuable labor. Humans must produce use values to live, but the production of use values only becomes synonymous with the production of exchange values in the capitalist mode of production.
production labor then as the creator of use values as useful labor is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society it is an eternal necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature and therefore human life itself and here okay I think the important point to emphasize is that even if the creation of use values is a condition of human existence across all the trans-historical conditions of human existence,
It doesn't mean that what we call labor, labor as we know it, labor as fundamental social form is a trans historical condition of human existence. In other words, if you remember, because we looked at this a couple of sessions ago, we saw how it's only under capitalism that labor as such becomes a fundamental social form. Why? because the majority of human beings are compelled by the class relation to sell their labor power to live. So capitalism is a society in which labor as such, in which a heterogeneous array of
human activities, tailoring, weaving, melding, programming, computing, designing activities which are actually remarkably heterogeneous and qualitatively, you know, irreducible are grouped together, you know, and subsumed under this abstract category of labor, labor as such. So Marx, when Marx distinguishes useful work from valuable labor. I think he's not saying, or his point is rather that the fact that we live in a society in
which labor, in which in the buying and selling of labor is necessary for the majority of human beings to reproduce their material conditions of existence. That doesn't entail that labor is a transhistorical condition of existence. Because I think Marx's point is that useful work or use value generating activity need not necessarily take the form of what we currently recognize as valuable labor.
And in a society freed from the commodity form and the predominance of the value form, the creation of use values would not be tethered to the extraction of surplus value. Therefore human beings would be free to produce not just what they need but also what they desire collectively. This means that this would be a kind of a register of activity in many ways would not be in which the opposition between work and play as we saw, which is a consequence of
alienated labour, would be overcome. So the claim that the creation of use values is a trans-historical condition of human existence is not tantamount to the claim that labor as we know it, which is to say the compulsion to labor as compelled by conditions of scarcity is a necessary condition of human existence. Okay, I just wanted to make that clear. Now, value is social form.
So value is a social form and labor is a social form. That's the point of this, you know, this elaboration. both value and labor are you know co constituting they're you know they're they're reciprocally presuppose one another but Marx writes not an atom of natural material nature stuff enters into the value objectivity of commodities in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity of the body of commodities. We may twist and turn a single commodity as we
wish. It remains impossible to grasp it as a thing possessing value. However, let us remember that commodities possess an objective character as values only insofar as they are all expressions of an identical social substance, human labor, and that their objective character as values is therefore purely social. From this, it follows self-evidently that it can only appear in, that value can only appear in the social relation between commodity and commodity.
So the value objectivity, the spectral objectivity of value, whose substance is abstract human labor, appears in the relation that one commodity has to another commodity and that all commodities have to, you know, to each other, as we'll see. But this becomes a social relation. So value is a social relation between products that predominates over the social relations between producers. This is what Marx calls the fetishism of commodities. And labor in general or abstract human labor is the content of this what Marx will call
this alien social form. So now we come to the analysis of the value form and the four forms of value. And this is necessary in order to understand exactly what Marx means by the social relation between commodity and commodity. So in a way, Marx is saying is that the value equivalence between any two commodities, such as in his famous example, 20 yards of linen and one coat, presupposes a system of value relations among all commodities.
In a way, this is why value is totalizing, because the equivalence, the value equivalence of any two commodities implies the equivalence of the abstract equivalence of all commodities. So the first form of values, this what Marx calls a simple isolated or accidental form of value. So the simplest value relation is evidently that of one commodity to some one other commodity of a different kind. And hence the relation between the values of two commodities supplies us with the simplest expression of the value of a single commodity.
For example, X amount of commodity A equals Y amount of commodity B. That's a simple form of value. Or another way of saying this is X amount of commodity A is worth Y amount of commodity B. and actually you know value the german vat makes it clear that you know value is the worth of something okay the english the english word worth which is you know very similar to the the german word vat expresses um uh you know the the the value relation that marx is interested in here what makes under what conditions does one thing is one thing worth or does one stand in the relation
of worth to another thing so under what conditions are 20 yards of linen worth one coat or equivalent to one coat Marx writes the linen expresses its value in the coat and the coat serves as the material in which the value is expressed. So here we have the distinction between what Marx calls the relative form of value and the equivalent form of value. So here in the equation 20 yards of linen equals one coat or 20 yards of linen is worth one coat. The linen is the relative form and the coat is the equivalent form of value the linen expresses its relative value in the coat
and the coat is the equivalent value for the linen um sorry um so marx writes it is only the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities which brings to view the specific character of value creating labor by actually reducing the different kinds of labor embedded in the different kinds of commodity to their common quality of being human labor in general. However, it is not enough to express the specific character of the labor which goes to make up the value of the linen human labor power in its fluid states or human
labor creates value but is not itself value it becomes value in its coagulated states in objective form the value of the linen as a congealed mass of human labor can be expressed only as an objectivity a thing which is materially different from the linen itself and yet common to the linen and all other commodities when it is in the value relation with the linen the coat counts qualitatively as the equal of the linen it counts as a thing of the same nature because it is a value
So, here, this clarifies, in every commensuration of two qualitatively different commodities or qualitatively different varieties of commodity. There's also commensuration of the varieties of labor that produce those commodities. And this commensuration takes the form of the relationship
between relative and equivalent value, whereby the use value of one commodity embodies the exchange value of another commodity so Marx writes by means of the value relation therefore the natural form of commodity b a the use value of commodity b becomes the value form of commodity a and here you know a is the linen and B is the coat so it's clear that you know the the usefulness the use value of the coat you know expresses the exchange value of the linen in other words the body of commodity B
B becomes a mirror for the value of commodity A. Commodity A then, in entering into relation with commodity B as an embodiment of value, as a materialization of human labor, makes the use value B into the material through which its own value is expressed. is expressed. The value of commodity A, thus expressed in the use value of commodity B, has the form of relative value. So the value of A is embodied as exchange value in the use value of B. And B, as equivalent value,
embodies A's relative or exchange value. And here again, it's crucial to remember that the body of the commodity or the materiality or usefulness of a commodity may or may not be physical. It is for some kinds of commodities, but not for many others. But nevertheless, the body, you know, the materiality here means the qualitative characteristics of the commodity, the properties that make it useful.
useful. Okay, so now the distinction between use value and exchange value and value begins to become clearer. Okay, so the distinction between relative and equivalent value is required in order to understand the nature of money. This is Marx's account is building up to the money form. And Marx is trying to explain why commodities are commodities and money are both
manifestations of value, of abstract value, and why in fact every commodity is simply you know equivalent to a quantity of money such that you know there is no commodity that is not abstractly convertible with you know a quantity of money because money and commodities stand to one another in the relationship of relative and equivalent. Money is always the equivalent value for another commodity.
This is what Marx is building up to. When at the beginning of this chapter we said in the customary manner that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value this was strictly speaking wrong a commodity is a use value or object of utility and a value an abstract value as such it appears as the twofold thing it really is as soon as its value possesses its own particular form of manifestation which is distinct from its natural form. In other words, when it enters into relation with another commodity. In other words, it's only in relationship to another commodity that a commodity
manifests its exchange value. An isolated commodity has no exchange value, but only a value, a use value and a value. So it appears as a twofold thing it really is, as soon as its value possesses its own particular form of manifestation which is distinct from its natural form this form of manifestation is exchange value and the commodity never has this form when looked at in isolation but only when it is in a value relation or an exchange relation with a second commodity of a different kind he and by the way this is also why the the division of labor
labour is a condition for the value relation or for the exchangeability of commodities. If there were not a heterogeneity amongst commodities, if they were not useful in different ways and therefore produced by different kinds of labor they would not be exchangeable. A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of commodity A contained in the value relation of A to B has shown that within that relation the natural form of commodity A figures only as
the aspect of use value, the natural form of the linen figures only as the aspect of use value, while the natural form of B, natural form of the coat figures only as the form of value or aspect of value. The internal opposition between use value and value hidden within the commodity is therefore represented on the surface by an external opposition, by a relation between two commodities, such that the one commodity whose own value is supposed to be expressed counts directly only as a use value, whereas the other commodity in which that value is to be expressed counts
directly only as an exchange value and hence the simple form of value of a commodity is a simple form of appearance of the opposition between use value and value which is contained within the commodity. The commodity is a contradictory form of the commodity encapsulates you know the essential contradictoriness of capitalist society because use value and value are actually antithetical. They are mutually exclusive. And the reason is because you cannot use
what you are exchanging. Okay, so it's only the value of a commodity can only be expressed in the use value of a second commodity. this is required this is what it's this relation to another commodity that you know that displaces the opposition between use value and exchange value okay so this is why this this has important consequences as we'll see later
So, the second form of value is the total or expanded form of value whereby, you know, it stands to reason if 20 yards of linen is equivalent to one coat, it's also equivalent to a host or series of other commodities, okay, including 10 pounds of tea, one quarter of corn, two ounces of gold, half a ton of iron, etc, etc. And the point here is that the equivalence of any two commodities implies the equivalence of any single commodity with the totality of commodities, which is to say the totality of value.
So here we're simply kind of, you know, expanding the equivalence implied in the isolated form of value or the isolated equivalence of the 20 yards of linen and the single coat. And then, so the simple or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated equivalent. But the expanded form of relative value, that expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, imprints those other commodities with the form of particular equivalents of different kinds.
And finally, a particular kind of commodity acquires the form of universal equivalence, because all other commodities make it the material embodiments of their uniform and universal form of value. So now we come to the general form of value, which here, which flips the relation between relative and equivalent. The, you know, one coat, 10 pounds of tea, 40 pounds of coffee, one quarter of corn, you know, two ounces of gold, etc. are equivalent to 20 yards of linen. So the relative value of each of these commodities on the left hand column is expressed in
the body of the use value of the commodity in the right hand column. It becomes the general equivalent and this obviously this is what money is. See, so in form B only one commodity at a time could completely expand its relative value and it only possesses this expanded relative form of value because and insofar as all other commodities are with respect to it equivalence and here we can no longer reverse the equation 20 yards of linen equals one coat without altering its whole character and converting it from the
expanded form into the general form of value and finally the last form c gives to the world of commodities a general social relative form of value because and insofar as all commodities except one are thereby excluded from the equivalent form a single commodity the linen therefore has the form of direct exchange ability with all other commodities in other words it has a directly social form because and in so far as no other commodity is in this situation. and this so finally we come to the money form money is general equivalence which is the same
so money is the commodity that represents or embodies the abstract equivalence of all other commodities okay and gold is the first kind of it's not the first but like gold is traditionally the kind of the favorite example of the money form. But the choice of gold as general equivalence is, you know, not is more or less arbitrary. The point is that money need not take the form of gold.
and obviously it's it's it's soon replaced by paper money um and then you know the the value of paper money is decoupled from you know the gold standard in other words because money the point is that money is a social relation amongst commodities and although this social relation has to be represented by and embodied in a general equivalent. You know, the characteristics of this general equivalent, the qualitative characteristics of this general equivalent are actually, you know, irrelevant.
This is why money starts off by being a precious metal of some sort, then it becomes paper, and then it becomes digital encryptions. But I think that the Marxian point that it always embodies this value relation, which is a social relation, continues to, or still holds. So this is the final characterization of the money form.
So gold confronts the other commodities as money only because it previously confronted them as a commodity. Like all other commodities, it also function as an equivalent, either as a single equivalent in isolated exchanges or as a particular equivalent alongside other commodity equivalents. gradually began to serve as a universal equivalent in narrower or wider fields. As soon as it had won a monopoly of this position in the expression of value for the world of commodities, it became the money commodity and only then when it had already become the money commodity did form d become distinct from form c and the general form of value come to be transformed into the money form.
The simple expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such as linen, in a commodity which is already functioning as the money commodity, such as gold, is the price form. The price form of the linen is therefore 20 yards of linen equals two ounces of gold. Or if two ounces of gold when coined are two pounds, 20 yards of linen equals two pounds. Okay. Okay, so the point is that money is, there's a famous passage in the Grunry where Marx writes that money is a commodity alongside other commodities, you know, it's a particular
kind of commodity, but it's the particular commodity that represents the exchangeability or the commodity character of all other commodities. And he says this is as if alongside the zoological equivalent would be a kind of a taxonomy of species of animal species which included the genus animal as if alongside all the other varieties of animals tigers lions bears zebras parakeets dolphins etc etc etc etc you also
had animal and this is money has the same you know money you know the the status of money alongside other commodities is analogous to the status of the abstracts genus animal in relation to specific varieties of animal. But under capitalism, this abstraction, the abstraction of the value form, is concretely incarnated in money. This is why money represents, and this is what money represents.
Okay. Okay, now, so money is, it's this characteristic of money that is intimately tied to what Marx calls the fetishism of commodities. So he writes, whence arises the enigmatic character of the product of labor as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity. And clearly it arises from this form itself. The equivalence of the kinds of human labor takes on a material form in the equivalent value objectivity of the products of labor.
The measure of the expenditure of human labor power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labor. And finally, the relationships between the producers within which the social characteristics of their labors are manifested take on the form of a social relation between the products of labor. So here in this, the fetishistic transposition involves the correspondence between the equivalence of labors and the equivalence of value. The equivalence between the magnitude of abstract labor time and the magnitude of value as measured
in money and finally the equivalence between the material relations among producers and social relations among commodities. This is what Marx means by the fetishism of commodities. And this, the fetish character of the commodities is incarnated in value, which is why, you know, incarnated in money, sorry, money as measure of value and index of price.
And this is why money has this, in a way, the manifestation of this, or the most obvious manifestation of this, the fetish character of commodities. Okay, I'll pause. I've been talking for just a little bit over an hour. I'll pause, I'm about, I think just over halfway through. Any questions about what we've covered so far?
May I ask something? Yes, sure. You said, actually Mark said, that the same commodities cannot be, like two codes cannot be exchanged, something like that. Yes. But how do you explain the fact that we have all different kinds of different exchange values for codes that are of different brands, for example? So you might have
the exact same coat and one of them might be in a cheap store and the other one which might be exactly the same exactly the same material from gucci for example so the one costs 10 pounds and the other 2000 so how do you explain that um because the um in a way the brand but two things is that first of all, I mean, the obvious objection is to say,
well, people do exchange coats. Like I can swap my coats with my friend. Okay. If it's a, you know, if my friend has a yellow coat and I have a red coat, but he, you know, prefers red to yellow, he'll change, you know, his, we'll exchange coats. Okay. That's fine. But that kind of exchange is not socially validated. So in other words, it's not commodity exchange because here there's no... There's no labor involved. There's no labor. But also it's simply it's not... There's no money also involved.
There's no money involved and you're simply, you know, letting, you're sharing. In a way, what you're doing is you're not, you know, you're simply sharing because you're saying you can use, you know, this coat is mine, you know, but it's yours to use. If you like it, you have it, okay? in a way the property the proprietary relation is not operative this is why I'm not selling this is why I don't sell the coat to my friend I just say here have it okay if you like it have it and I may or may not ask for something in return but the point is I don't need you know to give that doesn't need to be an exchange so it's not exchange in the in the
peculiar sense involved in commodity exchange where precisely what you're exchanging is not the basis of the exchange is precisely not um you know human um use is not you know human preference or use but this um you know this abstract value um and it with the example of the labels well i I think the labels do make a difference to, in a way, to the value. I mean, it's a good example because so like the, you know, the designer label, the coat made by the famous designer and the one which is just a kind of an imitation. At the level of their use value, they seem, you know, equivalent.
Yeah, and their labor or the required labor. But the label makes all the difference. Yeah, but imagine that you have the exact same labor, the exact same use value, but then they have different exchange values. So there is another element that adds to the exchange value, and this is the idea of the brand, which has nothing to do, or at some point, in some cases, it does have to do with labor, for example, in haute couture.
But in some cases, when you have a T-shirt, that says Balenciaga, for example, and this T-shirt is made in the same factory where cheaper brands make their T-shirts as well. So you have the same labor. The brand changes the exchange value, right? Yes. um sorry i i thought when i was saying i was saying label meaning brand i think um might have heard i wasn't saying labor i was saying label yeah yeah i know but the brand makes a difference
so that's why in the example you just gave um you can have um so you've got the uh the coats the designer brand coat and a coat which is qualitatively indistinguishable, but which is an imitation with a kind of a non-designer brand, and it will be much cheaper. And here it's the brand that people are, you know, that is intrinsic to the value of the commodity. And that explains the difference in price, even if they are qualitatively indiscernible,
even if one coat is as good as the other in terms of its material and its properties, that people it will you know contain this extra value because of the brand because people are paying for for the brand for the name and the point is that so there's a difference in price you know there's a difference in value which corresponds to a different difference in price and value and price are not always you know marx has a lengthy discussion about how price does not always correlate with value that there's a distinction really value and price
so that a commodity can be priced above or below its value and that's obviously important as well but there's a sense in which you know branding is constitutive of value and of course then you can get you know you know a valuable brand can be purchased you know at a discounted price okay you can you can get it for the same price as the the imitation or the you know the non-brand um but i think but marx's point is that um you so in that case this is why you you know you know but
you you might be able to sell um a brand you know the brand coat um for the non-brand code but there's going to be in a way there's a there's a discrepancy in values which usually you know which is usually manifested in a difference in price, which is why, you know, someone can buy your designer, you know, someone can offer to buy your designer coat off you, but they wouldn't simply, you know, if they're selling you their non-designer coat, there's going to be a, a non-equivalence in price, a difference in price.
The point he's simply making is that the value relation is always... So within a single kind of commodity, such as coats, there are obviously different species of coats and different qualities of species of coat. So you can subdivide a kind of commodity into differences in varieties and sub-varieties according to their characteristics, to their
qualities. So you say, for example, that the idea of the brand is part of the use value of the code. And then we cannot really say that two identical codes of different brands are the same, because they fulfill different needs for example social status yes the need one of the things that people pay for is obviously you know people pay for brands and they pay for status okay And that becomes, in a way, part of, you know, in a way, because the use value isn't, I want to be careful, this is tricky here.
I mean, what do people desire in a commodity? They desire the things that make it useful. And in a way, among the qualities, the useful qualities of a commodity, things like status, okay, things like, you know, the quality, you know, which is, you know, associated with the brand name or the designer name plays a role.
So in this instance, with the example of like brands, you know, designer brands, I think, I mean, I have to think about this longer to be certain, but I think that it falls under the, you know, the brand characteristic, you know, counts as one of the use values of the commodity. because it's one of the things that people are paying for. And it's one of the things that people want when they want that commodity. So I think, yes, I think the status, you know, social status is among the use values
of certain commodities. And that's how luxury commodities function. even something that is ostensibly you know like a work of art a work of art is you know has this often has an exceptional value or a higher value than you know ostensibly useful commodities precisely because its value is has to do with these you know social kind of properties or social characteristics, which are not directly, which are, you know,
not immediately tangible. So the point is that things can be useful. To say that something, when talking about the use value of a commodity, the registers of use need not be you know, functionally tangible in a single dimension, okay? In other words, you know, what you want to use a commodity for, what you, you know, expect to get by using a commodity isn't always kind of measurable in a single, you know, commodity. So if it's a, let's say, with if it's a car yeah you want a reliable car a comfortable car a fast car but you may also want
you know a jaguar um as opposed to an alfa romeo an alpha romeo and that qualitative difference i think is part of the use value of the commodity even though um it's not again it shows how in a a way with commodities, there's a kind of, you know, the ways, the varieties of usefulness also become decoupled from, you know, the, you know, the immediate satisfaction of, you know, of needs, or rather, you know, there are, you know, new social needs get generated
and commodities are produced to satisfy these new and more or less artificial varieties of needs. Thank you. If I ask you really quick, I just wanted to actually ask a question about the transformation problem, Armin just talked about it here in the chat, but yeah, you know, this, so we talked earlier about how, you know, value in, as like average necessary labor time isn't concretely measurable, and so I've seen the criticism of Marx in various places, like saying, okay, well,
it's not concretely measurable, therefore, how does it actually relate to or explain the price of goods, or the, you know, and this, I guess, goes back to the discussion we've just been having about maybe whether there is like a distinction between price and value. And obviously, you mentioned that Marx has something to say about the relationship between them at some point. But yeah, I was just kind of curious if you could elaborate on that a little bit. You know, is it not a problem for Marx that average necessary labor time is not concretely measurable and yet he's using it to describe the price of commodities? Okay, well, this is, so he distinguishes value from price. So, you know, value and price are not kind of, you know, directly correlative, and they
can be inversely proportional, okay? Now, the transformation problem is, I'm not, you know, I've read a little bit about it, you know sometimes I think I understand that sometimes I don't but the claim seems to be that you know in in volume one of capital it's you know price you know we value somehow no price is a is a kind of you know some kind of measure of value price is some kind of quantification of value whereas in volume three it's there's a the relationship is inverted and
you know somehow value comes to be derived from price actually i have if you just hold on for a minute i have something here which is more Let me see if I can get something here. um
Yes, so the claim is that Marx confuses value calculation and cost calculation. Either values are determined by quantities of necessary and surplus labor, but rates of profit are unequal, or there is an equal rate of profits, but values are not determined by quantities of necessary and surplus labor. So consequently, either the labor theory of value is false or the claim that capitalist production entails a failing or the claim that capitalist production entails a falling rate of profit is false. So. Yeah, so the claim. So. There's this. There's a...
This is... Okay, as I understand it, this is related to the issue about... We were talking about the way in which the total of value is subdivided. Okay, there's a kind of a social totality of value, which is then, you know, which is distributed amongst different individual capitals. capitals and there are obviously different rates of profits or your different rates of extraction of surplus value corresponding to different rates of profits amongst different
capitals but they are averaged out so that there is an average rate of profits across total social capital. So the claim is that in redistributing surplus value in proportion to different capitals, Marks in volume three, Marks entered values and not prices of production. So in other words, you need surplus value to get profits, you know, which is then reinvested
in production. But then the reinvestment in production has got to be calculated in prices and not in values. So you have to convert. So in other words, value is converted into profits, which is a monetary sum. And then profits are reinvested into capital at the kind of the start of another cycle of production. but when yeah that Marx had substituted values for prices in explaining this you know this operation in volume three of Capital
Now, one answer, this may or may not be convincing, okay, but I think that one answer to this question is that the concept of prices of production is there to kind of explain this. So, the prices of production,
the reason why there's not simply a confusion is because prices of production are expressions of value. And there's no category mistake in simply substituting prices of production can express magnitudes of value, which can be factored into the capital invested in production without simply conflating a magnitude of value.
and a magnitude of money or a price. And the claim here is that there's two different levels of analysis. The difference corresponds to the objective inversion mentioned a few sessions ago, where it's only if you think that, it's only if you, in a way, if you abstract from labor, from abstract labor as a substance of value and treat value as deriving from capital, land, and labor, that this conflation between value and price occurs.
Okay, so that's one Marxian rejoinder that I've seen, you know, made to this so-called transformation problem. There is no problem of the transformation of value into price or price into value because the categories of value and price operate at different levels of analysis. So another way of saying this would be to say that although value expresses itself or manifests itself in price, prices can't be derived from value.
Now, okay, I don't know how convincing, how satisfying this is, but I think Marx, well, I don't know. I mean, I don't think for Marx, the thing, the question of what determines the price of a commodity and the question of what determines the value of a commodity are clearly different questions, they're different kinds of questions. So I think that simply saying that he's, you know, that the answer to one must furnish the answer to the other seems to be misleading.
Okay, I should probably stop there because that's otherwise I'll, you know, I'll get completely lost. But that would tend to be my response, is that Marx is, you know, yes, Marx, when he's talking about, and this is why money is, he talks about the kind of threefold function of money, although money is an index of price, it's not, you know, price itself, you know, presupposes, You know, money is a measure of value, which is a social relation for Marx.
Okay, I probably wasn't very, you know, satisfying, but it's about all I can say on this topic. That was more satisfying than previous answers I've received, so thanks for that. By the way, there's a whole body of literature, I went through some of it, the claim that Marx's project was destroyed by the transformation problem, which is an old claim, which everyone said, But there's a vast kind of, you know, body of literature saying that it's based on a misunderstanding that, you know, von Baum-Bavark, who's the guy who made this charge originally
in around 1900, simply misunderstood Marx and misunderstood the relationship between the first and the third volumes of Capital. you know I think there is something to that response so wouldn't it be proper if we would if I said something about this point if I asked something about this point or did we spend already nine minutes I guess well look I'm happy for the question is time so it's just 22 to how much time have we got left? We've got about 50 minutes left.
I mean, if you ask it, if it's a complicated question, I won't be able to answer it. No, forget it. I would try to email you or somehow ask the question. Thank you. Okay. Please, feel free. to just email it to me. Okay. I think we should probably plow on. Okay. Right. Is the screen share still working? Can you still see the screen? Yes. Okay. Good. Are we having a five-minute break or not? Yes. We should have a five-minute break now.
Okay, perhaps we should continue. Ray, we see your emails. Oh, OK, sorry. I was just trying to check if. Because I don't want to start if Zenobia is not ready.
Is he is he? I'm here. OK, shall we continue or? Sure, sure. I mean, your video is off, like it has been off, like, is it like. Yeah, I'm having, okay, so you can't see the PowerPoint. Yeah. Let me see. We see the PowerPoint. You do see the PowerPoint or something? Yes. Your screen is, but not, not, not you, not, not your video. I think because he's sharing the screen. Okay. Okay. Now, now we see. Now we can see you. To be honest, I just assumed that it was more to preserve the internet connection that the video was off but yeah no it's it's been that way for a minute.
Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't know. But as long as you can see the PowerPoint that's the key thing that would be. That would be a disaster otherwise. Okay, let's see if we can carry on. So spectral objectivity, okay, this, so this is really kind of, value has a spectral objectivity, and it's this spectral objectivity which underwrites the, you know, the fetishistic transposition of material relations among producers into social relations amongst their products. Okay, so Marx, so when he's elaborating on this Marx writes about the primacy of exchange,
how this transposition is conditioned by exchange. Men do not therefore bring the products of their labor into relation with each other as values because they see these objects merely as the material integuments of homogeneous human labor rather the reverse is true by equating their different products to each other in exchange as values they equate their different kinds of labor as human labor they do not know it but they do it value, therefore, does not have its description branded on its forehead.
It rather transforms every product of labor into a social hieroglyph. So the equivalence then of kinds of labor is implied in the exchangeability of the commodity, and they're effectively one and the same. And the value equivalence of commodities nullifies their use value, as well as the concrete labor that produces it as potential. If you remember last week when we were talking about the importance of Marx's account, of the distinction between actuality and potentiality in Marx's account, and how use values are only effectuated or activated through use.
it's by using something the examples are you know a you know a railroad um that it exists as a railroad because it's a form because in a way because the use value of a of a social commodity is um socially formed um and the activation of this social form um is only um you know effectuate effectuated in use um no um so we can begin then to elaborate you know the um you know the the antithesis which are encapsulated in the commodity and it's these you know um you know
contradictions which Marx is unfolding in his analysis of the commodity. There is an antithesis imminent in the commodity between use value and value, between private labor which must simultaneously manifest itself as directly social labor, and a particular concrete kind of labor which simultaneously counts as a merely abstract universal labor between the personification of things and the reification of persons the antithetical phases of the metamorphosis of the commodity selling to buying buying to sell are the developed forms of motion of this imminent contradiction so contradictions that Marx is
you know identifying here are the contradiction of using and exchanging that exchange involves an abstraction from use but also the suspension of the usefulness of the commodity secondly the labor power the second antithesis is between labor power which must be privately owned to be socially valuable i.e. to produce value for a wage and labor that must be at once concrete you know a concrete particular and abstract and universal
between the free circulation of commodities which embodies the autonomy of value while the worker is objectified as the bearer of this movement and finally you know these contradictions ultimately extend into what you know the fundamental contradiction or what Marx calls you know the moving contradiction which we looked at a couple of weeks ago whereby capital is compelled to keep maximizing value while minimizing the value of the commodity that is its source right which is labor power um and this um you know the uh the account of self valorizing value
is important. I mean, here's a very quick schema that the, you know, in a circulation, the conversion of money into capital operates, you know, in this circuit MCM prime buying in order to sell. So some of money, you know, divided into constant capital and variable capital or machinery and wages is you know activated through the consumption of labor power okay through the use of labor power which from which surplus value is extracted which is then converted into profits okay so the conversion of c into m prime is the extraction
of surplus value you know which um which is has to be valorized which is to say converted into monetary profit which is reinvested in production so this is this you know the the interminable cycle mcm prime you know to m double prime to m triple prime etc etc and this is what is sometimes called self-positing value um um self um now here's the passage where marx describes this um now he describes it as self valorizing value because he it's a it's it's value in a way positing the conditions for its own valorizations so in other words by you know by being reinvested
in production and by consuming more labor power you know value you know converts itself into surplus value and thereby ultimately valorizes itself and it's this process that Marx now describes as follows the independent form i.e the monetary form which the value of commodities assume in simple circulation cmc you know commodity money commodity does nothing but mediate the exchange of commodities and it vanishes in the final result of the movement on the other hand in the circulation mcm both the money and the commodity function only as different modes of
existence of value itself the money as its general mode of existence the commodity as its particular or so to speak disguised mode it is constantly changing from one form into the other without becoming lost in this movement it thus becomes transformed into an automatic subject if we pin down the specific forms of appearance assumed in turn by self-valorizing value in the course of its life we reach the following elucidation capital is money capital is commodities in truth however value is here the subject of a process in which while constantly assuming the form in turn of
money and commodities it changes its own magnitude throws off surplus value from itself considered as original value and thus valorizes itself independently for the movement in the course of which it adds surplus value is its own movement its valorization sorry it's is its own movement its valorization is therefore self-valorization by virtue of being value it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself as the dominant subject of this process in which it alternately assumes and loses the form of money and the form of commodities
but preserves and expands itself through all these changes value requires above all an independent form by means of which its identity with itself may be asserted and only in the shape of money does it possess this form money therefore forms the starting point and the conclusion of every valorization process. Okay. So money then is the independent form of value. Okay. So value is, you know, incarnated in money, which, you know, expresses the convertibility,
the abstract equivalence of every commodity. And this is why Marx, you know, famously says that money is you know the alienated manifestation of the you know the infinite productivity or the in a way the the limitless power of appropriation of human genus being okay You know, money is capable of commensurating incommensurables in the way in which abstracts
in the way in which, you know, human activity, free conscious activity is potentially capable of doing so as well. So there's a kind of money is the estranged form of the limitless plasticity or fungibility of human being. And now, so now we shift to this, you know, once we see this, I want to kind of briefly
discuss this paper by Chris Arthur, which I shared, where he discusses capital as the avoid a form or capital as a system of pure forms, but forms which work by, in a way, deactivating human formative capacities. but you know this is capital is um you know the social form in a way that uh suspends the formative capacity um of you know property human genus being in marx's account
so arthur writes there is a void at the heart of capitalism the circulation of commodities and money as seemingly material objects supports a world of pure form because value is an is this is this pure form um you know embodied in in money which is itself nothing but this um you know the incarnation of this you know abstract form of convertibility or equivalence you know the equivalence of of of any concrete object with any other concrete object
so in this regard the complete the the whole you know the absolute abstraction from the concrete specificity of use value. So this is why I think Arthur's account, in a way, is a very illuminating extrapolation from Marx's account of self-valorizing value. So he writes, whatever may be true before and after exchange in the sphere of exchange itself the commodity is entirely abstracted from its character as a use value it is of great importance here that
this abstraction and the nominalist ie empty universally yields are not effects of consciousness but objectively constituted in the real process of exchange this is the famous line of marx where he says, you know, by equating their different products to each other in exchange as values, you know, humans equate their different kinds of labor as human labor. They do not know it, but they do it. So, this is a material abstraction from the character of the commodities as use values. which is absented use value is absented for the period of exchange the commodities acquire as a
new determination the character of values and the natural bodies of the commodities concerned play the role of bearers of this determination imposed on them while passing through this phase of their life cycle they become subject to the value form And this absenting of use value through, you know, the, in and through the value form is, Arthur elaborates on as follows. if use value is suspended for the duration of exchange because you cannot use what you are
exchanging this absenting is equivalent not to destruction but to distantiation so that use value remains potent at a level removed from exchange determinations the natural body of the commodity appears in exchange but merely as a bearer of value its use value having been substantively displaced so here this is the um the value equivalent so the um the uh um the body of um the body of the coat um expresses the exchange value of the linen um but the um you know the
The use value of one commodity can only express the exchange value of another, which is why every commodity can be intrinsically useful. Where value is, use value is not. If use value is, value is nothing. Two different regions of being in which what is present in the one region is absent in the other. It is a feature of the structure of commodity relations that use value and value exhibit such duality and yet eventually interpenetrate.
Exchange brings about a sui generis form without any given content because all use value is absented, not merely all determinate utility, but the category itself. It is presupposed to exchange and actualized after exchange, but simply not present in exchange, i.e. utility. The category of usefulness is presupposed prior to exchange and actualized after exchange, but it is entirely suspended and effectively nullified in exchange.
so this means then you know as Arthur continues the operation of gathering commodities into the class of exchangeables reflects itself into them imputing value as the substance of them as their substance which then appears fetishistically as an inherent power. More precisely, it is money that is socially imputed with the power of immediate exchangeability and commodities are classed as exchangeable in virtue of the worth imputed to them in their price.
To sum up, money stands for commodities not because it represents some common property in them, which in some theories of money must also be shared by it, but rather a contrarian wise money takes it upon itself to stand in place of them. Therewith imposing this common relation on them, putting as their essence this ideal signification of being worth so much money. The common content is therefore not a pre-given one, but a dialectically developed one interjecting the form of value. So the value substance of commodities is simply, it's not something that doesn't pre-exist commodities,
commodities, but it's commodification. It's always already in effect in the production of any commodity, and it coordinates relations amongst commodities. But in this, as a, you as this abstract, dominant form, which secures its domination in a way by suspending and absenting, as Arthur puts it,
um the um uh the actuality um of all other of of any um of any other social form okay so it it value is effective um by disabling um and in a way you know deactivating every other form, okay, every non-valuable form. And money is, in a way, kind of, you know, embodies the presence of value as this, you know, as this absence, as this absent form.
Since money represents the emptiness of commodities as value bodies, it needs share no common property with them and indeed need have hardly any natural body at all, an electronic charge will do. It is true that money is supposed to represent in external form the essence of commodities, but since there is no common essence other than their relation to money, money represents the presence of this absence. Albeit some use value, e.g. gold may be selected to play the role of its visible body. But this clothing is contingent. But since it is the function that counts, not the particular body of money, it can be replaced by a symbol of itself.
So, okay, here's finally, here's, you know, my gloss on, you know, Arthur's suggestion, okay. The value is the absenting of form. Now, it's important that Marx is Aristotelian to the extent that he equates being with form, and form with energia, which is to say with actuality or effectivity. And this effectivity is tied to use or, you know, it's by using something that you render it effective or actualize it. A suspension of use value is suspension of being or actuality.
And this is why, although I mean I don't go into it, but you know, Arthur equates, you know, abstract value with with nothingness in the, you know, in the opening of Hegel's Science of Logic. use value is produced as potential subordinated to the exchange value which actually embodies it in exchange. The consumption of labor power in commodity production produces the suspension of use because use value serves to embody the value equivalence.
Thus value is the spectral form suspending the actuality of form. It is present as the virtual form absenting actual form. And in this sense, the term virtual here simply means presence as the absence of actuality or a non-actual presence. presence. Value is the presence of the absence of use value, which is to say that, you know, for Arthur, it's equivalent to nothing as the form of the absenting of form. And this is why
he writes, Chris Arthur writes, what is historically specific to capitalism is that nothing perfection perfects itself when it develops its presence in the form of value. And here's, this is how you put it, even when the value form grounds itself on production, The former is not reduced to the mere appearance form of the latter. A previously empty form seized by this content. Rather, the form of self-determination achieved by this ideality, ideality of value, maintains itself, takes production within its power,
and thereby form determining production so as to shape it into its own content through the real subsumption of labor, for example. So this is to say that value determines production so that production, as such commodity production, becomes the content of value, of abstract value. The specter of value determines both the social form of production as commodity production, but also the production of social forms coextensive with commodity production, which is to say
money, labor, property, class, state, etc. So in this sense, okay, so what I want to suggest in closing is that the counter to value as voiding, as absenting the effectivity or actuality of form and of the practical
formative capacities. proper to you know to human social being according to Marx is the formless effectivity of living labor and this is why I think it's really crucial to distinguish living labor from labor power labor power is a commodity okay labor power is a valuable commodity which is used in the process of commodity production. So labor power is really a resource of valorization. Value valorizes itself by consuming labor power.
And moreover, the distinction between concrete and abstract labor, which corresponds to the distinction between use and exchange is internal to the commodity labor power. This is why I think it's a mistake to align, you know, concrete and abstract labor with um um you know living um um it's a mistake to align concrete labor with living labor um and abstract labor with uh
you know, labor power. I think living labor is, in a way, the substratum, okay, of the bearer of labor power, and the distinction between concrete and abstract labor is, you know, way internal or consequence or attendant upon the effectuation of labor power or actually the consumption of labor power. It's only in the consumption of labor power that, you know, the capital capitalism is using of labor power that the distinction between concrete and abstract labor is operative because you can only consume labor power as concrete labor,
which is also, which is exchanged or bought as abstract labor. Okay, so this is why as a commodity, the effectivity of labor power or its use value serves the virtuality of value. The consumption of concrete labor produces value, And therefore, living labor as the bearer of labor power is the counter virtuality to the spectral virtuality of value. David Sloan- Living Labor then can be seen as a residue of effective formlessness within the creation of spectral form within the.
David Sloan- You know the process of valorization or the consumption of Labor power. David Sloan- For you know in and by self valorizing value. value. But this is a, the formlessness of living labor is a determinate formlessness. The shadow, it's the shadow of the valuable labor, which is itself the shadow of spectral value. so that the reproduction of living labor is the effective presupposition for values self-positing
form and this is where the distinction between presupposition and positing is I think really crucial. Value posits itself posits its own, you know, preconditions, you know, through the process we just just saw a self valorizing value, which consumes labor power. But in a way, living labour is the residue of values consumption of labour power. It's what's always kind of left over after the consumption of labour power, which is why I think it's a mistake, you know,
to ontologise living labour as this productive capacity. and why I think it's a mistake to align you know you know to call to to identify living labor with a kind of generative productive capacity which I think is a tendency of spinicism here so this is a passage from the results of the immediate process of production which is the appendix to the you know the penguin edition of capital this is it's actually written i think in 1863 prior um earlier it's it predates the text of capital volume one um but it's um it contains some very very kind of um you know interesting
formulations and and here and it allows us to see how the interdependence between the reproduction of capital and the reproduction of labor okay so Marx writes for capitalist relations to establish themselves at all presupposes that a certain historical level of social production has been attained and even within the framework of an earlier mode of production, certain needs and certain means of communication and production must have developed which go beyond the old relations of production and coerce them into the capitalist mode. But for the time being they need to be developed only to the point that permits the formal
subsumption of labor under capital. On the basis of that change however specific changes in the mode of production are introduced which create new forces of production and these in turn influence the mode of production so that um sorry there's so that a new so that new um relations are brought uh is i think that word should be relation so the new relations are brought about on the one hand it creates so that new real conditions come into being says yes yeah the So the word conditions has been omitted here so that new real conditions are brought about. On the one hand, it creates the real conditions for the domination of labor by capital, perfecting
the process and providing it with the appropriate framework. On the other hand, by evolving conditions of production and communication and productive forces of labor antagonistic to the workers involved in them this revolution creates the effective presuppositions and this is the term this is this term again which um i pointed out um last week um the effective presuppositions of a new mode of production one that abolishes the contradictory form of capitalism. It thereby creates the material basis of a newly shaped
social process and hence of a new social formation. I think by material basis, again, Marx means he doesn't just mean material in the sense like, you know, new physical basis or new empirical basis he means um the uh the substratum okay um um for um you know a new social process for a transformed social process and a new social formation um and um if we okay this is a this diagram is from endnotes um i've used it we know but this is is the double mill showing how the reproduction of capital intersects with the reproduction
of labor power. So capital uses labor power to reproduce itself and to valorize itself. Labor power has to use, you know, capital has to requires access to the means of production get the money it needs to pay for the commodities it needs to live. So that, you know, so in other words, you know, capital reproduces itself by using labor and labor reproduces itself by using capital. But in these two cycles, obviously capital dominates labor, it imposes the conditions
under which labor has to reproduce itself. And this is a sense in which it kind of, you know, it subsumes the means of production and you know transforms them to you know to facilitate the the maximum maximization of surplus value but Okay, the claim is that the disjunction between repositing and reproduction occurs in this,
in the interaction between labor and capital. So capital posits its own presuppositions, which is to say it has to posit, you know, in its, in valorizing itself and in reproducing itself, it has to generate, it has to see to it that labor power is constantly available to be used in its own reproduction. So it posits its own, you know, it posits its presuppositions. In other words, it posits the existence of labor power. It generates conditions under which everyone is compelled to sell their labor power in order to live.
However, at the same time, you know, the labor that is compelled to objectify itself as labor power and to allow itself to be consumed as labor power in the capitalist production process is never simply reducible to that labor power. it's also living labor which is to say it is you know labor that is you know whose needs and appetites you know must whose needs and appetites compel it to objectify itself as labor power and
And this is the effective presupposition. This is a sense in which living labor is the effective presupposition for self-positing value. And the claim is that this effective presupposition cannot be wholly integrated or incorporated into values, self-reproduction. Okay, and it can't because it's, well, this is something I'd like to explore actually
in the discussion, but I'll just read out, this is the penultimate slide. okay um the bourgeois economists do not understand how these relations um capitalist relations are themselves produced together with the material preconditions of their dissolution they do not see therefore that their historical justification as a necessary form of economic development and of the production of social wealth may be undermined. Unlike them, we have seen both how capital produces and how it is itself produced.
And we have seen also how it emerges from the process of production as something essentially different from the way it entered into it. On the one hand, it transforms the existing mode of production on the other hand this change in the mode of production the particular stage reached in the evolution of the material forces of production is itself the basis and precondition the premise of its own formation okay so the question here is whether the um capital the sense in which capital does not emerge from the process of production in the same way in which it entered into it
is the fact that there are means of production which pre-exist the emergence of capitalism. So capitalism first formally subsumes pre-capitalist means of production, and then generates itself, but then has to wholly subsume or really subsumes those means of production, transformation transforms them to render them entirely subservient to its own reproduction and expansion.
And so the question is whether this simply kind of eliminates the real subsumption of the real subsumption of the means of production by capital incorporates labor altogether, as some thinkers think, or whether it incorporates labor power, okay, and by by generating social relations which increase or intensify the reduction of living labour to labour power.
but also in doing so capital necessarily excludes or has to omit living labor okay so in other words the conditions of capitals in order for capital to posit its own presupposition it has to rely on a condition which it cannot incorporate and that would be living labor okay capital self-positing presupposes the effective the effective self-reproduction of living labor the actual self-reproduction of living labor
this self-positing operates through the spectral absenting of use value self-positing of value operates through the spectral absencing of use value but the spectral absencing of form of value of the value form relies on another absence whose effectivity shadows the contours of absent use value the spectral value is haunted by the living labor it preys upon and in this sense the super centrist there's a super central centrist residue generated by the century super central split which is constitutive of the commodity and the
contradiction of capitalist actuality um where you know the uh what is super centrist is value as such as value as this absenting um of um of actuality of the actuality of form um there's a there's a kind of a there's a countervailing um super centristness which is a the supercentrousness of effective practice of the actuality of living labor. And that's the sense in which capital self-reproduction generates the conditions of its own superstition
without this kind of you know opposing force simply being you know either you know concrete labor or labor power okay i'll stop that's the end of the presentation um we should hopefully there's still time for discussion Yeah, we can have like 10 or 15 minutes to some questions and then. Thank you.
First of all, I would like to make a small remark regarding the Greek word energia, which means to put into work. So it's closer to this idea of actualization that you mentioned, but it has no relation to the idea of use. Actually, Agamben places the two notions as quite even antithetical, like being completely opposite. And then actually I have a question. How do you define form, especially in the article that you commented upon?
How do you define form and formlessness? Okay. A form in this account, so... In Aristotle, form is the, in a way, the, you know, the, the big, the substance of the entity.
Form is what something is. So form is intelligible and consists of these generic and specific properties. Now, Marx inherits some of his accounts of form from Aristotle, but also from Hegel. And in Hegel, form is, well, form is ultimately self-relating negativity.
So in Hegel, form is no longer, you know, it's tied to determination. Anything that is determinate has a form. And in a way, so, you know, kind of determination is tantamount to formation. but this involves negation so this and ultimately the the formation of being is articulated through
negation. So meaning that something that is, all that there is, there is something that there is not. So there is a kind of interiority and exteriority. Well, it turns out that for Hegel, so in a way, for Aristotle, you know being is substantial form which is to say that it's it's characterized in terms of a positivity or or kind of you know plenitude um for hegel you know famously he begins you know with being is the most impoverished being a sheer indeterminacy okay it is um you know it's the
absence of determinacy, which is why it's equivalent to nothing. To try to think being pure being without any further determination is to think nothing, which is why being and nothing vanish into one another or kind of, you know, coextensive. And it's not until, you know, and then this yields becoming and then eventually, you know, becoming has to be negated for becoming to yield something. Okay? So, in a way, or as I read them, Hegel is suggesting that being is the most impoverished category, and that's, you know, to try to think in terms of being
is ultimately to think nothing. And it's only so that it's really it's only an abstraction, which is only retrospectively intelligible. So it's only after you've thought something that you can, you know, so to speak, abstract from something and try to think, you know, you know, what's left over and what's left over is, you know, the equivalence of being a nothing. but an empty equivalence because it's an equivalence that has no determinacy to it so this is why okay so all this to say that hegel decouples form from or he desubstantializes form
because it's not it's no longer being that possesses form or being is certainly not what is self-forming um as as i think it is for for aristotle um because the the generator of form in aristotle is god uh thoughts um thinking itself thinking thinking thinking um is the this is this pure activity uninterrupted by you know by negativity by lack by deficiency which is the generator of the forms that are actualized in becoming, in sensible becoming.
And for Hegel, so form has a relationship with thinking, and thinking is this activity of kind of negation. And I think what Marx wants to do is to transplant formative activity from the domain of thinking, conceptualization, to this domain of practice, of human practice. an appropriate what he calls appropriation um you know when he says the production is appropriation
i think he means um that this involves um you know all appropriation at least you know in in at the initial stage it involves you know cancelling you know negating the thing you know cancelling the the qualities or characteristics of the thing to you know to invest it with with new ones So I think, so this is very schematic, but I think that for Marx, form involves, you
know, this transformation, and it involves a process of transformation, which is not whose source is not simply thought in the Hegelian sense or conceptualization. Now that doesn't tell us what it is, but I'd use that a form is
no it's it's um I mean your question is a you know this is a crucial question to ask It's the right question to ask, but I don't have a good answer to it, partly because I think that it's because you can understand what determinants, the way in which determinant negation yields form in hegel but but you know form is never kind of um it's not simply abstracted
from content what is generated is the unity of form and content so in a way the point first of all is to say that form never exists you know an abstraction from content there's only a formed content, you know, and content, you know, matter and content as Marx uses them are equivalent, you know, as they are roughly for Aristotle. So there's no such thing as a formless content or a contentless form. And the question is always of, you know, recognizing the interdependence of form and content.
what Marx is saying is that in capital, it's in, you know, in a way the pathology of capital is that form in a way tries to swallow up content. Capital, there's an asymmetry of form and content in capital, and capital is formalization, trying to become independent or trying to kind of rest itself free from content and that's I think the suggestion is that that is a kind of a pathology and the you know the the inter you know uh an activity which you know um
conditioned by the interdependence of form and content is, you know, is what, you know, should be achieved. Also because in a sense, yes, so in a way, it's only if one thinks of form as something imposed upon content from above or something that transcends form that the question about the origin of form arises there is no such thing as the genesis of form you know in isolation from the genesis of content there's always form and content and
The point is to kind of to understand their interdependence. So Marx is emphasizing the formative dimension of practical activity and productive activity. but then to explain how this formative dimension becomes alienated in this self-perpetuating object form. This objective form which tries to wholly absorb content within itself. So, at the beginning, when we were talking about Deleuze and Gotari, Deleuze and Gotari
reject hylomorphism in favour of hylozoism, so there is no form that is generated through the self form is assembled by material processes but they still need an account of synthesis okay they still need this account of synthesis to explain the genesis of form and the account of stratification in a thousand plateaus is also an account of the genesis of form but in a way it's It's also about the articulation of form and context. So hylomorphism is only objectionable if you think it's objectionable in Aristotle because
form has a transcendent source in pure intellection. Intellection is the source of all form. But that's not the case, you know, the extent to which that is the case in Hegel is, you know, can be discussed, but in Marx, it's not. It's not kind of, um, intellection or thought is not the generator of form. So then what's really at stake between Marx, Nose and Guattari is two alternative accounts
of the interdependence of form and content. I don't think it's fair to say that Marx reifies forms and renders it metaphysically independent. On the contrary, he's trying to explain how it's generated in and through practice. But then, as far as societies are concerned, the form content distinction, I mean, the The claim that content generates its own form or that matter generates its own form is precisely,
you know, the claim of the political economy that Marx is criticizing. I mean, the claim that exchange is natural, that the market is natural, that competition, you know, are, you know, ubiquitous, you know, is a ubiquitous biological phenomenon. That's, in a way, the kind of the hylozoism in political economy that Marx is attacking. So that's why he insists that the, you know, social form generates a content that has a non-social origin, you know,
you know, land, you know, social labour begins by working on, you know, biological, organic and inorganic materials, but they are transformed in the process. And once they are transformed, they can't simply be you know, their transformation completely, you know, you can't abstract from their transformation and, you know, rely on the properties that those organic and inorganic elements have
independently of society. So I think that that's the point of Marx's insistence or emphasis on form. I mean, please, the last question, and then we should wrap up because it's already midnight in some places. Sure. Just one last question about, say, it's landing on the last point, I think. Would you say something similar to the idea of positing and presupposing language, or would you say that language is absolutely supersense and not something as is due of the split of sense or something supersense?
And if that is so, then the difference between a social construct like value and a social construct like meaning, what would be the difference? Would it be something about a biological life form that needs to... What would be that difference? The difference between language and social forms described by Marx? No, let me, sorry, maybe I was not clear. I understood your last point in the last, actually the last slide in the 39.
I think this is somehow your reading of the whole structure, if I understood you correctly, and that's not directly Marx. So I'm trying to ask that. If this is your point, that the spectral value is had by the living labor it preys on, would you say something similar about language or meaning of a word? Would you see that there is the same structural difference between the, let's say, if there is such a thing, private meaning of a phrase and a spectral, more social meaning of it resultant of something like a reasoning chain or the game of asking and giving reasons.
But would you say something similar about value or meaning? And if not, if your answer is that the meaning is more superfluous and value is actually, the point is that the value is the, or the whole resultant residue of the split between superfluous and sense is the problem that we are talking about. then my question is, can you talk a bit more about this difference, difference between completely social constructs one meaning, one value? I hope I'm clear now. I don't know.
Let me try. I think I got, I think I got, I think I understood. I mean, so, I mean, I think you're asking, so like, look, if living labor is this kind of, you know, in a way, formless residue of, you know, presupposed by values absencing of form, well, it is something like language, or or language as a medium of rational conceptual activity, does it also have a residue? Does conceptual formalization or linguistic formalization
also generate a formless residue? or does meaning does socially instituted meaning rule governed meaning generates you know a rule less kind of you know residue of like singular sense or meaning or well two things one is I mean I would say no because language well look because I think In a way, I think that the private public, I mean, I think that individual speakers and thinkers, you know, can express unique thoughts using common public resources.
so in a way the kind of what language language you know allows one to express unique singular thoughts through um common um you know general resources okay and that's the you know so in other words whereas so in that sense value language is not like value because um the way in which you know the articulation of the universal in the particular um in language is you know disanalogous to their articulation in value value um institutes this you know abstract
equivalence of everything with everything else um in a way by uh and and makes it impossible for particularity to play a determining role other than as a quantitative determination. So in other words, there can be a particular magnitude of value, a particular commodity will have a particular exchange value, but that's a a quantitative determination which is you know monodimensional okay and the claim then would be
that um um in a way the particularity um allowed or expressible through language is um you know poly vocal and multi dimensional. Okay, unless one thinks that meaning as such, unless one thinks that meaning as such is reductive, because it's only, you know, however complicated and poly valence, the meaning you're expressing the fact that it is a meaning still reduces it and that to which the
claim would be well that's like saying that's like a bit like saying that painting um you know it doesn't matter you know how expressive a painting is it's being a painting is still a kind of a restriction or a reduction um you know and that's but but then that's an abstract and compared to what okay marx is clear about the sense in which the value reduction is impoverishing it's impoverishing because he thinks it only allows um you know because of the way in which you know use value is subordinated you know use value is only serves only to kind of to embody
exchange value and that limits the dimensions of use it restricts the dimensions of use the ways in which things can be you know useful in the ways in which they can be humanly used is constrained by you know the um the requirements of maximizing you know exchange value um and so meaning is this this analogous because if you say that well the ways i mean yes there are stereotypical and impoverished ways of meaning um but you know the language as such you know has this
i mean if not infinite like you know at least you know astonishing um allows for this astonishing range of invention and productivity. And so, okay, I think that's my attempt to answer part of your question. Is that, I mean, is that along the lines of what you're asking when you're asking about language and value? Definitely it is. And if you think that it would be better to maybe, because I think you're, I'm looking at you and I'm seeing that you're tired and I don't want to take your time,
nothing more than I did already. So I'm not to be argumentative. I'm just trying to understand understand your point as I can. My thought was that maybe if we abstract away from some, actually some particular content of the economics or linguistics, two systems as two machines of producing social constructs, then there are similarities with them. Then I understood your point that the spectral value or the social value or the whole, the point of maybe abstinence
from the particularities of the youth values or what you want to call it, is haunted by the living lay. As you put it, at the first moment, as you said, is there a shadow or a leak from the language, that was more aligned the line that the last one that I learned from your... Anyway, in a nutshell, there could be this haunting opposition between two aspects of the language because, as I understood you, you said that no, the singularities of thoughts,
human thoughts or private thoughts or individual thoughts of whatever and the public language are not are not as much disparate as useful and structural values or values would that be correct to to understand your answer or not yeah but actually i see the point you're making i mean i don't want want to say look i mean language is a rule government activity i mean the point would be i think you know and in relation to you know the question you're asking is that it's also that um you know misunderstandings are a kind of um you know a degree of ineptitude or incompetence
in, you know, applying the rules of a language, you know, misapplying a rule, misusing a word, the misuse of words, the misuse of concepts might also have, you know, productive consequences. So in other words, if language was just, I mean, look, the points about normative functionalism is that you can always make a mistake. And it's the possibility of, you know, making a mistake of misusing a word or a concept that constitutes, you know, that is constitutive of, you know, that makes it possible for it to be used correctly.
But in a way, the errors, the misuse of language can also have a generative a positive generative value in other words that's how and presumably that's how um you know you know new thoughts are generated or new ideas you know new ways of using words or you know on you know unanticipated associations and connections you know might might come about through error, you know, through misunderstandings or misapplications. So that would be, because clearly, you know, it's not as if you want to say that,
you know, if the game of giving and asking for reasons was just about winning, okay, like every just kind of optimum you know some kind of optimal performance in the sense of like you know always maximizing your um you know your assessments you know your awareness of um you know obligations and entitlements you know always perfectly calibrating obligations and entitlements then it would be trivial and not interesting. So I assume that something else is at stake and
something else is constitutive of novelty and invention in playing the game of giving and and asking for reasons or playing it well. So that means that it's not the sense in which competence is operative, it's not just like, it's not, you know, there isn't the, you know, the, there isn't an optimal degree of competence in giving and asking for reasons in the way in which there might be for playing chess, I guess, is what I would say. And that's a sense in which there would be an underside or a residue generated by playing
it. It's where your lack of understanding or your misunderstanding of words and concepts is also productive. Okay, I think we should wrap up now. And Ray, if you have any last remarks on the assignments or the deadlines or just to finish the seminar? Just to, okay, so like, I mean, so the official deadline for the final papers is two weeks from today, which is the 19th of March, and as suggested by the new centers kind of, you know, rough guidelines.
however i mean if you need more time if you can't get it done within those two weeks just let me know i mean it's it's negotiable um i know you're all busy and you've all got you know lots of other commitments so um you know um yeah so so just let me know you know um how work is progressing um and i've i've already you know had meetings with some of you but you know ideally you know It'd be good if I could meet with everyone who intends to submit a final piece of coursework. So if you haven't done so already, just contact me to let me know.
And since it's quite a big class, it'll probably take me a while to kind of, you know, to grade everything. but I'll do it and you know I'll you know try to do it in a reasonable time I'll try not to take you know weeks and weeks to to get through the grading okay thanks for your patience and good luck good luck with good luck with everything Thank you, Ray, for the seminar. Yeah, thanks. This was really wonderful. The Chris Archer article was wonderful. And I look forward to some future seminar on the self as the Parmenides and Hegel's logic,
which is what it sounds like we need to do to understand any of this. Yes, it turns out that, yeah, that may be necessary. but that's um yeah that will take a long time to kind of uh you know to prepare so yeah well thank you for your time this was great okay um okay thanks very much um everyone and good nights good nights