As part of my recent reply to Rakesh, I wrote
"... I strongly doubt I'll be convinced by your sources of the centrality of
value theory in understanding [capitalist] production, and not because my
mind is made up already. My doubt is based on a question of logical type:
the legitimate ground of value theory is not the ground on which the
operation of capitalist firms is based."
I've just finished reading the chapter in Moishe Postone's _Time, Labor, and
Social Domination_ that Rakesh recommended to me, and it strikes me that
the point made above is emphatically borne out in Postone's (otherwise quite
insightful and interesting) analysis: his application of value analysis in
understanding the development of capitalist production is based on a
consistent fallacy, just as in Marx, leading to consistently misleading
conclusions, just as in Marx.
The fallacy, specifically a form of the fallacy of division, asserts itself
early on.
Postone's argument in Ch. 9, "The trajectory of production" is premised on
the claim that "...the expansion of surplus value [is] the systemic goal of
production in capitalism."
Now, ascribing goals to *systems* rather than conscious beings, as Postone
does here, is necessarily a dicey proposition, but in any case it is clear
that *capitalists* direct production, not *capitalism*. Capitalists want to
make profits; Marx made this point in describing the circuit of capital
M-C-M', and the fact that M' must on average be greater than M for this
circuit to make sense depends not at all on whether the elements of the
circuit are represented in terms of labor values.
Thus individual capitalists will adopt innovations in the production process
so long as they increase profit by reducing costs or increasing revenues for
given inputs. A typical capitalist *necessarily* cannot think in terms of
"increasing surplus value" when organizing production, since value is
determined by "socially necessary labour time"--"the labour time which is
necessary *on average*--and a single capitalist in a large capitalist
economy necessarily cannot affect that average. Thus, for example, a single
capitalist under such conditions cannot possibly create relative surplus
value. What the capitalist *can* do is increase individual profits for
*given* values.
Now it is of course *possible* that the cumulative effect of such an
innovation, once generally adopted, is to increase surplus value. But that
is a (contingent) consequence of the original motivation, and should not be
confused with that motivation itself. Thus, when Postone states later (p. 342)
"...because the goal of capitalist production is surplus value, it gives
rise to an incessant drive for increased productivity..."
he puts the cart before the horse. Capitalists strive to increase
productivity because this increases profits, and don't (can't) care what is
the ultimate effect of their individual actions on surplus value, which
pertains to the system as a whole.
A related example of such backwards reasoning is found in another passage (327)
"Thus, for example, [Marx] states that 'the law of valorization...comes
fully into its own for the individual producer only when he produces as a
capitalist and employes a number of workers simultaneously, i.e. when from
the outset he sets in motion labour of a socially average character.' This
passage reinforces my earlier claim that Marx's determinations of value do
not refer to market exchange alone but are intended as determinations of
capitalist production."
But the passage Postone quotes does no such thing: rather it states that the
the conditions of capitalist production inform the "determinations of value"
rather than vice-versa.
Surprisingly (at least it was surprising to me), Postone's subsequent analysis
**confirms my point**, at least as it applies through the manufacturing
stage of capitalist production (i.e. through the argument in V. I of Capital
as developed up to Ch. 14): Marx's analysis of the nature of capitalist
production *does not depend* on value categories. Striving to make a
somewhat different point, Postone writes (p 334):
"So long as human labor remains the essential productive force of material
wealth, production for the purpose of creating material wealth at a high
level of productivity necessarily entials the *same* form of the labor
process as when the goal of production is an increase in surplus value."
{Emphasis in original.}
Well, exactly. Suppose we ignore value categories entirely and just state
the obvious: capitalists direct production so as to increase their material
wealth in the form of profit. The resulting process of production would be
exactly the same, as Postone affirms.
But Postone goes on to argue that this isomorphism does not continue to hold
for machinofacture, the most developed form of capitalist production. His
argument, however, depends *centrally* on the conclusion he draws from the
earlier fallacy of division. The resulting _non sequitur_ is anticipated in
the following passage (p 342):
"At the same time...capitalist production is and remains based on human
labor time expenditure precisely because its goal is surplus value. Marx
grasps capitalist industrial production in terms of this duality: as a
process of creating material wealth, it ceases to depend necessarily on
direct human labor; yet, as a process of valorization, it necessarily
remains based on such labor."
Now, put aside for the moment that neither Postone nor Marx has established
that at the stage of machinofacture the "process of creating material
wealth...ceases to depend necessarily on direct human labor." The central
point is that the sense in which surplus value is the "goal" of capitalist
production has never been established, and is at the most immediate level of
capitalist decisionmaking simply nonsense.
Postone then uses this _non sequitur_ to draw his fundamental conclusion
about the most developed stage of capitalist production (p 344):
"Production no longer is a form of handicraft, based ultimately on the labor
of the workers. Nevertheless, because the socially general productive
powers are developed as those of capital...the objectified forces of
production in large-scale industry do not, *on a total social level*, tend
to replace direct human labor in production. Rather, **they are used to
extract higher levels of surplus value from labor that has ceased to be
essential to the production of material wealth...**"
(Latter emphasis added.)
But this is a double _non sequitur_. First, if it were really true that
"labor ...has ceased to be essential to the production of material
wealth..", individual profit-maximizing capitalists would refuse to hire
that unnecessary labor, and thus would save themselves wage costs at no loss
in production. When reproduced in the aggregate, that decision may hurt
capitalists *as a whole*, but to insist that therefore individual
capitalists will avoid it is precisely to commit the fallacy of division.
[To put this another way, this may be a form of the "prisoners dilemma" in
which individually rational decisions lead to collectively irrational
outcomes.] But second, I restate that no one has shown that machinofacture
makes direct human labor *superfluous* in the production of commodities--it
just changes the character of that labor.
My conclusion is as in my earlier post: the application of value theory in
analyzing capitalist production relations represents a fundamental error of
logical type. Postone's analysis, which is often quite insightful on other
grounds, suffers exactly because of this error, just as Marx's did.
Gil Skillman
>
>>Marx's valid
>>insights into the operation of capitalist firms are obscured by, rather than
>>dependent on, his value-theoretic categories.
>
>Gil, have you read Hans-Dieter Bahr's "The Class Structure of Machinery:
>Notes on the Value Form" in Outlines of A Critique of Technology, ed. Phil
>Slater. Humanities Press, 1980. An argument like this you will not find in
>the journals of managerial science. If you can't find Slater's book, do
>tell me what you think of Moishe Postone's last chapter, also based on the
>value form. I really am interested in what someone of your analytical
>prowess makes of such arguments.
>
>Thank you,
>Rakesh
>
>
>
>
