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Labour and Value Rethinking Marx’S Theory of Exploitation

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Labour and Value Rethinking Marx’S Theory of Exploitation Labour and Value Rethinking Marx’s Theory of Exploitation ERNESTO SCREPANTI LABOUR AND VALUE Labour and Value Rethinking Marx’s Theory of Exploitation Ernesto Screpanti https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2019 Ernesto Screpanti This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Ernesto Screpanti, Labour and Value: Rethinking Marx’s Theory of Exploitation. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2019. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0182 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1066#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Any digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1066#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-7837-4779-5 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-7837-4780-1 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-7837-4781-8 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-7837-4782-5 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-7837-4783-2 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0182 Cover design by Anna Gatti. Cover image: photo by Zeyn Afuang on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/9xp0AWvlGC4. The sphere of circulation or commodity exchange, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, let us say, of labour-power, are determined only by their own free will. They contract as free persons, who are equal before the law. Their contract is the final result in which their joint will finds a common legal expression. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other as with a simple owner of commodity, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to his own advantage […]. And precisely for that reason, either in accordance with the pre- established harmony of things, or under the auspices of the omniscient providence, they all work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal, and in the common interest. When we leave this sphere of simple circulation or the exchange of commodities, which provides the ‘free-trader vulgaris’ with his views, his concepts and the standard by which he judges the society of capital and wage-labour, a certain change takes place, or so it appears, in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing else to expect but a tanning. (Marx 1976a, 280) Contents Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 3 1. Abstract Labour as a Natural Substance 15 1.1 The Double Abstraction 17 1.2 Labour as a Natural Abstraction 20 1.3 Value Form and Substance 23 1.4 Abstract Labour as a Productive Force 26 2. Abstract Labour as a Historical Reality 31 2.1 The Labour Exchange: From Hegel to Marx 32 2.2 The Subsumption and Subordination of Labour 34 2.3 Abstract Labour as Resulting from a Social Relation 40 3. Labour Subsumption and Exploitation 45 3.1 The Production of Absolute Surplus Value 48 3.2 The Production of Relative Surplus Value 53 3.3 Wage Dynamics 57 4. Values and Prices 63 4.1 Labour Values 65 4.2 Production Prices 67 4.3 The Transformation Problem 70 5. Measures of Exploitation 75 5.1 Two Paradoxes 76 5.2 A Single System Approach 80 5.3 Back to the Real World 85 Conclusions: Rethinking Exploitation 89 Appendix 1. Reproduction Conditions 101 Appendix 2. Advanced or Postponed Wage Payments? 105 References 111 Acknowledgements This work summarises and re-elaborates ideas I have been developing in several publications and throughout a lengthy research activity. The conciseness and simplicity I have been finally able to achieve is the result of a process of refinement that would have been impossible without the contribution of many friends who provided their encouragement, their suggestions and criticisms. I wish to thank them all, but in particular: Ash Amin, Rakesh Bhandari, Sam Bowles, Paul Cockshott, Matt Cole, Richard Cornwall, Massimo De Angelis, Jim Devine, Emilio Dìaz, Panayotis Economopoulos, David Ellerman, Duncan K. Foley, Argo Golski, Geoff Hodgson, Douglas Koritz, Gerald Levy, Yahya M. Madra, John McDermott, Gary Mongiovi, Edward Nell, Ugo Pagano, Fabio Petri, Angelo Reati, Roberto Renò, Francesco S. Russo, Neri Salvadori, Gilbert L. Skillman, Ian Steedman, Emma Thorley, Marco P. Tucci, Andrew Tylecote, Alberto Valli, Andrea Vaona, Roberto Veneziani, Paul Zarembka and Maurizio Zenezini. I also wish to thank the Association for Economic and Social Analysis and the journal Rethinking Marxism for the permission to use materials previously published as ‘Karl Marx on Wage Labour: From Natural Abstraction to Formal Subsumption’ (Screpanti 2017). Introduction There are two alternative approaches to the theory of capitalist exploitation: normative or descriptive. The former aims to prove that capitalism is unjust because it is based on the extraction of surplus value from labour power; the latter seeks to explain the social process through which surplus value is produced. The normative approach postulates some universal principles of justice so that capitalism may be examined to reveal the illegitimacy of surplus value. Various socialist thinkers, more or less implicitly, assume Locke’s axiom of self-ownership. This posits that, by natural law, a free individual is the owner of herself, her talents and abilities, and therefore of the fruits of their use. If another person appropriates these fruits without the consent of the legitimate owner, unjust exploitation occurs. The Ricardian socialist, Thomas Hodgskin (1825, 83), uses this principle to condemn capitalism. He asserts that “the labour of a man’s body and the work of his hands are to be considered as exclusively his own. I take it for granted, therefore, […] that the whole produce of labour ought to belong to the labourer”. In a natural system, each commodity is exchanged at its “natural or necessary price”, which is determined by “the whole quantity of labour nature requires from man [to] produce any commodity” (1827, 219). Natural prices yield no profits and workers earn the entire value they produce. But under a regime of capitalist private property workers are paid a wage and commodities exchanged at “social prices” granting a profit. “Whatever quantity of labour may be requisite to produce any commodity, the labourer must always, in the present state of society, give a great deal more labour to acquire and possess it than is requisite to buy it from nature. Natural © Ernesto Screpanti, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0182.09 4 Labour and Value price thus increased to the labourer, is social price” (1827, 220). Profits are unjust because social prices violate natural law. In my opinion, Marxists must reject the self-ownership axiom, chiefly because it is politically distasteful. In fact, it can be used to condemn communism as a form of exploitation of the talented by untalented people and to censure progressive redistribution policies as a form of mistreatment of the richest individuals. Not by chance, Nozick (1974) furtively uses it to justify extreme right-wing policies. Moreover, the axiom is self-contradictory. Among the various theoretical problems,1 the following is decisive. A full property right over a thing entails the right to sell it. Therefore, a person entitled to self-ownership should have the right to sell herself as a slave. In this way, an ethical principle that seems to imply a condemnation of slavery can be used to justify it, as done by Nozick (1974, 331). Although Marx never says that the extraction of surplus value is unjust on account of any universal principle of justice, there are some grounds for a normative interpretation of his theory of exploitation. To start with, the young-Hegelian philosopher believes that “the criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being” (Marx 1975a, 182). And even the mature economist exhibits a certain moral indignation when he declares that exploitation is “robbery”, “embezzlement”, “looting”, “fraud” or “theft” (Geras 1985). Moreover, although he does not like natural law philosophies, sometimes he seems to assume the self-ownership axiom. For instance, he states that a worker is the “untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e. of his person” (Marx 1996, 178). In a capitalist system, workers sell the use of their labour power. This use generates flows of abstract labour, a substance with the capacity to create value. Workers are paid a normal wage, which is lower than the quantity of abstract labour they supply in the production process.
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