Returning to the specialness of labor
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1. Can one in principle construct an X-theory of value (an XTV),
substituting some other item in place of the labor of the LTV?
(Barkley Rosser, 3/21/94, suggests land.) And if so, does that mean
that the LTV has no special claim to privilege?
2. There is a first technical requirement: X must be a 'basic'
commodity, i.e. one which enters either directly or indirectly into the
production of all others. But surely we can find some of these besides
labor -- oil, perhaps.
3. Now notice a second technical point. When calculating labor-
values, it is necessary to value all inputs to production in terms of the
amount of labor-time it takes to produce them -- except for labor-
power! Direct labor inputs must be 'valued' at one hour per hour of
labor performed. What would happen if one instead valued the direct
labor input itself in terms of the labor-time required to reproduce the
workers' labor-power, when that is less than one hour per hour of
labor performed? Then all "labor-values" would go to zero. (It is
easy to see this if you write out the standard matrix equation for
determining labor-values. It can also be seen more intuitively if you
imagine calculating labor-values by an iterative method: start out by
approximating the labor-value of each commodity by its *direct*
labor-content; then adjust your first approximation by bringing into
account the first-round labor-values of all the other inputs; and so on.
The point is that if the direct labor input itself is revalued, in the second
round, at its 'labor-content', conceived as the value of labor-power,
the second approximations will be smaller than the first; and "labor-
values" will shrink every time round this loop until they disappear.)
4. The same applies to oil: in order to prevent the "oil-values" of all
commodities from going to zero, one has to attribute to each barrel of
oil that enters the production process directly, a value of one barrel --
and not the (smaller) amount of oil that it takes to *produce* a barrel
of oil. In effect, one has to make a distinction analogous to that
between labor and labor-power, e.g. between the combustion of oil,
and a barrel of oil itself as "combustion-power".
5. But is this distinction really significant for anything other than human
labor? As the possessor of a unit of human labor-power, it matters to
me to what extent my labor-power is exercised in actual labor per unit
time. I want it to be exercised to some degree, preferably in
interesting ways, but enough is enough. Suppose somebody urges me
to work more than this, saying "After all, your labor-power will still be
reproduced. If you use up more calories laboring, you'll be provided
with more to eat." This misses the point. I am not just concerned that
my labor-power be reproduced (though this is important): I am
independently concerned about the amount of work I do, since there
are other things I like to do with my time.
6. Here, of course, there is no analogy with oil. A barrel of oil simply
doesn't care if it's used up or not: it has nothing else to do. And
neither does anybody else care, *except insofar as it is a non-
reproducible resource that is liable to run out* (or at any rate become
much more costly in terms of labor-time to extract, over a relevant
time-horizon). A society that is capable of reproducing its stocks of
fuels ("combustion-power") over all relevant time-horizons has no
additional reason to be concerned about the rate at which actual
combustion is taking place per period. But a society that is capable of
reproducing its stock of labor-power over all relevant time horizons
does have an additional reason to pay attention to the rate at which
actual labor is performed by its members per unit time, since this is of
concern to all its members individually.
7. It may be helpful here to make a distinction between "strongly
producible goods" and "weakly producible goods". A strongly
producible good is one that requires as "ultimate" inputs only labor and
natural resources the planetary supply of which is, at least for practical
purposes, unlimited. A weakly producible good is one that requires
as an input some natural resource whose supply is limited, and may
pose a definite constraint over some economically-relevant time-
horizon.
8. There is no possible justification for taking any strongly producible
good X as the basis for an "XTV". The scarcity of such a good is
strictly "derived" --derived, that is, from the scarcity of labor-power
(and possibly of other weakly producible inputs).
9. On the other hand, it would be possible, in principle, to base an
XTV on some weakly producible X other than labor. But notice a
formal constraint on an X-content theory of value (as opposed to a
non X-content theory, such as the Sraffian or GE systems). Since
exchange ratios, the explananda of such a theory, are scalars, X-
content must itself be a scalar. In other words, X must be
homogeneous -- or at least it must be possible to treat X as
homogeneous for theoretical purposes, without departing too radically
from reality. This requirement clearly rules out "land" (i.e. one can't
even begin to think of the land-content of a commodity as a scalar
quantity), though it would seem not to rule out oil. (And neither, of
course, does it rule out labor. Yes, human labor-time is not truly
homogeneous. But nonetheless human labor-power is an all-purpose
resource, in the sense that anyone of average intelligence and dexterity
can be trained to perform almost any of the tasks required in the
economy.)
10. Conclusions so far: An XTV is in principle possible for any X that
(a) is 'basic' in the technical sense, (b) is only weakly producible and
(c) may be conceived as homogeneous as a tolerable first
approximation. Coming up: Some final suggestions on why the LTV is
properly privileged over any other XTV.
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Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(910) 759-5762
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