20 bringing about a violent decrease in the population, and therefore a fall in the prices of corn and other NECESSARIES, and this would lead again to a rise in profits.
The period between 1820 and 1830 is metaphysically speaking the most important period in the history of English political economy — theoretical tilting for and against the Ricardian theory, a whole series of anonymous polemical works, the most important of which are quoted here, especially in relation to those matters which concern our subject. At the same time, however, it is a characteristic of these polemical writings that all of them, in actual fact, merely revolve around the definition of the concept of value and its relation to capital.
a) Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes in Political Economy, Particularly Relating to Value, and to Demand and Supply, London, 1821
This is not without a certain acuteness. The title Verbal Disputes is characteristic.
Directed in part against Smith and Malthus, but also against Ricardo.
The real SENSE of this work is that
* "disputes ... are entirely owing to the use of words in different senses by different persons; to the disputants looking, like the knights in the story, at different sides of the shield" * ([pp.] 59-60).
This kind of scepticism always heralds the dissolution of a theory, it is the harbinger of a frivolous and unprincipled eclecticism designed for domestic use.
First of all in relation to Ricardo's theory of value:
labour and consequently speaks directly of the VALUE OF LABOUR, while what is bought and sold is the temporary use of labour capacity, itself a product. Instead of the problem being resolved, it is only emphasised here that a problem remains unsolved.
It is also quite correct that "THE VALUE OR PRICE OF LAND", which is not produced by labour, appears directly to contradict the concept of value and cannot be derived directly from it. This proposition is [all the more] insignificant when used against Ricardo, since its author does not attack Ricardo's theory of rent in which precisely Ricardo sets forth how the nominal value of land is evolved on the basis of capitalist production and does not contradict the definition of value. The value of land is nothing but the price which is paid for capitalised rent. Much more far-reaching developments have therefore to be presumed here than can be deduced prima facie from the simple consideration of the commodity and its value, just as from the simple concept of productive capital one cannot evolve fictitious capital,85 the object of gambling on the stock exchange, which is actually nothing but the selling and buying of entitlement to a certain part of the annual tax revenue.
The second objection — that Ricardo transforms value, which is a relative concept, into an absolute concept — is made the chief point of the attack on the whole Ricardian system in another polemical work (written by Bailey), which appeared later. In considering this latter work, we will also cite relevant passages from the Observations.(1)
A very pertinent observation about the source from which capital, which pays labour, arises, is contained in an incidental remark unconsciously made by the author, who on the contrary wants to use it to prove what is said in the following sentence not underlined [by me], namely, that the SUPPLY OF LABOUR itself constitutes a CHECK on the tendency OF LABOUR TO SINK TO ITS NATURAL
PRICE.
as the point of departure. Only on this basis is it possible to understand the real phenomena of price fluctuations.
[XIV-807] *"It is not meant to be asserted by him" (Ricardo), "that two particular lots of two different articles, as a hat and a pair of shoes, exchange with one another when those two particular lots were produced by equal quantities of labour. By 'commodity' we must here understand 'description of commodity', not a particular individual hat, pair of shoes, etc. The whole labour which produces all the hats in England is to be considered, to this purpose, as divided among all the hats. This seems to me not to have been expressed at first, and in the general statements of this doctrine" * (I.e., [pp.] 53-54). For example, Ricardo speaks of "A PORTION OF [the] LABOUR OF THE ENGINEER IN MAKING MACHINES" contained, for instance, in a pair of stockings.(2) * "Yet the 'total labour' that produced each single pair of stockings, if it is of a single pair we are speaking, includes the whole labour of the engineer, not a 'portion'; for one machine makes many pairs, and none of those pairs could have been done without any part of the machine" * (I.e., [p.] 54).
The last passus is based on a misunderstanding. The whole machine enters into the labour process, but only a part of it enters the valorisation process.
Apart from this, some things in the remark are correct. We start with the commodity, this specific social form of the product, as the foundation and prerequisite of capitalist production. We take individual products and analyse those distinctions of form which they have as commodities, which stamp them as commodities. In earlier modes of production—preceding capitalist production — a large part of the output never enters into circulation, is never placed on the market, is not produced as commodities, and does not become commodities. On the other hand, at that time a large part of the products which enter into production are not commodities and do not enter into the process as commodities. The transformation of products into commodities only occurs in individual cases, is limited only to the surplus of production, etc., or only to individual spheres of production (manufactured products), etc. A whole range of products neither enter into the process as articles to be sold, nor arise from it as such. Nevertheless, the prerequisite, the starting-point, of the formation of capital and of capitalist production is the development of the product into a commodity, commodity circulation and consequently money circulation within certain limits, and consequently trade developed to a certain degree. It is as such a prerequisite that we treat the commodity, since we proceed from it as the simplest element in capitalist production. On the other hand, the product, the result of capitalist production, is the commodity. What appears as its element is later revealed to be its own product. Only on the basis of capitalist production does the commodity become the general form of the product and the more this production develops, the more do the products in the form of commodities enter into the process as ingredients. The commodity, as it emerges in capitalist production, is different from the commodity taken as the element, the starting-point of capitalist production. We are no longer faced with the individual commodity, the individual product. The individual commodity, the individual product, manifests itself not only as a real product but also as a commodity, as a part both really and conceptually of production as a whole. Each individual commodity [represents] a definite portion of capital and of the surplus value created by it. The value of the capital advanced+the surplus labour appropriated, for example, a value of £120 (if £100 is the capital and the surplus labour=£20), is, as far as its value is concerned, contained in the total product, let us say, in 1,200 yards of cotton. Each yard=£[120]/i,Soo=1/io of £l=2s. It is not the individual commodity which appears as the result of the process, but the mass of the commodities in which the value of the total capital has been reproduced + a surplus value. The total value produced divided by the number of products determines the value of the individual product and it becomes a commodity only as such an aliquot part. It is no longer the labour expended on the individual particular commodity (in most cases, it can no longer be calculated, and may be greater in the case of one commodity than in that of another) but a proportional part of the total labour — the average of the total value [divided] by the number of products — determines the value of the individual product and establishes it as a commodity. Consequently, the total mass of commodities must also be sold, each commodity at its value, determined in this way, in order to replace the total capital together with a surplus value. If only 800 out of the 1,200 yards were sold, then the capital would not be replaced, still less would there be a profit. But each yard would also have been sold below its value, for its value is determined not in isolation but as an aliquot part of the total product.
What is in fact brought to market is not LABOUR, but the LABOURER. What he sells to the capitalist is not his labour but the TEMPORARY USE OF HIMSELF AS A WORKING POWER. This is the immediate object of the contract which the capitalist and the worker conclude, the purchase and sale which they transact.
Where payment is for piece-work, TASK-WORK, instead of according to the time for which the labour capacity is placed at the disposal of the employer, this is only another method of determining the time. It is measured by the product, a definite quantity of products being considered as a standard representing the socially necessary labour time. In many branches of industry in London where TASK-WORK is the rule, payment is thus made by the hour, but disputes often arise as to whether this or that piece of work constitutes "an hour" or not.
Irrespective of the individual form, it is the case not only with regard to TASK-WORK, but GENERALLY, that, although labour capacity is sold on definite TERMS before its USE, it is only paid for after the work is completed, whether it is paid daily, weekly, etc. Here money becomes the means of payment after it has served previously as an abstract means of purchase, because the nominal transfer of the commodity to the buyer is distinct from the actual transfer. The sale of the commodity — labour capacity — the legal transfer of the use value and its actual alienation, do not occur at the same time. The realisation of the price therefore takes place later than the sale of the commodity (see the first part of my book, p. 122).(3) It can also be seen that here it is the worker, not the capitalist, who does the advancing, just as in the case of the renting of a house, it is not the tenant but the landlord who advances use value. The worker will indeed be paid (or at least he may be, if the goods have not been ordered beforehand and so on) before the commodities produced by him have been sold. But his commodity, his labour capacity, has been consumed industrially, has been transferred into the hands of the buyer, the capitalist, before he, the worker, has been paid. And it is not a question of what the buyer of a commodity wants to do with it, whether he buys it in order to retain it as a use value or in order to sell it again. It is a question of the direct transaction between the first buyer and seller.
productive powers of labour. The productive powers of labour are generally greatest where there is an abundance of fertile land"* (Ricardo, [On the Principles of Political Economy,] 3RD ED., [London,] 1821, [p.] 92).a
The following remark on this passage of Ricardo's:
* "If, in the first sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it, the sentence is nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence capital can, if the owner pleases, be accumulated"* [I.e.].
(This is a tacit admission that from the standpoint of the capitalist * "productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it".* This sentence is very nice.)
* "But then this does not generally happen where there is most fertile land." *
(This is SILLY. Ricardo presupposes capitalist production. H e does not investigate whether it develops more freely with FERTILE OR RELATIVELY UNFERTILE LAND. Where it exists, it is most productive where land is most fertile. Just as the social productive forces, the natural productive powers of labour, that is, those labour finds in inorganic nature, appear as the productive POWER of capital. Ricardo himself, in the passage cited above, rightly identifies PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF LABOUR with LABOUR PRODUCTIVE OF CAPITAL, PRODUCTIVE
OF THE WEALTH THAT COMMANDS LABOUR, NOT OF THE WEALTH THAT BELONGS TO LABOUR. His expression, "CAPITAL, OR THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING LABOUR",is, in fact, the only one in which he grasps the real nature of capital.[86] H e himself is so much the prisoner of a [XIV-809] capitalist standpoint that this conversion, this quid pro quo, is for him a matter of course. T h e objective conditions of labour— created, moreover, by labour itself — RAW MATERIALS AND WORKING
INSTRUMENTS, ARE NOT MEANS EMPLOYED BY LABOUR AS ITS MEANS BUT, ON THE CONTRARY, THEY ARE THE MEANS OF EMPLOYING LABOUR. They are not employed by labour; they employ labour. For them labour is a MEANS by which they are accumulated as capital, not a means to provide products, WEALTH for the worker.)
(This is the basis of the doctrine of the Physiocrats. T h e physical basis of SURPLUS VALUE is this "GIFT OF NATURE", most obvious in agricultural labour, which originally satisfied nearly all human needs. [3] It is not so in manufacturing labour, because the product must first be sold as a commodity. The Physiocrats, the first to analyse SURPLUS VALUE, understand it in its natural form.)
* "but 'surplus produce (the term used by Mr. Ricardo, p. 93), generally means the excess of the whole price of a thing above that part of it which goes to the labourers who made it;"(4)
(the fool does not see that where the LAND is FERTILE, the PART OF
THE PRICE OF THE PRODUCE THAT GOES TO THE LABOURER, ALTHOUGH THAT PART
[ m a y ] BE SMALL, BUYS A SUFFICIENT QUANTITY OF NECESSARIES; THE PART THAT GOES
TO THE CAPITALIST IS GREATEST):
* "a point which is settled by human arrangement, and not fixed" * (I.e., [Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes..., pp.] 74-75).
If the last, concluding passus has any meaning at all, it is that "SURPLUS PRODUCE" in the capitalist sense must be strictly distinguished from the productivity of industry as such. The latter is of interest to the capitalist only in so far as it realises profit for him. Therein lies the narrowness and limitation of capitalist production.
[XIV-810] *"'Conversion of revenue into capital' is another of these verbal sources of controversy. One man means by it, that the capitalist lays out part of the profits he has made by his capital, in making additions to his capital, instead of spending it for [his] private use, as he might else have done: another man means by it, that a person lays out as capital something which he never got as profits, or any capital of his own, but received as rent, wages, salary" * (I.e., [pp.] 83-84).
This last passage—"ANOTHER OF THESE VERBAL SOURCES OF CONTROVERSY. ONE MAN MEANS BV IT ... ANOTHER MAN MEANS BY IT..."—testifies to the method used by this smart-alec.
b) An Inquiry into those Principles, Respecting the Nature of Demand and the Necessity of Consumption, lately Advocated by Mr. Malthus etc., London, 1821
[A] RICARDIAN [work]. Good against Malthus. Demonstrates the infinite narrow-mindedness to which the clairvoyance of these fellows is reduced as soon as they examine not LANDED PROPERTY, but capital. NEVERTHELESS, it is one of the best of the polemical works of the decennium mentioned.
*"If the capital employed in cutlery is increased as 100:101, and can only produce an increase of cutlery in the same proportion, the degree in which it will increase the command which its producers have over things in general, no increased production of them having by the supposition taken place, will be in a less proportion; and this, and not the increase of the quantity of cudery, constitutes the employers' profits or the increase of their wealth. But if the like addition of 1% had been making at the same time to the capitals of all other trades, and with the like result as to produce, this [conclusion] would not follow: for the rate at which each article would exchange with the rest would remain unaltered, and therefore a given portion of each would give the same command as before over the rest" * (I.e., [p.] 9).
D'abord,* if there has been no increase of production (and of the capital devoted to production) except in the CUTLERY TRADE, as is assumed, then the RETURN will not be " IN A LESS PROPORTION" , but * a n absolute loss. There are then only three courses open to the cutlery monger. Either he must exchange his increased produce as he would have done his less produce, and so his increased production would result in a positive loss. O r he must try to get new consumers; if amongst the old circle, this could only be done by withdrawing customers from another trade and shifting his loss u p o n other shoulders; or he must enlarge his market beyond his former limits; but neither the one nor the other operation depends on his good will, nor on the mere existence of an increased quantity of knives. Or, in the last instance, he must carry over his production to another year and diminish his new supply for that year, which, if his addition of capital did exist not only in additional wages, but in additional fixed capital, will equally result in a loss.
Furthermore: If all other capitals have accumulated at the same rate, it does not follow at all that their production has increased at the same rate. But if it has, it does not follow that they want one per cent more of cutlery, as their demand for cutlery is not at all connected, either with the increase of their own produce, or with their increased power of buying cutlery.* What follows is merely the tautology: If the INCREASED CAPITAL used in each particular TRADE is * proportionate to the rate in which the wants of society increase the demand for each particular commodity, then the increase of one commodity secures a market for the increased supply of other commodities.*
Here, therefore, is presupposed: 1) capitalist production, in which the production OF each particular TRADE and ITS INCREASE are NOT
IMMEDIATELY REGULATED, BY THE WANTS OF SOCIETY, AND [ X I V - 8 1 1] CONTROLLED BY IT,BUT BY THE productive forces at the disposal of each individual
CAPITALIST, INDEPENDENT OF THE WANTS OF SOCIETY;
2) It is assumed that nevertheless production is proportional [to the requirements] as though capital were EMPLOYED IN THE DIFFERENT TRADES directly by society in accordance with its needs.
On this assumption — if capitalist production were entirely socialist production — a contradictio in adjecto*—no overproduction could, in fact, occur.
By the way, in the various TRADES in which the same accumulation of capital takes place //and this too is an unfortunate assumption that capital ACCUMULATES AT AN EQUAL RATE IN DIFFERENT TRADES//, the amount of products corresponding to the increased capital employed may vary greatly, since the productive powers in the DIFFERENT TRADES or the total use values produced in relation to the labour employed differ considerably. The same value is" produced in both cases, but the quantity of commodities in which it is represented is very different. It is quite incomprehensible, therefore, why TRADE A, because the value of its output has increased by 1% while the mass of its products has grown by 20%, must find a market in TRADE B where the value has likewise increased by 1%, but the quantity of its output only by 5%. Here, the author has failed to take into consideration the difference between use value and exchange value.
Say's earth-shaking discovery that "commodities can only be bought with commodities"" simply means that money is itself the converted form of the commodity. It does not prove by any means that because I can buy only with commodities, 1 can buy with my commodity, or that my purchasing power is related to the quantity of commodities I produce. The same value can be embodied in very different quantities [of commodities]. But the use value— consumption — depends not on value, but on the quantity. It is quite unintelligible why I should buy 6 knives because I can get them for the same price that I previously paid for 1. Apart from the fact that the workers do not sell commodities, but labour, a great number of people who do not produce commodities at all buy things with money. Buyers and sellers of commodities are not identical. The LANDLORD, the MONEYED CAPITALIST and others obtain in the form of money commodities produced by other people. They are buyers without being sellers of "commodities". Buying and selling occurs not only between industrial capitalists, but they also sell to workers; and likewise to owners of REVENUE who are not commodity producers. Finally, the purchases and sales transacted by them as capitalists are very different from the purchases they make as REVENUE-SPENDERS.
* "Mr. Ricardo (2nd ed., p. 359),b after quoting the doctrine of Smith about the cause of the fall of profits, adds: 'Mr. Say has, however, most satisfactorily shown, that there is no capital which may not be employed in a country, because demand is only limited by production.' " *
(This is very wise. LIMITED, indeed. * Nothing can be demanded which cannot be produced upon demand, or which the demand finds not ready made in the market. Hence, because demand is limited by production, it does by no means follow that production is, or was, limited by demand, and can never overstep the demand, particularly the demand at the market price.* This is Say-like acumen.)
(Ricardo here equates "PRODUCTIVELY" and "PROFITABLY", whereas it is precisely the fact that in capitalist production "PROFITABLY" alone is "PRODUCTIVELY", that constitutes the difference between it and absolute production, as well as its limitations. In order to produce "productively", production must be carried on in such a way that the mass of PRODUCERS are excluded from the DEMAND for a part of the PRODUCE. Production has to be carried on in opposition to a class [XIV-812] whose consumption stands in no relation to its production — since it is precisely in the excess of its production over its consumption that the profit of capital consists. On the other hand, production must be carried on for classes which consume without producing. It is not enough merely to give the SURPLUS PRODUCE a form in which it becomes an object of demand for these classes. On the other hand, the capitalist himself, if he wishes to accumulate, must not [be] a DEMANDER of his own products, in so far as they make up the REVENUE to the extent that he is their PRODUCER. Otherwise he cannot accumulate. That is why Malthus opposes to the capitalist classes whose task is not ACCUMULATION but EXPENDITURE. And while on the one hand all these contradictions are assumed, it is assumed on the other that production proceeds without any friction just as if these contradictions did not exist at all. Purchase is divorced from sale, commodity from money, use value from exchange value. It is assumed however that this separation does not exist, but that there is barter. Consumption and production are separated; [there are] producers who do not consume and consumers who do not produce. It is assumed that consumption and production are identical. The capitalist directly produces exchange value in order to increase his profit, and not for the sake of consumption. It is assumed that he produces directly for the sake of consumption and only for it. [If] it is assumed that the contradictions existing in bourgeois production — which, in fact, are reconciled by a process of adjustment which, at the same time, however, manifests itself as a crisis, violent fusion of disconnected factors operating independently of one another and yet correlated — if it is assumed that they do not exist, then these contradictions obviously cannot come into play. In every TRADE each individual capitalist produces IN PROPORTION TO HIS CAPITAL irrespective of the WANTS OF SOCIETY and especially irrespective of the COMPETITIVE SUPPLY of capitals in the same TRADE. It is assumed that he produces as if he were fulfilling orders placed by society. If there were no foreign trade, then LUXURIES could be produced AT HOME, WHATEVER their COST. In that case, labour, with the exception of [the branches producing] NECESSARIES, would, in actual fact, be very unproductive. HENCE accumulation of capital [would proceed at a low rate]. Thus every country would be able to employ all the capital accumulated there, since according to the assumption very little capital would have been accumulated.)
* "The latter sentence limits (not to say contradicts) the former, if 'which may not be employed', in the former, means 'employed productively', or rather, 'profitably'. And if it means simply 'employed', the proposition is useless; because neither Adam Smith nor any body else, I presume, denied that it might be 'employed', if you did not care what profits it brought"* (I.e., [pp.] 18-19).
Ricardo says indeed that all capital in a given LAND, AT wHATteven
RATE ACCUMULATED, MAY BE EMPLOYED PROFITABLY; O n t h e O t h e r h a n d h e
S a y s THAT THE VERY FACT OF THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL CHECKS ITS "PROFIT-
ABLE" EMPLOYMENT, BECAUSE IT MUST RESULT IN LESSENING PROFITS, THAT IS, THE
RATE OF ACCUMULATION.
* "The very meaning of an increased demand by them" (the labourers) "is a disposition to take less themselves, and leave a larger share for their employers; and if it is said that this, by diminishing consumption, increases glut, I can only answer, that glut is synonymous with high profits" * (I.e., [p.] 59).a
This is indeed the secret basis of GLUT.
* "The labourers do not, considered as consumers, derive any benefit from machines, while flourishing (as Mr. Say says [in his] Letters to Malthvs, 4[th] ed., p. 60) [8]' unless the article, which the machines cheapen, is one that can be brought, by cheapening, within their use. Threshing-machines, windmills, may be a great thing for them in this view; but the invention of a veneering machine, [or] a block machine, or a lace frame, does not mend their condition much" (I.e., [pp.] 74-75).
"The habits of [the] labourers, where division of labour has been carried very far, are applicable only to the particular line they have been used to; they are a sort of machines. Then, there is a long period of idleness, that is, of labour lost; of wealth cut off at its root. It is quite useless to repeat, like a parrot, that things have a tendency to find their level. We must look about us, and see that they [XIV-813] cannot for a long time find a level; that when they do, it will be a far lower level than they set out from" * (I.e., [p.] 72).
This RICARDIAN, following Ricardo's example, recognises correctly crises resulting FROM A SUDDEN CHANGE IN THE CHANNELS OF TRADE.88 This was the case in England after the war of 1815. And consequently, whenever a crisis occurred, all later economists declared that the most obvious cause of the particular crisis was the only possible cause of all crises.
The author also admits that the credit system may be a cause of crises (p. 81 et seq.) (As if the credit system itself did not arise out of the DIFFICULTY of EMPLOYING CAPITAL "PRODUCTIVELY", i.e. "PROFITABLY".) The English, for example, are forced to lend their capital to other countries in order to create a market for their commodities.
a Cf. this volume, p. 252.—Ed.
Overproduction, the credit system, etc., are means by which capitalist production seeks to break through its own barriers and to produce over and above its own limits. Capitalist production, on the one hand, has this driving force; on the other hand, it only tolerates production commensurate with the profitable employment of existing capital. HENCE crises arise, which simultaneously drive it onward and beyond [its own limits] and force it to put on seven-league boots, in order to reach a development of the productive forces which could only be achieved very slowly within its own bornes.*
What the author writes about Say is very true. This should be dealt with in connection with Say (see p. 134, Notebook VIIs9).
* " He" * (the worker) * "will agree to work part of his time for the capitalist, or, what comes to the same thing, to consider part of the whole produce, when raised and exchanged, as belonging to the capitalist. He must do so, or the capitalist would not have afforded him this assistance." *
(Namely capital. Very fine that it * comes to the same thing whether the capitalist owns the whole produce and pays part of it as wages to the labourer, or whether the labourer leaves, makes over to the capitalist part of his (the labourer's) produce.)
"But as the capitalist's motive was gain, and as these advantages always depend, in a certain degree, on the will to save, as well as on the power, the capitalist will be disposed to afford an additional portion of these assistances; and as he will find fewer people in want of this additional portion, than were in want of the original portion, he must expect to have a less share of the benefit to himself; he must be content to make a present" (!!!) "(as it were) to the labourer, of part of the benefit his assistance occasions, or else he would not get the other part; the profit is reduced, then, by competition"* (I.e., [pp.] 102-03).
This is very fine. If, as a consequence of the development of the productive powers of labour, capital accumulates so quickly that the demand for labour increases WAGES and the worker works for LESS TIME gratis for the capitalist and SHARES TO SOME DEGREE IN THE BENEFITS
OF HIS MORE PRODUCTIVE LABOUR THE CAPITALIST MAKES HIM A " PRESENT" ! The same author demonstrates in great detail that high wages are a poor ENCOURAGEMENT for workers, although, speaking of the Against Say. (Notebook XII, p. 12.[44])
* "The immediate market for capital, or field for capital, may be said to be labour. The amount of capital which can be invested at a given moment, in a given country, or the world, so as to return not less than a given rate of profits, seems principally to depend on the quantity of labour, which it is possible, by laying out that capital, to induce the then existing number of human beings to perform" (I.e., [p.] 20).
[XIV-814] "Profits do not depend on price, they depend on price compared with outgoings" (I.e., [p.] 28).
"The proposition of M. Say does not at all prove that capital opens a market for itself, but only that capital and labour open a market for one another" * (I.e., [p.] HD-
c) Dialogues of Three Templars on Political Economy, chiefly in Relation to the Principles of Mr. Ricardo ([ The] London Magazine, Vol. IX, 1824) ( author: Thomas De Quincey)
Attempt at a refutation of all the attacks made on Ricardo. That he is aware of what is at issue is to be seen from this sentence:
"All difficulties of political economy will be found reducible to this: *What is the ground of exchangeable value?"* (I.e., [Dialogues of Three Templars..., p.] 347).(1)
In this work, the inadequacies of the Ricardian view are often pointedly set forth, although the dialectical depth is more affected than real. The real difficulties, which arise not out of the determination of VALUE, but from Ricardo's inadequate elaboration of his ideas on this basis, and from his arbitrary attempt to make concrete relations direcdy fit the simple relation of value, are in no way resolved or even grasped. But the work is characteristic of the period in which it appeared. It shows that in political economy consistency and thinking were still taken seriously at that time.
(A later work by the same author: The Logic of Political Economy, Edinburgh, 1845, is weaker.) De Quincey very clearly oudines the differences between the Ricardian view and those which preceded it, and does not seek to mitigate them by re-interpretation or to abandon the essential features of the problems in actual fact while retaining them in a purely formal, verbal way as happened later on, thus opening the door wide to easy-going, unprincipled eclecticism.
One more point in the Ricardian doctrine which is especially emphasised by De Quincey and which should be mentioned here because it plays a role in the polemic against Ricardo to which we shall refer below, is that the command which one commodity has over other commodities (its purchasing power; in fact, its value expressed in terms of another commodity) is altogether different from its real value.
"It is quite wrong to conclude * that the real value is great because the quantity it buys is great, or small because the quantity it buys is small... If A doubles its value, it will not therefore command double the former quantity of B. It may do so: and it may also command 500 times more or 500 times less...* No man has ever denied that A *by doubling its own value will command a double quantity of all things which have been stationary in value. But the question is whether universally, [by] doubling its value, A will command a double quantity"* (I.e., [p.] 552 et seq. passim).
d) A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value; Chiefly in Reference to the Writings of Mr. Ricardo and His Followers. By the Author of Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions ( Samuel Bailey), London, 1825
This is the main work directed against Ricardo. (Also aimed against Malthus.) It seeks to overturn the foundation of the doctrine— VALUE.* It is definitely worthless except for the definition of the "MEASURE OF VALUE", or RATHER, of money in this function.(1)
Compare also the same author's: A Letter to a Political Economist; Occasioned by an Article in the Westminster Review on the Subject of Value etc., London, 1826.
Since, as has been mentioned,(2) this work basically agrees with Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes in Political Economy, it is here necessary to add the relevant passages from these Observations.
The author of the Observations accuses Ricardo of having transformed VALUE from a relative attribute of commodities in their relationship to one another, into something absolute.
The only thing that Ricardo can be accused of in this context is that, in elaborating the concept of value, he does not clearly distinguish between the various aspects, between the exchange value of the commodity, as it manifests itself, appears in the process of commodity exchange, and the existence of the commodity as value as distinct from its existence as an object, product, use value. [XIV-815] It is said in the Observations:
* "If the absolute quantity of labour, which produces the greater part of commodities, or all except one, is increased, would you say that the value of that one is unaltered? since it will exchange for less of every commodity besides. If, indeed, it is meant to be asserted that the meaning of increase or diminution of value, is increase or diminution in the quantity of labour that produced the commodity spoken of, the conclusions I have just been objecting to might be true enough. But to say, as Mr. Ricardo does, that the comparative quantities of labour that produce two commodities are the cause of the rate at which the two commodities will exchange with each other, i.e. of the exchangeable value of each,—is very different from saying that the exchangeable value of either means the quantity of labour which produced it, understood without any reference to the other, or to the existence of the other" (Observations etc., p. 13).
"Mr. Ricardo tells us indeed that 'the inquiry to which he wishes to draw the reader's attention relates to the effects of the variations in the relative value of commodities, and not in their absolute value'a; as if he there considered that there
Î5 such a thing as exchangeable value which is not relative" (I.e., [pp. 9-]10).
"That Mr. Ricardo has departed from his original use of the term value, and has made of it something absolute, instead of relative, is still more evident in his chapter entitled: 'Value and Riches, their distinctive Properties'. The question there discussed has been discussed also by others, and is simply verbal and useless" * (I.e., [p.] 15 et seq.).
Before dealing with this author, we shall add the following about Ricardo. In his CHAPTER ON "Value and Riches", he argues that social wealth does not depend on the value of the commodities produced, although this latter point is decisive for EVERY INDIVIDUAL PRODUCER. It should have been all the more clear to him that a form of production whose exclusive aim is SURPLUS VALUE, in other words, which is based on the relative poverty of the mass of the PRODUCERS, cannot possibly be the absolute form of the production of wealth, as he constantly asserts.
Now to the "OBSERVATIONS" of the "VERBAL" wiseacre. If all commodities except one increase in value because they cost more labour time than they did before, smaller amounts of these commodities will be exchanged for the single commodity whose labour time remains unchanged. Its exchange value, in so far as it is realised in other commodities — that is, its exchange value expressed in the use values of all other commodities — has been reduced. "Would you then say that the exchange value of that one is unaltered?" This is merely a formulation of the point at issue, and it calls neither for a positive nor for a negative reply. The same result would occur if the labour time required for the production of the one commodity were reduced and that of all the others remained unchanged. A given quantity of this particular commodity would exchange for a reduced quantity of all the other commodities. The same phenomenon occurs in both cases although from directly opposite causes. Conversely, if the labour time required for the production of commodity A remained unchanged, while that of all others were reduced, then it would exchange for larger amounts of all the other commodities. The same would happen for the opposite reason, if the labour time required for the production of A increased and that required for all other commodities remained unchanged. Thus, sometimes commodity A exchanges for smaller quantities of all the other commodities, and this for either of two different and opposite reasons. At other times it exchanges for larger quantities of all the other commodities, again for two different and opposite reasons. But, nota bene, it is assumed that it always exchanges at its value, consequently for an equivalent It always realises its value in the quantity of use values of the other commodities for which it exchanges, no matter how much the quantity of these use values varies. From this it obviously follows: that the rate at which commodities exchange for one another as use values, although it is an expression of their value, their realised value, is not their value itself, since the same proportion of value can be represented by quite different quantities of use values. Value as an aspect of the commodity is not expressed in its own use value, or in its existence as use value. Value manifests itself when commodities are expressed in other use values, that is, [it manifests itself] in the rate at which these other use values are exchanged for them. If 1 ounce of gold = 1 ton of iron, that is, if a small quantity of gold exchanges for a large quantity of iron, is therefore the value of the ounce of gold expressed in iron greater than the value of the iron expressed in gold? That commodities exchange for one another in proportion to the labour embodied in them, means that they are equal, alike, in so far as they represent the same quantity of labour. Consequently it means likewise that every commodity, considered in itself, is something different from its [XIV-816] own use value, from its own existence as use value.
The value of the same commodity can, without changing, be expressed in infinitely different quantities of use values, always according to whether I express it in the use value of this or of that commodity. This does not alter the value, although it does alter the way it is expressed. In the same way, all the various quantities of different use values in which the value of commodity A can be expressed, are equivalents and are related to one another not only as values, but as equal values, so that when these very unequal quantities of use value replace one another, the value remains completely unchanged, as if it had not found expression in quite different use values.
When commodities are exchanged in the proportion in which they represent equal amounts of labour time, then it is their existence as objectified labour time, as embodied labour time, which manifests their substance, the identical element they contain. As such, they are qualitatively the same, and differ only quantitatively, according to whether they represent smaller or larger quantities of the same substance, i.e. labour time. They are values as expressions of the same element; and [they are] equal values, equivalents, in so far as they represent an equal amount of labour time. They can only be compared as magnitudes, because they are already homogeneous magnitudes, qualitatively identical.
It is as manifestations of this substance that these different things constitute values and are related to one another as values; their different magnitudes of value, their immanent measure of value are thus also given. And only because of this can the value of a commodity be represented, expressed, in the use values of other commodities as its equivalents. Hence the individual commodity as value, as the embodiment of this substance, is different from itself as use value, as an object, quite apart from the expression of its value in other commodities. As the embodiment of labour time, it is value in general, as the embodiment of a definite quantity of labour time, it is a definite magnitude of value.
It is therefore typical of our wiseacre when he says: * If we mean that, we do not mean that and vice versa. Our "meaning" has nothing at all to do with the essential characters of the thing we consider. If we speak of the value in exchange of a thing, we mean in the first instance of course the relative quantities of all other commodities that can be exchanged with the first commodity. But, on further consideration, we shall find that for the proportion, in which one thing exchanges with an infinite mass of other things, which have nothing at all in common with it — and even if there are natural or other similarities between those things, they are not considered in the exchange—[for the proportion] to be a fixed proportion, all those various heterogeneous things must be considered as proportionate representations, expressions of the same common unity, [of] an element quite different from their natural existence or appearances. We shall then furthermore find, that if our view has any sense, the value of a commodity is something by which it not only differs from or is related to other commodities, but is a quality by which it differs from its own existence as a thing, a value in use.
"The rise of value of article A, only meant value estimated in articles B, C, etc., i.e. value in exchange for articles B, C, etc." (I.e., p. 16).
To estimate the value of A, a book for instance, in B, coals, and C, wine, A, B, C must be as value something different from their existences as books, coals or wine. To estimate a value of A in B, A must have a value independent of the estimation of that value in B, and both must be equal to a third thing, expressed in both of them.*
It is quite wrong to say that the value of a commodity is thereby transformed from something relative into something absolute. On the contrary, as a use value, the commodity appears as something independent. On the other hand, as value it appears as something merely posited,[93] something merely determined by its relation to socially necessary, equal, simple labour time. It is to such an extent relative that when the labour time required for its reproduction changes, its value changes, although the labour time really contained in the commodity has remained unaltered.
[XIV-817] How deeply our wiseacre has sunk into fetishism and how he transforms what is relative into something positive, is demonstrated most strikingly in the following passage:
* " Value is a property of things, riches of men. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchange, riches do not"* (I.e., [p.] 16).
RICHES here are use values. These, as far as men are concerned, are, of course, RICHES, but it is through its own PROPERTY, its own qualities, that a thing is a use value and therefore an element of wealth for men. Take away from grapes the qualities that make them grapes, and their use value as grapes disappears for men and they cease to be an element of wealth for men. RICHES which are identical with use values are PROPERTIES OF THINGS THAT ARE MADE USE
OF BY MEN AND WHICH EXPRESS A RELATION TO THEIR WANTS. B u t "VALUE" is supposed to be a "PROPERTY OF THINGS".
As values, commodities are social magnitudes, that is to say, something absolutely different from their "PROPERTIES" AS "THINGS". As VALUES, they constitute only relations of men in their PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY. VALUE indeed "IMPLIESEXCHANGES", but EXCHANGES are EXCHANGES OF THINGS BETWEEN MEN; EXCHANGES which in no way affect the things as such. A thing retains the same "PROPERTIES" whether it be owned by A or by B. In actual fact, the concept "VALUE" presupposes "EXCHANGES" of the products. Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not manifest themselves as * "values" of "things". Exchange of products as commodities is a certain method of exchanging labour, and [the form] of the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others, a certain mode of social labour or social production.*
In the first part of my book," I mentioned that it is characteristic of labour based on private exchange that the social character of labour "manifests itself" in a perverted form — as the "PROPERTY" of things; that a social relation appears as a relation between things (between PRODUCTS, VALUES IN USE, COMMODITIES). This appearance is accepted as something real by our fetish-worshipper, and he actually believes that the exchange value of things is determined by their PROPERTIES AS THINGS, and is altogether A NATURAL PROPERTY of things. No scientist to date has yet discovered what natural qualities make definite proportions of snuff tobacco and paintings "equivalents" for one another. Thus he, the WISEACRE, transforms value into something absolute, "A PROPERTY OF THINGS", instead of seeing in it only something relative, the relation of things to social labour, social labour based on private exchange, a relation in which things are defined not as independent entities, but as mere expressions of social production.
But to say that "VALUE" is not an absolute, is not conceived as AN ENTITY, is quite different from saying that commodities must impart to their VALUE OF EXCHANGE a separate expression which is different from and independent of their use VALUE and of their existence as real products, in other words, that commodity circulation is bound to evolve money. Commodities express their exchange value in money, first of all in the price, in which they all present themselves as materialised forms of the same labour, as only quantitatively different expressions of the same substance. The fact that the exchange value of the commodity assumes an independent existence in money is itself the result of the process of exchange, the development of the contradiction of use value and exchange value embodied in the commodity, and of another no less important contradiction embodied in it, namely, that the definite, particular labour of the private individual must manifest itself as its opposite, as equal, necessary, general labour and, in this form, social labour. The representation of the commodity as money implies not only that the different magnitudes of commodity values are measured by expressing the values in the use value of one exclusive commodity, but at the same time that they are all expressed in a form in which they exist as the embodiment of social labour and are therefore exchangeable for every other commodity, that they are translatable at will into any use value desired. Their representation as money — in the price — therefore appears first only as something nominal, a representation which is realised only through actual sale.
Ricardo 's mistake is that he is concerned only with the magnitude of value. Consequently his attention is concentrated on [XIV-818] the relative quantities of labour which the different commodities represent, or which the commodities as values embody. But the labour embodied in them must be represented as social labour, as alienated individual labour. In the price this representation is nominal; it becomes reality only in the sale. This transformation of the labour of private individuals contained in the commodities into uniform social labour, consequently into labour which can be expressed in all use values and can be exchanged for them, this qualitative aspect of the matter which is contained in the representation of exchange value as money, is not elaborated by Ricardo. This circumstance — the necessity of presenting labour contained in commodities as uniform social labour, i.e. as money — is overlooked by Ricardo.
For its part, the development of capital already presupposes the full development of the exchange value of commodities and consequently its independent existence as money. The point of departure in the process of the production and circulation of capital, is the independent form of value which maintains itself, increases, measures the increase against its original amount, whatever CHANGES the commodities in which it manifests itself may undergo, and quite irrespective of whether it presents itself in the most varied use values and changes the commodities which serve as its embodiment. The relation between the value preposited to production and the value which results from it — capital as preposited value is capital in contrast to profit — constitutes the all-embracing and decisive factor in the whole process of capitalist production. It is not only an independent expression of value as in money, but dynamic value, value which maintains itself in a process in which use values pass through the most varied forms. Thus in capital the independent existence of value is raised to a higher power than in money.
From this we can judge the wisdom of our "VERBAL" WISEACRE, who treats the independent existence of exchange value as a figure of speech, a MANNER OF TALKING, a SCHOLASTIC INVENTION.
* "Value, or valeur in French, is not only used absolutely instead of relatively as a quality of things, but is even used by some as a measurable commodity, 'Possessing a value', 'Transferring a portion of value' " * (a very important factor with regard to fixed capital), * " 'the sum, or totality of values', etc. I do not know what this means" * (I.e., [p.] 57).
The fact that the value which has become independent acquires only a relative expression in money, because money itself is a commodity, and HENCE OF A CHANGEABLE VALUE, makes no difference but is a shortcoming which arises from the nature of the commodity and the necessity of expressing its exchange value, as distinct from its use value. OUR MAN has made it abundandy clear that he DOES "NOT KNOW" this. This is shown by the kind of criticism which would like to talk out of existence the difficulties innate in the contradictory functions of things themselves, by declaring them to be the result of reflexions or of conflicting DEFINITIONS.
* " 'The relative value of two things' is open to two meanings: the rate at which two things exchange or would exchange with each other, or the comparative portions of a third for which each exchanges or would exchange" * (I.e., [p.] 53).
D'abord,* this is a fine definition. If 3 lbs of coffee EXCHANGE for 1 lb. of tea TODAY OR WOULD EXCHANGE TOMORROW, it does not at all mean that equivalents HAVE BEEN EXCHANGED FOR EACH OTHER. According to this, a commodity could always be EXCHANGED only at its value, for its value would constitute any quantity of some other commodity for which it had been accidentally exchanged. *This, however, is not what people generally mean, when they say that 3 lbs of coffee have been exchanged for their equivalent in tea.b They suppose that after, as before, the exchange, a commodity of the same value is in the hands of either of the exchangers. The rate at which two commodities exchange does not determine their value, but their value determines the rate at which they exchange.* If value were nothing more than the quantity of commodities for which commodity A is accidentally exchanged, how is it possible *to express the value of A in the commodity B, C, etc.? Because [XIV-819] then, as there is no immanent measure common to the two, the value of A could not be expressed in B before it had been exchanged against B.*
Relative value means first of all magnitude of value in contradistinction to the quality of being value at all. For this reason, the latter is not something absolute. It means, secondly, the value of one commodity expressed in the use value of another commodity.
This is only a relative expression of its value, namely, *in relation to the commodity in which it is expressed. The value of a pound of coffee is only relatively expressed in tea(3); to express it absolutely — even in a relative way, that is to say, not in regard to the time of labour, but to other commodities — it ought to be expressed in an infinite series of equations with all other commodities. This would be an absolute expression of its relative value; its absolute expression would be its expression in [the] time of labour, and by this absolute expression it would be expressed as something relative, but in the absolute relation, by which it is value.*
Let us now turn to Bailey.[94]
His book has only one positive merit — that he was the first to give a more accurate definition of the MEASURE OF VALUE, that is, in fact, of one of the functions of money, or money in a particular, determinate form. In order to measure the value of commodities — to establish an external measure of value — it is not necessary that the value of the commodity in terms of which the other commodities are measured, should be invariable. (It must on the contrary be variable, as I have shown in the first part,(4) because the measure of value is, and must be, a commodity since otherwise it would have no immanent measure in common with other commodities.) If, for example, the value of money changes, it changes to an equal degree in relation to all other commodities. Their relative values are therefore expressed in it just as correcdy as if the value of money had remained unchanged. The problem of finding an "invariable measure of value" is thereby eliminated.(5)
But this problem itself (the interest in comparing the value of commodities in different historical periods, is, indeed, not an economic interest as such, [but] an academic interest(6)) arose out of a misunderstanding and conceals a much more profound and important question. "Invariable measure of value" signifies de
prime abord" a measure of value which is itself of invariable value, and consequently, since value itself is a predicate of the commodity, a commodity of invariable value. For example, if gold and silver or corn, or labour, were such commodities, then it would be possible to establish, by comparison with them, the rate at which other commodities are exchanged for them, that is, to measure exactly the variations in the values of these other commodities by their prices in gold, silver, or corn, or their relation to wages. Stated in this way, the problem therefore presupposes from the outset that in the "measure of value" we are dealing simply with the commodity in which the values of all other commodities are expressed, whether it be the commodity by which they are really represented — money, the commodity which functions as money — or a commodity which, because its value remains invariable, would function as the money in terms of which the theoretician makes his calculations. It thus becomes evident that in this context it is in any case a question only of a kind of money which as the measure of value — either theoretically or practically — would itself not be subject to changes in value.
But for commodities to express their exchange value independently in money, in a third commodity, the exclusive commodity, the values of commodities must already be presupposed. Now the point is merely to compare them quantitatively. A homogeneity which makes them the same — makes them values — which as values makes them qualitatively equal, is already presupposed in order that their value and their differences in value can be represented in this way. For example, if all commodities express their value in gold, then this expression in gold, their gold price, their equation with gold, is an equation on the basis of which it is possible to elucidate and compute their value relation to one another, for they are now expressed as different quantities of gold and in this way the commodities are represented in their prices, as [XIV-820] comparable magnitudes of the same common de-nominator.
But in order to be represented in this way, the commodities must already be identical as values. Otherwise it would be impossible to solve the problem of expressing the value of each commodity in gold, if commodity and gold or any two commodities as values were not representations of the same substance, capable of being expressed in one another. In other words, this presupposition is already implicit in the problem itself. Commodities are already presumed as values, as values distinct from their use values, before the question of representing this value in a special commodity can arise. In order that two quantities of different use values can be equated as equivalents, it is already presumed that they are equal to a third, that they are qualitatively equal and only constitute different quantitative expressions of this qualitative equality.
The problem of an "invariable measure of value" was in fact simply a spurious name for the quest for the concept, the nature, of value itself, the definition of which could not be another value, and consequently could not be subject to variations as value. This was labour time, social labour, as it presents itself specifically in commodity production. A quantity of labour has no value, is not a commodity, but is that which transforms commodities into values, it is their common substance; as manifestations of it commodities are qualitatively equal and only quantitatively different. They [appear] as expressions of definite quantities of social labour time.
Let us assume that gold has an invariable value. If the value of all commodities were then expressed in gold one could measure variations in the values of commodities by their gold prices. But in order to express the value of commodities in gold, commodities and gold must be identical as values. Gold and commodities can only be considered to be identical as definite quantitative expressions of this value, as definite magnitudes of value. The invariable value of gold and the variable value of the other commodities would not prevent them, as value, from being the same, [consisting of] the same substance. Before the invariable value of gold can help us to make a step forward, the value of commodities must first be expressed, assessed, in gold — that is, gold and commodities must be represented as equivalents, as expressions of the same substance.
//In order that the commodities may be measured according to the quantity of labour embodied in them — and the measure of the quantity of labour is time — the different kinds of labour contained in the commodities must be reduced to uniform, simple labour, average labour, ordinary, UNSKILLED LABOUR. Only then can the amount of labour embodied [in] them be measured according to a common measure, according to time. The labour must be qualitatively equal so that its differences become merely quantitative, merely differences of magnitude. This reduction to simple, average labour is not, however, the only determinant of the quality of this labour to which as a unity the values of the commodities are reduced. That the quantity of labour embodied in a commodity is the quantity socially necessary for its production — the labour time being thus necessary labour time—is a definition which concerns only the magnitude of value. But the labour which constitutes the substance of value is not only uniform, simple, average labour; it is the labour of a private individual represented in a definite product. However, the product as value must be the embodiment of social labour and, as such, be directly convertible from one use value into any other. (The particular use value in which labour is directly represented is irrelevant so that it can be converted from one form into another.) Thus the labour of individuals has to be directly represented as its opposite, social labour; this transformed labour is, as its immediate opposite, abstract, general labour, which is therefore represented in a general equivalent. Only by its alienation does individual labour manifest itself as its opposite. The commodity, however, must have this general expression before it is alienated. This necessity to express individual labour as general labour is equivalent to the necessity of expressing a commodity as money. The commodity receives this expression in so far as the money serves as a measure and expresses the value of the commodity in its price. It is only through sale, through its real transformation into money, that the commodity acquires its adequate expression as exchange value. The first transformation is merely a theoretical process, the second is a real one.
[XIV-821] Thus, in considering the existence of the commodity as money, it is not only necessary to emphasise that in money commodities acquire a definite measure of the magnitude of their value — since all commodities express their value in the use value of the same commodity — but that they all become manifestations of social, abstract, general labour; and as such they all possess the same form, they all appear as the direct incarnation of social labour; and as such they all act as social labour, they can be directly exchanged for all other commodities in proportion to the magnitude of their value; whereas in the hands of the people whose commodities have been transformed into money, they exist not as exchange value in the form of a particular use value, but as use value (gold, for example) which is merely a bearer of exchange value. A commodity may be sold either below or above its value. This is purely a matter of the magnitude of its value. But whenever a commodity is sold, transformed into money, its exchange value acquires an independent existence, separate from its use value. The commodity now exists only as a certain quantity of social labour time, and it proves that it is such by being directly exchangeable for any commodity whatsoever and convertible (in proportion to its quantity) into any use value whatsoever. This point must not be overlooked in relation to money any more than the formal transformation undergone by the labour a commodity contains as its element of value. But an examination of money — of that absolute exchangeability which the commodity possesses as money, of its absolute effectiveness as exchange value which has nothing to do with magnitude of value — shows that it is not quantitatively, but qualitatively determined and that as a result of the very process through which the commodity itself passes, its exchange value becomes independent, and is really represented as a separate aspect alongside its use value as it is already nominally in its price.
This shows, therefore, that the "VERBAL OBSERVER" [95] understands as little of the value and the nature of money as Bailey, since both regard the independent existence of value as a scholastic invention of economists. This independent existence becomes even more evident in capital, which, in one of its aspects, can be called value in process—and since value only exists independently in money, [it can accordingly be called] money in process, as it goes through a series of processes in which it preserves itself, departs from itself, and returns to itself increased in volume. It goes without saying that the paradox of reality is also reflected in paradoxes of speech which are at variance with COMMON SENSE and with WHAT VULGARIANS MEAN AND BELIEVE they are TALKING OF. The contradictions which arise from the fact that on the basis of commodity production the labour of the individual presents itself as general social labour, and the relations of people as relations between things and as things — these contradictions are innate in the subject-matter, not in its verbal expressions.//
Ricardo often gives the impression, and sometimes indeed writes, as if the QUANTITY OF LABOUR is the solution to the false, or falsely conceived problem of an "INVARIABLE MEASURE OF VALUE" in the same way as corn, money, wages, etc., were previously considered and advanced as nostra* of this kind. In Ricardo's work this false impression arises because for him the decisive task is the definition of the magnitude of value. Because of this he does not understand the specific form in which labour is an element of value, and fails in particular to grasp that the labour of the individual must present itself as abstract general labour and, in this form, as social labour. Therefore he has not understood that the development of money is connected with the nature of value and with the determination of this value by labour time. Bailey's book has rendered a good service in so far as the objections he raises help to clear up the confusion between "MEASURE OF VALUE" expressed in money as a commodity along with other commodities, and the immanent measure and substance of value. But if he had analysed money as a "MEASURE OF VALUE", not only as a quantitative measure but as a qualitative transformation of commodities, he would have arrived at a correct analysis of value. Instead of this, he contents himself with a mere superficial consideration of the external "MEASURE OF VALUE"—which already presupposes VALUE — and remains rooted in a purely frivolous approach to the question.
[XIV-822] There are, however, occasional passages in Ricardo in which he direcdy emphasises that the quantity of labour embodied in a commodity constitutes the immanent measure of the magnitude of its value, of the differences in the amount of its value, only because labour is the factor the different commodities have in common, which constitutes their uniformity, their substance, the intrinsic foundation of their value. The thing however he failed to investigate is the specific form in which labour plays that role.
* "In making labour the foundation of the value of commodities, and the comparative quantity of labour which is necessary to their production, the rule which determines the respective quantities of goods which shall be given in exchange for each other, we must not be supposed to deny the accidental and temporary deviations of the actual or market price of commodities from this, their primary and natural price" ([Ricardo, On the Principles...,] 3rd ed., [London,] 1821, [p.] 80).
" 'To measure ... is to find how many times they' " (the things measured) "'contain ... unities of the same description.'* A franc is not a measure of value for any thing, but for a quantity of die same metal of which francs are made, unless francs, and the thing to be measured, can be referred to some other measure which is common to both. This, I think, they can be, for they are both the result of labour; and, therefore" * (because LABOUR is their causa efficiensb) ""labour is a common measure, by which their real as well as their relative value may be estimated" * (I.e., [pp.] 333-34).
All commodities can be reduced to LABOUR as their common element. What Ricardo does not investigate is the specific form in which LABOUR manifests itself as the common element of commodities. That is why he does not understand money. That is why in his work the transformation of commodities into money appears to be something merely formal, which does not penetrate deeply into the very essence of capitalist production. He says however: only because LABOUR is the common factor of commodities, only because they are all mere manifestations of the same common element, of LABOUR, is LABOUR their MEASURE. It is their measure only because it forms their substance as values. Ricardo does not sufficiendy differentiate between LABOUR in so far as it is represented in use values or in exchange value. LABOUR as the foundation of value is not any particular LABOUR, with particular qualities. Ricardo continuously confuses the LABOUR which is represented in use value and that which is represented in exchange value. It is true that the latter species of LABOUR is only the former species expressed in an abstract form.
By REAL VALUE, Ricardo, in the passus cited above, understands the commodity as the embodiment of a definite amount of labour time. By RELATIVE VALUE, he understands the labour time the commodity contains expressed in the use values of other commodities.
Now to Bailey. Bailey clings to the form in which the exchange value of the commodity — as commodity — appears, manifests itself. It manifests itself in a general form when it is expressed in the use value of a third commodity, in which all other commodities likewise express their value — a commodity which serves as money — that is, in the money price of the commodity. It manifests itself in a particular form when the exchange value of any particular commodity is expressed in the use value of any other, that is, as the corn price, linen price, etc. In actual fact, the exchange value of the commodity always appears, manifests itself with regard to other commodities, only in the quantitative relationship in which they exchange. The individual commodity as such cannot express general labour time, or it can only express it in its equation with the commodity which constitutes money, in its money price. But then the value of commodity A is always expressed in a certain quantity of the use value of M, the commodity which functions as money. This is how matters appear directly. And Bailey clings to this. The most superficial form of exchange value, that is, the quantitative relationship in which commodities exchange with one another, constitutes, according to Bailey, their value. The advance from the surface to the core of the problem is not permitted. He even forgets the simple consideration that if y yards of linen =x lbs of straw, this [implies] a parity between two unequal things — linen and straw — making them equal magnitudes. This existence of theirs as things that are equal must surely be different [XIV-823] from their existence as straw and linen. It is not straw and linen that they are equated, but as equivalents. The one side of the equation must, therefore, express the same value as the other. The value of straw and linen must, therefore, be neither straw nor linen, but something common to both and different from both commodities considered as straw and linen. What is it? He does not answer this question. Instead, he wanders off into all the categories of political economy in order to repeat the same monotonous litany over and over again, [namely,] that value is the exchange relation of commodities and consequendy is not anything different from this relation.
* " / / the value of an object k its power of purchasing, there must be something to purchase. Value denotes, consequently, nothing positive or intrinsic, but merely the relation in which two objects stand to each other as exchangeable commodities" * ([A Critical Dissertation..., pp.] 4-5).
His entire wisdom is, in fact, contained in this passage. * "If value is nothing but power of purchasing" (a very fine definition since "purchasing" [prejsupposes not only value, but the representation of value as "money"), "it denotes",* etc. However let us first clear away from Bailey's proposition the absurdities which have been smuggled in. "PURCHASING" means transforming money into commodities. Money already presupposes VALUE and the development OF VALUE. Consequentiy, out with the expression "PURCHASING" first of all. Otherwise we are explaining VALUE by VALUE. Instead of PURCHASING we must say "EXCHANGING AGAINST OTHER OBJECTS". It is quite superfluous to say that "THERE MUST BE SOMETHING TO PURCHASE". If the "OBJECT" was to be consumed by its producers as a use value, if it was not merely a means of appropriating other objects, not a "commodity", then obviously there could be no question of VALUE. First, it is a matter of an OBJECT. But then the relation "IN WHICH TWO OBJECTS STAND TO EACH OTHER" is transformed into "THE RELATION ... THEY STAND TO EACH OTHER ... AS EXCHANGEABLE COMMODITIES". After all, the OBJECTS STAND only in relation OF EXCHANGE or as EXCHANGEABLE OBJECTS TO EACH OTHER. That is why they are "COMMODITIES", which is SOMETHING other THAN "OBJECTS". On the other hand, the "relation OF EXCHANGEABLE COMMODITIES" is either nonsense, since "NOT EXCHANGEABLE OBJECTS" are not COMMODITIES, or Mr. Bailey has beaten himself. The OBJECTS SHALL NOT BE EXCHANGED IN ANY PROPORTION WHATEVER, but are to be EXCHANGED as COMMODITIES, that is, they are to stand to one another as EXCHANGEABLE COMMODITIES, that is, as objects each of which has a value, and which are to be exchanged with one another in proportion to their equivalence. Bailey thereby admits that the RATE at which they are exchanged, that is, the POWER of each of the commodities to purchase the other, is determined by its value, but this value however is not determined by this POWER, which is merely a corollary.
If we strip the passage of everything that is wrong, nonsensical or smuggled in, then it will read like this.
But wait: we must dispose of yet another snare and piece of
22-733 nonsense. W e have two sorts of expression. AN OBJECTS "POWER" OF EXCHANGING, etc. (since the term "PURCHASING" is unjustified and makes n o sense without the concept of money), a n d the RELATION IN WHICH AN OBJECT EXCHANGES WITH OTHERS. If "POWER" is to be regarded as something different from "RELATION", then one ought not to say that "POWER OF EXCHANGING" IS "MERELY THE RELATION" , etc. If it is meant to be the same thing, then it is confusing to describe the same thing with two different expressions which have nothing in common with each other. T h e * relation of a thing to another is a relation of the two things and cannot be said to belong to either. Power of a thing, on the contrary, is something intrinsic to the thing, although this, its intrinsic quality, may only [XIV-824] manifest itself in its relation to other things. For instance, power of attraction is a power of the thing itself, although that power is "latent" as long as there are n o things to attract.* Here an attempt is made to represent the value of the "OBJECT" as something intrinsic to it, and yet as something merely existing as a "RELATION". That is why [Bailey uses] first the word POWER and then the word RELATION.
Accurately expressed it would read as follows:
* " / / the value of an object is the relation in which it exchanges with other objects, value denotes, consequently" (viz., in consequence of the "if"), "nothing, but merely the relation in which two objects stand to each other as exchangeable objects" * (I.e., [pp.] 4-5).
Nobody will contest this tautology. What follows from it, by the way, is that the "VALUE" OF AN OBJECT "DENOTES NOTHING". For example, 1 lb. of COFFEE=4 lbs of COTTON. What then is the value of 1 lb. of COFFEE? 4 lbs of COTTON. And of 4 lbs of COTTON? 1 lb. of COFFEE. Since the value of 1 lb. of coffee is 4 lbs of COTTON, and, on the other hand, the value of 4 lbs of COTTON = 1 lb. of COFFEE, then it is clear that the value of 1 lb. of COFFEE= 1 lb. of COFFEE (since 4 lbs of COTTON = 1 lb. of COFFEE), a = b, b = a, HENCE a=a. What arises from this explanation is, therefore, that the value of a use value=a [certain] quantity of the same use value. Consequendy, the value of 1 lb. of COFFEE is nothing else than 1 lb. of coffee. If 1 lb. of COFFEE=4 lbs of cotton, then it is clear that 1 lb. of COFFEE>3 lbs of COTTON and 1 lb. of COFFEE<5 lbs of COTTON. T O say that 1 lb. of COFFEE>3 lbs of COTTON and < 5 lbs of COTTON, expresses a RELATION between COFFEE and COTTON just as well as saying that 1 lb. of COFFEE=4 lbs of COTTON. T h e symbol = does not express any more of a relation than does the symbol < o r the symbol > , but simply a different relation. Why is it then precisely the relation represented by the sign of equality, by = , which expresses the value of the COFFEE in COTTON and that of the COTTON in COTTON? O r is this sign of equality the result of the fact that these two amounts exchange for one another at all? Does this sign = merely express the fact of exchange? It cannot be denied that if COFFEE exchanges for COTTON in any RATIO whatever, they are exchanged for one another, and if the mere FACT of their exchange constitutes the RELATION between the commodities, then the value of the COFFEE is equally well expressed in cotton whether it exchanges for 2, 3, 4 or 5 lbs of cotton. But what is then the word RELATION supposed to mean? COFFEE in itself has n o "INTRINSIC, POSITIVE" quality which determines the rate at which it exchanges for COTTON. It is not a relation which is determined by any kind of determinant INTRINSIC to coffee and separate from real exchange. What is then the purpose of the word "relation"? What is the relation? THE QUANTITY OF COTTON AGAINST WHICH A QUANTITY OF COFFEE IS EXCHANGED. Then one could not speak of a relation IN WHICH IT EXCHANGES but only of a RELATION IN WHICH IT IS OR HAS BEEN EXCHANGED. For if the RELATION were determined before the exchange, then the exchange would be determined by the "RELATION" a n d not the RELATION by the exchange. We must therefore DROP the relation as signifying something which stands over and above the coffee and the cotton and is distinct from them.
*"If the value of an object is the quantity of another object exchanged with it, value denotes, consequently, nothing, but merely the quantity of the other object exchanged with it." (7)
As a commodity, a commodity can only express its value in other commodities, since general labour time does not exist for it as a commodity. If the value of one commodity is expressed in another commodity, the value of one commodity is nothing apart from this EQUATION with another commodity. Bailey flaunts this piece of wisdom tirelessly — and all the more tiresomely. As h e conceives it, it is a tautology, for he says: If the value of any commodity is nothing but its exchange relation with another commodity, it is nothing apart from this relation. H e reveals his philosophical profundity in the following passage:
If a thing is distant from another, the distance is in fact a relation between the one thing and the other; but at the same time, the distance is something different from this relation between the two things. It is a dimension of space, it is some length which may as well express the distance of two other things besides those compared. But this is not all. If we speak of the distance as a relation between two things, we suppose something "intrinsic", some "property" of the things themselves, which enables them to be distant from each other. What is the distance between the syllable A and a table? The question would be nonsensical. In speaking of the distance of two things, we speak of their difference in space. Thus we suppose both of them to be contained in space, to be points of space. Thus we equalise them as being both existences of space, and only after having them equalised sub specie spatii(8) we distinguish them as different points of space. To belong to space is their unity.*(9)
But what is this UNITY of OBJECTS EXCHANGED AGAINST EACH OTHER? This EXCHANGE is not a relation which exists between them as natural things. It is likewise not a relation which they bear as natural things to human needs, for it is not THE DEGREE OF THEIR UTILITY THAT DETERMINES THE QUANTITIES IN WHICH THEY EXCHANGE. What is therefore their identity, which enables them TO BE EXCHANGED IN A CERTAIN MEASURE
AGAINST EACH OTHER? A s w h a t DO THEY BECOME EXCHANGEABLE?
* [XV-887] // The following has to be added with regard to Bailey's insipidity: When he says that A is DISTANT from B, he does not thereby compare them with one another, equalise them, but separates them in space. They do not occupy the same space. Nevertheless he still declares that both are spatial things and are differentiated in virtue of being things which belong in space. He therefore makes them equal in advance, gives them the same unity. However, here it is a question of equation. If I say that the area of the A A is equal to that of the o B, this means not only that the area of the A is expressed in the O and that of the O in the A,
but it means that if the height of the A=h and the base=b, then A = - g -
a property which belongs to it itself just as it is a property of the O that it is like-
wise = -g- .[96] As areas, the A and the a are here declared to be equal, to be
equivalents, although as a triangle and a parallelogram they are different. In order to equate these different things with one another, each must represent the same common element regardless of the other. If geometry, like the political economy of Mr. Bailey, contented itself with saying that the equality of the A and of the o means that the A is expressed in the parallelogram, and the parallelogram in the triangle, it would be of little value.// [XV-887] In fact, in all this Bailey is merely a pedisequus* of the author OF
THE "VERBAL OBSERVATIONS".
* "It" (value) "cannot alter as to one of the objects compared, without altering as to the other" * (I.e., [p.] 5).
This again simply means that the expression of the value of one commodity in another commodity can only change as such an expression. And the expression as such presupposes not one but two commodities.
Mr. Bailey is of the opinion that if one were to consider only two commodities—in exchange with one another — one would automatically discover the mere relativity of value, in his sense.c The fool. As if it were not just as necessary to say, in connection with [two] commodities which exchange with one another — two products which are related to one another as commodities—in what they are identical, as it would be in the case of a thousand. For that matter, if only two products existed, the products would never become commodities, and consequently the exchange value of commodities would never evolve either. The necessity for the labour in product I to manifest itself as social labour would not arise. Because the product is not produced as an immediate object of consumption for the producers, but only as a bearer of value, as a claim, so to speak, to a certain quantity of all materialised social labour, all products as values are compelled to assume a form of existence distinct from their existence as use values. And it is this development of the labour embodied in them as social labour, it is the development of their value, which determines the formation of money, the necessity for commodities to represent themselves in respect of one another as money—which means merely as independent forms of existence of exchange value — and they can only do this by setting apart one commodity from the mass of commodities, and all of them measuring their values in the use value of this excluded commodity, thereby directly transforming the labour embodied in this exclusive commodity into general, social labour. Mr. Bailey, with his QUEER way of thinking which only grasps the surface appearance of things, concludes on the contrary: Only because, besides commodities, money exists, and we are so used [to regarding] the value of commodities not in their relation to one another but as a relation to a third, as a [XIV-826] third relation distinct from the direct relation, is the concept of value evolved — and consequently value is transformed from the merely quantitative relation in which commodities are exchanged for one another into something independent of this relation (and this, he thinks, transforms the value of commodities into something absolute, into a scholastic ENTITY existing in isolation from the commodities). According to Bailey, it is not the determination of the product as value which leads to the establishment of money and which expresses itself in money, but it is the existence of money which leads to the fiction of the concept of value. Historically it is quite correct that the search for value is at first based on money, the visible expression of commodities as value, and that consequently the search for the definition of value is (wrongly) represented as a search for a commodity of "invariable value", or for a commodity which is an "invariable measure of value". Since Mr. Bailey now demonstrates that money as an external measure of value — and expression of value — has fulfilled its purpose, even though it has a variable value, he thinks he has done away with the question of the concept of value — which is not affected by the variability of the magnitudes of the value of commodities — and that in fact it is no longer necessary to attribute any meaning at all to value. Because the representation of the value of a commodity in money — in a third, exclusive commodity — does not exclude variation in the value of this third commodity, because the problem of an "invariable measure of value" disappears, the problem of the determination of value itself disappears. Bailey carries on this insipid rigmarole for hundreds of pages, with great self-satisfaction.
The following passages, in which he constantly repeats the same thing, are, in part, verbotenus* copied from the VERBAL ONE.1"
"Suppose that only two commodities are IN EXISTENCE, both EXCHANGEABLE in proportion to the * quantity of labour. If A ... should, at a subsequent period, require double the quantity of labour for its production, while B continued to require only the same, A would become of double value to B... But although B continued to be produced by the same labour, it would not continue of the same value, for it would exchange for only half the quantity of A, the only commodity, by the supposition, with which it could be compared" (I.e., [p.] 6).
"It is from this circumstance of constant reference to other commodities" * (instead of regarding value merely as a RELATION between two commodities) * "or to money, when we are speaking of the relation between any two commodities, that the notion of value, as something intrinsic a n d absolute, has arisen" (I.e., [p.] 8).
"What I assert is, that if all commodities were produced under exacdy the same circumstances, as for instance, by labour alone, any commodity, which always required the same quantity of labour, could not be invariable in value" * // that is, INVARIABLE IN THE EXPRESSION OF ITS VALUE IN OTHER COMMODITIES — a tautology //, * "while every other commodity underwent alteration" (I.e., [pp.] 20-21). "Value is nothing intrinsic and absolute" (I.e., [p.] 23).a
"It is impossible to d e s i g n a t e , or e x p r e s s the value of a commodity, except by a quantity of some other commodity" (I.e., [p.] 26).
(As impossible as it is to "designate" or "express" a thought except by a quantity of syllables. Hence Bailey concludes that a thought is — syllables.)
"Instead of regarding value as a relation between two objects, they" (Ricardo and his followers) "consider it as a positive result produced by a definite quantity of labour" (I.e., [p.] 30).
"Because the values of A and B, according to their doctrine, are to each other as the quantities of producing labour, or ... are determined by the quantities of producing labour, diey appear to have concluded, that the value of A alone, without reference to anything else, is as the quantity of its producing labour. There is no meaning certainly in this last proposition"* (I.e., [pp.] 31-32).
They speak of * "value as a sort of general and independent property" ([p.] 35). "The value of a commodity must be its value in something" * (I.e.).
We can see why it is so important for Bailey to limit value to two commodities, to understand it as the relation between two commodities. But a difficulty now arises:
* "The value of any commodity denoting its relation in exchange to some other commodity" *
(what is in this context the purpose of the "RELATION [XIV-827] IN EXCHANGE"? WHY NOT, ITS "EXCHANGE"? But at the same time EXCHANGE is intended to express a definite relation, not merely the FACT of
EXCHANGE. HENCE VALUE = RELATION IN EXCHANGE)
* "we may speak of it as money-value, corn-value, cloth-value, according to the commodity with which it is compared-, and then there are a thousand different kinds of value, as many kinds of value as there are commodities in existence, and all are equally real and equally nominal" * ([p.] 39).
H e r e w e h a v e it. VALUE = PRICE. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM.
A n d THERE IS NO "INTRINSIC" DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MONEY PRICE AND ANY OTHER
EXPRESSION OF PRICE, ALTHOUGH IT IS THE MONEY PRICE AND NOT THE CLOTH PRICE, SAME VALUE. This proves that all these DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS ARE EQUIVALENTS which not only can replace one another in this expression, but do replace o n e another in EXCHANGE itself. This relation of the commodity, with the price of which we are concerned, is expressed in a thousand
DIFFERENT "RELATIONS IN EXCHANGE" tO ALL t h e DIFFERENT C o m m o d i t i e s a n d yet always expresses the same relation. Thus this RELATION, which remains the same, is distinct from its thousand DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS, or VALUE is DIFFERENT from PRICE, a n d the PRICES ARE ONLY EXPRESSIONS OF VALUE;
MONEY PRICE [is] ITS GENERAL EXPRESSION, OTHER PRICES [ a r e ] PARTICULAR EXPRESSIONS. It is not even this simple conclusion that Bailey arrives at. In this context Ricardo is not a fictionist but Bailey is a fetishist in that h e conceives value, though not as a property of the individual object (considered in isolation), but as a relation of objects to one another, while it is only a representation in objects, an objective expression, of a relation between men, a social relation, the relationship of men to their reciprocal productive activity.
* "Mr. Ricardo, ingeniously enough, avoids a difficulty, which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine, that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it—which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages, or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is to be estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged" * (I.e., [pp.] 50-51).*
This is a justified criticism of Ricardo's mistake of making capital exchange direcdy with labour instead of with labour capacity. It is the same objection which we have already come across in another form. b Nothing else. Bailey's comparison cannot be applied to labour capacity. It is not CLOTH, but an organic product such as MUTTON, that h e ought to compare with living labour capacity. Apart from the labour involved in tending livestock and that required for the production of their means of subsistence, the labour required for their production is not to be understood as meaning the labour which they themselves perform in the act of consumption, the act of eating, drinking, in short, the appropriation of those products or means of subsistence. It is just the same with labour capacity. T h e labour required for its production, or reproduction, consists solely of the labour involved in the reproduction of the means of subsistence which the labourer consumes — apart from the labour involved in developing his labour capacity, his education, his APPRENTICESHIP, which hardly arises in relation to UNSKILLED LABOUR. The appropriation of these means of subsistence is not "labour". [XIV-828] Any more than the labour contained in the CLOTH, in addition to the labour of the weaver and the labour which is contained in the wool, the dye-stuff, etc., comprises the chemical or physical action of the wool in absorbing the dye-stuff, etc., an action which corresponds to the appropriation of the means of subsistence by the worker or the cattle.
Bailey then seeks to invalidate Ricardo's law that the value of labour and profit stand in inverse proportion to one another. H e seeks, moreover, to invalidate that part of it which is correct. Like Ricardo, he identifies SURPLUS VALUE with PROFIT. H e does not mention the one possible exception to this law, namely, when the working day is lengthened and workers and capitalists * share equally in that prolongation, but even then, since the value of the working power will be consumed more quickly — in fewer years — the surplus value rises at the expense of the working man's life, and his working power is depreciated as compared with the surplus value it yields to the capitalist.*
Bailey's REASONING IS OF THE MOST SUPERFICIAL DESCRIPTION. Its starting-point is his concept of value. T h e value of the commodity is the expression of its value IN A CERTAIN QUANTITY OF OTHER VALUES IN USE (the use value of other commodities). Thus the value of labour=the quantity of other commodities (use values) for which it is exchanged. // T H E REAL PROBLEM, HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO EXPRESS THE VALUE IN EXCHANGE OF A IN THE VALUE IN USE OF B — does not even occur to him.// So long, therefore, as the worker receives the same quantity of commodities, the VALUE OF LABOUR remains unchanged, BECAUSE, AS BEFORE, IT IS EXPRESSED IN THE SAME QUANTITY OF OTHER USEFUL THINGS. Profit, on the other hand, expresses a relation to capital, or else to the total product. T h e portion received by the worker can, however, remain the same although the proportion received by the capitalist rises if the productivity of labour increases.[97] It is not clear why, in dealing with capital, we suddenly come to a proportion and of what use this proportion is supposed to be to the capitalist, since the value of what he receives is determined not by the proportion, but by ITS "EXPRESSION IN OTHER COMMODITIES".
T h e point he makes here has, in fact, already been mentioned by Malthus. (10) Wages=A QUANTITY OF use values. Profit, on the other hand, is (but Bailey must avoid saying so) A RELATION OF VALUE. If I measure wages according to use value and profit according to exchange value, it is quite EVIDENT that neither an inverse nor any other kind of relation exists between them, BECAUSE I SHOULD THEN
COMPARE INCOMMENSURABLE MAGNITUDES, THINGS WHICH HAVE NO COMMON UNITY.
But what Bailey says here about the VALUE OF LABOUR applies— according to his principle — to the VALUE OF EVERY OTHER COMMODITY as well. IT IS NOTHING ELSE BUT A CERTAIN QUANTITY OF OTHER THINGS EXCHANGED AGAINST IT. If I receive 20 lbs of twist for £ 1 , then the value of the £ 1 always remains the same, and will therefore be always paid, although the labour required to produce 1 lb. of twist can on one occasion be double that required on another. T h e most ordinary merchant does not believe that he is getting the same value for his £ 1 when he receives 1 qr of wheat for it in a period of famine and in a period of glut. But the concept of value ends here. A n d there remains only the unexplained and inexplicable fact that a quantity of A is exchanged against a quantity of B IN ANY PROPORTION WHATEVER.
AND WHATEVER THAT PROPORTION MAY BE IT IS AN EQUIVALENT. Even Bailey's formula, * the value of A expressed in B loses thus every sense. If the value of A is expressed in B, it is supposed that the same value is, if expressed once in A, and at another time in B, so that, if [it is] expressed in B, the value of A remains the same as it was before. But with Bailey there is n o value of A [that could] be expressed in B, because neither A nor B have a value besides that expression. T h e value of A [expressed] in B must be something quite different from the value of A in C, as different as B and C are. And it is not the same value, identical in both expressions, but there are two relations of A which have nothing in common with each other, and of which it would be nonsense to say that they are equivalent expressions.
[XIV-829] "A rise or fall in the value of labour implies an increase or decrease in the quantity of the commodity given in exchange for it" (I.e., [p.] 62).
Nonsense! [From Bailey's standpoint] there can be no rise or fall in the value of labour, nor of any other thing. I get today 3 Bs for one A, tomorrow 6 Bs and [the day] after tomorrow 2 Bs. But [according to Bailey] in all these cases the value of A is nothing but the quantity of B for which it has [been] exchanged. It was 3 Bs, it is now 6 Bs. How can its value be said to have risen or fallen? T h e A expressed in 3 Bs had another value from that expressed in 6 or 2 Bs. But then it is not the identical A which at the identical time has been exchanged for 3 or 2 or 6 Bs. The identical A at the identical time has always been expressed in the same quantity of B. It is only with regard to different times that it could be said the value of A had changed. But it is only with "contemporaneous" commodities that A can be exchanged, and it is only the fact (not even the mere possibility of exchange) of exchange with other commodities which constitutes [according to Bailey] A to be a value. It is only the actual "relation in exchange" which constitutes its value; and the actual "relation in exchange" can of course only take place for the same A at the identical time.* Bailey therefore declares the comparison of commodity values at different periods to be nonsense.(11) But at the same time he should also have declared the *rise or fall of value—[which is] impossible if there is no comparison between its [a commodity's] value at one time and its value at another time*—to be nonsense and consequently, also, the *"rise or fall in the value of labour".
"Labour is an exchangeable thing, or one which commands other things in exchange; but the term profits denotes only a share or proportion of commodities, not an article which can be exchanged against other articles. When we ask whether wages have risen, we mean, whether a definite portion of labour exchanges for a greater quantity of other things than before" *
(thus when corn becomes dearer, the value of labour falls because less corn is EXCHANGED for it. On the other hand, if CLOTH becomes cheaper at the same time, the value of labour rises simultaneously, because more CLOTH can be EXCHANGED for it. Thus the value of labour both rises and falls at the same time and the
tWO EXPRESSIONS OF ITS VALUE IN CORN AND [ i n ] CLOTH ARE NOT IDENTICAL, NOT EQUIVALENT, because its increased value CANNOT BE EQUAL to its reduced value);
* "but when we ask whether profits have risen, we ... mean ... whether the gain of the capitalist bears a higher ratio to the capital employed" ([pp.] 62-63).
"The value of labour does not entirely depend on the proportion of the whole produce, which is given to the labourers in exchange for their labour, but also on the productiveness of labour" ([pp.] 63-64).
"The proposition, that when labour rises profits must fall, is true only when its rise is not owing to an increase in its productive powers" ([p.] 64).
"If this productive power be augmented, that is, if the same labour produce more commodities in the same time, labour may rise in value without a fall, nay even with a rise of profits" * ([p.] 66).
(Accordingly it can also be said of every other commodity that * a rise in its value does not imply a fall in the value of the other commodity with which it exchanges, nay, may even imply a rise in value on the other side.* For instance, supposing the same labour which produced 1 qr of corn, now produces 3 qrs. The 3 qrs COST £1, as *the one qr did before. If 2 qrs be now exchanged against £1, the value of money has risen, because it is expressed in 2 qrs instead of one. Thus the purchaser of corn gets a greater value for his money. But the seller who sells for £1 what has cost him only [2]/[3] gains Vs- And thus the value of his corn has risen at the same time that the money price of corn has fallen.)
[XIV-830] "Whatever the produce of the labour of 6 men might be, whether 100 or 200 or 300 qrs of corn, yet so long as the proportion of the capitalist was one-fourth of the produce, that fourth part estimated in labour would be invariably the same."
//And so would the s/[4] of the produce accruing to the labourer, if estimated in labour.//
"Were the produce 100 qrs, then, as 75 qrs would be given to 6 men, the 25 accruing to the capitalist would command the labour of two men;"
(and that given to the labourers would command the labour of 6 men)
"if the produce were 300 qrs, the 6 men would obtain 225 qrs, and the 75 falling to the capitalist would still command 2 men and no more."
(Thus the 225 qrs falling to the 6 men would still command 4 a
men and no more.) (Why does the almighty Bailey then forbid Ricardo to estimate the portion of the men, as well as that of the capitalist, in labour, and compare their mutual value as expressed in labour?)
"Thus a rise in the proportion which went to the capitalist would be the same as an increase of the value of profits estimated in labour,"
(how can he speak of the value of profits, and an increase in their value, if "[the term] profits denotes ... not an article which can be exchanged against other articles" (see above) and, consequently, denotes no "value"? And, on the other hand, is a rise in the proportion which went to the capitalist possible without a fall in the proportion that goes to the labourer?)
"or, in other words, an increase in their power of commanding labour" ([p.] 69).
(And is this increase in the power of the capitalist to appropriate the labour of others not exactly identical with the decrease in the power of the labourer to appropriate his own labour?)
"Should it be objected to the doctrine of profits and the value of labour rising at the same time, that as the commodity produced is the only source whence the capitalist and the labourer can obtain their remuneration, it necessarily follows that [what] one gains the other loses, the reply is obvious. So long as the product continues the same, this is undeniably true; but it is equally undeniable, that if the product be doubled the portion of both, may be increased, although the proportion of one is lessened and that of the other is augmented."*
(This is just what Ricardo says. The * proportion of both cannot increase, and if the portion of both increases, it cannot increase in the same proportion, as otherwise portion and proportion would be identical. The proportion of the one cannot increase but by that of the other decreasing.*(12) However, that Mr. Bailey calls the PORTION OF THE LABOUR "VALUE" OF "WAGES", and the * proportion [of the capitalist] value of "profits", that the same commodity has 2 values for him, one in the hands of the labourer, and the other in the hands of the capitalist, is nonsense of his own.)
"So long as the produce continues the same, this is undeniably true; but it [is] equally undeniable, that if the product be doubled the portion of both may be increased, although the proportion of one is lessened and that of the other augmented. Now it is an increase in the portion of the product assigned to [the] labourer which constitutes a rise in the value of his labour"
(because here we understand by value a certain quantity of articles);
"but it is an increase in the proportion assigned to the capitalist which constitutes a rise in [his] profits"
(because here we understand by value the same articles not estimated by their quantity, but by the labour worked up in them).
" Whence" * (that is, because of the absurd use of two measures, in the one case ARTICLES, in the other case *the value of the same articles)
"it clearly follows, that there is nothing inconsistent in the supposition of a simultaneous rise in both" * ([p.] 70).
This absurd argument against Ricardo is quite [XIV-831] futile since he merely declares that the VALUE of the two portions must RISE and FALL in inverse proportion to one another.(13) It merely amounts to a repetition by Bailey of his proposition that VALUE IS
THE QUANTITY OF ARTICLES EXCHANGED FOR AN ARTICLE. I n d e a l i n g w i t h profit he was bound to find himself in an embarrassing position. For here, the value of capital is compared with the value of the product. Here he seeks refuge in taking value to mean the VALUE OF AN ARTICLE ESTIMATED IN LABOUR (in the Malthusian manner [3]).
* "Value is a relation between contemporary commodities, because such only admit of being exchanged for each other; and if we compare the value of a commodity at one time with its value at another, it is only a comparison of the relation in which it stood at these different times to some other commodity"* (I.e., [p-] 72).
Consequently, as has been stated, there can be NEITHER [a] RISE NOR [a] FALL [in] VALUE for this ALWAYS involves COMPARING THE VALUE OF A COMMODITY AT ONE TIME WITH ITS VALUE AT ANOTHER. A commodity cannot be sold below its value any more than [above] it, for its value is what it is sold for. VALUE and market price are identical. In fact one cannot speak either of "CONTEMPORARY" COMMODITIES, or of PRESENT VALUES, but ONLY of PAST ONES. What is the value of 1 qr OF WHEAT? The £1 for which it was sold yesterday. For ITS VALUE is ONLY WHAT IS GOT. IN EXCHANGE FOR IT, AND AS LONG AS IT IS NOT EXCHANGED, ITS "RELATION TO MONEY"
IS ONLY IMAGINARY. But as soon as the EXCHANGE has been transacted, we have £1 instead of 1 qr [of wheat] and we can no longer speak of the value of 1 qr [of wheat]. In comparing values at different periods, Bailey has in mind merely academic researches into the different values of commodities, for example in the 18th and the 16th centuries. There the difficulty arises from the fact THAT THE
SAME MONETARY EXPRESSION OF VALUE OWING TO THE VICISSITUDES IN THE VALUE OF MONEY ITSELF — DENOTES DIFFERENT VALUES. The difficulty here lies in reducing the MONEY PRICES to VALUES. But what a fool he is! Is it not a fact that, in the process of circulation or the process of reproduction of capital, COMPARING THE VALUE OF ONE PERIOD TO THAT OF ANOTHER is always AN OPERATION UPON WHICH PRODUCTION ITSELF IS BASED?
Mr. Bailey does not understand at all what the expressions — to determine the value of commodities by labour time or by the VALUE OF LABOUR — mean. He simply does not understand the difference.
* "I beg not to be understood as contending, either that the values of commodities are to each other as the quantities of labour necessary for their production, or that the values of commodities are to each other as the values of the labour: all that I intend to insist upon is, that if the former is true, the latter cannot be false" * (I.e., [p.] 92).
The determination of the value of commodities by the value of another commodity (and in so far as they are determined by the "VALUE OF LABOUR", they are determined by another commodity; for VALUE OF LABOUR presupposes labour as a commodity) or its determination by a third entity, which has neither value nor is itself a commodity, but is the substance of value, and that which first turns products into commodities, are for Bailey identical. In the first case, it is a question of a measure of the value of commodities, that is, IN FACT, of money, of a commodity in which the other commodities express their value. In order that this can happen, the values of the commodities must already be preposited. The commodity which measures as well as that to be measured must have a third element in common. In the second case, this identity itself is first posited; later it is EXPRESSED in the PRICE, either MONEY PRICE OR any OTHER PRICE.
Bailey identifies the "invariable measure of value" with the search for an immanent measure of value, that is, the concept of value itself. So long as the two are confused it is even a reasonable instinct which leads to the search for an "invariable measure of value". Variability is precisely the characteristic of value. The term "invariable" expresses the fact that the immanent measure of value must not itself be a commodity, a value, but rather something which constitutes value and which is therefore also the immanent measure of its [the commodity's] value. Bailey demonstrates [XIV-832] that commodity values can find A MONETARY EXPRESSION and that, if the value relation of commodities is given, all commodities can express their value in one commodity, although the value of this commodity may change. But it nevertheless always remains the same for the other commodities at a given time, since it changes SIMULTANEOUSLY in relation to all of them. From this he concludes that no value relation between commodities is necessary nor is there any need to look for one. Because he finds it reflected in the MONETARY EXPRESSION, he does not need to "understand" how this expression becomes possible, how it is determined, and what in fact it expresses.
These remarks, in general, apply to Bailey as they do to Malthus, since he believes that one is concerned with the same question, on the same plane, whether one makes QUANTITY OF LABOUR OR VALUE OF LABOUR the measure of value. In the latter case, one presupposes the values whose measure is being sought, [their] external measure, [their] representation as value. In the first case one investigates the genesis and immanent nature of value itself. In the second, the development of the commodity into money or the form which exchange value acquires in the process of the exchange of commodities. In the first, we are concerned with value, independent of this representation, or rather antecedent to this representation. Bailey has this in common with the other fools: to determine the value of commodities means to find their monetary expression, AN EXTERNAL MEASURE OF THEIR VALUES. They say, however, impelled by a reasonable instinct, that this measure then must have invariable value, and must itself IN FACT stand outside the category of value, whereas Bailey says that one does not need to understand it, since one does find the expression of value in practice, and this expression itself has a n d can have variable value without prejudice to its function.
In particular, he himself has informed us that 100, 200 or 300 qrs can be the product of the labour of 6 men, that is, of the same quantity of labour, whereas "VALUE OF LABOUR" ONLY MEANS for him the ALIQUOT PART of the 100, 200 or 300 qrs which the 6 men receive. This could be 50, 60 or 70 qrs per man. [9 8] T h e QUANTITY OF LABOUR a n d the VALUE OF THE SAME QUANTITY OF LABOUR are therefore, according to Bailey himself, very different expressions. And how can it be the same if the value is expressed first in one thing and then in something essentially different? If the same labour which formerly produced 3 qrs of corn now produces 1 qr, while the same labour which formerly produced 20 yards of CLOTH (or 3 qrs of corn) still produces 20 yards, then, reckoned according to labour time, 1 qr of corn is now equal to 20 yards of CLOTH, or 20 yards of CLOTH to 1 qr of corn, and 3 qrs of CORN=60 yards instead of 20. T h u s the values of the quarter of corn and the yard of linen have been altered RELATIVELY. But they have by no means been altered according to the "VALUE OF LABOUR", for 1 qr of corn and 20 yards of CLOTH remain the same use values as before. And it is possible that 1 qr of corn does not command a larger quantity of labour than before.
If we take a single commodity, then Bailey's assertion makes n o sense whatever. If the labour time required for the production of shoes decreases and now only one-tenth of the labour time formerly required is necessary, then the value of shoes drops to one-tenth of the former value; and this also holds true when the shoes are compared with, or EXPRESSED IN, ALL OTHER COMMODITIES, WHEN
THE LABOUR REQUIRED FOR THEIR PRODUCTION HAS REMAINED THE SAME OR HAS NOT DECREASED AT THE SAME RATE. Nevertheless, the value of labour — for example the daily wage in shoemaking as well as in all other INDUSTRIES — may have remained the same; or it may even have increased. Less labour is contained in the individual shoe, hence also less paid labour. But when one speaks of the value of labour, one does not mean that for one hour's labour, for a smaller quantity of labour, less is paid than for a greater quantity. Bailey's proposition could have meaning only in relation to the total product of capital. Suppose 200 pairs of shoes are the product of the same capital (and the same labour) which formerly produced 100 pairs. In this case, the value of the 200 pairs is the same as [previously] that of 100 pairs. A n d it could be said that the 200 pairs of shoes are to 1,000 yards of linen (say the product of £ 2 0 0 of capital) as the value of the labour set in motion by the two amounts of capital. In what sense? In the sense in which it would also apply [XIV-833] to the relation of the individual pair of shoes to the single yard of linen?
T h e value of labour is the part of the labour time contained in a commodity which the worker himself appropriates; it is the part of the product in which the labour time which belongs to the worker himself is embodied. If the entire value of a commodity is reduced to paid and unpaid labour time — and if the rate of unpaid to paid labour is the same, that is, if surplus value constitutes the same proportion of total value in all commodities — then it is clear that if the ratio of one commodity to another is proportional to the total quantity of labour they contain, they must also represent equal aliquot parts of these total quantities of labour, a n d their ratio must therefore also be as that of the paid labour time in one commodity to the paid labour time in the other.
C : C ' = T L T (total labour time) to T L T ' (total labour time).
TLT TLT' = the paid labour time in C, and =the paid labour time x x in C , since it is presupposed that the paid labour time in both commodities constitutes the same aliquot part of the total labour time.
C:C' = TLT:TLT'
TLT TLT' TLT:TLT'= : x x TLT TLT' a n d C:C'= : x x or the commodities are to one another as the quantities of paid labour time contained in them, that is, as the VALUES OF the LABOUR CONTAINED IN THEM.
T h e VALUE OF LABOUR is then, however, not determined in the way Bailey would like, but by the labour time [contained in the commodity].
Further, disregarding the conversion of values into prices of production a n d considering only the values themselves, capitals consist of different ALIQUOT PARTS OF VARIABLE AND CONSTANT CAPITAL. HENCE, AS FAR AS VALUES ARE CONSIDERED, THE SURPLUS VALUES ARE NOT EQUAL, OR
THE PAID LABOUR IS NOT AN EQUAL ALIQUOT PART OF THE TOTAL LABOUR ADVANCED.
In general, WAGES — or VALUES OF LABOUR — would here be INDICES of
23-733 the VALUES OF COMMODITIES, not as VALUES, not in so far as WAGES rise or fall, but in so far as the quantity of paid labour—represented by WAGES — contained in a commodity would be an INDEX of the total quantity of the labour contained in the corresponding commodities.
In a word, the point is that, if the values of commodities are to one another as LT to LT' (the amounts of labour time contained
LT LT' in them), then their ratio is likewise as to — , i.e. the X X amounts of paid labour time embodied in them, if the proportion of the paid labour time to the unpaid is the same in all commodities, that is, if the paid labour time always=the total labour time, whatever this may be, divided by x. But the "if" does not correspond to the real state of affairs. Supposing that the workers in different industries work the same amount of surplus labour time, the relation of paid to actually employed labour time is nevertheless different in different industries, because the ratio of IMMEDIATE LABOUR EMPLOYED tO ACCUMULATED LABOUR EMPLOYED is different. [Let us take two capitals consisting,] for example, [the one of] 50f [variable] and 50c [constant] and [the other of] 10v and 90c. In both cases, let the unpaid labour=7io- [The value of] the first commodity would accordingly be 105, [of] the second 101. The paid labour time would=1/2 of the labour advanced in the first case, and only Vio in the second. [XIV-834] Bailey says:
* "If the commodities are to each other as the quantities, they must also be to each other as the values of the producing labour; for the contrary would necessarily imply, that the two commodities A and B might be equal in value, although the value of the labour employed in one was greater or less than the value of the labour employed in the other; or that A and B might be unequal in value, if the labour employed in each was equal in value. But this difference in the value of two commodities, which were produced by labour of equal value, would be inconsistent with the acknowledged equality of profits, which Mr. Ricardo maintains in common with other writers" * (I.e., [pp.] 79-80).
In this last phrase, he stumbles unconsciously on a real objection to Ricardo, who directly identifies profit with SURPLUS VALUE and VALUES with COST PRICES.[6] Correctly stated, it is — if the commodities are sold at their value, they yield unequal profits, for then profit=the surplus value embodied in them. And this is correct. But this objection does not refer to the theory of value, but to A BLUNDER OF Ricardo's in applying this theory.
How little Bailey himself, in the above passage, can have correctly understood the problem, is shown in the following statement:
"Ricardo on the other hand maintains * 'that labour may rise and fall in value without affecting the value of the commodity'. This is obviously a very different proposition from the other, and depends in fact on the falsity of the other, or on the contrary proposition"* etc. (I.e., [p.] 81).
The fool himself previously asserted that the result of the same labour may be 100, 300 or 200 qrs [of corn]. This determines the relation of a quarter to other commodities irrespective of the changing value of labour, that is, irrespective of how much of the 100, 200 or 300 qrs falls to the labourer himself. The fool would have shown some consistency if he had said: the VALUES OF LABOUR may rise or fall, nevertheless the VALUES OF COMMODITIES are as the VALUES OF LABOUR, because — according to a false assumption — the rise or fall * of wages being general, and the value of wages being always the same proportionate part of the whole quantity of labour employed.
"The capability of expressing the values of commodities has nothing to do with the constancy of their values"
//indeed not! but it has much to do with first finding the value, before expressing it; finding in what way the values in use, so different from each other, fall under the common category and denomination of values, so that the value of the one may be expressed in the other//
"either to each other or to the medium employed; neither has the capability of comparing these expressions of value anything to do with it".
//If the values of different commodities are expressed in the same third commodity, however variable its value may be, it is of course very easy to compare these expressions, already possessed of a common denomination.//
"Whether A is worth 4B or 6B" (the difficulty consists in equalising A with any portion of B; and this is only possible if there exists a common entity for A and B, or if A and B are different representations of the same entity. If all commodities are to be expressed in gold, [or] money, the difficulty remains the same. There must be a common entity to gold and each of the other commodities)
"and whether C is worth 8B or 12B, are circumstances which make no difference in the power of expressing the value of A and C in B, and certainly no difference in the power of comparing the value of A and C when expressed" ([pp.] 104-05).
But how to express A in B or in C? To express "them" in each other, or, what comes to the same thing, to treat them as equivalent expressions of the same unity, A, B, C must all be
23* considered as something different from what they are as things, products, values in use. A = 4 B . Then the value of A is expressed in 4B, a n d the value of 4B in A, so that both sides express the same. They are equivalents. They are both equal expressions of value. It would be the same if they were unequal ones or A > 4 B , A < 4 B . In all these cases they are, as far [XIV-SSö] as they are values, only different or equal in quantity, but [they are] always quantities of the same quality. T h e difficulty is to find this quality.
"The requisite condition in the process is, that the commodities to be measured should be reduced to a common denomination " *
//for example, in order to compare a A with any of the other polygons it is only necessary to transform the latter into A, *to express them in triangles. But to do this the A and the polygon are in fact supposed [to be] identities, different figurations of the same [thing]—space//
"which may be done at all times with equal facility; or rather it is ready done to our hands, since it is the prices of commodities which are recorded, or their relations in value to money" (I.e., [p.] 112).
"Estimating value is the same thing as expressing it"* (I.e., [p.] 152).
We have the fellow here. We find the VALUES measured, expressed in the PRICES. We can therefore content ourselves with not knowing what value is. H e confuses the development of the measure of value into money and further the development of money as the standard of price with the discovery of the concept of value itself in its development as the immanent measure of commodities in EXCHANGE. H e is right in thinking that this money need not be a commodity of invariable value; from this he concludes that no separate determination of value independent of the commodity itself is necessary.
As soon as the value of commodities, as the element they have in common, is given, the measurement of their relative value and the expression of this value coincide. But we can never arrive at the expression so long as we d o not find the common factor, which is different from the immediate existence of the commodities.
This is shown by the very example he gives, the DISTANCE BETWEEN A and B .a W h e n one SPEAKS OF THEIR DISTANCE one ALREADY presupposes that they are POINTS (OR LINES) in SPACE. Having been reduced to POINTS, AND POINTS OF THE SAME LINE, THEIR DISTANCE MAY BE EXPRESSED IN INCHES,
OR FEET, etc. THE identity OF THE TWO COMMODITIES A AND B IS, AT FIRST sight, THEIR EXCHANGEABILITY. THEY ARE "EXCHANGEABLE" OBJECTS. AS "EXCHANGEABLE" OBJECTS THEY ARE MAGNITUDES OF THE SAME DENOMINATION. BUT
a See this volume, p. 330.— Ed.
THIS "THEIR" EXISTENCE AS "EXCHANGEABLE" OBJECTS MUST BE DIFFERENT FROM
THEIR EXISTENCE AS VALUES IN USE. WHAT IS IT?
Money is already a representation of value, and presupposes it. As the standard of price money, for its part, already presupposes the (hypothetical) transformation of the commodity into money. If the values of all commodities are represented in money prices, then one can compare them, they are IN FACT already compared. But for the value to be represented as price, the value of commodities must have been expressed previously as money. Money is merely the form in which the value of commodities appears in the process of circulation. But how can one express x COTTON in x money? This question resolves itself into this — how is it at all possible to express one commodity in another, or how to present commodities as equivalents? Only the elaboration of value, independent of the representation of one commodity in another, provides the answer.
* "Mistake ... that the relation of value can exist between commodities at different periods, which is in the nature of the case impossible; and if no relation exists there can be no measurement"* ([p.] 113).
We have already had the same nonsense before.[2] " T H E RELATION OF VALUE BETWEEN COMMODITIES AT DIFFERENT PERIODS" already exists when money acts as means of payment. T h e whole circulation process is a perpetual comparison of VALUES OF COMMODITIES AT DIFFERENT PERIODS.
* "If it" (money) "is not a good medium of comparison between commodities at different periods,*... [it asserts] its * incapability of performing a function in a case where there is no function for it to perform"* ([p.] 118).
Money has this FUNCTION TO PERFORM as means of payment and as treasure.
All this is simply copied from the " VERBAL OBSERVER" b and in fact the secret of the whole nonsense OOZES OUT IN THE FOLLOWING PHRASE which has also convinced me that the "VERBAL OBSERVATIONS" which were very carefully concealed by Bailey, were used by him in the m a n n e r of a plagiarist.
[XIV-836] * "Riches are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of commodities. A man or [a] community is rich; a pearl or a diamond is valuable" ([p.] 165).'
A pearl or a diamond is valuable as a pearl or a diamond, that is, by their qualities, as values in use for men, that is, as riches But there is nothing in a pearl or a diamond by which a relation of
* See ibid., pp. 337, 339-40.— Ed. b The anonymous author of Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes in Political Economy...— Ed.
c Cf. this volume, p. 316.— Ed.
exchange between them is given, * etc.
Bailey now becomes a profound philosopher:
"Difference between LABOUR AS CAUSE AND MEASURE, and in general between CAUSE AND MEASURE OF VALUE" ([p.] 170 et Seq.).
There is, in actual fact, a very significant difference (which Bailey does not notice) between "MEASURE" (in the sense of money) and "CAUSE OF VALUE". The "CAUSE" of value transforms use values into VALUE. The external MEASURE OF VALUE already presupposes the existence of VALUE. For example, gold can only MEASURE the VALUE OF COTTON if gold and COTTON — as VALUES — possess a common factor which is different from both. The "CAUSE" OF VALUE is the substance of VALUE and hence also its immanent measure.
•"Whatever circumstances ... act with assignable influence, whether mediately or immediately, on the mind in the interchange of commodities, may be considered as causes of value"* ([pp.] 182-83).
This in fact means nothing more than: the cause of the value of a commodity or of the fact that two commodities are equivalent are the circumstances which cause the seller, or perhaps both the buyer and the seller, to consider something to be the value or the equivalent of a commodity. The "circumstances" which determine the value of a commodity are by no means further elucidated by being described as circumstances which influence the "MIND" of those engaging in exchange.
(These same circumstances (independent of the MIND, but influencing it), which compel the producers to sell their products as commodities—circumstances which differentiate one form of social production from another — provide their products with an exchange value which (also in their MIND) is independent of their use value. Their "MIND", their consciousness, may be completely ignorant of, unaware of the existence of, what IN FACT determines the value of their commodities or their products as values. They are placed in conditions which determine their reasoning but they may not know it. Anyone can use money as money without necessarily understanding what money is. Economic categories are reflected in the mind in a very distorted fashion.) He [Bailey] transfers the problem into the mental sphere, because his theory has nothing further to offer. The circumstances which, as such, likewise exist (or perhaps they do not, or perhaps they are incor-rectly conceived) in the consciousness of those engaging in exchange.
Instead of explaining what he himself understands by "value" (or "CAUSE OF VALUE") Bailey tells us that it is something which buyers and sellers imagine in the act of exchange.
In fact, however, the following considerations are the basis of the would-be philosophical proposition.
1) T h e market price is determined by various circumstances which express themselves in the relation of demand and supply and which, as such, INFLUENCE "THE MIND" OF THE OPERATORS ON THE MARKET. This is a very important discovery!
2) In connection with the conversion of commodity values into cost prices, "various CIRCUMSTANCES" are taken into account which as "reasons for compensation" influence THE MIND or are reflected in it. All these reasons for compensation, however, affect only the MIND of the CAPITALIST as CAPITALIST and stem from the nature of capitalist production itself, and not from the subjective notions of buyers and sellers. In their mind they exist rather as self-evident "eternal truths".
I,ike his predecessors, Bailey CATCHES hold of Ricardo's confusion of VALUES and COST PRICES IN ORDER TO PROVE THAT VALUE IS NOT DETERMINED BY LABOUR, BECAUSE COST PRICES ARE DEVIATIONS FROM VALUES. A l t h o u g h t h i s is quite correct in relation to Ricardo's identification, it is incorrect as far as the question itself is concerned.
In this context, Bailey quotes first from Ricardo himself about t h e CHANGE IN THE RELATIVE VALUES OF [ X I V - 8 3 7 ] COMMODITIES IN CONSEQUENCE OF A RISE IN THE VALUE OF LABOUR.[3] H e quotes further the "effect of time" (different times of production though the labour time remains unchanged), the same CASE which aroused scruples in Mill.b H e does not notice the real general contradiction — THE VERY EXISTENCE OF
AN AVERAGE RATE OF PROFIT, DESPITE THE DIFFERENT COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL, ITS DIFFERENT TIMES OF CIRCULATION, etc. H e simply repeats the particular forms in which the contradiction appears, and which Ricardo himself — and his followers — had already noticed. Here he merely echoes what has been previously said but does not advance criticism a step forward.
H e emphasises further that the costs of production are the main CAUSE OF "VALUE", and therefore the main element in value. However, he stresses correctly — as was done [by other writers] after Ricardo — that the concept of production costs itself varies. H e himself in the last analysis expresses his agreement with Torrens that value is determined by the capital advanced,0 which is correct
a See present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 405-25.— Ed. b See this volume, pp. 276-77, and also K. Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy... (present edition, Vol. 29, pp. 58-60).— Ed.
c See this volume, pp. 265-66, 270-71, and also K. Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy... (present edition, Vol. 29, p. 196).— Ed.
in relation to COST PRICES but meaningless if it is not evolved on the basis of value itself, that is, if the value of a commodity is to be derived from a more developed relationship, the value of capital, and not the other way round.
His last objection is this: The value of commodities cannot be measured by labour time if the labour time in one TRADE is not the same as in the others, so that the commodity in which, for example, 12 hours of an engineer's labour is embodied has perhaps twice the value of the commodity in which 12 hours of the labour of a FIELD LABOURER is embodied. What this amounts to is the following: A simple working day, for example, is not a measure of value if there are other working days which, compared with DAYS OF SIMPLE LABOUR, have the effect of COMPOSITE [working] DAYS. Ricardo showed that this FACT does not prevent the measurement of commodities by labour time if the relation between SIMPLE and COMPOSITE LABOUR is given.(14) He has indeed not described how this relation develops and is determined. This belongs to the definition of wages, and, in the last analysis, can be reduced to the different values of labour capacity itself, that is, its varying production costs (determined by labour time).
The passages in which Bailey expresses what has been summar-ised above are:
* "It is not, indeed, disputed, that the main circumstance, which determines the quantities in which articles of this class" * (where no MONOPOLY exists and where it is possible to INCREASE [output] by expanding INDUSTRY) * "are exchanged, is the cost of production ; but our best economists do not exactly agree on the meaning to be attached to this term; some contending that the quantity of labour expended on the production of an article constitutes its cost; others, that the capital employed upon it is entitled to that appellation" (I.e., [p.] 200).
"What the labourer produces without capital, costs him his labour; what the capitalist produces costs him his capital"* ([p.] 201).
(This is the factor which determines Torrens' views. The labour which the capitalist employs, costs him nothing apart from the capital he lays out in wages.)
commodities, once equal in value, have become unequal in value, without any change in the quantity of labour respectively employed in each" ([p.] 209).
"It is no answer" * (with regard to CASES of the first kind) * "to say, with Mr. Ricardo, that 'the estimation in which different qualities of labour are held, comes soon to be adjusted in the market with sufficient precision for all practical purposes'[3]; or with Mr. Mill, that 'in estimating equal quantities of labour, an allowance would, of course, be included for different degrees of hardness and skill',(15) Instances of this kind entirely destroy the integrity of the rule" ([p.] 210).
"There are only two possible methods of comparing one quantity of labour with another; one is to compare them by the time expended, the other by the result produced" * (the latter is done in the TASK-WORK system). *"The former is applicable to all kinds of labour; the latter can be used only in comparing labour bestowed on similar articles. If, therefore, in estimating two different sorts of work, the time spent will not determine the proportion between the [XIV-839][99] quantities of labour, it must remain undetermined and undeterminable"* ([p.] 215).
With reference to 2: *"Take any two commodities of equal value, A and B, one produced by fixed capital and the other by labour, without the intervention of machinery; and suppose, that without any change whatever in the fixed capital or the quantity of labour, there should happen to be a rise in the value of labour; according to Mr. Ricardo's own showing, A and B would be instantly altered in their relation to each other; that is, they would become unequal in value" ([pp.] 215-16).
"To these cases we may add the effect of time on value. If a commodity take more time than another for its production, although no more capital and labour, its value will be greater. The influence of this cause is admitted by Mr. Ricardo, but Mr. Mill contends",* etc. (I.e. [p. 217]).
Finally Bailey remarks, and this is the only new contribution he makes in this respect:
"The 3 types of commodities" //this is again taken from the author of the VERBAL OBSERVATIONS, I mean the 3 types// (namely, [the commodities produced] under absolute monopoly, or limited monopoly, as is the case with corn, or completely free competition) "cannot be entirely distinguished from one another. *They are all not only promiscuously exchanged for each other, but blended in production. A commodity, therefore, may owe part of its value to monopoly, and part to those causes which determine the value of unmonopolised products. An article, for instance, may be manufactured amidst the freest competition out of a raw material, which a complete monopoly enables its producer to sell at 6 times the actual cost" ([p.] 223).(16) "In this case it is obvious, that although the value of the article might be correctly said to be determined by the quantity of capital expended upon it by the manufacturer, yet no analysis could possibly resolve the value of the capital into quantity of labour" * ([pp.] 223-24).
This remark is correct. But monopoly does not concern us here, where we are dealing with two things only, value and cost price. It is clear that the conversion of value into cost price works in two ways. First, the profit which is added to the capital advanced may be either above or below the surplus value which is contained in the commodity itself, that is, it may represent more or less unpaid labour than the commodity itself contains. This applies to the variable part of capital and its reproduction in the commodity. But apart from this, the cost price of constant capital — or of the commodities which enter into the value of the newly produced commodity as raw materials, matières instrumentales(17) and instruments and conditions of — may likewise be either above or below its value. Thus the commodity comprises a portion of the price which differs from value, and this portion is independent of the quantity of labour newly added, or of the labour whereby these conditions of production with given cost prices are transformed into a new product. It is clear that what applies to the difference between the cost price and the value of the commodity as such — as a result of the production process — likewise applies to the commodity in so far as, in the form of constant capital, it becomes an ingredient, a precondition, of the production process. Variable capital, whatever difference between value and cost price it may contain, is replaced by a certain quantity of labour which forms a constituent part of the value of the new commodity, irrespective of whether its price expresses its value correctly or stands above or below the value. On the other hand, thé différence between cost price and value, in so far as it enters into the price of the new commodity independently of its own production process, is incorporated into the value of the new commodity as a presupposed element. The difference between the cost price and the value of the commodity is thus brought about in two ways: by the difference between the cost price and the value of commodities which constitute the preconditions of the process of production of the new commodity; by the difference between the surplus value which is really added to the conditions of production and the profit which is calculated. But every commodity which enters into another commodity as constant capital, itself emerges as the result, the product, of another production process. And so the commodity appears alternately as a precondition for the production of other commodities and as the result of a process in which the existence of other commodities is the precondition for its own production. In agriculture (cattle-breeding), the same commodity appears at one point of time as a product and at another as a condition of production.
This important deviation of cost prices from values brought about by capitalist production does not alter the fact that cost prices continue to be determined by values.
Endnotes
[120] The chapter on the real movement of wages was not written by Marx. He deals with this question in Volume One of Capital (see present edition, Vol. 35).— 445
[86] In his manuscript of 1861-63 Marx repeatedly returns to the proposition of the English bourgeois economists that "capital employs labour" (see this volume and present edition, Vol. 34).—303
[8] This definition of monopoly price is given by Ricardo in Chapter XVII of On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, third edition, London, 1821, pp. 289-90. A similar definition of monopoly price given by Adam Smith is quoted by Marx on p. XII — 623 of the manuscript (present edition, Vol. 31, p. 558).—22
[44] Marx is referring to Say's argument stated in Lettres à M. Malthus..., Paris, Londres, 1820, p. 15, that the cause of the flooding of the Italian market with English goods was the underproduction of Italian goods which might be exchanged for English ones. This argument by Say is quoted in the anonymous discourse An Inquiry into Those Principles..., London, 1821, p. 15, from which Marx made excerpts. Cf. also present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 133, 166.—160, 311
[93] Posited (Marx has "Gesetztes")—a term in Hegelian philosophy used to describe something which is caused as opposed to something without cause, original or primary — something having its foundation not in itself but in something else.—316
[94] Here Marx continues the analysis of Bailey's views which he began earlier (see this volume, p. 312).—320
[95] This is the way in which Marx ironically refers to the anonymous author of Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes in Political Economy...—324
[96] In the example discussed by Marx, the area of a parallelogram and that of a triangle will be equal if the height of the parallelogram equals — or if its base equals — .—330
[97] The "portion" of a product accruing to the workers (and, consequendy, to the capitalist) means the number of natural units of the product in which the newly added labour is objectified, whilst "proportion" refers to the percentage of this product accruing to one or other of the parties.—335, 339
[4] The actual location of the materials in notebooks XIV and XV does not always accord with that given by Marx in the table of contents. Notebook XIV, for example, contains only the beginning of the section on the adversaries of the economists. The continuation of this section is to be found in the first half of notebook XV. The section on Bray is located in notebook X of the manuscript (see present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 245-50). This section was not completed. The sections on Ramsay, Cherbuliez and Richard Jones are to be found on pp. XVIII —1086-1157 (present edition, Vol. 33). Marx did not follow up his original intention to complete the fifth section in notebook XIV. The survey of revenue and its sources is located in the second half of notebook XV (this volume, pp. 449-541). The section on Ravenstone begins on p. XIV — 861 (this volume, p. 392). This section is preceded by that numbered 1 ) and devoted to the anonymous pamphlet The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties. The end of the section on Hodgskin is contained on pp. XVIII — 1084-1086 (see present edition, Vol. 33). Marx did not write any section specifically devoted to vulgar political economy. He dealt with this subject in the section entitled "Revenue and Its Sources".—8
[98] If, instead of the random figures "50, 60 or 70 qrs per man", we take the figures which correspond to Bailey's example given above (this volume, p. 338) we will obtain 12 X— , 25 or 37 — qrs per man.—342
[6] The term "cost price" (Kostpreis, Kostenpreis) was used by Marx in three different senses: 1) in the sense of the costs of production for the capitalist (c + v), 2) in the sense of the "immanent costs of production" of a commodity (c + v + s) which coincide with the value of the commodity, and 3) in the sense of the price of production (c + v+average profit). Here the term is used in the third sense. In notebooks X-XIII of the manuscript Marx used the term "cost price" to mean the price of production, or the average price. He thus treats the two terms as identical (see present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 402-03, 559). In notebooks XIV-XV of the manuscript this term is used now in the sense of the price of production, and now in that of the costs of production for the capitalist (see this volume, pp. 261, 271, 462). The use of the term "Kostenpreis" in three different senses is due to the fact that "Kosten" has three different meanings in political economy, as specifically pointed out by Marx (see this volume, pp. 269-73, 513): 1) in the sense of what is advanced by the capitalist, 2) in the sense of the price of the capital advanced plus average profit, 3) in the sense of the actual (or immanent) production costs of the commodity itself. Apart from these three meanings which we encounter in the classics of bourgeois political economy, there exists a fourth, vulgar meaning of the term "costs of production" as used by J. B. Say. He defined the "costs of production" as something paid for the "productive services" performed by labour, capital or land (J. B. Say, Traité d'économie politique. Seconde édition, Tome II, Paris, 1814, p. 453). Marx resolutely rejects this vulgar interpretation of "costs of production" (see, for example, present edition, Vol. 31, pp. 361, 439 and this volume, p. 102).—9, 102, 210
[99] When numbering the pages, Marx missed out "838".—351
[3] The two final points were subsequently crossed out in pencil and instead of them Marx inserted the point "Theory of Cost Price".—7
[2] At the side of this line in the manuscript there is written in pencil, without any indication as to where it should be inserted: "(circulating and fixed capital, p. 643) in Ricardo".—7 36-733