A Crisis of Measurability

Abstract

Postoperaists extrapolate from the advent of contemporary ‘immaterial labour’ a crisis of measurability synonymous with a crisis in the law of value. This chapter reveals such claims to deny the Marxian theory of value only through recourse to its most traditional interpretation, holding value to relate not the social validation of abstract labour but the quantification of direct labour-time. Drawing on existing critiques by Michael Heinrich and George Caffentzis, the chapter interrogates three assumptions present in theorisations of immaterial labour: its novelty, its ‘immediately abstract’ character, and its immeasurable productiveness. The chapter concludes that the new conditions captured in the concept of immaterial labour do not pose a crisis for the law of value, because value has never related to the measurement of immediate labour.