okay hello everyone this is boxing philosophy session 5 led by professor rick brassia and we're gonna start the lesson right now Okay, thanks. So I've just sent the handout to everyone, so I hope, you know, I think, let me know if you haven't received it. So today we're going to begin looking at Volume 1 of of Capital, especially the first chapter of Volume 1 of Capital.
And also because we're only now, I've decided to make an adjustment to the syllabus, because we're now in week 5, so I'd like to do, I want to spend at least two weeks on Capital, but mainly just focusing on Volume 1, which means if we do that, that would only give us two sessions, two concluding sessions. So I'd like to basically do Volume 1 of Capital this week and next week. so that will be five and six and then that leaves us two weeks
in which I'd like to do Lukash and Althusser Lukash in weeks seven and Althusser in week eight but if it's possible that I might we'll see how it goes I'm hoping to be able to do both of those but I've eliminated the the original kind of reading for week eight, because I just don't think we're gonna get to it, basically. So, yeah, I hope that will work out. So, okay, today we're doing, yeah, so, let's start,
Let's start going through the handout. So today we're going to look at Marx's analysis of the commodity form, the relationship between commodities, value and money. Now, last week we discussed, we looked at the Grundrisse and we discussed the distinction which seems to be fundamental for Marx's, the method of the critique of political economy, which is a distinction between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality, the concrete in actuality. And what I suggested there was that the starting point for Marx's critique of political economy,
and in other words his kind of his critical analysis of capitalist society, are not any kind of, it's not a set of empirical data, nor a set of metaphysical assumptions, but rather the categories of political economy understood as standing in a symptomatic relationship to the reality to the capitalist reality that they know that they are both describing but also by
which they are conditioned without understanding the nature of their conditioning by it so what Marx is you know so what I suggested was that Marx's method is trying to imminently generate the categories that will you know that allow him to analyze capitalism so unlike traditional political economists he's not simply he's not taking these categories for granted he's generating them through his analysis and the category of commodity just like the category of value in the category of money is generated through Marx's
analysis no in relationship now if you remember when we discussed you know the traditional categories of political economy are you know production distribution exchange and consumption and one way of understanding what's going on is that in a way Marx is going to show through his analysis that in a way that all these categories are interdependent you know you can't kind of understand any of them in complete abstraction from the others however the the category or the categorical determination which is most important for his analysis is the category of exchange.
Because, you know, Marx's thesis, as explained by the so-called value theory analysis, which is exemplified by Michael Heinrichs a little bit, is that basically the relationship between production, distribution and consumption is mediated by the exchange relation. And what is, you know, the units of exchange is the commodity. What is exchange is the commodity. What is produced is the commodity and what is circulated and consumed is the commodity.
So in a way, by beginning his analysis with an analysis of the commodity form, in a way, all the relationship between production, distribution, and exchange, sorry, production, distribution, exchange, and consumption is concentrated in the analysis of the commodity form. I mean, it will subsequently be unpacked in volumes two and three. But the reason why the analysis begins with the commodity form is because the commodities are both the fundamental units of production and of exchange. A commodity is something that is produced in order to be exchanged.
therefore its exchangeability is the precondition of its production. This is very important. So the first fundamental distinction Marx makes, which I'm sure you all know, is the distinction between use value and exchange value. But it's important to understand this properly. The use value of a commodity is simply what it can be used for, the purposes or the functions that it satisfies. And Marx wants to insist that the exchange value of the commodity can never be read off
its use value. So in other words, what he calls the exchangeability of a commodity has nothing to do with its usefulness. That's the first claim. So in number one, we see, Marx writes, the utility of a thing makes it a use value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical property of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity such as iron, corn or a diamond is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a useful, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labor required to appropriate its useful qualities.
This is important because although labor generates use, but it's not the imminent measure of the usefulness of a commodity because things can be useful, water, soil, air, minerals, materials, all of these things can be useful but none of them are products of labor. I mean they have to be extracting, their use requires their transformation by labor but they are not themselves commodities, they are not themselves produced by labor.
The usefulness of a commodity is a physical property. This physical property is, now by physical here he doesn't simply mean a natural property and I think it's important to understand that what something is used for isn't necessarily predetermined by its physical characteristics or properties. Thinks of all the different ways in which human beings can use physical objects. So even though use value is tied to the physical structure of an object, its use value is not
predetermined by its physical attributes. So this is why there is no, even the usefulness of an object can't itself be abstracted from the social context or the social relations in which human beings use objects to satisfy certain functions or purposes which are socially generated. The point being that the contrast between use and exchange is not simply a contrast between a kind of an intrinsic property of physical objects and an extrinsic relative
property. Because even the usefulness of objects, although it's tied to their physical characteristics, objects is not determined by them. It's also socially mediated. So the claim is that the exchangeability of a useful object is something that has to be understood as, you know, in a way, kind of a second order abstraction. Or it's something that is socially mediated, but in a way which has to be understood independently of the way in which usefulness or function
is socially mediated. And this is why Marx says that the exchange value of a commodity is a very peculiar quality or characteristic tied to what he calls its spectral objectivity. We'll get to that. Now, I'm not going to read the entirety of quote 2, but I'll just read the passages in bold. First, the valid exchange values of a given commodity express something equal. And secondly, exchange value generally is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it.
Let us take two commodities, corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever these proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron. For example, one quarter of corn equals X hundred weight of iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things, in one quarter of corn and X hundred weight of iron there exists in equal quantities something common to both the two things must therefore be equal to a third which in itself is neither the one nor the other each of them so far as it as it is exchange value must therefore be
reducible to this third but this common something cannot be either a geometrical a chemical or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention only insofar as they affect the utility of those commodities or make them use values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterized by a total abstraction from use value. As use values, commodities are above all of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities and consequently do not contain an atom of use value so there's two things going on here is
first is you know the Marx's claim that's not one atom of use values enters into the exchange value of a commodity so that if two commodities are exchangeable they have something in common and that something is value okay they're exchanged on the basis of a value which they have in common but that value has nothing to do with their usefulness and therefore the measure of of value, the measure of this value understood as exchangeability, cannot be determined by
any use that these commodities might have. So Markta's question is, what is the basis of exchange what is it that makes things what is this third thing this thing that commodities have in common now those of you who I guess who know Marx are familiar with Marx will know that well the you know the the obvious answer is that Marx is going to say that it's labor you know that labor is a substance of exchange value.
Commodities are products of labor and the value of a commodity is determined by the labor that went into its manufacturing. This is the so-called labor theory of value which is often attributed to Marx. Michael Heinrich, who's reading I'm following here, thinks that this is a mistake. It's a mistake. Now to understand why it's a mistake is to understand first the significance of abstract labor in Marx's analysis because the, you know, if
If commodities are the products of labor, labor can only be used to determine the substance of exchange value by abstracting from its concrete characteristics or the qualities of labor. So the contrast is this is that concrete labor, okay, produces use values, okay. If you're, so consider all the different, you know, types of labor.
You can, you know, there's a blacksmith, a shoemaker, you know, a weaver, etc. These are all forms of concrete labor and they are qualitatively distinct. The skills employed in these forms of labor are distinct. The materials processed in these forms of labor are distinct. And the products of labor are distinct and serve different purposes. labor that forms the substance of exchange value is abstract labor in
other words it's a it's a labor that has whose concrete characteristics are disregarded so now we come to so I'll read a number this is number three on the handouts mark tries if we leave out the consideration if we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities they have only one common property left that of being products of labor but even the product of labor itself has undergone a change in our hands if we make abstraction from its use value we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value we see in it no longer a table a house yarn or any other useful thing its existence as a material thing is put out
of sight and neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labor of the joiner the mason spinner or any other definite kind of productive labor along with the useful qualities of the products themselves we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labor embodied in them and the concrete forms of that labor there is nothing left but what is common to them all, all are reduced to one in the same sort of labor, human labor in the abstract. Let's now consider the residue of each of these products. It consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogenous human
labor, of labor power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is that human labor power has been expended in their production that human labor is embodied in them when looked at as crystals of this social substance common to common to them all they are values therefore the common substance that manifests itself in exchange value of commodities whenever they are exchanged is their value so the The substance of value for Marx will be socially necessary abstract labor time. So that means that in order to commensurate objects, in order to measure the value of
commodities that have different useful characteristics, we must abstract from the concrete forms of labour that endow them with concrete forms of use value to arrive at abstract labour. Abstract labor itself is measured in terms of the time it takes. So this is why in a way they, if abstract labor is a substance of exchange value, socially
necessary labor time is the substance of abstract labor or is the unit for measuring the quantity of abstract labor that constitutes the substance of value. So Marx writes, some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor spent on it, the more idle and unskillful the laborer, the more valuable his commodity would be because more time would be required in his production. The labor, however, that forms a substance of value is homogeneous human labor, expenditure of one uniform labor power. The total labor power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of
the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogenous mass of human labor power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society and takes effect as such. That is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on average or no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.
So in a way, just as exchange involves an abstraction from use, exchange value involves a complete abstraction from use value. Abstract labor, which is the substance of exchange value, involves a complete abstraction from the concrete labor that generates particular uses. And so the labor time, the time that abstract labor takes, first of all, it can be measured
by clock time. A clock can measure a concrete act of production. Only concrete labor can be measured in terms of clock time, but no clock can measure abstract labor time because it's the socially average time required with an average degree of skill and intensity. Which is why abstract labor involves a reduction, you know, you abstract from the particular concrete skills, you know, that distinguish concrete labors from each other, and you reduce
all skill to a kind of generic, you know, generic unskilled labor. So Marx writes in number five, a commodity may be the product of the most skilled labor, its value by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labor represents a definite quantity of the latter labor alone the different proportions in which different sorts of labor are reduced to unskilled labor as their standard are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers and consequently appears to be fixed by custom for simplicity sake which shall and henceforth account every kind of labor to be unskilled, simple labor.
And by this, we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction. So what Heinrich points out is that in a way the abstraction from concrete labor, which is the presupposition of the exchangeability of commodities insofar as this abstract labor constitutes the substance of the value of the commodity. This abstraction takes place behind the backs of the producers of commodities.
And it's socially validated, says Marx. It's socially validated because society, understood as the totality of relations between individuals or members of the society, carries out this, in a way, carries out the abstraction. The abstraction from the concrete to the abstract is carried out behind the backs of individual producers and consumers of commodities and is ensured by society, you know, society understood
as the totality of relations between you know producers and consumers of commodities it's also important because the the social validation is in order to determine to what extent one can abstract from any particular kind of skilled labor to arrive at abstract labor a whole set of you know societal assumptions and conditions come into play so in other words the point is that the distinction between skilled and unskilled labor which Marx is invoking
here is itself a variable historically and socially variable he's not pointing to any kind of definite you know there is no absolute measure of the difference between skilled and unskilled labor it is socially variable which is why it is the reduction of concrete labour to abstract labour is something that is socially validated but this validation is always historically specific and different societies will have different ways of adjudicating the difference
between abstract and concrete labor or skilled and unskilled labor. Now, the time, okay, the time is the measure of abstract labor, but here again, this is not a concrete, any kind of determinate time. It's not the time that is measured by any clock. once again it's a socially necessary abstract labor time it's it's it's time measured in terms of some socially validated average and this is why
socially necessary labor time is variable it depends on certain conditions So Marx writes in number six, as values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labor time. The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant if the labor time required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labor. This productiveness is determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average amount of skill of the workman, the state of science, the degree of its practical application, the social organization of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production,
and by physical conditions. In general, the greater the productiveness of labor, the less is the labor time required for the production of an article. The less is the amount of labor crystallized in that article, and the less is its value, and vice versa. The less the productiveness of labor, the greater the labor time required for the production of an article, and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness of the labor incorporated in it. um okay before i go on um i see that there's a comment here from uh from peter
um i'll read this comment yeah right that you'd actually just clarified that okay it's not it's not exchange value um i was just trying to think how how does it happen how does how does this abstraction happen it can't just come from the concrete and then become abstract it has there has to be some it has to be in relation to something else i thought it must be exchange value but that no it's it's science it's the skill of the workers uh it's a it's so it's socially produced like you're saying there's actually i was reading something oh only only recently that reminds me of this that was um called red plenty and in the book they sort of, there's sort of like an ongoing joke.
Like, I think that they've sort of misinterpreted the labour theory of value maybe. And so they're producing like unnecessarily large chairs and chandeliers and everything because they think that like, well, presumably maybe, that because a lot of labour time has gone into it, must be sort of valuable, do you know what I mean? So the metrics they've given to the managers to sort of measure everything are just sort of, I don't know, maybe they don't take into account this sort of concrete abstract difference between concrete labour and abstract labour. Yeah, the key thing, I mean, just to, okay,
I think the key to understanding Marx is his theory of real abstraction. So what he's talking about, capitalism is a system of real abstractions. Okay. Now, so this is something I began, you know, we kind of discussed a little bit last week. What is value and money are real abstractions. Now, what does that mean? What is the contrast between, you know, a real abstraction and let's say the opposite would be an ideal abstraction? Well, an ideal abstraction, say redness or justice or goodness or beauty, okay? These are, you know, ideal abstractions. These are abstractions generated through intellection, through an intellectual operation, okay?
If you have a bunch of, you know, if you see, you know, we perceive many, many red things, okay? but we abstract redness as the common property, the universal attribute which is common to all particular red things. But redness as such doesn't exist in any particular red thing. It's distinct, and therefore it's... Whereas red things exist or particulars that exist in space and time, redness as such as a universal is an abstract entity that has no concrete spatial temporal existence and you can say the same thing for justice goodness
okay no Marx's proposal is that a real abstraction is something that is it's something it's an abstraction that is generated through practice through social practice and not through intellection it's it's it's an it's abstract because you cannot point to it okay a concrete entity is a spatial temporal particular which can be pointed to okay I can point to you know this red thing or that red thing or this other red thing I can point to this good person or this good acts or this other good thing but I can't point to redness as
such or goodness as such okay they they're universals they're abstract entities the Marxist claim is that value and money and labor under capitalism are real abstractions because you cannot they are not spatial temporal particulars you cannot point to them okay they are not concrete entities but he says nevertheless they are not these they are not transcendent entities existing beyond space and time they have this pic they are they are entities which are generated through human practices but which are whose existence is spatial temporally distributed okay so if you think about so value for marks
value is something that turns out to kind of coordinates all of the human existence under capitalism but it's not something that you can point to and money the money form which is the measure of value is also a real abstraction because it's what allows you all ultimately all value is measured in terms of money but money is also something that is abstract that it's It's something that is instituted in human social practice, but it's not a spatial temporal
particular. So as I remember, the pieces of paper or metal that you carry around in your pockets and your wallets are not money. They are merely tokens. They're emblems or they're placeholders for money. But money is not something that you can hold in your hand. And that's what Marx means by a real abstraction. But it turns out in Marx's account that labor is also a real abstraction because the labor that constitutes the substance of value that makes all things exchangeable is itself an abstraction. It's abstract labor. And it's abstract labor which is ultimately, which is commodifiable.
It's abstract labor. In order for the reduction of concrete labor to abstract labor to be possible, labor must be something that can be exchanged, which is to say that the labor power of the worker is itself something that has a value in a way and ultimately something that has, whose value is measured by money. So Michael Heinrich points out, he says it's a mistake to think that Marx exposes a labor theory of value. He says as people like Mill and the classical economists did, Marx esposes a monetary theory of value because it turns out that the labor,
the abstract labor that constitutes the substance of value, of exchange value, is itself a commodity. Abstract labor is itself a commodity and it is itself something that can be bought and sold and therefore that is subsumed by value, by exchange and ultimately measured in terms of money. So one consequence of this analysis is that it's a mistake to think that labour is a a kind of as a concrete material reality that generates the substance of value
because the conditions under which you know labor generates the substance of value is a condition under which labor has already been abstracted from its concrete instances and reduced to you know a kind of a socially validated you know abstract form and something who's you know that is measured in terms of you know abstract time socially necessary abstract labor time so on this account this is why when you know what Marx says that not one parcel of use not there's nothing there's nothing concrete no concrete physical
characteristics of objects or of human physical activity enter into the substance of value he means it he means that value is a real abstraction and it's a real abstraction that mediates all social existence under capital which means that even the labor okay that is that counts the labor that is validated as valuable, as value generating, is itself abstract labor, okay, and never concrete labor. That's why the attempt to kind of, you know, an example you gave from this book, from the Red Plenty book, there's no way of tying value, or there's no way of coordinating
exchange value to any form, any manifestation of concrete labor. There's a complete disconnection. And in fact, I think for Marx, because Marx emphasizes a social totality, You know, the social totality is always already what mediates relationships between, you know, individual social agents and individual social roles. that means that you know nothing you know you can't point to some kind of
dimension of human practical activity or a human no labor or productivity that somehow subsists in itself independently of its mediation by value under the capital relation. This is, so this reading has kind of drastic consequences because we'll see the fundamental distinction is between use creating labor and value generating labor but use creating labor is not some kind of a historical abstract you know what he mark says that the attempt to posits you know use creating useful labor as some kind of you know a
historical invariant would itself be you know an abstraction a bad kind of metaphysical abstraction the relationship between everything the ways in which we create useful objects you know under capitalism is itself mediated by the value form and we don't have access to a sphere of use in itself there is no sphere of use in itself or of labor in itself existing independently of historically specific social forms and as far as our current
understanding of you know our own existence and the social forms that you know led up to our social existence you can't abstract you can't understand the modalities of useful labor independently of the way in which use is currently mediated by value. Now I hope that this will become a bit clearer once we move on. Well actually it ties on commodity production presupposes social exchange. This is point number seven. Marx writes anything can be a use value value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to
labour such are air, virgin soil, natural metals, etc. A thing can be useful in the product of human labour without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour creates indeed use values but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, i.e. commodities, he must not only produce use value but use values for others, i.e. social use values. So the point, okay Marx wants to point there's a fundamental difference between exchanging on the basis of use, on the basis of usefulness and exchanging on the basis of what Marx calls value or exchange
value. Something a commodity is produced in order to be exchanged and the conditions of its production are conditioned by the exchange relation. Which is to say that no, you know, the, and because the exchange relation is something that is instituted at the level of the social totality, that means that whatever, whatever use values commodities have is inseparable or rather it's not inseparable but is necessarily
somehow connected or somehow determined by their exchange value, their exchange ability. So the difference between there being commodities, the commodity form is anticipated by pre-capitalist societies. And obviously all pre-capitalist societies involve all sorts of exchange, but exchange was never an end in itself, basically.
Things are exchanged on the basis of use, and there was a kind of a social... Society has a certain structure which determines what uses things will have. So for instance, the medieval peasant produces corn for the feudal lord. He produces two types of corn, for the lord and the one type for the lord, another type for the parson. And the lord and the parson have different social roles within feudal society. But in a society which is entirely organized around commodity exchange, that means everything,
no aspect of use or no dimension, no feature of use can be entirely abstracted from the sphere of exchange. And this is why, and remember here Marx's comment that the anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape. Marx insists historical materialism means that when Marx talks about the relationship between capitalist society and feudal society, he doesn't view feudal society as anticipated. He doesn't think that capitalist society simply evolved naturally out of feudal society. He thinks that the features of feudal society that are intelligible to us, and that help
us understand capitalist society, presupposed, can only be understood if we have a proper analysis of the structure of capitalist society. And since, according to him, everything is coordinated by the primacy of exchange, that That means that it's the structure of capitalist commodity exchange that makes feudal forms of exchange that were not yet wholly commodified in feudalism historically intelligible to us. So again, all this to say that this is why Marx is offering a kind of, you know, a synchronic structural analysis.
He's treating the capitalist totality as a kind of, as a totally integrated structure whose moments are all interdependent. And he's not trying to explain the historical genesis of capitalism, because, you know, there's no, you know, he thinks that, in other words, he emphasizes the historical specificity of the capitalist totality, but he doesn't think it evolves kind of naturally out of these pre-capitalist social formations. And I think it's always important to remember this when, you know, whenever Marx talks about history or when we're talking about Marx's historical materialism.
It's only by understanding, well it's only by going through the critique of political economy by understanding how the categories of analysis are determined by the capitalist social relations. Thank you.
Hello? Hello? Hi, Ray. Yeah, you dropped off there for a minute. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, there was a haircut. Okay. Sorry about that. Yeah, there was a power cut. It happens here sometimes. But anyway, I guess it's good because it stopped me from droning on. So, okay, let's get back to the handouts. Commodity production presupposes social exchange. So Marx's claim is that all social relations under capital are mediated by exchange, by exchange value. That's the basic claim. So you can't understand any feature of capitalist society without understanding the exchange relation,
which is fundamental, around which everything else kind of orbits. and his claim that this exchange relation, which is absolutely kind of central to capitalism, can't be read off pre-capitalist forms of exchange. Okay. You just, it's only by understanding the capitalist exchange relation that we can, you know, see, we can understand exchange in pre-capitalist social formation. So this is, you know, the anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape. Okay, so let's move on to number eight. So the second, okay, the distinction
between useful labor and valuable labor. Okay, I think this is also the key to understanding Marx. Marx writes, in the use value of each commodity there is contained useful labor, a productive activity of a definite kind, exercise with a definite aim. Use values cannot confront each other as commodities unless the useful labor embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them. In a community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, ie in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labor that are carried on independently by individual producers, each on their own account develops into a complex system a social division of labor so far therefore as labor is a
creator of use value is useful labor it's a necessary condition independent of all forms of society for the existence of the human race it is an eternal nature imposed necessity without which there can be no material exchanges between man and nature and therefore no life so this is often taken to be so when Marx Marx is famous for emphasizing the primacy of labor okay and but the distinction between useful labor and valuable labor is absolutely crucial Marx is sick he's not we know that the valuable labor or value generating labor is abstract labor okay it's it's it's socially validated
abstract labor it's not any kind of concrete labor but remember that for Marx or every variety of concrete labor presupposes social presupposes a kind of a mode of production and relations of production. So Marx says obviously human beings have to produce and reproduce the material conditions of their existence and labor is necessary, is useful labor but the use values you know the the use values created by useful labor
can never be abstracted from historically specific mode of production and historically specific relations of production which is which is why although labor as he puts it is a necessary condition independent of all forms of society. It's the invariant. You know, it's a common thread running through human history. The forms, the varieties of use created by labor are not historically immutable. It's one thing to say that useful labour is a necessary condition independent of all historically
specific societies, but that's not to say that there's a repertory of use values which are in themselves necessary conditions and independent of all historically specific societies. So I think this is why, although Marx recognizes the necessity of labor, he says, what kinds of labor, the use values created by labor are always historically specific, are always
going to presuppose historically specific social formations. And this is why he's not simply saying that there are certain things, that there are basic necessities which condition all human existence. even, you know, the food, clothing and shelter. Okay? This is why Marx is not a kind of, he's not saying human beings will always have these elementary physiological needs that they will have to satisfy. If he believed that, he couldn't be a communist because it's precisely, he thinks that the
transformation in the relationship between no means and ends under capitalism because of the the that the socialization of labor under capital allows for the satisfaction of you know all material human needs we can produce we have a kind of a regime of production which allows us to satisfy, to eliminate want and scarcity for the first time in human history. And the point is to, he thinks, is to kind of transform social relations and abolish the subordination
of labor to value so as to create currently un-invisageable modalities of use. The point is that communism won't be the... It's not the return to the satisfaction of perennial human needs. It's the ushering in of a dimension of the satisfaction of needs that are historically unprecedented and currently uninvisigable from the vantage point of the domination of the
value form. So, yes, there is a distinction between useful and valuable labor, use-creating labor and value-creating labor, but there is no eternal domain of use to which labor must always be always be subordinated. Because if Marx believed that, then he would be a primitive communist, which I think clearly he is not. And finally, abstract labour is a social form, not a physiological reality. It's a mistake, you know, abstract labor, again, it's a mistake. The form abstraction
involved in the reduction of concrete abstract labor, it's not, abstract labor is not to be understood as some kind of, you know, once again, kind of generic human capacity, okay, a kind of a historically invariant capacity of the human species. It's not. It is something that is... It's a social form and it's something that is conditioned by value and by the exchange abstraction. So it's important not to substantialize abstract labor. which would be the error tending upon the temptation to substantialize concrete labor.
Now, okay, so now we're going to move on because, okay, I'm trying to move a little bit faster now. I wanted to discuss, okay, so first, so value is a function of the social relation between commodities. And this Marx writes in number 11 on the handout, The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance. Not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity by itself, as we will, yet insofar as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities is a purely social reality,
and that they acquire this reality only insofar as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz human labor, it falls as a matter of course that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity. So value is a social relation, but it's a social relation between commodities. So now we have to understand the nature of this social relation between commodities. So the first distinction that Marx will make is between what he calls relative value and equivalent value. The value of any given commodity can only be measured in terms of another commodity.
so the famous example he gives in capital is 20 yards of linen equals one coat and in this account the 20 yards of linen have a relative value and the coat has an equivalent value the value of the linen is expressed in the value of the coat so we say, as Marx himself writes in number 13 20 yards of linen equals one coat or 20 yards of linen are worth one coat now
There's a reversibility between this relation, the relation of relative value and equivalent value. But first of all, before we examine this reversibility, we must understand what is peculiar to the equivalent value. So in quotation number 12 on the Hannah-Marx writes, the relative form of the value of the linen presupposes therefore the presence of some other commodity, here the quote, under the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume the relative form. So there's an asymmetry. The value of a commodity can only be expressed in another distinct commodity.
and in a way the commodity that you know assumes the expressive role okay you know the commodity that figures as the equivalent value of some other commodity can't itself express its own value okay it can only its value can only be expressed in another you know in a third commodity Now, the question then is what is the characteristic of the equivalent value?
What characteristic of a commodity allows it to be the bearer of the equivalent value for another commodity? Now here, okay, I'm going to look at number 15 on the handout, okay? Marx writes, when occupying the position of equivalent in the equation of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen, as something of the same kind because it is value. In this position, it is a thing in which we see nothing but value, or whose palpable bodily form represents value.
Yet the coat itself, the body of the commodity coat, is a mere use value. A coat as such no more tells us it is value than does the first piece of linen we take hold of. This shows that when placed in value relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than when out of that relation. Just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous uniform counts for more than when in Mufti. The point he's making here is that in order for the coat to express the value of the linen, in order for it to be the equivalent value of the linen, in a way we also abstract from its use value.
In other words, the useful properties of the coat, the attributes that make it a useful thing, are irrelevant to its expressive role vis-a-vis the value of the other commodity, the linen. So, and this is where Marx begins to talk about the value form, the form of value. Here, the coat is the form of value for the linen. And insofar as it can, you know, express the form of value of the linen,
we disregard all its material or physical attributes. Marx writes, By means, therefore, of the value relation expressed in our equation, the bodily form of commodity B, i.e. the coat, becomes the value form of commodity A, i.e. the linen. Or the body of commodity B acts as a mirror to the value of commodity A. By putting itself in relation with commodity B as value in its own person, as the matter of which human labor is made up, the commodity A, remember here this was the linen, converts the value in use B, i.e. the coat, into the substance in which to express its A's own value.
The value of A that's expressed in the use value B has taken the form of relative value. But Marx continues. This is number 17. The value form must therefore not only express a value generally, but also value in a definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of commodity A to commodity B of the linen to the coat, not only is the latter's value in general made the equal in quality of the linen, but a definite quantity of coat is made the equivalent of a definite quantity of linen. One coat is made the equivalent of 20 yards of linen. so what's what Marx is pointing out here is that what's happening here is that in the the value form
value can only be determined by abstracting from the qualities that express the usefulness of a commodity. So in other words that the the substance of value which is common to two commodities a and b linen and coat has a merely quantitative value as opposed to a qualitative value so value is quantitative and homogeneous okay because it must be the common elements on you
know you know guaranteeing the exchange ability of different commodities so therefore and this common element must be homogeneous it must be but its homogeneity can't be understood in terms of any qualitative commonality any any qualitative resemblance between these different commodities so therefore it can only be quantitatively measured okay so therefore the the value relation between commodities is ultimately as assumes a quantitative form it's a magnitude this is why we have to talk about magnitudes of value and not because
and not any qualities value is without quality so here then marks and I'm just kind of summarizing very briefly now I'm moving very fast but um so he distinguishes between the equivalent form of value as when we say that you know the the coach is the equivalent for 20 yards of linen okay and then he distinguishes between what he calls the total form of value because if you think when you say the equivalent form is X amount of commodity a equals y amount of commodity B. This is the equivalent form of value. But this implies obviously it's reversible. If you say that X amount of commodity A is equivalent to Y amount of commodity B, you
imply that Y amount of commodity B is also equivalent to X amount of commodity A. However, It's never just, you know, because a commodity form is common to everything, you know, every object that is exchanged under capitalism, no commodity is ever equivalent to one other commodity alone. Okay, so in other words, so the form of value of any commodity can be expanded into a total list of equivalent commodities.
And this is what Marx calls the expanded or total form of value. So for instance, 20 yards of linen are worth one coat, but they're also worth 10 pounds of tea, 40 pounds of coffee, etc., etc. So in other words, the value of any single commodity can be expanded into the value of, you know, the magnitude of all the other commodities with which this amount of this commodity is equivalent. Okay. So that's what Marx calls the total form of value. Okay. But finally, this total form of value, for Marx implies what he calls the general form
of value. In other words, if for every commodity you can expand the equivalence of any two commodities can be expanded into a total form of value where you explain, where you list the totality of equivalents for any single commodity, then this implies a general form of value where you can specify what some general equivalent for every single commodity. So one coat is worth 20 yards of linen, 10 pounds of tea are worth 20 yards of linen,
40 pounds of coffee are worth 20 yards of linen, etc. Marx's point is that the general form of value is, there must be something that expresses the general form of value. And in traditional societies, gold, for instance, is a general form of value. In order to exchange commodities, the exchange relation implies equivalent value, total value, and ultimately a general form of value, which will be the general equivalent.
Okay? And ultimately, it's from this that the money form will be generated. So think of, so the claim is that in any kind of, you know, society organized around commodity exchange, there will be a general equivalent, okay, which expresses the general form of value. gold was the general equivalent the general form of value so in other words the value of every other commodity was expressible in terms of a quantity of gold okay so gold then becomes the general equivalent which expresses the general form of value you know value as such is measured in terms of gold so
Marx writes a number 18 through its equation with linen the value of every commodity is now not only differentiated from its use value but from all use values generally and is by that very fact expressed as that which is common to all commodities and by this form commodities are for the first time really brought into relation with each other as values. The general equivalent is what relates every commodity to every other commodity as an exchangeable, exchangeable as something that is valuable, that has a specific magnitude of value. Then he goes on in 19, in both cases equivalent and general form of value, it is the private task so to speak of the individual commodity to give itself a form of value.
But the general form of value on the other hand can only arise as a joint contribution of the whole world of commodities. A commodity only acquires a general expression of its value if, at the same time, all other commodities express their values in the same equivalent, and every newly emergent commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that because the objectivity of commodities as values is the purely social existence of these things it can only be expressed through the whole range of their social relations so what marx is here is the spectral objectivity of them he says that value um has a is objective
but it has a very peculiar objectivity because it's not the objectivity of um you know the uh you know, the objects, you know, the properties and the phenomena kind of described by natural science. It's a peculiar, it's an objectivity once again that is socially mediated, okay, that depends on the social totality. So his claim is that in a way this totality must already be, this
totality of relations must be operative in order for any two commodities A and B to be exchangeable and to have something in common. So what he's saying is that the exchangeability of A and B presupposes the general equivalent, presuppose a general form of value which is the gold standard but ultimately money. Okay, so which is why Marx will say that money and commodities are the two forms of appearance of value okay so value is you know this peculiar stuff okay remember
it has no physical it has no kind of physical or you know kind of or no metaphysically neutral characteristics it has this kind of the spectral objectivity but it's this stuff that manifests itself first in the commodity form, where a commodity is something that is exchangeable, but what are commodities, what is it that renders commodities exchangeable? It's the money form. So in a way, as soon as you have the commodity form, you must also have the money form. So what Marx is articulating here is the kind of how each moment, how value, the commodity form presupposes value but value presupposes money however value is the
kind of in a way is is what mediates in a way is what finds expression in both commodities and money which is why Marx says that commodities and money are the forms of appearance of value okay money is the imminent measure of value we know that value abstracts from every quality of particularity and it can only be determined quantitatively which is why
value is its only kind of feature is is is quantitative there are magnitudes of values of value but no qualities of value so what you know what can serve to kind of to measure magnitudes of value well that must be some commodity in a way that represents the exchange ability of every other commodity okay and so so gold will be what gold you know assumes a role general equivalent gold becomes a commodity in a way which expresses in terms of which the value of every other commodity is measured but what makes gold valuable there's nothing
intrinsically valuable you know what makes gold valuable is human you know a human social formation that decides that gold will be you know the the measure of value and then finally that the point is that you know at some points you know the money we have the money and the coins that are used in society are supposed to be placeholders for a quantity of gold remember you know that gold in a way is supposed to be the kind of the the ultimately valuable thing the thing that measures the value of all you know other commodities but because gold
is cumbersome to kind of carry around in exchange we create objects which are tokens or representatives of gold so we put you so paper money and coins are you know you know representatives of gold but but ultimately once you have a kind of you know once you have a kind of once the money form is has been instituted you know and once money is kind of doing its work as a kind of a general equivalent it turns out that you can decouple the value of of the
representatives of money as such of what counts as money from the privileged commodity which was taken to be its its embodiment gold so in other words so money becomes decoupled from gold and this is as Heinrich points out this isn't although for instance in the 19th century you know economists couldn't foresee this happening. The logic of the money form is perfectly compatible with the decoupling of the general equivalent from any kind of privileged commodity.
You don't need a gold standard for the general equivalent to play the social role that it plays. Shall we have a quick break now? Because it's 6.33. The final section on the handout. Shall we have a quick five-minute break? For me, it's okay. Or not. I mean, I'm happy to go on if people want to. A break will be good. Okay. We'll have a five-minute break. And we'll come back just before... Well, yeah. just five minutes from now basically. Okay.
Yeah, I think there's just kind of... Yeah, we can start now basically. okay can you turn on your camera sure yes okay right okay so I'll just try to finish the okay the what I want to discuss now is Mark's account of what he of fetishism of commodities. So we know, so for Marx, value then presupposes, you know,
the exchangeability of every commodity is mediated by a general equivalent, the money form but the money form itself can't operate independently of value understood as a system of relations. The point about the value form for Marx is that it's the, and we'll see this next week when we look at Marx's general formula for capital. Ultimately, the value form is what mediates every other kind of social relation under capitalism.
So it has to be understood as a kind of, not simply as a kind of, it's not an object, nor is it any kind of substance. It's simply a totality of relations. And it's this... Now, when Marx talks about... Remember, we talked a couple of weeks ago. We said that Marx... The young Marx distinguished between... the primacy between appearance and reality, between the reality of material production
and reproduction, and its ideological misrepresentation. And remember, there's a famous kind of metaphor of the camera obscura, in that the consciousness in a way kind of inverts relations between the real material relations that condition social reality. Now, the opening of the first chapter of Capital is famous for this analysis of the commodity form and the articulation of commodity, value and money.
And Marx now brings in, he starts talking about what he calls the fetishism of commodities. And he describes the fetishism of commodities as an inversion of material relations and social relations. So what I'm suggesting is that Marx's account of the fetishism of commodities is a mature consummation of ideological inversion, of the inversion relation between consciousness and material reality in the German ideology. So now, what is the fetishism of commodities? Fetishism is the transplantation of social relations between producers or laborers
into social relations between the products of labor or between commodities. Okay, so the fetishism of commodities characterizes this inversion where relations between producers of commodities, social relations between producers are mediated and conditioned by social relations between the products of that productive activity or which is to say between commodities so Marx writes in number 20
whence then arises the enigmatical character of the product of labor as as soon as it assumes the form of commodities. Clearly from this form itself, the equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally valued. Now here, remember, he means the equality of abstract labour is expressed objectively in the equality of value, of commodities being equally exchangeable and having an exchange value. The measure of the expenditure of labor power by the duration of that expenditure,
i.e. socially necessary abstract labor time, takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labor. What is the magnitude of value is a measure of socially necessary abstract labor time. And money is a measure of socially necessary abstract labor time. And then Marx continues, And finally, the mutual relations of the producers within which the social character of their labor affirms itself takes the form of a social relation between the products. If you think of what we just said about money, well, in what way is there a social relation between the products?
Well, in so far as there's a general equivalent which relates every commodity to every other commodity. So commodities are socially related through the money form, which is the general equivalent. And then Mark continues, a commodity is therefore a mysterious thing simply because in it, the social character of men's labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor. because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation,
existing not between themselves but between the products of their labor. This is the reason why the products of labor become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. So if we pause and if we think about this passage in bold here, so a commodity is mysterious, according to Marx, because the social character of men's labor, which is to say that the fact that, you know, commodities are products of human labor, but the value of every commodity is determined by the socially necessary abstract labor time.
But this value, the value, the exchangeability of a commodity appears to us as an objective character. So in other words, any commodity, all the commodities surrounding us have an exchange value, have a worth, which we don't decide, which is objectively fixed. So everything, every commodity has a value, and that value is fixed independently of the attitude of producers or consumers. okay so this is why the objective no value is a peculiar thing because it's its value is objective
but it's an objectivity which is in a way is both generated through human social practice but seems to operate independently of that practice at the same time this is why it's spectral okay it haunts kind of human social consciousness. And then Marx continues after the semicolon, because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation existing not between themselves but between the products of their labor. So what's the relation of the producers the sum total of their own labor. Well if you think about the kind of
you know total value, every commodity is a product of labor, okay? But every commodity has both an equivalent value and a total value, okay? The total value is its value is expressed in relationship to the totality of commodities, every other kind of existing commodity. But commodities are produced by human labor. So in a way, the total value of any commodity is itself a social relation. It's a relation that a commodity has to every other commodity.
And this is a social relation. But it's not a relationship between the producers of commodities, but rather between the commodities themselves. And finally, when you come to money as general equivalent, insofar as the value of every commodity can be bought or sold, it has a kind of a monetary value, then once again the value, the way in which money mediates between commodities or allows commodities to circulate, this is again a kind of social relation, but it's a social relation that seems to operate entirely independently of the laborers themselves.
So Marx says, this is the reason why the products of labor become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the sense. So what Marx means here is that a commodity is a social entity, it's a social being, and it has certain qualities. It has a set of useful characteristics. Commodities, we buy and sell commodities. We buy commodities because we need something. We want to use them for something. So their useful attributes are perceptible, but at the same time, their exchangeability in a way, or what conditions this usefulness,
the conditions under which a useful commodity was produced are invisible to us, they're imperceptible. Or more pointedly, if you think that the qualities of commodities that we desire, the perceptible features that we desire, are conditioned by imperceptible features, which are a function of the regime of commodity production and of the domination by value, by the value form. so think I think Marx means think about
who decides what commodities get produced it's not we don't decide because commodity a regime of commodity exchange isn't governed by the satisfaction of human needs and human purposes it's driven and determined by the logic of commodity exchange to which the satisfaction of human needs is entirely incidental. This is why we buy shit we don't need. This is why we're always kind of consuming stuff without ever choosing whether or not we really you know need or want this stuff. So this is why you know a commodity is a social object whose
qualities are both perceptible and imperceptible but the fact that it's the imperceptible features of commodities that Marx is foregrounding here but the point now the point is that in order to grasp you know the imperceptible features of these commodities you need you know in a way to penetrate the veil of appearance to see the reality behind the appearance and this and to see this you need to kind of you need these the form determinations you need to understand what a commodity is, what value is and what money is and how they are interrelated. And this is, and to kind of to perceive this you know underlying reality, you need
the resources of conceptual abstraction because you cannot perceive it you know with through the senses. It doesn't manifest itself at the level of sensible experience. And this is why then he will say in number 21 he says you know in the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as a subjective excitation of our optic nerve but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself but in the act of seeing there is at all events an actual passage of light from one thing to another from the external objects to the eye there's a physical relation between physical things but it is different with commodities there the existence of the
things qua commodities and the value relation between the products of labor which stamps them as commodities have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising there from there it is a definite social relation between men that assumes in their eyes the fantastic form of a relation between things okay and so because I want to leave time for discussion so I think I'm going to stop Yes, I'm going to stop here. So, clearly, commodity fetishism for Marxism has nothing
to do, I hope this goes without saying, has nothing to do with liking certain kind of labels or certain types of objects. The fetishism of commodities involves transplanting, it's the condition under which social relations between the producers of commodities are transplanted into social relations between these commodities as products, but in a way which prevents the producers, the laborers, from seeing those
genuine social relations. In other words, the producers of commodities are prevented from perceiving the reality of their relationships to one another, but also to the capitalists who own the means of production because of the logic, because of the relations between, because those relations appear as social relations between commodities themselves, which is to say that everything Everything is, everything, the way in which we understand ourselves necessarily assumes the form of relationship between exchangeable commodities.
And that relationship is always mediated by money. so so I think this is Marx's mature understanding of how the reality appearance distinction functions it's not so the way in which value commodity the commodity form the value form and the money form are the, you know, underlie appearances in capitalism. It's not the way in which we think of, we can't understand them in terms of some kind of a world behind the scenes.
This is not a metaphysical kind of, you know, so to speak, a metaphysical paradigm. It's not a world behind the scenes in the sense that, you know, criticized by Nietzsche, for instance. the point the spectral objectivity of value is precisely something it's it's a real abstraction it's something in a way that is generated by human social practice but then which you know dominates and governs those practices and the ways in which we understand those practices so it's not it's not kind of a linear relation
it's not so the the inversion in terms of relationship between reality and appearance is not a uni dimension it doesn't just happen in a single dimension it happens in several dimensions at once and it happens in a way in which we have to abstract from the concrete immediacy of our experience in order to be able to perceive the reality, the real abstractions that condition our existence and that underlie those appearances.
Okay, I'll stop, and I think we should have a kind of a discussion now about some of these points. Okay, I guess I'll start. I guess because this just ties into what we're talking about right now, what I'm wondering about this, when Marx leaves out ideal forms of value from this theory of fetishism of the commodity, which I believe you were just describing, is I'm concerned that in doing that he's omitting people under oppression
and members of proletariat, laborers that don't fit into traditional forms of his historical period. people who aren't actually making the commodities, but contribute other forms of perhaps ideal value, and that they're omitted from this theory here, if that makes any sense. Okay, now, can you just say a little bit more? So you mean, well, first of all, not everyone... So Marx is talking about the relationship between, you know, you know, labor and capital between, you know, laborers, those who only have their labor power to sell and those who own the means of production and who buy labor power in order to kind of to produce commodities that they can sell to acquire more capital.
So the first point would be, well, not everyone. Right, I'm meaning in terms of say maybe is this where a certain feminist critique of Marx would come in because Yes, you mean like domestic, reproductive labor and domestic labor. Things like this and then also perhaps something where maybe you couldn't necessarily talk about the genealogy of morals since you brought up Nietzsche because it's like this master-slave morality doesn't apply here because the relationship he's describing is between, you know, people who work in factory and the people who own the means of production. And is it that – is because he's describing that relationship,
is that why he's leaving out these other forms of what we would call metaphysics now, but things that actually women would exchange on, like some kind of – beauty or blah or something like that. Well, so Marx is talking about the, it turns out, as we'll see next week, when he begins, labor itself is also a commodity, and it's the commodity in a way that is necessary in order for what Marx calls the valorization process to be, to continue. So in other words, capital needs labor to valorize itself, to create more of itself.
But commodified labor is wage labor. Okay? So Marx is talking about the capital labor relation is the wage relation. So in other words, the labour that he's talking about here, the labour that produces value is wage labour. It's labour that is bought and sold. Now, so yes, so like in one sense, unwaged labour, so the feminist critique is to say but look, in order for wage labor to be possible, in order for workers to be able to go out into the marketplace and sell their labor to capitalists,
there has to be reproductive labor and there has to be effective labor, which is the you know you know which is a precondition for the availability of wage labor but then but but this labor is is not you know doesn't it doesn't seem to enter into the wage relation no okay so that's I think that's true that's correct and I mean there's a lot to say about this though I think it I think it complements Marx's account I mean you could say I mean the point for
Marx is that yes I mean and remember Marx is not talking about Marx doesn't think that value generating labor is good. He wants to abolish it, okay? So he's not, you know, the point, you know, and this is absolutely crucial. Marx isn't saying that this is, you know, all value comes from labor, but labor is not kind of, you know, properly acknowledged or remunerated and therefore you know we need to have you know the value of labor needs to be kind of you know acknowledged
independently of its you know independently of the exchange value as fixed by capital accumulation. He thinks that, you know, this kind of, the fact that we need to work to live, you know, the fact that we need to kind of to buy the things, to pay for the things that we need in order to keep existing is terrible. So that's the condition he wants to abolish. So even if you have a kind of a, if you think, so the domestic labor undertaken by women, when they care for children who then you know and they care for the kind of the you know the male labor uh in order so that you know he can go out and sell his labor on the marketplace the next day
well the point would be that kind of domestic labor um it's not in a way it's ancillary to wage labor so it's not itself wage labor but in a way the conditions of its existence are conditioned by wage labor. In other words, because the laborer needs to go out to buy, to make money in order to be able to pay the rent on the apartment and to buy the products to clothe and feed his family. And that's the relation that Marx also wants to abolish. Okay, so I think it's absolutely true to say that there is a necessary feminist corrective
to this account of the relationship between labour and value, but the fact that the effective labour that is undertaken in contemporary capitalist society is still conditioned by the wage relation and by value, even if it's only an ancillary to, and doesn't directly enter into the wage relation. because the fact that women, you know, the fact that these domestic arrangements are unavoidable is itself a consequence of domination, of the abstract domination of value.
So the first thing to say would be that, yes, this is a kind of a necessary corrective, but I don't think it doesn't kind of, you know, the indispensability of effective labor, domestic labor, doesn't directly kind of refute Marx's account here. But I think you were saying something else. You were also saying that there's a kind of value, you were saying that there's a value that is generated. Yes. I think that you just sort of spoke to that point as well, because even in something like prostitution, which is, you know, a type of creating, you know, interjecting into the exchange value economy that isn't domesticated, where there is, you know, money being.
I think that your point also speaks to a condition like that because it's still based on this idea of value and exchange value. Marx's point is that there is no social relation that is untouched by the value form. And in a way that isn't kind of subsumed by the value form. So in a way, the relationships between human beings, between men and women, all human relations are mediated and conditioned by value. Even if they don't directly, and even, so for instance, the fact that, so if you think about the distinction between work and leisure, that distinction itself is conditioned by value.
actually Marx says this really early on, this is why he wants to abol... Communism for him is a condition under which work as we know is abolished and therefore leisure, that very distinction between work and leisure is abolished because we don't need... because we're not forced to work in order to live. we don't need recreational time to be able to recuperate psychologically. So he envisaged a radical transformation in the nature of human social existence. And he thinks it will, you know, and I think clearly, you know, and I think as Marxist
feminists have pointed out, so that even the relations between men and women would also be transformed with the abolition of property, class, commodity, etc. So I don't want to deny that there's lots of things... I mean, one thing I will say is that, and I think Heinrich is very good on this, in that, for instance, if you think about the heart and negar and the turn of the last millennium, there's a lot of talk about immaterial labor.
and you know as if this is something that kind of Marx doesn't take into account but if you if you understand Marx's account of abstract labor there's nothing material about labor for Marx okay so for instance a service you know the example Heinrich gives is like a taxi ride okay when you when you take a taxi or when you or any other kind of you know service or if you pay for someone to, if you go and see a therapist. This is still commodity exchange and this is still labor. The difference is that the commodity is immediately consumed. When you pay for a taxi ride, the commodity that you're paying for is the transportation.
And the transportation is not a physical object. It's just something that happens. When you pay to see a therapist, the therapist listens to you, but that experience is still a commodity. It's something that you're paying for and you're consuming it as you talk about your problems to the therapist. So if you understand what Marx means by abstract labor, Marx doesn't think the distinction between the material and the immaterial vanishes. There's nothing material about abstract labor. now so the really interesting
in terms of the issue you just raised is like whether there is still nevertheless a distinction to be made between effective labour and other kinds of labour because look I mean look if you have most nanes domestic workers okay they carry out both you know practical you know physical labor but they also do undertake a lot of effective labor by looking after children and often by becoming very attached to the children that they're looking after. But this is still labor in Marx's sense. They're still being paid and this effective labor is
you know it's simply a modality, it's a species of abstract labor but it's not some kind of new category. Okay there's a couple of questions that have come up. First by Peter. So interesting to think with sex work the body itself is the commodity as well as the labor him or herself so the tension between material and material must sort of internal, must sort of almost a pure instance of the problem. Well in sex work Yes, it's a kind of a sex work, the body, but also a kind of a set of experiences, you know, because think of a sex worker doesn't need to use his or her body to do their work.
okay you know a sex worker can you know can you know there's lots of things a sex worker can do that counts as sex work that don't involve them using their bodies so so once again I think you know the distinction between the abstract and the concrete here is not the distinction between the material and the immaterial but yes in a way the you know the and and also it's not clear to me actually I just trying to so I just trying to make the point that you know that the point of what you're saying is that Marx is saying is that as I make the as I as I
produce a commodity it's then or as I'm or as I'm looking at it it's the labor and the social relations are sort of, it's external to me. Like the labour that I've put into it is, you know, the concept of alienation is that it's then sort of like presented as a relation between the commodities itself. So as sex work, you've almost kind of got this internal problem where I'm just, I was just trying to comment on what the previous person was saying maybe. you've got that relation sort of internally whereby you or the things that you can do with your body are the commodity as well as you're the laborer yourself so that that that
tension exists sort of internally it's not like the commodity so your body is you is you, but it also is abstracted as a relation between commodities. Yes, but then... Like all the other bodies and practices that you can get out on the street, whatever. Yeah, but Marsha's point is that your mind can also be a commodity in this sense, and people sell their minds. So if you're working in advertising, you're effectively... See, I think it's a mistake when people talk about sex workers you know, selling themselves or selling their bodies. Actually, we all sell ourselves in that way. There's nothing different between a sex worker and any other wage labor in that regard,
because for Marx, what is the, you know, the, it's labor power that is bought and sold. So, so every body, you know, a human being has a labor power that can have, that involves physical, but also cognitive or psychological kind of manifestations. And, you know, think of, which is why it's a mistake to talk about, I think, you know, to talk about labor as involving more or less of, you know, the worker's body. You know, whether you turn up, whether you're in a factory or a brothel, I mean, there's no, it's the same kind of, you know, you're selling part of yourself, you're selling your labor power as a commodity to the capitalist, you know, in return for a wage.
and if you're working and now in contemporary kind of society people who work in there's all sorts of cognitive labour which is directly our cognitive capacities which are being directly commodified so we sell our cognitive skills and prowess in exchange for a wage in order to produce more commodities but it's at the end of I guess the point I was making at the end of some of those you end up with a TV that is outside outside it's separate from you that's what I was trying to say
but you're absolutely right okay you know the product of your labour is something outside of you Yes, yes. The commodity that you're producing is not something that you own, basically. That's the whole point about wage labor, is that you're producing something that you don't own, that you have no control over. And nor do you have any control of the conditions under which you produce this commodity, because they're determined by society. Okay, so there's a question from Victor, so I'll read this out.
Am I understanding you and Heinrich well in that replacing a labour theory of value with a monetary theory of value gets rid of a lot of the problems around the distinction between productive and improductive work or that between paid labour and reproductive labour? Under a labour theory of value, real value is produced by the human transformation of nature and there's a lot of things that appear as worthless in material labour, reproductive labour etc. But under a monetary theory of value, there is no sense in which these things are less important or cannot be accounted for. The question is more about whether that labour is commodified in that it is organised by the need to do it for money.
Okay, so yes, the point about, so Heinrich insists that if you understand what Marx means by abstract labor and how abstract labor is itself, you know, socially, you know, socially valorized and in a way socially valorized and measured, it has a kind of a monetary worth. then you realize that there's nothing that Marx thinks that's value there's nothing concrete about value generating labor the labor that enters into the
wage relation to produce value is already abstract okay it's already abstract and the labor and and the concrete you know the example to think here is that in pre-capitalist societies, human beings' society is organized around stratifications. There's a division of labor in which certain people with certain skills make these things and other people with other skills make these other things. But the skills are, the cultivation of these skills is also kind of social in a way,
so that the division of labor is also a social division in terms of different members of societies. Think of the difference between artisans and artisanal laborers and farm laborers or peasants. The point that Marx is making is that under capitalism, capitalism and capitalist commodity production brings about a kind of a general kind of de-skilling, a decomposition of the segmentation of practical skill. Okay, so you can, if you're only able to make, you know, to do one
kind of thing, that's not an asset in a capitalist economy, because the point is, the point about of commodity production is that the, you know, you get the decomposition, capitalist production decomposes skilled labour into a set of elementary unskilled labourers. Think of assembly line production. Think about how a very complicated process is decomposed on an assembly line into a set of very, very kind of elementary processes that require no particular skill. therefore you can pay each individual labor far less than you would have to pay a skilled laborer.
So you reduce production costs in a way by decomposing skillful, complex labor into a kind of unskilled, in a set of very elementary steps that require no particular skills. And also the laborer's end, it means that you know laborers no longer have specific you know kind of things, types of work that are kind of reserved or allotted for them. You have to be able to do, to move from one kind of work to another kind of work.
So you get an increasing homogenization of labor, where, you know, in a way, the more skilled you are at just doing one thing, the worse off you are in a commodity producing economy. So that's part of what Marx is talking about, and that's part of the kind of the phenomenon of abstract labour, the abstraction from concrete labour. But this doesn't mean that, so the point is that this abstract labour, it has a monetary
value. The only value that abstract labour has is monetary. Okay, it's only, it's value producing, but its value is measured in terms of the value of the commodities that it produces. So it has no intrinsic value, it's simply kind of, you know, it's either, you know, more or less well paid. So this doesn't mean that you dissolve the problem of distinction between productive and unproductive work. So this doesn't mean that you dissolve the distinction between wage labor and reproductive labor. It simply means that in a way, what?
Reproductive labor is useful, okay? Reproductive labour is useful, it's socially useful, and because it's necessary in order for there to be value creating labour. If there's no reproductive labour, you don't have a population of workers who are able to kind of to sell their labor power to the capitalist. But that's, you know, its usefulness is not directly measured in terms of money. It's not directly monetizable, but it is still
conditioned by money, okay? Because you wouldn't have to, you know, women wouldn't have to care, wouldn't have to, wouldn't be obliged to undertake this reproductive and effective labor if society wasn't, and if the existence of the family units wasn't subordinated to commodity production. And to, you know, if a family could live without having to work, then, you know, the things would be women wouldn't need to undertake the types of reproductive and effective labour that they are obliged
or forced to undertake in a society organized around commodity production. So, and then the question, the second part of the question is under labour theory of value, real value is produced by the human transformation of nature. well okay the labor theory of value says that the the worth the value of a commodity is measured in terms of the amount of labor required to produce it so you know like let's say kind of a horse saddle is more valuable you know than a glass because it takes more labor to
produce a horse saddle than a glass. This is not Marx's theory at all because for him value is always already sorry labor is always already subsumed by value the abstraction from concrete labour or the abstraction of labour has always already happened before you enter, and in a way it's a condition for you entering into the wage relation. So in other words that there is no, you know, the only value that is created by labour is exchange value which is measured in monetary terms which has a kind of, which has a price and the price of and that the price of that value is already operative
when you when you sell your labor abstract labor has a price as well so in this account note this is you know the account I know this is Michael Heinrich's account, but it's the so-called value theory account, which is, you know, a product of a group of German kind of scholars who have been developing this new interpretation of Marx, you know, starting in the 1960s and continuing up till the present. So they insist on the primacy of value. They insist that labor is always already subsumed by value, and therefore labor doesn't, the value that is generated by labor is already conditioned or posited by value as such.
And this is controversial for traditional Marxists who think that labor in a way creates value, but also exists independently of value and can somehow kind of, you know, assume ends and goals that would be kind of independent of value. and this value series deny this because they think that the labor that Marx is talking about labor value producing labor is itself an abstraction that is
conditioned by the by the you know the the valorization process in the capital relation and therefore it's a mistake to think that the standpoint of labor is in opposition to the standpoint of capital. The standpoint of labor is just capital's own standpoint upon itself which is why the workers perspective on capital is itself you know a kind of externalization of capital self-relation, which is why value thieves are notorious for the claim that the affirmation of labor cannot be the sine qua non for the abolition of capital.
abolition of capital requires the abolition of labor and of you know wage labor but also you know labor as as we know it labor as even even the the forms of useful labor with which we are familiar are conditioned by valuable labor and we cannot simply abstract from the capitalist totality and intuit forms of valuable labor that somehow transcend our historical circumstances, the specific historical conditions of capitalism. So this is why a monetary theory of value,
Because really, money, remember money is just the measure of value. There's no real difference between money and value. Money is just the form in which value appears to itself and the way in which value measures itself. But there can be no money that is independent of the value form. and and the point not so the final part of your question is that there's no sense in which these things are less important or cannot be accounted for the question is more about whether that labor is commodified and that is organized by the need to do it for money well yes labor labor power is bought and
sold labor power is precisely that which enters into the wage relation you buy and what you sell to the capitalist is your labor power but your abstract labor power and that's and what you're selling is a commodity and why do you need to sell it because you can't exist unless you can purchase other commodities this is why you're compelled to sell your labor so I guess what I'm saying is that the distinction between material and immaterial labor I think is dissolved or becomes redundant once you understand how abstract labor
is already subsumed by value that's the only point I'm trying to make here the The other point is about the relationship between, you know, and then there are forms of useful labor that are, you know, not directly value generating because they're not remunerated, they're not kind of paid. But I think, well, I think it would be very difficult to insist that they are somehow not conditioned by the value form, according to this account, or that they somehow transcend
Sure. You're talking a bit, sorry, I've got a bit of a saucer at the moment. You're talking a bit about the social relations being sort of like distributed in space and time. I didn't remember reading those terms in Kant. Is this kind of contextualising it in the sort of German idealist tradition? Is this sort of, you know, are you talking about Marx's Marx is sort of different to Kant here. Kant is this sort of like isolated sort of subject perceiving these objects just in its head, if you like, through sort of transcendental sort of categories,
whereas in Marx is sort of that sort of same transcendental sort of realm is perceived as sort of distribute distributed and social and constituted through sort of practices or something sort of like a resolution of like if you take hey go as being kind of like I don't know maybe something in between hey go and can't maybe or I don't know or something I mean the key thing you're absolutely right to emphasize the key thing I think or you know in terms of relationship between kind of Kant and Marx is that
Marx you know also kind of you know rejects representation so he thinks that in a way the you know if we you know the the world as grasped from the vantage point of representation or you know the world as represented and as you know experienced in terms of its representability is not you know the real world which is a world of practices okay and the points marks his points are about some ideology and about but also about commodity fetishism is that practices are never transparent to their practitioners this is why he keeps saying no when he says what we do when we
exchange commodities we exchange commodities without understanding without knowing what it is we're doing we do it but we do not know that we're doing it and he also talks about the exchange abstraction operating behind the back of the practitioners so for Marx there's a dimension of of practice a dimension of the reality of practice operates behind the back of consciousness of self-consciousness or awareness and conditions it and in terms of the account of real abstraction so
what he's saying so he's saying value is a real abstraction okay value is a real abstraction what does that mean he thinks that it's something that is not that has no tangible perceptible form it's not something that you can perceive with your senses. It's not something that you can point to or touch or grasp, but nevertheless, it is concrete in that it doesn't exist in our heads. It doesn't exist in our heads, it's not just a representation, but neither does it exist beyond space and time in some kind of
transcendent metaphysical realm. This is what Marx means by spectral objectivity. It means an objectivity that is neither guaranteed by cognizing consciousness. If you think about the objects of representation in Kant, it has a kind of objectivity which is you know inter subjectively guaranteed because any cognizer any knowing subject must be able to recognize as having these characteristics and this is for Marx the objectivity of value is is not like that at all because
it's not something it's not guaranteed through intersubjective consensus nor is it constant is it constituted by our subjectivity it's not constituted by our attitudes or beliefs or desires or anything else it's constituted by what we do by our practice and but the things that we don't understand we don't know what it is we're doing when we produce when we exchange commodities so the practice of commodity exchange generates the spectral objectivity of value which then controls every other aspect every other social
relations because every social relation is subordinated to value. And what does that mean? It means that there isn't anything that can't be bought or sold. There is no aspect of our existence that operates entirely independently of the commodity form. There is nothing in your life that you haven't paid for or bought in one way or another. that's what marx is saying you know by the the spectrum so in that sense it's something very concrete and it's concrete that it exists in space and time but its existence it's an object unlike any kind of discreetly individuated um empirical object this is why it can't be directly perceived
This is why it can only be known through an act of cognitive abstraction. You need the detour of abstraction to be able to grasp what is really concrete, which is to say the real abstractions of capital, commodity, value, money, etc. etc. And so what I'm suggesting is that in a way we usually think of the contrast between the abstract and the concrete. So the concrete is in space and time and anything beyond space and time is abstract. But in a way Marx, why he's so interesting is that he's kind of undermining
this familiar contrast and saying no there is there are things that are concrete that exist in space and time but they are not particular objects and money is a case in point okay money is not some kind of money does not exist in a transcendent you know domain beyond space and time so in that sense it is it exists in space and time and it's concrete but it's it's not a particular thing it's not it can't be discreetly localized at any spatial temporal point and that's why it's it's an abstract that's why
it's it's a real abstraction so values are real abstraction in this sense I know and money is just a kind of a form of appearance of value and says we are you know we are material beings in space and time money is a material phenomenon but it's not it's a phenomenon whose reality cannot be grasped at the level of empirical experience. This is why you can't understand money if you're an empiricist. If you think that money is generated by human beings coming into agreement about, well, we need a general equivalent.
He says you'll never understand how money works, how money operates independently of the attitudes of its users. And he's not a rationalist either because he thinks that money can be, it's not an intellectual obstruction. It's not something that was designed to facilitate social interaction. And it has, and it doesn't, and it's machinations outstrip that which is, is rationally transparent to us. So money has a logic of its own, which ends up kind of,
to which we are subject, to which we are subjected, and to which our thinking is subjective. That's what Marx is even more radical point. Because it's not just how we think how we act is conditioned by value in capitalism and this is something that we he think and he thinks that you know kind of traditional philosophy is simply lacks the conceptual resources to be able to understand this to be able to understand the you know the extraordinary weirdness of of social reality, of the society that we have generated through our practices,
but from which we are alienated because we don't understand what it is we're doing and we don't have the cognitive resources to understand it unless we undertake this critical procedure which he's recommending. Yes, so this is, I mean, so when Mark talks about, you know,
I mean, you know, writers, you know, a lot has been written about kind of, you know, the gothic register of Marxism, kind of some Marxist terminology. You know, this talk about kind of, you know, when he talks about, you know, theological niceties required in order to understand the logic of the commodity and the spectral objectivity of value. yes a weirdness in the sense that I think the best way to kind of I think the best way to kind of to grasp this weirdness is to say that for Marx it's the it's the intelligible know what we you know what is transparent to consciousness okay is merely apparent whereas what is you know sent
what is materially real, what is sensible, what is spatially, temporally concrete, is precisely what is invisible to us. This is this kind of inversion of the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible. Traditional metaphysicians thought that you have to see through the sensible to grasp its intelligible structure. And Marx thinks that you have to see through the intelligible to grasp its sensible structure, but its sensible structure is precisely that of real abstractions. Sensible here means what is generated through concrete human practices, which are opaque to consciousness.
I have one more, but I can happily ask it like the next time or something if it's getting late. well I don't mind answering it no I mean I have to go in five minutes but um I'll try and answer you know you're talking about the kind of the the the end point of this this process of kind of the ideal if you like it not having to not
having to labor and in the in the sections that we were reading in the Grundrisse I think that there was there was some sort of you know there was there was like a there was an idea of technological process accelerating to the point where like everything got more more efficient than everything was sort of done for you or something. I think that I read something like that in there. There was a lot about science and technology accelerating to the point and this causing a kind of conflict in capital or something. I'm just curious, after the Grundrisse, in Capital One,
is there anything else where Marx is talking about where this leads? I mean, I'm just trying to think of it in my head because I'm kind of like, you know, there's kind of an assumption like that if everything got more efficient, capital would go into some sort of crisis or you could accelerate it to the point where production was so efficient that nobody had to sell their labour and everyone was just provided for. but isn't it possible as well that like the human that you're presupposing and that just gets sort of transformed and our minds get linked up
to the company and the new needs at once is sort of created, like you want to live forever, you want to, you know, so the whole process just keeps going infinitely. I don't know. I'm just thinking about the end point of this process. Maybe I've been reading up on these debates around accelerationism on the internet and whatnot. Well, I think Marx, okay, so for Marx, the motor of the entire, what drives capitalism is what he calls the valorization process through which surplus value is extracted from commodity production.
And wage labor is necessary. Wage labor, or rather, living labor is the source of surplus value. This is absolutely crucial for Marx's entire account. So the conversion of, so capitalism, you know, the fundamental formula for capitalism for Marx is money, commodity, money, prime. So in other words, you have an outlay of, there's an initial sum of capital, which is used to kind of to produce a commodity, which is then sold to generate a greater magnitude of money. which is then reinvested in the production process to produce more commodities and to create more money.
So this is what he calls self-valorizing value. So this is what drives capitalist production. But this is also the condition of technological innovation for Marx. and it's a mistake now Marx in the Grundrisse there's a you know a famous kind of you know the fragment on the machines where Marx distinguishes between the tool and the machine you know the tool is the instrument of of labor a tool is created to execute a specific function okay so a tool has a specific purpose in the production of use value. A machine is something that is not reducible
to a tool because in a way a machine, capitalism is the, you know, ushers in this kind of this regime of machining production where you know the the laborers themselves become tools in the production process they become components of the production process but the so like a factory is a machine that produces commodities and the workers in the factory are merely machine parts okay and there's no difference between the workers and the tools
you know that the instruments that are used in the production process but the organization of the factory and the existence of the factory is conditioned by the valorization process. So actually, it's a mistake, I think. For Marx, technological evolution is socially determined, and capitalism will only invest in technological innovation for the purposes of valorization. So technological innovation is subordinated to the valorization process, to the extraction of surplus value. But it's not technological innovation is ancillary to capital accumulation.
It's not the capitalism only goal is self-accumulation. It just wants to create more money. It just wants greater and greater sums of capital. Technological innovation may or may not facilitate this process, but it's perfectly easy to imagine circumstances in which it does not. So Marx is not an accelerationist. if acceleration is understood as the kind of the fusion of capital accumulation and technological innovation, where the two are, you know, they have two different logics for Marx.
And capitalism just cares about making more money, and if it can make more money without, you know, technological innovation, it will be happy to do so. The second point is that the limit to technological, you know, to the automation of production, of commodity production, is that labor is the ultimate source of surplus value. because without laborers to enter into the wage relation, there is no surplus value. So that the exhaustive automation of the production process would terminate the source of surplus value,
the extraction of surplus value, and the process of capital accumulation, which is simply not permissible. So in a way, if you understand the logic of Marx's account, you understand how there's an imminent limit to the mechanization of labor, not because there's a qualitative distinction between what a machine can do and what a human can be. most you know even when Marx is writing most human labor you know can be automated and will be automated you know but nevertheless even in this automation
you have to kind of what's striking is that you know any automated process will still require some human instruments or some human kind of machine parts as the source of surplus value because you don't have to pay a machine and you can't extract surplus value from an instrument that you don't have to pay for marks so So this is why it's a mistake to think that capitalism will kind of –
capitalism does not have a kind of progressive evolutionary teleology. But isn't that the problem? Because if you could automate everything theoretically, then you would not be able to extract that surplus. Exactly, yes, exactly. And the other problem is that, you know, if, you know, the problem is that the social existence, you have to focus on, you know, the forms of, because every social relation is ultimately mediated by the commodity form and by value, what human beings, you know, how human beings exist, you know, is entirely subordinated to the logic of capital accumulation.
and it seems you know I think it seems foolish to think that that would be you know it seems that that could somehow be that that would ever you know leave human beings free to kind of you know to do things that are you know that will you know impede or contravene this logic so I think that the claim that yeah everything will become automated and then human beings will be free to kind of you know to do whatever they want to do is that's clearly not going to happen because you know a kind of a society organized around commodity production has certain necessary features you know private property, class stratification and the existence of a
state and even, you know, I think these free markets kind of ideologues who say that capitalism, that the state is an impediment to the evolution of capitalism. I think that's a metaphysical fantasy. I think the state form is, you know, spontaneously generated by capital. And it's It's true that the state is a useful instrument of capital. It's not a kind of something that capitalism is necessarily compelled to dissolve. I mean, that's a longer debate to have, but that's also why I don't accept these claims that capitalism will just destroy every kind of social impediment and plunge into the wild
blue yonder. That was a really good answer, thanks. Just, yeah. Okay, so I really, I do have to go ahead, I'm afraid. So, okay, thanks very much and next week we'll do, yeah, we'll talk about, we'll carry on where we left on, we'll talk about the rest of chapter one and I think the reading is on the the syllabus as let me see it's pages yeah capital volume one the pages 482 to