The Labour Theory of Value (2)

Of course, it is only necessary labour which counts as value. If one uses old-fashioned methods or obsolete instruments, or wastes more time or energy or materials than is necessary compared with the generally prevailing knowledge and equipment, this unnecessary additional labour will give no additional value to the product. Society is the accountant, not the producer. The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour required to produce it.
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The objections of the orthodox economists, and their alternative theories mentioned above, are more significant than important. It is to be expected that they should be preoccupied with an explanation of “price,” which is what chiefly concerns their employer, the capitalist. It is not to be expected that they should occupy themselves with a theory of value which strikes the capitalist where he can’t take it, as we shall see. What is important is that the capitalist substantiates the labour theory of value in actual practice. He acts upon it and it works. Not only does he pay more for skilled workers than for less skilled, according to the time and cost of producing that skill, but he constantly aims to reduce the value of his products by eliminating waste, improving methods and so on, while hoping either to go on selling at the old price and thus making an extra profit, or to reduce his price to the new value and smash his rivals. The means of production are thus continually being revolutionised in one industry or another by the constant competition to produce commodities at lower values. The capitalist demonstrates in practice what his economists cannot tell him in theory.

Since value, the quality peculiar to commodities, manifests itself only in exchange it is not surprising that the history of exchange is a large slice of human history. Beginning in primitive times with exchange, between tribes, of surplus products incidentally left over after their needs were satisfied, it initiated the production of surpluses purposely intended for exchange and not for use, the production of commodities, and soon came the need to set apart one of these commodities to serve as a common medium of exchange for all others; this commodity thus becoming— money. Tribal enemies captured in war were not now put to death, but made slaves for the production of surplus wealth. Accumulation of private property, class exploitation, and commodity production are an inseparable trinity. The slave civilisation of the ancient world, of Greece and Rome in particular, witnessed the death-struggles of tribal Communism and saw arise the new system based on private ownership and class exploitation. This under Mediterranean hot-house conditions. In Northern Europe a slower and vaster development of commodity-relationships awaited the coming of the world market. Ocean navigation, conquest and colonisation; conversion of feudal dues into money rents, influx of silver from newly-discovered mines, “enclosure” movements, which took away the peasants’ lands, the power-machine factory movement, which pauperised the handicraftsmen—both classes bereft of any claim on the means of production and became proletarians, the working class, wage-slaves of a small class now in exclusive possession of the means of life: the capitalist. These were the processes by which the commodity came to maturity.

The commodity has come of age. For now the very source and content of value, labour-power is itself a commodity. Men are not men but hands in the labour market, hoping for a bidder, rotting without one.

It is here that the importance of the distinction between usefulness and value comes home. It is the distinction which earlier labour theories of value, notably that of Ricardo failed to make between labour and labour power. It is the secret of capitalist exploitation. The worker sells his labour power (his knowledge, skill, energy) for a price, his wages, salary, fees, commission, etc., which, on an average is its value. The worker gets the value of his labour power, the socially-necessary cost of reproducing it—the cost of living. The capitalist, having bought the commodity, proceeds to enjoy the use of it as fast as he can and as long as he dare. By lengthening the working day, or by speeding up, by fines and penalties, by regimentation and discipline, by team competition and pace-setting, by psychological research and cups of tea he squeezes from the worker a far greater quantity of labour than the value of his labour power. He extorts surplus value.

Marx’s analysis of the commodity unearthed a secret which will bury a society! “What capitalism produces above all things are its own gravediggers,” and this is the grim and glorious spadework for which the S.P.G.B. is organised. There are plenty of spades, fellow-workers, waiting but the hands to use them.
F. EVANS