Endnotes: Communisation and Value-Form Theory

My ignorance of the debate over the value-form is catching up with me -- not an easy task since I am totally rushing around frantically busy and over-extended these days; really, I feel like I don't have time to think, read, or reflect. Even flights are times for class-prep, grading, and reviewing articles rather than reading on my own (this is not entirely true -- I have been reading about crowds in preparation for a talk in November, but I am afraid that I will not have had time to read what I need to write something new for this and if I think about it too much my anxiety escalates unmanageably).  I tried to squeeze in a little reading of some of the value-form debate. Below is an excerpt of a piece that appeared in Endnotes with my initial thoughts about it. 

The (Anti-)Politics of Value Theory

The critical import of value-form theory is that it calls into question any political conception based on the affirmation of the proletariat as producer of value. It recognises Marx’s work as an essentially negative critique of capitalist society. In reconstructing the Marxian dialectic of the value-form, it demonstrates how the social life process is subsumed under — or “form-determined” by — the value-form. What characterises such “form-determination” is a perverse priority of the form over its content. Labour does not simply pre-exist its objectification in the capitalist commodity as a positive ground to be liberated in socialism or communism through the alteration of its formal expression. Rather, in a fundamental sense value — as the primary social mediation — pre-exists and thus has a priority over labour. As Chris Arthur argues:

At the deepest level, the failure of the tradition that uses the model of “simple commodity production”, is that it focuses on the human individual as the originator of value relationships, rather than viewing human activities as objectively inscribed within the value form… In truth, however, the law of value is imposed on people through the effectivity of a system with capital at its heart, capital that subordinates commodity production is the aim of valorisation and it is the real subject (identified as such by Marx) confronting us.53

While it seems true and politically effective54 to say that we produce capital by our labour, it is actually more accurate to say (in a world that really is topsy turvy) that we, as subjects of labour, are produced by capital. Socially necessary labour time is the measure of value only because the value-form posits labour as its content. In a society no longer dominated by alienated social forms — no longer orientated around the self-expansion of abstract wealth — the compulsion to labour which characterises the capitalist mode of production will disappear.55 With value, abstract labour disappears as a category. The reproduction of individuals and their needs becomes an end in itself. Without the categories of value, abstract labour and the wage, “labour” would cease to have its systematic role as determined by the primary social mediation: value.

This is why value-form theory points, in terms of the notion of revolution that follows from it, in the same direction as communisation. The overcoming of capitalist social relations cannot involve a simple “liberation of labour”; rather, the only “way out” is the suppression of value itself — of the value-form which posits abstract labour as the measure of wealth. 

 via endnotes.org.uk

JD:  There is something appealing in an emphasis that suggests an alternative approach to wealth. It would allow natural resources, inefficient talent, cultivated craft, and reproductive and caring labor to appear as valuable. None would be reinserted into a labor theory of value. Further, we can talk about the value of communicative acts without having to insert them into an account of labor into which they don't fit particularly well.

At the same time, there is something here that feels elite and surgical, like an extraction or excision of workers and their productive labor. It's like the people who matter, in their material work and lives, somehow don't matter anymore. It's as if the real movement of people as the actuality of communism is jettisoned. My discomfort here is part and parcel with my dislike of emphases on alienation and reification. Those seem designed to show how capitalists are also trapped and oppressed, how everyone is caught in a bad system. I don't buy it. I think that there are elites who benefit from the system, who like the system, and who even if they are somewhat alienated would gladly pay for their privilege with a little alienation. In fact, I think complete disalientation is an illusion.

In the note corresponding to the sentence with the phrase 'compulsion to labor,' the gloss associates labor done out of necessity (to eat) is not compulsion but free labor. This strikes me as the precisely the opposite of free labor. Labor done out of compulsion is the labor we have to do to survive and to survive at a certain societal level. 

The most crucial theoretical claim appears to be "Labour does not simply pre-exist its objectification in the capitalist commodity as a positive ground to be liberated in socialism or communism through the alteration of its formal expression." The sentence that follows asserts that value--as the primary social mediation-- has a priority over labor. I take 'primary social mediation' to be another way of referring to the social substance crystalized in value, that is, the historically sedimented relations that underlie the abstract labor congealed in the value form. I'm not sure what priority means, though, unless the point is just that under capitalism there isn't first an individual who works and then the exploitation of that person, but that seems so obvious as to be unnecessary to assert (I must be missing the point). In part, I don't get how the point quoted from Chris Arthur affirms the claim preceding it. Arthur implies an individualism underlying Marxian discussions of labor. I don't see that. The entire point is to emphasize that one appears individualistically in bourgeois thought is already and essentially social and collective. There is nothing individual about individual labor.

I also wonder about abstraction. Maybe there is a real advance in abstraction (I think Alberto Toscano and Slavoj Zizek have arguments in this direction). So the good thing about the value form is that it equates different kinds of labor in the form of abstract labor power. The problem with capitalism is that it doesn't go far enough in this direction. Instead, hedge fund managers are somehow more valuable than school teachers or factory laborers. Uneven equalization is thus equalization as the proletarianization of the rest of us while the very, very few at the top are unique, singular, and super-rich. It's like the long-tail (power-law, 80/20 rule) version of employment. I don't think, then, that the equalization I support would count as abolishing the value form. I think it would be better describing as realizing it (in keeping with the already ongoing liberation of labor from the commodity form via unpaid labor).

Comments

[Theresonlyonechrisokane]

Hi Jodi,

If you want a more lucid introduction to value-form theory I highly recommend Michael Heinrich's Introduction to Capital. http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2884/ Unlike the Endnotes piece, Heinrich, refrains from using Hegelian, Value-form and communisation jargon which can be hard to follow. Heinrich's exposition of Marx's theory of value is particularly concise and extremely lucid.

[warenform]

Jodi,

value-form theory, or as its German variant is called, "the New Reading of Marx", isn't a political current or school of philosophy. It's a research direction in Marx philology.

The Endnotes piece, while not bad in some respects, is problematic because it's written from the perspective of some left-communists in Britain who see some affinities between value-form theory and the particular brand of post-Bordigist communism they sympathize with.

But value-form theory isn't a unified set of political positions, or a normative approach to evaluate contemporary political questions. It's a branch of academic Marx philology, the aim of which is to reconstruct as rigorously and painstakingly as possible the categories of Marx's critique of political economy, not only on the basis of the published canonical texts of traditional Marxism (what Michael Heinrich calls "worldview Marxism"), but also on the various unpublished manuscripts which have only seen the light of day in Germany as part of the MEGA edition.

Since the aim is merely to acquire as clear and rigorous an understanding of Marx's economic writings as possible, no programmatic "political" conclusions can be derived from it, which is mainly the shortcoming of the Endnotes piece, which seems to suggest that value-form theory necessarily implies the particular sort of post-Bordigist "communization" they adhere to. In fact, there is in interest in the value-form form approach ranging from the post-operaist Open Marxism school all the way to the relatively traditional Trotskyists of the British SWP.

I'd agree with theresonlyonechrisokane that the Heinrich introduction to Capital, in addition to being the best introduction to Capital there is, also gives a good taste of what the value-form approach entails. But it doesn't really have much to do with the sort of questions you raise. Reproaching it for not doing so is like accusing particle physics of not having a theory of Thomas Pynchon's novels.

[Jodi]

Thanks for the links and the thoughts. Earlier I skimmed this piece by Heinrich:

http://libcom.org/library/invaders-marx-on-uses-marxian-theory-difficulties-a-contemporary-reading-michael-heinric

I didn't get a sense from that piece that the discussion of the value form is irrelevant to politics, but maybe I'm wrong? In a way, it would be a relief if it's not relevant--then I wouldn't have to read it all!

From the Endnotes piece, though, as well as from the book Communisation and its Discontents, it seems to me that it is relevant--it has a lot to do with how one understands capitalism and political possibilities under capitalist conditions.

Warenform: would you say that the criticisms I make don't apply to the Endnotes article either?

[warenform]

I think the intent in that _Invaders from Marx_ piece is to draw a distinction between "Marxism" as a comprehensive worldview inherited from the Second and Third Internationals, and Marx's own writings as a very fragmented, discontinuous, but nonetheless insightful and relevant body of work. I suppose it's relevant to political questions inasmuch as people's politics are filtered through the interpretative matrix of traditional (or even heterodox) "Marxism."

Also, not trying to beef with you but I find this a startling admission:

"n a way, it would be a relief if it's not relevant--then I wouldn't have to read it all!"

This amounts to saying that you're not interested in Marx's critique of political economy! I think _Capital_ and its preparatory works and precursor manuscripts is still the best thing Marx ever did, certainly the most relevant, so it's odd to encounter Marxists who want to excise this aspect of his work.

As for your criticisms, inasmuch as the Endnotes folks are pushing a particular perspective, I think your criticisms are fair enough, though to be honest I'm not very familiar with the French milieu they refer to (Theorie Communiste and the like). I find the "communization" milieu as a whole a bit too teleological and fatalistic for my taste, and while it's encouraging that many of them are getting into value-form theory, I'd prefer to make a clear distinction between "communization" and "value-form theory", despite the facts that advocates of the former claim to discover some affinities in the latter.

[Guy Sinqual]

The other commenters are right that communization theory and value-form theory are two distinct projects, and the prospect of their merger is a complex and difficult one. They can't be considered identical.

The Heinrich book is indeed the best introduction to Marx in English. It's a fantastic book. But it does not seem to me a very good introduction to value-form theory and the debates and problems from which it arises. Though that perspective -- with both its benefits and drawbacks -- is implicit in Heinrich's treatments, it remains implicit, and someone with no exposure to it is unlikely to intuit where Heinrich departs from standard treatments of Marx. For an English language text, I'd recommend Postone (rather than Chris Arthur). Though he's not a value-form theorist proper, he draws upon that tradition, and arrives at all of the central points.

The political consequences of value-form theory are as follows: by defining what value is, it likewise defines the basis of capitalism. This clarifies what it would mean to destroy capitalism, and sheds a rather uncharitable light on both once-upon-a-time actually existing socialism and the various theories of capitalism that formed the basis for it (cf. Postone's treatment of orthodox Marxism). In other words, value-form theory changes our understanding of what it would mean to uproot capitalism by focusing on the value-form itself rather than the bourgeois class rule which accompanies it. It is on this basis that Endnotes attempts a synthesis of communization theory and value-form theory, but for a number of reasons, it's a highly tendentious synthesis.

[Jodi]

Warenform --no, saying I don't have to read it all has nothing to do with Marx's discussion of political economy. It has to do with all these other folks' debates and discussions.

Guy -- thanks for that; it affirms my previous impression.

[Theresonlyonechrisokane]

For what its worth I recommended the Heinrich because: (1) it is short and concise so I thought Jodi would be able to fit it in the busy work schedule she outlines and (2) it provides an excellent and concise definitions of concepts such as real abstraction and Marx's development of the value-form that are central to the value-form interpretation of Marx, which Endnotes etc draw on without really defining and discussing. I also think that Heinrich makes it clear where he is differentiating his interpretation from traditional interpretations of Marx.

If you want something shorter than Postone that covers many of the debates within value-form theory there are a few overview essays in Re-reading Marx: New Perspectives after the Critical Edition such as 'Dialectic of the commodity and its exposition: the German debate in the 1970s - a personal survey' by Roberto Fineschi and 'Reconstuction or deconstruction? Methodological controversies about value and capital, and new insights from the critical edition by​ Michael Heinrich.' Although these cover the scholarly debates not the political ones.

As for the political consequence of value-form theory I guess I would put myself somewhere between Guy and D. Ware's points by saying that whilst Guy points that value-form theory entails a certain view of what capitalism is and how to destroy it the question of this will occurs is theorized from a number of theoretical perspectives from communization, to Open Marxism, to drawing on the Rose Luxembourg.