The twofold determination of labor

structure and value

Note: this is a small selection from a far larger draft.

Marx’s theory of value is built on two basic foundations: 1) the theory of the form of value as a material expression of abstract labor which in turn presupposes the existence of social production relations among autonomous commodity producers, and 2) the theory of the distribution of social labor and the dependence of the magnitude of value on the quantity of abstract labor which, in turn, depends on the level of productivity of labor. These are two sides of the same process.¹

These two movements of thought presuppose and posit one another. The form of value presupposes the fractured nature of the commodity economy and the division of labor under capitalism, regulated by commodity exchange, depends on the form of value. The former is the subjective, or private, determination of labor in value that begins with the private act of labor—the individual product. The latter is the objective, or structural, determination of labor in value that begins with the social division of labor. Both of these movements result in the category of value, but taken in isolation, neither one is sufficient. It is only in their organic unity that the determination of labor can be understood.

1 | The subjective determination of labor

Individuals producing in society—hence socially determined production—is, of course, the point of departure.²

Labor, so long as it is labor for someone else (which can be assumed in the context of a division of labor), necessarily takes a social form. The question is: what social form does labor assume under capitalism?

The abstract individual of capitalist production and circulation has been established as a proprietor and a producer of private products of labor. It, therefore, appears that the abstract individual is independent of society and social forms—completely atomized and distinct from all others. This leaves us with more questions than it answers, though. How is a society constituted? An economy? We are left to solve the sociological “problem of order”. How does the abstract individual move outside of itself and engage with society?

For this, we must look at what defines the abstract individual—his product of labor. As a private producer, he produces a private product of labor which is itself immediately alien from society. This individual cannot be presented as existing in a vacuum, however. He appears as a form specific to the capitalist mode of production. In this context, the product of labor, in its simplest social form, appears as a commodity. Not only is it a commodity, however, as commodities have existed throughout history, predating the capitalist epoch. What distinguishes it is that it is a general commodity. The commodity appears as the general product under the capitalist mode of production. Labor thus exists for the market, for universal exchange relations.

When one produces a commodity, it isn’t for his own immediate consumption. The commodity as the general product implies a social division of labor predicated on commodity exchange, meaning that one must alienate his own labor in order to sustain himself—in order to interact with other branches of production. In this sense, the commodity as a use-value is subordinated to exchange-value. These exchange values cannot be said to be determined by rational, intersubjective transactions, however, as they appear already determined. Something seems to be determining exchange-values beyond individual control.

In order for labor to be commensurable and replaceable on a universal level, it must interact with the money-form—the universal equivalent—and subordinate itself to its power, as it is only through the money-form that products of labor can manifest as equivalents on this scale. This, however, implies a movement of abstraction. It is not concrete moments of labor being commensurated (i.e. programming, welding, weaving), for there is no way to establish a common commensurable between these distinct moments of labor. However, we must look closer at what has just been stated. They are all moments of labor—labor-as-such. The money-form reduces these concrete moments of labor to their common measure—labor in the abstract. It is thus abstract labor—congealed socially necessary labor-time—that renders the commodity immanently exchangeable. It is abstract labor that gives rise to labor’s social manifestation—as a value, which itself manifests practically in Money, and consequently as Right, the two modes of mediation that unite abstract individuals into a commodity-economy.

When speak of the commodity as the materialisation of labour — in the sense of its exchange value — this itself is only imaginary, that is to say a purely social mode of existence of the commodity which has nothing to do with its corporeal reality; it is conceived as a definitive quantity of social labour or of money³

This analysis shows that, in a commodity economy, the productive-working connection between commodity producers can only be expressed in a material form, in the form of the value of products of labor.⁴⁵

This analysis of labor is one-sided, however. We must also look at this schematic in reverse, starting not with the individual commodity, but the supposition that “Capitalist economies presuppose a division of labor regulated by commodity exchange”. In order to come to a concrete concept of the determination of labor we must analyze the division of labor as it appears when subordinated to capitalist production.

2 | The objective determination of labor

All societies, at their base, presuppose a division of labor by which they produce products and goods in order to sustain and reproduce social relations. Capitalist society is no different. The distinguishing factor of capitalism, however, is that this division of labor is regulated by the exchange of commodities. This means that capitalist commodity exchange must allocate portions of labor in order to ensure the ongoing process of social reproduction.

The totality of heterogeneous use-values or physical commodities reflects a totality of similarly heterogeneous forms of useful labour, which differ in order, genus, species and variety: in short, a social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for commodity production, although the converse does not hold; commodity production is not a necessary condition for the social division of labour… Only the products of mutually independent acts of labour, performed in isolation, can confront each other as commodities.⁶

The division of labor regulated by commodity exchange, i.e. the capitalist division of labor, appears only insofar as independent producers exchange their private products of labor. The distribution of social labor within capitalism appears atomistic, and this is seen in its result—the dual mediation of economic relations by Money and Right. The individual producer on the market (and his product) is concerned only with his own interests. Production in general is regulated by a multiplicity of distinct commodity producers who produce for the market. This process of economic regulation, importantly, is not a socially conscious one. It is one that emerges without private producers knowing it. As Money and Right are enshrined in the commodity itself, economic relations are maintained through these individual commodities, through “self-sufficient and independent”, private acts of labor.

Portions of labor, it appears, are regulated and thus assigned by commodity exchange. This isn’t regulated by any conscious social action, however. It appears as the aggregate of private exchange.

Since individual commodity producers are autonomous in the management of production…the actions of the separate commodity producers are not connected or constant.⁷

Commodity exchange can only arise in a context wherein the use value of a commodity simultaneously exists in a determinate exchange-relation with the totality of other commodities—if the commodity bears an exchange value. These moments of labor, it seems, can also be moved around indiscriminately; objectified portions of labor are universally mutually replaceable. If the movement of labor within the capitalist mode of production is regulated by the relationships between products, this is only because they have a value beyond their use value that allows them to exchange at aggregated ratios. This exchange-value manifests itself as price. Prices, though, as has been hinted at earlier, do not present themselves as the result of private interchanges. There appears to be a process in the background, unbeknownst to the producer.

The objectified portion of labor—the product of labor—insofar as it manifests as a price must appear as a determinate sum of money. The product of labor of the private producer “is equalized as a value with all other commodities.”—this is simultaneously a total equalization of all moments of private labor under capitalism as values, insofar as they’re produced for exchange.

This means that the private labor of separate individuals does not acquire the character of social labor in the concrete form in which it was expended in the process of production, but through exchange which represents an abstraction from the concrete properties of individual things and individual forms of labor. Actually, since commodity production is oriented to exchange already during the process of production, the commodity producer already in the process of direct production, before the act of exchange, equalizes his product with a determined sum of value (money), and thus also his concrete labor with a determined quantity of abstract labor. But, first of all, this equalization of labor carries with it a preliminary character "represented in consciousness." The equalization must still be realized in the actual act of exchange.⁸

However, since the equalization of labor through the equalization of things is a result of the social form of the commodity economy in which there is no direct social organization and equalization of labor, abstract labor is a social and historical concept. Abstract labor does not express a psychological equality of various forms of labor, but a social equalization of different forms of labor which is realized in the specific form of equalization of the products of labor.⁹

Thus labor takes on a social form and value can be realized as the relation between the individual product and the social product: in the fractured mode of production that is capitalism (fractured insofar as producers are immediately isolated from one another) the individual product is related to the social product through exchange, and through reduction to the money-form, labor is rendered abstract and general. It is comparable universally—this is what truly renders the commodity as an immanently exchangeable product. It is only in this context that value can arise; it is only now that we can posit a commodity and general commodity circulation as opposed to isolated, private producers.¹⁰

Insofar as value is the social form in which labor manifests itself under the capitalist mode of production, it regulates not only commodity exchange but the division labor as such. In this context, social labor materializes as value and assumes a pervasive and standardizing nature. As Marx eloquently sums this up in a letter to Louis Kugelmann:

Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance, is self-evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labor asserts itself, in the state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products.¹¹

Thus the “labor theory of value” actually appears as a value theory of labor. Within the capitalist mode of production, the social division of labor is regulated via commodities and commodity exchange. This exchange of commodities is, in turn, governed by the labor necessary for the reproduction of society through these commodities (i.e. socially necessary labor time). Furthermore, this labor assumes a particular abstract character, serving to present itself as a property of the commodity in question, namely its exchange value.

[W]hile each producer of a commodity is bound to produce a use-value to satisfy a particular social want, and while the extent of these wants differs quantitatively, still there exists an inner relation which settles their proportions into a regular system…the law of value of commodities ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time society can expend on each particular class of commodities.¹²

The capitalist economy can only be posited by the proportional distribution of labor among its branches—by universal exchange. Otherwise, we are left with purely isolated producers.

[I]t is only through the “value” of commodities that the working activity of separate independent producers leads to the productive unity which is called a social economy, to the interconnections and mutual conditioning of the labor of individual members of society. Value is the transmission belt which transfers the movement of working processes from one part of society to another, making that society a functioning whole.¹³

Value not only connects the products of labor of individuals but their actual production processes which mutually condition one another. This is the way in which labor, in its immediately social form represents itself as value. This is the only way by which individual moments of labor can be connected to one another. This conclusion is merely a result of the analysis of social production—labor isn’t given a privileged role in a laundry list of other factors which could constitute themselves as value.

We must determine the connection between value and labor not only to understand the phenomena relate to “value,” but in order to understand the phenomenon “labor” in contemporary society, i.e., the possibility of unity of the productive process in a society which consists of individual commodity producers.¹⁴

3 | Value as such

Labor, then, in its social form under capitalist conditions of production, appears as value. This does not, however, mean that the content of value is labor as such. This should already be apparent through prior exposition. “Labor” is not embodied in the commodity, nor does it render it a value. The content of value can only be taken as labor in its most abstract determination, and furthermore, as only that abstract labor required to reproduce the social totality (socially necessary labor-time). This is not determined by timing acts of production—it cannot be determined consciouslywhatsoever. It is only through the unconscious mutual regulation of the market that it can be aggregated.

The form of labor that constitute value is, consequently, alienated labor—“labour whose human qualities have been reduced to the single quality of duration; dehumanised, homogeneous,”¹⁵ Value is dependent on a division of labor constrained by the exchange of commodities. For my labor to be social it must be alienated in the act of exchange.

Social labor manifests itself as value, but value is still an abstract determination. The value-form has already been covered, but not in its enirety. We must, consequently, come to understand the form-determinations of value: in itself, for itself, in-and-for-itself.

1. Isaak Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, p. 73.

2. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, p. 83.

3. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 1, p. 167.

4. Ibid., p. 82.

5. One question remains, however—a question asked by Böhm-Bawerk: “Where equality and exact equilibrium obtain, no change is likely to occur to disturb the balance. When, therefore, in the case of exchange the matter terminates with a change of ownership of the commodities, it points rather to the existence of some inequality or preponderance which produces the alteration.” Böhm-Bawerk is entirely correct. Were there to be total equality between two commodities, no exchange would occur. This, however, isn't the case. He forgets the two-fold nature of commodities. It is true that the commodity's use-value is dominated by the abstract appearance of labor, but use-value is not canceled out. Rather, it is instrumentalized towards the ends of value—as that which prompts exchange. When one comes to the market with their commodity, one seeks a use-value distinct from their own. In the act of exchange, then, use-values remain distinct and heterogeneous, whereas value is the homogeneous substance that permits their mutual replaceability on a universal level. Both aspects are maintained in the commodity, and the two are absolutely interdependent.

6. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 132.

7. Rubin, op. cit., p. 77.

8. Ibid., p. 70.

9. Ibid., p. 71.

10. Critics of Marx generally refer to the “labor theory of value” as an attempt to prove that labor is the content of value. The reverse is true, however. We are not interested in proving that the content of value is labor, for value could not be posited in the beginning of our analysis. In both cases (the subjective and objective determinations of labor as value) we have started from the category of labor and moved through them to value.

11. Marx, Marx to Kugelmann in Hanover, July 11, 1868.

12. Marx, op. cit., p. 79.

13. Rubin, op. cit., p. 81

14. Ibid., p. 80.

15. Simon Clarke, Marx, Marginalism, and Modern Sociology, p. 78.