On the specialness of labor
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1. Everybody knows that human labor is a special process and labor-
power a very special commodity. But a certain sort of hard-nosed
theorist is very unwilling to grant labor any special theoretical privilege.
This attitude, although I think it is ultimately theoretically debilitating, is
understandable. One doesn't want to be caught sneaking into one's
basic economic *theory* a privileging of labor that is based on
scientifically "extraneous" ideological, political or humanitarian
concerns. If the LTV acquires its "validity" *only* from, say, a
standpoint of political-ideological sympathy with the labor movement,
this seems like sufficient reason for rejecting it.
2. Sraffa's very title, "The Production of Commodities by Means of
Commodities," seems to bespeak such a concern, which is more
explicit in some of his followers. From the abstract theorist's point of
view, labor (or rather labor-power) is just one of the n commodities
that jointly produce each other.
3. I will attempt to allay this fear, showing that the granting of a
special privilege to human labor time, and the commodity labor
power, is *not in the least* (or need not be) the effect of the intrusion
of extraneous factors into the realm of theory.
4. Here is a very broad first pass: The economy is "about" the
production of goods that serve certain human purposes, by human
beings, via their labor time. (The stipulation that the goods "serve
human purposes" -- though those purposes may be quite various -- is
necessary to distinguish economic production from, e.g., the
production by humans of carbon dioxide and other bodily wastes.) Is
this an "ideological" statement, extraneous to science? Not at all.
Some such statement is absolutely required to prevent the "economy"
from *vanishing* as a specific object of theoretical investigation.
Otherwise how can one make a principled distinction between the
economy, and all the other stuff going on in the biosphere (with which,
of course, the economy is intricately linked)?
5. One could try delimiting the economy as the set of activities that
earn (and participate in the determination of) the equalized rate of
profit. But strictly speaking, this would be the empty set. Or "the set
of activities involving the allocation of scarce resources by and on
behalf of humans." But that, IMO, is too broad to isolate the
economy as such; and besides, it skirts the point -- to be defended
shortly -- that labor is the *key* "scarce resource."
6. There follow three quotations, one from each of the classical
proponents of the LTV. No, this is not an appeal to authority. It is a
limbering-up exercise, a preliminary to presenting some further angles
on the "specialness" of labor. If you are interested in this topic, I
would ask you to try to look at these quotes with fresh eyes -- to
ignore the fact that they are almost cliches, and to see if they suggest
any interesting implications.
A. Smith:
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man
who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ...
Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid
for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labour, that all the
wealth of the world was originally purchased...
B. Ricardo:
Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from
two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour
required to obtain them.
There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by
their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such
goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased
supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scare books and coins, wines
of a peculiar quality, which can be made only from grapes grown on a
particular soil, of which there is a very limited quantity, are all of this
description. Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of
labour originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the
varying wealth and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess
them.
These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of
commodities daily exchanged in the market. *By far the greatest part
of those goods which are the object of desire, are procured by labour;
and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many,
almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the
labour necessary to obtain them.* (emphasis added)
C. Marx:
Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a
year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every
child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the
differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively
determined amounts of society's aggregate labour. It is self-evident
that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific
proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social
production; it can only change its form of manifestation.
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Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
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