Value and negativity: a reply to Carchedi

Abstract

Recently I have advanced a new theory of value in which the relation of labour to value is not taken in positive terms, but understood as a dialectic of negativity (Arthur 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004). This is derived from the insight that, when the key concepts ('value', 'abstract labour', and 'socially necessary labour') are situated in the capital relation, this changes their meanings from those attributed to them at the more abstract level of simple circulation. I argue (i) that capital 'creates' value out of the exploitation of living labour; (ii) that this labour is constituted as abstract in the process of capitalist production prior to exchange, because it is an activity form--determined by the imposition on it of capital's general objective of valorisation; (iii) that once the terms of 'social necessity' are concretised in this context the basic determinant is the time for which capital can compel labour to work on its behalf; and (iv) that value results from class struggle at the point of production. (Arthur 2001: 17, 23, 30, 32). It follows from all this that value cannot be positively identified with labour, because capital valorises itself only by negating that which resists its exploitation in production. Labour does not 'create' value; it is that out of which capital does so to the extent that it appropriates labour's productive powers and makes them its own (see below for more on this). I therefore argue that two kinds of exploitation occur: 'Exploitation in production ... involves the subjection of workers to alien purposes ... Exploitation in distribution arises from the discrepancy between the new wealth created and the return to those exploited in production.' (Arthur 2001: 33) Mino Carchedi, in Capital & Class 81, polemicises against my views. He says my 'notion of value is internally inconsistent and indefensible, that of exploitation in production is irrelevant for economic theory, and that of exploitation in distribution is illogical.' (Carchedi 2003: 26). Let us enquire why, and let us begin with value. Carchedi, in fact, says nothing at all about my concept of value in his objection. Instead he says: 'For Arthur, the common feature of capitalists' labour is that it forces the worker to labour.' (Carchedi 2003: 26-7). This is simply false. I never mention the capitalists' 'labour' (qua 'capitalist' they do not labour); a fortiori I never argue it is abstract, nor that it creates value; consequently Carchedi's proof that the labour of supervision is concrete only is irrelevant. (I myself have made the point elsewhere: Arthur 2003: 132). Carchedi implicitly infers that if capital 'creates' value then it is the capitalists' labour that must be abstract. But this is a conclusion he draws. I do not. I say that value is 'created' when labour is 'pumped out' of the workers by capital's representatives. This labour, as the source of value, is counted abstractly when capitals commensurate it indirectly through competition to extort labour more effectively. It seems that the point causing difficulty here is that I have not sufficiently made clear the significance of my value-form theory for the concept of capital. I attribute to capital as a social form the positing of the product of labour as value, and the positing of the surplus product as surplus value. This is quite different from saying that the labour of capital's personifications 'creates' value. A related point is that although I slip into the standard terminology by speaking of the 'creation' and 'production' of value, I reject any analogy here with material production. Commodities are materially produced as natural bodies. Their interpellation as values is the result of social determinations flowing from the forms within which material reproduction goes on. Consider next my notion of exploitation in production. Underpinning this is my view that the labour theory of value depends on the social reality of labour. …