I think that they have got entirely the wrong end of the stick here in confusing abstract labour with its historical form of appearance in commodity producing society. Abstract labour is simply labour under its general aspect of work performed by humans, this stems from something prior to and independent of commodity production : the unique ability of the human species to learn new labour skills combined with an ability to cooperate in the division of labour. It is this that makes labour a resource that can be poured into multiple concrete forms. This is clear from his famous letter to Kugelmann on the subject.
In a commodity producing society money is the form of representation of this, but in other societies other forms of representation are possible. Holding to the position that abstract labour only exists in commodity production involves deliberately ignoring the very clear definitions of abstract labour given in Capital I and claiming that it could not be independently measured without monetary exchange involves a neo-Hayekian reading of Marx that ignores what he says in Capital and the Critique of the Gotha programme about the direct use of labour time calculations by a communist economy. I find it significant that in order to make the point draft documents rather than final ones are cited. Normally one would take the author's final draft for publication, after they have had time to polish it, as the authoritative version. -------------------------- > Does he Ingo claim that commodities in pre capitalist economies did not > > exchange in proportion to their values? Or is he claiming that monetary > > calculation occured much earlier than Engels thought? I think in this essay Ingo takes issue particularly with Engels assertion of exchange occuring according to a conscious estimation of labor-time, when Marx's value-theory posits abstract labor as a sort of blindly operating average, and more importantly, the existence of exchange according to abstract labor absent the mediation of money. The monetary nature of Marx's value theory is a common argument among a lot of NML theoreticians. The value-form analysis in Chapter One of Volume I is thus asserted to be a logical derivation of the necessity of money to capitalism, and simultaneously an argument against Ricardian socialists and Proudhon, who asked "why not just abolish money and calculate labor-time directly?" Abstract labor is thus a relationship of social validation where private acts of labor are mediated to the total labor of society; abstract labor is not a physical substrate of an individual commodity, nor can it be measured directly by the stopwatch. There are two passages from Marx's revision manuscripts for Vol. I (“Ergänzungen und Veränderungen zum ersten Band des Kapitals”, December 1871/January 1872, MEGA II/6) that emphasize this very strongly: “Die Reduction der verschiednen konkreten Privatarbeiten auf dieses Abstractum gleicher menschlicher Arbeit vollzieht sich nur durch den Austausch, welcher Producte verscheidner Arbeiten thatsächlich einander gleichsetzt.” my translation: “The reduction of different acts of concrete labour to this abstraction of equal human labour is consummated only through exchange, which in fact equalizes products of different acts of concrete labour.” One more quote, from the same manuscript: “Ein Arbeitsprodukt, für sich isolirt betrachtet, ist also nicht Werth, so wenig wie es Waare ist. Es wird nur Werth, in seiner Einheit mit andrem Arbeitsprodukt, oder in dem Verhältniß, worin die verschiednen Arbeitsprodukte, als Krystalle derselben Einheit, der menschlichen Arbeit, einander gleichgesetzt sind.” “A product of labor, considered by itself in isolation, is therefore not value, anymore than it is a commodity. It only becomes value in its unity with another product of labor, or in the relationship within which the various products of labor, as crystalizations of the same unity, human labor, are equated to one another.” As for Ingo's text, keep in mind that the main purpose of the short essay is to outline the differences between the "NML" on one hand and "Western Marxism" and Engelsian "Marxism" on the other hand. It's not intended as a comprehensive critique of either "Western Marxism" or Engelsian "Marxism." Hans: > Why is the book "Der democratic state: critique of bourgeous > sovereignty" by Marxistische Gruppe/Gegenstandpunkt, written by Karl > Held, not mentioned when you mention all these? I didn't mention Johannes Agnoli's _Staat des Kapitals_ either, even though that's my favorite contribution to that whole discussion. I was wary of just offering a huge list of names for works that often aren't even available in English. But you linked the MG book, so there you go! I should probably also mention that Heide Gerstenberger's book is also available in a translation from Historical Materialism/Haymarket Books. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
