Author: corwin

Page 43: “The use-value, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements–matter and labour.  If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man.  The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.  Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces.  We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use-values produced by Labour.  As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother.”

Labor, then, is useful and purposeful activity expended upon substances provided by nature in order to change their form.  And, as we’ve seen from before, if we abstract from a commodity the particular material substance, and the exact form of the labor, what is left is human labor in the abstract.

The point is that, for now, we will refer for the sake of simplicity to labor, rather than doing the reduction of skilled labor to simple labor, as this will not change anything for this part of the investigation.

“So far as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour.  But tailoring and weaving are, qualitatively, different kinds of labour.  There are, however, states of society in which one and the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the labour of the same individual, and no special and fixed functions of different persons.; just as the coat which our tailor makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same individual.  Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of human labour is, in accordance with varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailoring, at another in form of weaving.”

Again, different kinds of labor, insofar as they are labor, can be equated as quantities; this is how commodities can be exchanged.

Page 44: Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form, viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the expenditure of human labour-power.”

To get an idea of what Marx means by labor-power, it is useful to consider the difference between  potential and kinetic energy.  Labor-power is the ability to labor–when labor-power is expended, it becomes labor.  So far, what we have read is little more than what has been discovered by earlier political economists (albeit expressed with exceptional clarity and precision); the important distinction between labor and labor-power constitutes one of the most important discoveries by Marx.  In retrospect, of course, it is obvious: the ability to take an action is not the same as the action.  But uncovering this distinction was as important to economics as changes in the form of energy was important to physics.

“The value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour-power in general.  And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part, so here with human labour.  It is the expenditure of simpler labour-power, i.e., of the labour-power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of very ordinary individual.  Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given.  Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled labour being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour.  Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made.  A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the produce of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone.”

Here Marx inserts a footnote to remind the reader that, when we speak of skilled or simple labor, we are not speaking of the cost of that labor–ie, wages; which we’ll be getting to later.

Page 42: “In the use-value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i.e., productive labour of a definite kind, and exercised with a definite aim.  Use-values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them.”

Right.  As we were discussing in the last post.  The emphasis here should be “cannot confront each other as commodities.”  That is, we are able to compare commodities and exchange them with each other as commodities because different sorts of labor are embodied in them.  It’s also worth noting that intention comes up here and there in significant ways.  We know that one thing that defines a commodity is that it is produced with the intention of exchanging it; and here Marx seems to emphasize that when we speak of particular kind of labor, we’re speaking of labor that is performed with a particular intention.  It’s easy to see that in day-to-day life; commodities are not produced by accidental labor.  I don’t know why Marx wants to emphasize that, but what strikes me is that it is part of what defines labor.  Human activity with a certain intention has to be part of the definition, which means human thought, human will, human imagination is part of what makes certain kinds of activity labor.

“…in a community of commodity producers,” [ie, a capitalist society] “this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently by individual producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.”

Social division of labor, at its most basic, would be, for example, the farmers producing food to feed the workers who build the implements used in by the farmers.  In a capitalist society, these relationships become very complex.

“Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either case it operates as a use-value.  Nor is the relation between the coat and the labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour.  Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.  But coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of Nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants.”

Here, of course, we are speaking of human activity, human labor, in general–not the peculiarities of capitalist production, but the general form of all production.

“So far therefore as labour is a creator of use-value, is useful human labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all form 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.”