>>2507152as i have demonstrated, there is literally no difference between men and machines in production except that men get paid a wage. similarly, to marx, slaves cannot produce, but only transfer value, because they are treated as property rather than as property-owners, while a worker is just a slave with a wage; a wage-slave:
>In slave labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htmwe also see the wage configure labour as a rented product rather than a wholly bought product:
<The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htmfurther, this relationship of rent or interest acts as the temporal basis of capitalist exploitation, with the capitalist being a debtor to what is forwarded in credit:
>In all cases, therefore, the use-value of the labour-power is advanced to the capitalist: the labourer allows the buyer to consume it before he receives payment of the price; he everywhere gives credit to the capitalist.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htmi have addressed this point before in rebuking austrian economist hans hermann hoppe:
>>2460758 to return to the point at hand, marx nowhere in all of his work ever implies that slaves can produce surplus value. here is a good blog post on the topic:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2015/07/marx-on-slaves-as-fixed-capital.htmlyet slaves labour, but as we see, labour has no value:
<Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htmto marx, only commodities possess value. thus, a slave (like any form of fixed capital) is a value, but cannot add to itself above its costs. but why? because its costs are not commodified, so do not take the form of value. this is not to imply that slaves are unproductive however, since machines are in themselves more productive than men, yet are said to not be able to produce values. if we take the notion then, that a slave's labour-power *becomes* valuable in the mode of a commodity, then the case is entirely symmetrical to machines. the difference of course is what marx may only consider in terms of the subjectivity of value's contract. lets read:
>In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognise in each other the rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economic relation between the two. It is this economic relation that determines the subject-matter comprised in each such juridical act. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm<The historical conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It can spring into life, only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power. And this one historical condition comprises a world’s history.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm<That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter sells is his labour-power.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htmso then, value only appears within these *subjective* circumstances to marx, where value is "mutually recognised" (a la hegel) in its possibility of equivalence. the slave does not produce value, even with a wage fund, because he does not yet own himself, so as to sell himself. thus, there is zero qualitative difference between the instruments of production (since all labour is abstracted as investment capital), and all difference only exists in the realm of circulation, or exchange.
if we rightfully treat machines as slaves then, the possibility of granting them a wage would entail the value of their costs of repair; the same as an animal. marx fails to be consistent with his own theory in this regard then (in what smith and menger see as labour being "commanded") and he instead metaphysicalises human labour as a magical substance. it is one of marx's worst passages (criticised by cockshott as well). i deal with the topic of abstraction fully here:
>>2488766>Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate […] We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human […] We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal […] A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htmthis subjective element of "imagination" of course is immaterial to the process of production, as much as smith in the same way dismisses the labour of superintendence as adding to the exchange-value of commodities. here then, marx in assigning the uniqueness of man's labour fails. man is not unique, as he has previously admitted. lets read the grundrisse:
>The worker’s activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and not the opposite. The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the power of the machine itself.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch13.htmhe even says quite clearly here that man's consciousness is no object to the ends of production. value then, is not a relation within production, but only something in exchange, where labour is abstracted:
>the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value […] there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract […] When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmthis is not a material relation, but purely social:
>The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition […] the value of commodities has a purely social reality […] So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmi have spoken of marx's anti-physicalism here:
>>2489516>>2489518we may even see marx granting the possibility of "imaginary" value immanent to the price-form (money):
>Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htmif we deduce marx's hegelianism it is rather clear that value is a process of "recognition" between the owners of commodities. it is a subjective process, the same way value is only a value if it has a subjective utility:
>Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmso then, why cant machines produce values? well, first of all they do produce values; values in use, and also values in exchange, just at a diminished rate (due to oversupply). the cost of its labour also equals what can be sold from its implementation, and so machines make money for capitalists, but not profits (this is confirmed by marginalists such as jevons, clark and bawerk). the reason they cant produce SURPLUS values is because theyre not paid a wage, which is because (1) machines cant subjectively receive wages or (2) voluntarily sell their labour. but this is also true for animals, yet animals are alive. machines are similarly a form of life and in many cases, of intelligence, yet they are not economic creatures the same way that we are. so then, marx's theory of value is subjective, and machines are not subjects. that is the most basic interpretation:
>…all the necessary factors of the labour process; its OBJECTIVE factors, the means of production, as well as its SUBJECTIVE factor, labour-power.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm<That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter sells is his labour-power.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htma slave is an object, not a subject. 🤷🏻♂️😅🫠
>social constructmarx's theory of value indeed is a theory of social recognition. value is not a natural force or substance:
<The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition […] the value of commodities has a purely social reality […] So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmif it was, you could measure it directly with instruments, like the chemist.