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Value for money? Putting Marx through the mill
Language Sciences 33 (2011) 689–694
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci
Value for money? Putting Marx through the mill Peter E Jones Communication Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 1WB, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Available online 4 May 2011 Keywords: Commodities Labour theory of value Integrationism Marxian economics
a b s t r a c t Marx’s analysis of commodities and the labour theory of value is examined in light of the integrationist principle that signification is a product of communication. An interrogation of Marx’s version of the labour theory of value seems to suggest that his treatment is compatible with integrationist principles. Marx’s position appears to be exceptionally well thought through and free from the uncritical banalities, reifications and mystifications that are all too common in economic theorising. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Integrationism and economics Roy Harris’s integrationist excursions into the realm of economics, as typically telling and insightful as they are, have so far been brief and sporadic, largely parenthetical in relation to other lines of argument (as, for example, in relation to the invariance of the sign in Harris, 1996, p. 91). But economic theory is certainly fair game for integrationism, as Harris notes in the same passage: ‘Economic behaviour is itself a case of communicational behaviour’ (1996, p. 91). It is from that note that I take my cue here. Interestingly, in one of these passing references, Harris hints at his own preferences in the domain of economic theory: ‘the integrationist’s claim that signification is a product of communication, rather than a value predetermined by any fixed code, is by no means a refusal to accept that traditions of sign-making exist (any more than claiming that economic value is a product of human labour involves denying the existence of traditional practices of production, exchange, payment, etc.). But it is a refusal to erect such traditions into theoretical systems which can be invoked to explain and delimit in advance what it is possible for a sign to signify’ (1996, p. 245; my emphasis). The wording implies that Harris is endorsing or, at least, entertaining the view that ‘economic value is a product of human labour’, a view commonly known as ‘the labour theory of value’. But Harris does not go on to elaborate on this remark. This, then, is my pretext for taking a closer look from an integrationist, or at least would-be integrationist, perspective at one classic statement of this economic doctrine, namely the famous (indeed, infamous) analysis of the commodity in Karl Marx’s Capital (Marx, 1973), one of the ‘books that shook the world’ (Wheen, 2006). My explorations will not be going very far, the apprehensive reader might be relieved to know, given the legendary difficulty of the text. But I thought it might be entertaining to see whether Marx’s theory of value is compatible to any degree with the principles of integrationist semiology. To that end, I will give an account of Marx’s initial approach to the problem which I will scrutinize, probe, poke and worry on the basis of the principles and categories of Harris (1996). Leaving to one side any consideration of the political context and implications of Marx’s work, let us then plunge into Capital and see what we find.
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2. The oddity of the commodity The opening sentence to Marx’s Capital is as follows: ‘The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘‘immense collection of commodities’’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity’ (1973, p. 125). Marx notes that a commodity can be seen from two different sides depending on the kinds of activity in which it is involved. The wedding ring has (or may have) a use in the wedding ceremony (its ‘use-value’ in Marx’s terms). But it may be bought and sold at a particular price (its ‘exchange-value’). Thus, objects, by virtue of the web of social connections spun around them, become the two-sided, or two-faced, entities we call commodities. Marx is not primarily interested in the use-value (i.e. usefulness) of commodities, merely noting that its being useful (to somebody) is essential to the commodity’s having exchange-value since things which nobody wants would not fetch a price at all. What Marx is interested in is how products come to have an exchange-value in the first place and how particular exchange-values are determined. He immediately discounts any possibility that the uses or usefulness of an object could account for its value, for how would you measure or compare usefulness? Is a chair as useful as a loaf of bread? Is a diamond more useful than a dictionary? In particular circumstances we may be able to answer such questions on the basis of pressing need: if I want to know the standard spelling of a word the dictionary will be useful and the diamond not at all. But no matter how pressing my spelling need, the diamond will still set me back a lot more than the dictionary. The scarcity or abundance of objects, on the other hand, will be a factor in what people will pay for them, as the ticket tout knows well. But that cannot explain differences in price between commodities when they are equally abundant. There may be no shortage of toilet paper or HD TV sets, but you will fork out 50p for one and £500 for the other. Of course, there is nothing stopping you letting go of something for peanuts if you are so inclined. If you own a TV retail business you could flog your new Panasonic 30’’ model for 50p a throw. But you would not be in the retail business for very long if you do. So an account of exchange-value cannot possibly be about individuals making choices of this kind but must be about the kind of practices that you have to engage in order to stay in business. Giving products away or, conversely, being uncompetitive on price, would not keep the firm afloat. The ‘objectivity of commodities as values’ (Marx, 1973, p. 138) is something that the retailer (and all the other players in the economic game) can neither alter nor ignore. In terms of communicational philosophy, then, Marx is not a ‘choice theorist’ (Harris, 1996, Chapter 3). Nor is he basing his account on the intentions of the people concerned (Harris, 1996, Chapter 4). In Harris’s terms, Marx has begun his analysis of the commodity ‘by investigating the restrictions imposed on participants by the integrational relations obtaining between one communication process and another’ (1996, p. 43). Although the concept of ‘exchange-value’ has been illustrated above by mentioning the price of commodities, Marx leaves money out of the equation to start with. His reason is simple: money is also a commodity and it comes into the picture only because it also has ‘exchange-value’. So ‘exchange-value’ needs to be explained first before we can understand how a commodity can come to play the role of money and what that role is. Before we can understand how it is that commodities change hands for money, we must first understand how commodities change hands without money: ‘Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind’ (1973, p. 126). In other words, ‘exchange-value’ does not ‘appear’ at all – there would be no such thing – if products were not exchanged. In self-sufficient family units who grow, make and consume all their own produce, for example, no exchange takes place, hence no exchange-value. But if they produce more than they can use, or have a need for products which they do not make themselves, they may exchange their surplus for the surplus products of other families or communities. Exchange-value will thereby ‘appear’ in the acts of equating a certain type and number of products from family A with a certain type and number of products from family B. Despite the discomfort we might feel at this talk of exchange-value ‘appearing’ (as if it was hanging about somewhere waiting for its entrance cue), we might just take him to mean that this ‘quantitative relation’ is the phenomenon of economic value in its most simple and basic form and, consequently, the starting point of his investigation. If we were to give his approach an integrationist spin we might say that exchange-value is a very particular communicational phenomenon. When A and B exchange their products they are jointly creating signs of a very specific kind. The nub of the process is in a circumstantially enacted equivalence between numbers of products of different kinds. Marx’s account continues: ‘Let us now take two commodities, for example corn and iron. Whatever their exchange relation may be, it can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron, for instance 1 quarter of corn = x cwt of iron’ (1973, p. 127).
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Marx explores this equivalence: ‘What does this equation signify? It signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things, in 1 quarter of corn and similarly in x cwt of iron. Both are therefore equal to a third thing, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to this third thing’ (1973, p, 127). This ‘third thing’ Marx will call ‘value’ and will, on that basis, refer to commodities as ‘values’ (1973, p. 126). His argument is that exchange-value (the relation of equivalence between two commodities as above) ‘cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the ‘‘form of appearance’’, of a content distinguishable from it’ (1973, p. 127), that content being ‘value’. 3. Marx on the ropes? Now at this point it looks as if we may have something to get our integrationist teeth into. Does Marx’s case even faintly hold up in integrationist terms? In particular, from the pragmatic ‘equating’ of corn and iron in the act of exchange does it necessarily follow that ‘a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things’? At first glance this sounds like an unwarranted metaphysical assertion. Marx seems to have mistaken the contextualized sign-making of the act of exchange (in which individuals, in the furtherance of their own goals, ‘equate’ their different products) for a situation in which some ‘element’ already present within these products ‘expresses itself’ by means of their act of exchange. Marx appears to be guilty of a crude reification – even a ‘fetishism’ – by inventing some substance, some mysterious ‘third’ element allegedly intrinsic to the product itself that determines the proportion in which it is exchanged for other products. He seems to be explaining human behaviour on the basis of the economic properties of things rather than explaining these properties on the basis of human behaviour. Furthermore, has not the example of family A above already demonstrated that products do not actually contain exchange-value as an intrinsic property at all since they simply do not have exchange-value until they are exchanged. And if they have no exchange-value they cannot have any ‘value’ either; there is simply no ‘common element’ floating round in the first place. So what ‘common element’ could Marx possibly have in mind? Things take an even more mysterious turn when he announces: ‘This common element cannot be a geometrical, physical, chemical or other natural property of commodities’ (1973, p. 127). This extraordinary claim might look like a further step in the process of mystification which Marx is forced to take as a result of his initial reification: first we have a mythical ‘element’ which expresses itself as exchange-value and then it turns out that actually we do not have an element so much as a will ‘o the wisp. Our integrationist probing seems to have caught Marx in a clear case of attempted, but unsuccessful, sleight of hand. 4. Exchange-value as integration How could we re-cast Marx’s account in integrationist terms? Perhaps we could argue that what, following Marx, we have been referring to as ‘the exchange-value’ of a commodity is not the sign of, and certainly not the ‘appearance’ of or ‘expression’ of, an ‘element’ of some kind which the commodity contains in advance of the exchange. Rather, exchange-value is a communicational construct, a dimension merely of the human activity of exchanging commodities. More specifically, it is an integrational ‘value’, i.e. a semiological means by which the activities of the separate parties to the exchange are integrated in practice. Since it is a function of the exchange, it is inseparable from the act of exchange itself and cannot be an independent substance or ‘content’. The attribution of an exchange-value (a value in exchange) to their products by the parties concerned is their way (perhaps the only way open to them) of ending up with the products they need on the basis of the products they have. Accordingly, it makes no sense whatever to think of the signs by which the behaviours of the parties are integrated in the exchange as signs of something existing independently of the exchange: rather, in the act of exchange the corn is made into a ‘sign’ of the iron, and, simultaneously, the iron into a ‘sign’ of the corn. The sceptical integrationist may go on to point out that there many different kinds of ‘equivalence’ which may be bestowed on things as a function of their role in integrating human activities. Some of these types of equivalence may be viewed as substitutions of one kind or another. As Harris (1996, p. 125) argues, casino chips may serve as equivalents for, or substitutes for, money while on casino premises. Or, in some cases a diagram of a machine may substitute for the real machine (1996, p. 125). Or in some cases the written word sheep may substitute for the spoken word or vice versa. In all cases, the equivalence (or substitution-relation) concerned is not the reflection or expression of some intrinsic or inherent sameness, identity or ‘common element’ in the phenomena being equated but a semiological construct created via the contextualized integration of relevant activities. Similarly, then, Marx’s equation signifies not the presence of an identical element, some ‘third thing’, but the simple fact that, under specific circumstances created and defined by particular parameters of human action, one thing may be substitutable for another. The equivalence concerned in this case is a function of a particular activity context. Marx’s mistake,
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on this interpretation, is to take the contextualized integrational equivalence for the appearance of a substance or element already in place before the integrating is achieved. Marx’s horse has fallen at the first hurdle. Or has it? Let’s look a little further. 5. Weighty measures: Marx bounces back? Marx might counter the objection to his analysis by pointing out that the objector has set out an interesting case but one which has not taken us very far. In particular, the integrationist re-formulation of the phenomenon of exchange-value has not told us much about exactly what activities are being integrated through the signs created in the act of exchange. Nor have we been told why these activities, whatever they are, require, in order that the exchange might take place at all, the creation of signs which take precisely this form, namely the form of a quantitative equivalence between use-values of any type you like. Finally, and most importantly, the objector has not given any leads on the very thing that Marx is attempting to explain, namely the proportions in which different commodities are exchanged for one another. Furthermore, Marx may argue that the objector, in taking exchange-value as a semiological ‘value’ created in the act of exchange itself rather than as the appearance of a property of the products exchanged, has overlooked the fact that ‘the properties of a thing do not arise from its relations to other things, they are, on the contrary, merely activated by such relations’ (1973, p. 149). In illustration of his point Marx offers an analogy: ‘A sugar-loaf, because it is a body, is heavy and therefore possesses weight; but we can neither take a look at this weight nor touch it’ (1973, p. 148). Suppose, by use of a set of weighing scales, we establish that a certain quantity of iron weighs the same as the sugar-loaf: ‘When we throw both of them into the scales, we see in reality that considered as weight they are the same, and therefore that, taken in the appropriate proportions, they have the same weight’ (1973, p. 149). Thus on the one hand we have our completely different objects – the sugar-loaf and the lump of iron. But on the other hand, ‘considered as weight, they are the same: there is an ‘identical magnitude’ in respect of weight in each. Thus, we have found our ‘common element’, our ‘third thing’, which is different from both the sugar-loaf and the iron, and this third thing is weight. Of course, we cannot isolate weight from the objects which have it; we cannot put the sugar-loaf’s sugar-loafiness on one side and examine its weight separately. On the other hand, when we make these two objects interact with one another via the mechanism of the weighing scales, we see that the sugar-loaf and the iron recognize one another, so to speak, as equals; they address one another, as it were, in the language of weight in complete abstraction from all those properties that otherwise differentiate them. Furthermore, although we may agree that it is people (and not weighing scales) who are doing the weighing and measuring here (a nod to Harris, 2009, Chapter 14), we cannot get away from the fact that measuring the weight of objects presupposes that objects have certain natural affinities and properties independently of and prior to our interventions which we exploit in order to further our particular ends. In other words, while we are the creators of weights and measures we are not the creators of weight per se, or, to be more exact, of the natural property or relation on which our weighing practices depend. Thus, we have identified a property of objects which ‘expresses itself’ in our actions of weighing and measuring them. In Marx’s Hegelian terminology, weight is the ‘form of appearance’ of this property. So if we are prepared to entertain the existence of a ‘common element’ (in this case the property underlying weight) as a precondition of our contextualized communicative acts of measuring weight (by means of scales and standards of weights and measures) without accusations of reification and mystification, then why should we not entertain the possibility that a ‘common element’ underlies the contextualized communicative acts of equating commodities in exchange? Just as weight is not created in the act of weighing, nor is value created in the act of exchange, Marx might say. And just as this common element we call ‘weight’ does not show itself separately unless and until one weighty object is put into a relation with another such object, then value remains similarly invisible unless and until the object containing it is put into relation with other value-containing objects via exchange. At this point, as Marx puts it, ‘the analogy ceases’ (1973, p. 149). Weight is a ‘natural property common to both bodies’, he argues, while value is ‘a supra-natural property’, ‘something purely social’ (1973, p. 149). But the objector is not convinced. Marx’s argument may have some force for weight but he has entirely failed to justify the relevance of the analogy to his hypothetical ‘supra-natural’ element, value. Let us grant that weight is (or expresses) a natural property of the object, a property independent of human observation or interference. But that cannot apply to the putative value ‘element’ which, as ‘something purely social’, is clearly entirely dependent on human action. Marx’s point about properties being ‘activated’ rather than created may, again, have some truth to it for natural processes but is way off when it comes to semiological ones. Indeed, to go back to our example of family A, unless a very particular ‘communicational infrastructure’ (Harris, 1996, p. 24) is in place, products are not commodities at all and therefore have no exchangevalue (hence no value). So the analogy does not lead us anywhere. But Marx’s position might be defended by extending his analogy still further. After all, we should acknowledge the fact that it is possible to create circumstances in which heavy objects are weightless. During space flight or in conditions of rapid downward acceleration, objects have no weight. But we would not want to conclude from this that the property underlying
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weight was a creation of ours in particular circumstances. We might rather be inclined to conclude that a property intrinsic to objects (i.e. ‘mass’) ‘appears’ or ‘expresses itself’ in different ways depending on the context. That the products made by family A have no exchange-value (no value) within the family does not mean, therefore, that these products do not have a property which, under different circumstances, may ‘appear’ as exchange-value. From this point of view, the claim that exchange-value is a semiotic value created in and by the act of exchange itself is therefore OK provided that we understand it to mean what we mean by saying that the weight of an object is a semiological value created in and through the act of weighing: just as objects need to have some property (mass) as a precondition of our weighing them, then commodities need to have some property (value) as a precondition of us exchanging them in definite proportions. In weighing objects, as in exchanging them on the market, we are not ‘creating’ this property but ‘activating’ it. 6. The ‘third thing’? Let’s say that our objector remains sceptical but is unable to see any point in continuing the argument on this basis. So let’s just get down to brass tacks: what is this ‘common element’ that Marx claims is making itself manifest in the act of exchange? We’ve already established that as use-values ‘commodities differ above all in quality, while as exchange-values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-value’ (1973, p. 128). From this, Marx moves to his conclusion: ‘If then we disregard the use-value of commodities, only one property remains, that of being products of labour’ (1973, p. 128). Marx argues that the value of the commodity, a property which is not created but ‘activated’ in the act of exchange, depends upon its being the product of a certain amount of expenditure of human effort. Now, obviously, all goods produced in any form of community at any point in history require people to put time and effort in. But only under certain very special social conditions do the goods produced become commodities, which means that it is only under these conditions that the time and effort put in by the producers turns into value: ‘Objects of utility become commodities only because they are the products of the labour of private individuals who work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact until they exchange the products of their labour, the specific social characteristics of their private labours appear only within this exchange. In other words, the labour of the private individual manifests itself as an element of the total labour of society only through the relations which the act of exchange establishes between the products, and, through their mediation, between the producers’ (1973, p. 166). On that basis, Marx is able to take on board the integrationist’s insistence on the necessary role of the act of exchange in the creation of exchange-value as a semiological construct by seeing exchange-value as the pragmatically unavoidable means via which private labours (the time and effort that individual producers are putting into their products, i.e. the ‘common element’) are integrated – ‘reconciled’ you might say – as they pass into the wider sphere of society as a whole: ‘It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire a socially uniform objectivity as values, which is distinct from their sensuously varied objectivity as articles of utility’ (1973, p. 166). On this basis it is easy to understand the quantitative relations between qualitatively different products: ‘How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the ‘‘value-forming substance’’, the labour contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc’ (1973, p. 129). But Marx gives this point a further twist. It would be quite wrong, he argues, to think that you could tot up the days, hours and minutes that you spent making some article and expect to get back the equivalent of your labour time in a corresponding number of somebody else’s products: ‘if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended to produce it, it would be the more valuable the more unskilful and lazy the worker who produced it, because he would need more time to complete the article’ (1973, p. 129). Marx’s attack on this naive version of a ‘labour theory of value’, and on the ‘shallow utopianism of the idea of ‘‘labourmoney’’ in a society founded on the production of commodities’ (1973, p. 188, fn) actually makes interesting reading from an integrationist viewpoint. Marx shows that the actual time it takes to produce a commodity is not the ‘value-forming substance’. In effect, to think that x hours of actual labour should automatically translate into y amount of value assumes the kind of ‘invariance’ relation between a sign and what it signifies that is characteristic of segregationist thinking (Harris, 1996, Chapter 7). And secondly, such a naive view overlooks the specific ‘integrational relations between communication processes’ (Harris, 1996, p. 43) which are involved in the production of commodities. More specifically, the ‘relevant general priorities of presupposition’ (Harris, 1996, p. 43) between communication processes are not understood. For what is not grasped is that, in exchanging their products on the market, the independent producers are competing against one another for a share of the total social product. If it takes me two days to make a pair of shoes then I will want more goods in exchange
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for my time than will the person who could make a pair of equal quality in one day. So the one-day shoemaker will naturally find it easier to exchange his or her product on the market than I will and if I want to stay in business at all I will either have to accept the same payment as the one-day merchant or find some way of speeding up production. The ‘value-forming substance’, then, is not labour time as such, as something that can be determined independently of the acts of exchange, but ‘socially necessary labour time’ (1973, p. 129), that is ‘the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society’ (1973, p. 129). Value, therefore, is not labour time as could be physically observed and measured, but ‘a supra-natural property’, ‘something purely social’. 7. Integrating Marx: value as macrosocial conformity? Translating Marx’s account of value into more palatable integrationist terms, we could perhaps say that it is a highly specific semiological function created through very particular ‘macrosocial practices’ (Harris, 1996, p. 29). The act of exchange of commodities, indeed the very existence of products of labour as commodities, presupposes a very particular ‘communicational infrastructure’ (Harris, 1996, p. 24) whose ‘existence predetermines the range of communicational possibilities’ which, in turn, ‘structures our communication universe’ (1996, p. 24). But the individuals caught up in this infrastructure, even though they create it and maintain it, may not be aware of what it is that they have created or how it works. As Harris argues, there are ‘macrosocial practices, or features of such practices, of which there is no general awareness at all’ (1996, p. 31). Exchange-value, of course, is clearly not such a feature, since people are very much aware of what items cost, although they have little influence over it. Value, however, is quite a different matter. Here, arguably, we have a case of a macrosocial phenomenon ‘that may be brought about by the voluntary behaviour of individuals, even though those individuals are quite unaware of the phenomenon or their contribution to it’ (1996, p. 30). In the case of value, then, we have a case of ‘macrosocial conformity (with the proviso that this is not understood in the sense of conscious alignment)’ (1996, p. 30). This is a good way, I think, to understand what Marx means by commodities’ ‘objectivity as values’ (1973, p. 166). It is the macrosocial practices of independent (private) production of goods followed by general (social) exchange of goods on the market that induces the macrosocial conformity Marx calls ‘socially necessary labour time’. In this way, through this massive macrosocial cyclotron, the expenditure of labour power on the part of particular individuals becomes transformed, transmogrified into an abstract property of the products they have produced. But this property is not created in the act of exchange. On the contrary, the proportions in which commodities exchange on the market can only be explained by appeal to this property. On the other hand, the value property does not exist independently of exchange since it is only in these many times repeated communicational acts of exchange that the time and effort that private individuals have put in is weighed on the scale of social necessity and thereby attains a socially recognizable and socially measurable form. 8. Balance sheet My interrogation of Marx’s version of the labour theory of value seems to suggest that his treatment is compatible with integrationist principles. But I am sure that other, and more astute, integrationists, or those less sympathetic to Marx’s approach, may disagree and find problems in his account which have passed me by. I can only hope that they continue the debate and take up from where I have left off. Obviously I have only scratched the surface of Marx’s economic analysis here. But Marx’s account of value is crucial to the whole of his further dissection of capitalist production and directly underlies his treatment of money, price, capital and, most crucially of all, surplus value. If we were to detect a problem with his explanation of value, then the theoretical edifice erected on it would surely fall. On the other hand, the fact that Marx’s position has, arguably, held up well against my critical probing may mean that it is exceptionally well thought through and free from the uncritical banalities, reifications and mystifications that are all too common in economic theorising. In that case, Marx would be an interesting and perhaps unexpected example not of an integrationist avant la lettre, surely, but of a thinker whose theoretical creations may offer a starting point, and open up valuable perspectives, for a future integrationist critique of economics. References Harris, R., 1996. Signs, Language and Communication. Routledge, London. Harris, R., 2009. After Epistemology. Bright Pen, Gamlingay. Marx, K., 1973. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1. Penguin. Wheen, F., 2006. Marx’s Das Kapital. A Biography. Atlantic Books, London.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Language Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci
Value for money? Putting Marx through the mill Peter E Jones Communication Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 1WB, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Available online 4 May 2011 Keywords: Commodities Labour theory of value Integrationism Marxian economics
a b s t r a c t Marx’s analysis of commodities and the labour theory of value is examined in light of the integrationist principle that signification is a product of communication. An interrogation of Marx’s version of the labour theory of value seems to suggest that his treatment is compatible with integrationist principles. Marx’s position appears to be exceptionally well thought through and free from the uncritical banalities, reifications and mystifications that are all too common in economic theorising. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Integrationism and economics Roy Harris’s integrationist excursions into the realm of economics, as typically telling and insightful as they are, have so far been brief and sporadic, largely parenthetical in relation to other lines of argument (as, for example, in relation to the invariance of the sign in Harris, 1996, p. 91). But economic theory is certainly fair game for integrationism, as Harris notes in the same passage: ‘Economic behaviour is itself a case of communicational behaviour’ (1996, p. 91). It is from that note that I take my cue here. Interestingly, in one of these passing references, Harris hints at his own preferences in the domain of economic theory: ‘the integrationist’s claim that signification is a product of communication, rather than a value predetermined by any fixed code, is by no means a refusal to accept that traditions of sign-making exist (any more than claiming that economic value is a product of human labour involves denying the existence of traditional practices of production, exchange, payment, etc.). But it is a refusal to erect such traditions into theoretical systems which can be invoked to explain and delimit in advance what it is possible for a sign to signify’ (1996, p. 245; my emphasis). The wording implies that Harris is endorsing or, at least, entertaining the view that ‘economic value is a product of human labour’, a view commonly known as ‘the labour theory of value’. But Harris does not go on to elaborate on this remark. This, then, is my pretext for taking a closer look from an integrationist, or at least would-be integrationist, perspective at one classic statement of this economic doctrine, namely the famous (indeed, infamous) analysis of the commodity in Karl Marx’s Capital (Marx, 1973), one of the ‘books that shook the world’ (Wheen, 2006). My explorations will not be going very far, the apprehensive reader might be relieved to know, given the legendary difficulty of the text. But I thought it might be entertaining to see whether Marx’s theory of value is compatible to any degree with the principles of integrationist semiology. To that end, I will give an account of Marx’s initial approach to the problem which I will scrutinize, probe, poke and worry on the basis of the principles and categories of Harris (1996). Leaving to one side any consideration of the political context and implications of Marx’s work, let us then plunge into Capital and see what we find.
E-mail address: [email protected] 0388-0001/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2011.04.016
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2. The oddity of the commodity The opening sentence to Marx’s Capital is as follows: ‘The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘‘immense collection of commodities’’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity’ (1973, p. 125). Marx notes that a commodity can be seen from two different sides depending on the kinds of activity in which it is involved. The wedding ring has (or may have) a use in the wedding ceremony (its ‘use-value’ in Marx’s terms). But it may be bought and sold at a particular price (its ‘exchange-value’). Thus, objects, by virtue of the web of social connections spun around them, become the two-sided, or two-faced, entities we call commodities. Marx is not primarily interested in the use-value (i.e. usefulness) of commodities, merely noting that its being useful (to somebody) is essential to the commodity’s having exchange-value since things which nobody wants would not fetch a price at all. What Marx is interested in is how products come to have an exchange-value in the first place and how particular exchange-values are determined. He immediately discounts any possibility that the uses or usefulness of an object could account for its value, for how would you measure or compare usefulness? Is a chair as useful as a loaf of bread? Is a diamond more useful than a dictionary? In particular circumstances we may be able to answer such questions on the basis of pressing need: if I want to know the standard spelling of a word the dictionary will be useful and the diamond not at all. But no matter how pressing my spelling need, the diamond will still set me back a lot more than the dictionary. The scarcity or abundance of objects, on the other hand, will be a factor in what people will pay for them, as the ticket tout knows well. But that cannot explain differences in price between commodities when they are equally abundant. There may be no shortage of toilet paper or HD TV sets, but you will fork out 50p for one and £500 for the other. Of course, there is nothing stopping you letting go of something for peanuts if you are so inclined. If you own a TV retail business you could flog your new Panasonic 30’’ model for 50p a throw. But you would not be in the retail business for very long if you do. So an account of exchange-value cannot possibly be about individuals making choices of this kind but must be about the kind of practices that you have to engage in order to stay in business. Giving products away or, conversely, being uncompetitive on price, would not keep the firm afloat. The ‘objectivity of commodities as values’ (Marx, 1973, p. 138) is something that the retailer (and all the other players in the economic game) can neither alter nor ignore. In terms of communicational philosophy, then, Marx is not a ‘choice theorist’ (Harris, 1996, Chapter 3). Nor is he basing his account on the intentions of the people concerned (Harris, 1996, Chapter 4). In Harris’s terms, Marx has begun his analysis of the commodity ‘by investigating the restrictions imposed on participants by the integrational relations obtaining between one communication process and another’ (1996, p. 43). Although the concept of ‘exchange-value’ has been illustrated above by mentioning the price of commodities, Marx leaves money out of the equation to start with. His reason is simple: money is also a commodity and it comes into the picture only because it also has ‘exchange-value’. So ‘exchange-value’ needs to be explained first before we can understand how a commodity can come to play the role of money and what that role is. Before we can understand how it is that commodities change hands for money, we must first understand how commodities change hands without money: ‘Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind’ (1973, p. 126). In other words, ‘exchange-value’ does not ‘appear’ at all – there would be no such thing – if products were not exchanged. In self-sufficient family units who grow, make and consume all their own produce, for example, no exchange takes place, hence no exchange-value. But if they produce more than they can use, or have a need for products which they do not make themselves, they may exchange their surplus for the surplus products of other families or communities. Exchange-value will thereby ‘appear’ in the acts of equating a certain type and number of products from family A with a certain type and number of products from family B. Despite the discomfort we might feel at this talk of exchange-value ‘appearing’ (as if it was hanging about somewhere waiting for its entrance cue), we might just take him to mean that this ‘quantitative relation’ is the phenomenon of economic value in its most simple and basic form and, consequently, the starting point of his investigation. If we were to give his approach an integrationist spin we might say that exchange-value is a very particular communicational phenomenon. When A and B exchange their products they are jointly creating signs of a very specific kind. The nub of the process is in a circumstantially enacted equivalence between numbers of products of different kinds. Marx’s account continues: ‘Let us now take two commodities, for example corn and iron. Whatever their exchange relation may be, it can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron, for instance 1 quarter of corn = x cwt of iron’ (1973, p. 127).
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Marx explores this equivalence: ‘What does this equation signify? It signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things, in 1 quarter of corn and similarly in x cwt of iron. Both are therefore equal to a third thing, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to this third thing’ (1973, p, 127). This ‘third thing’ Marx will call ‘value’ and will, on that basis, refer to commodities as ‘values’ (1973, p. 126). His argument is that exchange-value (the relation of equivalence between two commodities as above) ‘cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the ‘‘form of appearance’’, of a content distinguishable from it’ (1973, p. 127), that content being ‘value’. 3. Marx on the ropes? Now at this point it looks as if we may have something to get our integrationist teeth into. Does Marx’s case even faintly hold up in integrationist terms? In particular, from the pragmatic ‘equating’ of corn and iron in the act of exchange does it necessarily follow that ‘a common element of identical magnitude exists in two different things’? At first glance this sounds like an unwarranted metaphysical assertion. Marx seems to have mistaken the contextualized sign-making of the act of exchange (in which individuals, in the furtherance of their own goals, ‘equate’ their different products) for a situation in which some ‘element’ already present within these products ‘expresses itself’ by means of their act of exchange. Marx appears to be guilty of a crude reification – even a ‘fetishism’ – by inventing some substance, some mysterious ‘third’ element allegedly intrinsic to the product itself that determines the proportion in which it is exchanged for other products. He seems to be explaining human behaviour on the basis of the economic properties of things rather than explaining these properties on the basis of human behaviour. Furthermore, has not the example of family A above already demonstrated that products do not actually contain exchange-value as an intrinsic property at all since they simply do not have exchange-value until they are exchanged. And if they have no exchange-value they cannot have any ‘value’ either; there is simply no ‘common element’ floating round in the first place. So what ‘common element’ could Marx possibly have in mind? Things take an even more mysterious turn when he announces: ‘This common element cannot be a geometrical, physical, chemical or other natural property of commodities’ (1973, p. 127). This extraordinary claim might look like a further step in the process of mystification which Marx is forced to take as a result of his initial reification: first we have a mythical ‘element’ which expresses itself as exchange-value and then it turns out that actually we do not have an element so much as a will ‘o the wisp. Our integrationist probing seems to have caught Marx in a clear case of attempted, but unsuccessful, sleight of hand. 4. Exchange-value as integration How could we re-cast Marx’s account in integrationist terms? Perhaps we could argue that what, following Marx, we have been referring to as ‘the exchange-value’ of a commodity is not the sign of, and certainly not the ‘appearance’ of or ‘expression’ of, an ‘element’ of some kind which the commodity contains in advance of the exchange. Rather, exchange-value is a communicational construct, a dimension merely of the human activity of exchanging commodities. More specifically, it is an integrational ‘value’, i.e. a semiological means by which the activities of the separate parties to the exchange are integrated in practice. Since it is a function of the exchange, it is inseparable from the act of exchange itself and cannot be an independent substance or ‘content’. The attribution of an exchange-value (a value in exchange) to their products by the parties concerned is their way (perhaps the only way open to them) of ending up with the products they need on the basis of the products they have. Accordingly, it makes no sense whatever to think of the signs by which the behaviours of the parties are integrated in the exchange as signs of something existing independently of the exchange: rather, in the act of exchange the corn is made into a ‘sign’ of the iron, and, simultaneously, the iron into a ‘sign’ of the corn. The sceptical integrationist may go on to point out that there many different kinds of ‘equivalence’ which may be bestowed on things as a function of their role in integrating human activities. Some of these types of equivalence may be viewed as substitutions of one kind or another. As Harris (1996, p. 125) argues, casino chips may serve as equivalents for, or substitutes for, money while on casino premises. Or, in some cases a diagram of a machine may substitute for the real machine (1996, p. 125). Or in some cases the written word sheep may substitute for the spoken word or vice versa. In all cases, the equivalence (or substitution-relation) concerned is not the reflection or expression of some intrinsic or inherent sameness, identity or ‘common element’ in the phenomena being equated but a semiological construct created via the contextualized integration of relevant activities. Similarly, then, Marx’s equation signifies not the presence of an identical element, some ‘third thing’, but the simple fact that, under specific circumstances created and defined by particular parameters of human action, one thing may be substitutable for another. The equivalence concerned in this case is a function of a particular activity context. Marx’s mistake,
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on this interpretation, is to take the contextualized integrational equivalence for the appearance of a substance or element already in place before the integrating is achieved. Marx’s horse has fallen at the first hurdle. Or has it? Let’s look a little further. 5. Weighty measures: Marx bounces back? Marx might counter the objection to his analysis by pointing out that the objector has set out an interesting case but one which has not taken us very far. In particular, the integrationist re-formulation of the phenomenon of exchange-value has not told us much about exactly what activities are being integrated through the signs created in the act of exchange. Nor have we been told why these activities, whatever they are, require, in order that the exchange might take place at all, the creation of signs which take precisely this form, namely the form of a quantitative equivalence between use-values of any type you like. Finally, and most importantly, the objector has not given any leads on the very thing that Marx is attempting to explain, namely the proportions in which different commodities are exchanged for one another. Furthermore, Marx may argue that the objector, in taking exchange-value as a semiological ‘value’ created in the act of exchange itself rather than as the appearance of a property of the products exchanged, has overlooked the fact that ‘the properties of a thing do not arise from its relations to other things, they are, on the contrary, merely activated by such relations’ (1973, p. 149). In illustration of his point Marx offers an analogy: ‘A sugar-loaf, because it is a body, is heavy and therefore possesses weight; but we can neither take a look at this weight nor touch it’ (1973, p. 148). Suppose, by use of a set of weighing scales, we establish that a certain quantity of iron weighs the same as the sugar-loaf: ‘When we throw both of them into the scales, we see in reality that considered as weight they are the same, and therefore that, taken in the appropriate proportions, they have the same weight’ (1973, p. 149). Thus on the one hand we have our completely different objects – the sugar-loaf and the lump of iron. But on the other hand, ‘considered as weight, they are the same: there is an ‘identical magnitude’ in respect of weight in each. Thus, we have found our ‘common element’, our ‘third thing’, which is different from both the sugar-loaf and the iron, and this third thing is weight. Of course, we cannot isolate weight from the objects which have it; we cannot put the sugar-loaf’s sugar-loafiness on one side and examine its weight separately. On the other hand, when we make these two objects interact with one another via the mechanism of the weighing scales, we see that the sugar-loaf and the iron recognize one another, so to speak, as equals; they address one another, as it were, in the language of weight in complete abstraction from all those properties that otherwise differentiate them. Furthermore, although we may agree that it is people (and not weighing scales) who are doing the weighing and measuring here (a nod to Harris, 2009, Chapter 14), we cannot get away from the fact that measuring the weight of objects presupposes that objects have certain natural affinities and properties independently of and prior to our interventions which we exploit in order to further our particular ends. In other words, while we are the creators of weights and measures we are not the creators of weight per se, or, to be more exact, of the natural property or relation on which our weighing practices depend. Thus, we have identified a property of objects which ‘expresses itself’ in our actions of weighing and measuring them. In Marx’s Hegelian terminology, weight is the ‘form of appearance’ of this property. So if we are prepared to entertain the existence of a ‘common element’ (in this case the property underlying weight) as a precondition of our contextualized communicative acts of measuring weight (by means of scales and standards of weights and measures) without accusations of reification and mystification, then why should we not entertain the possibility that a ‘common element’ underlies the contextualized communicative acts of equating commodities in exchange? Just as weight is not created in the act of weighing, nor is value created in the act of exchange, Marx might say. And just as this common element we call ‘weight’ does not show itself separately unless and until one weighty object is put into a relation with another such object, then value remains similarly invisible unless and until the object containing it is put into relation with other value-containing objects via exchange. At this point, as Marx puts it, ‘the analogy ceases’ (1973, p. 149). Weight is a ‘natural property common to both bodies’, he argues, while value is ‘a supra-natural property’, ‘something purely social’ (1973, p. 149). But the objector is not convinced. Marx’s argument may have some force for weight but he has entirely failed to justify the relevance of the analogy to his hypothetical ‘supra-natural’ element, value. Let us grant that weight is (or expresses) a natural property of the object, a property independent of human observation or interference. But that cannot apply to the putative value ‘element’ which, as ‘something purely social’, is clearly entirely dependent on human action. Marx’s point about properties being ‘activated’ rather than created may, again, have some truth to it for natural processes but is way off when it comes to semiological ones. Indeed, to go back to our example of family A, unless a very particular ‘communicational infrastructure’ (Harris, 1996, p. 24) is in place, products are not commodities at all and therefore have no exchangevalue (hence no value). So the analogy does not lead us anywhere. But Marx’s position might be defended by extending his analogy still further. After all, we should acknowledge the fact that it is possible to create circumstances in which heavy objects are weightless. During space flight or in conditions of rapid downward acceleration, objects have no weight. But we would not want to conclude from this that the property underlying
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weight was a creation of ours in particular circumstances. We might rather be inclined to conclude that a property intrinsic to objects (i.e. ‘mass’) ‘appears’ or ‘expresses itself’ in different ways depending on the context. That the products made by family A have no exchange-value (no value) within the family does not mean, therefore, that these products do not have a property which, under different circumstances, may ‘appear’ as exchange-value. From this point of view, the claim that exchange-value is a semiotic value created in and by the act of exchange itself is therefore OK provided that we understand it to mean what we mean by saying that the weight of an object is a semiological value created in and through the act of weighing: just as objects need to have some property (mass) as a precondition of our weighing them, then commodities need to have some property (value) as a precondition of us exchanging them in definite proportions. In weighing objects, as in exchanging them on the market, we are not ‘creating’ this property but ‘activating’ it. 6. The ‘third thing’? Let’s say that our objector remains sceptical but is unable to see any point in continuing the argument on this basis. So let’s just get down to brass tacks: what is this ‘common element’ that Marx claims is making itself manifest in the act of exchange? We’ve already established that as use-values ‘commodities differ above all in quality, while as exchange-values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-value’ (1973, p. 128). From this, Marx moves to his conclusion: ‘If then we disregard the use-value of commodities, only one property remains, that of being products of labour’ (1973, p. 128). Marx argues that the value of the commodity, a property which is not created but ‘activated’ in the act of exchange, depends upon its being the product of a certain amount of expenditure of human effort. Now, obviously, all goods produced in any form of community at any point in history require people to put time and effort in. But only under certain very special social conditions do the goods produced become commodities, which means that it is only under these conditions that the time and effort put in by the producers turns into value: ‘Objects of utility become commodities only because they are the products of the labour of private individuals who work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact until they exchange the products of their labour, the specific social characteristics of their private labours appear only within this exchange. In other words, the labour of the private individual manifests itself as an element of the total labour of society only through the relations which the act of exchange establishes between the products, and, through their mediation, between the producers’ (1973, p. 166). On that basis, Marx is able to take on board the integrationist’s insistence on the necessary role of the act of exchange in the creation of exchange-value as a semiological construct by seeing exchange-value as the pragmatically unavoidable means via which private labours (the time and effort that individual producers are putting into their products, i.e. the ‘common element’) are integrated – ‘reconciled’ you might say – as they pass into the wider sphere of society as a whole: ‘It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire a socially uniform objectivity as values, which is distinct from their sensuously varied objectivity as articles of utility’ (1973, p. 166). On this basis it is easy to understand the quantitative relations between qualitatively different products: ‘How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the ‘‘value-forming substance’’, the labour contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc’ (1973, p. 129). But Marx gives this point a further twist. It would be quite wrong, he argues, to think that you could tot up the days, hours and minutes that you spent making some article and expect to get back the equivalent of your labour time in a corresponding number of somebody else’s products: ‘if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended to produce it, it would be the more valuable the more unskilful and lazy the worker who produced it, because he would need more time to complete the article’ (1973, p. 129). Marx’s attack on this naive version of a ‘labour theory of value’, and on the ‘shallow utopianism of the idea of ‘‘labourmoney’’ in a society founded on the production of commodities’ (1973, p. 188, fn) actually makes interesting reading from an integrationist viewpoint. Marx shows that the actual time it takes to produce a commodity is not the ‘value-forming substance’. In effect, to think that x hours of actual labour should automatically translate into y amount of value assumes the kind of ‘invariance’ relation between a sign and what it signifies that is characteristic of segregationist thinking (Harris, 1996, Chapter 7). And secondly, such a naive view overlooks the specific ‘integrational relations between communication processes’ (Harris, 1996, p. 43) which are involved in the production of commodities. More specifically, the ‘relevant general priorities of presupposition’ (Harris, 1996, p. 43) between communication processes are not understood. For what is not grasped is that, in exchanging their products on the market, the independent producers are competing against one another for a share of the total social product. If it takes me two days to make a pair of shoes then I will want more goods in exchange
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for my time than will the person who could make a pair of equal quality in one day. So the one-day shoemaker will naturally find it easier to exchange his or her product on the market than I will and if I want to stay in business at all I will either have to accept the same payment as the one-day merchant or find some way of speeding up production. The ‘value-forming substance’, then, is not labour time as such, as something that can be determined independently of the acts of exchange, but ‘socially necessary labour time’ (1973, p. 129), that is ‘the labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society’ (1973, p. 129). Value, therefore, is not labour time as could be physically observed and measured, but ‘a supra-natural property’, ‘something purely social’. 7. Integrating Marx: value as macrosocial conformity? Translating Marx’s account of value into more palatable integrationist terms, we could perhaps say that it is a highly specific semiological function created through very particular ‘macrosocial practices’ (Harris, 1996, p. 29). The act of exchange of commodities, indeed the very existence of products of labour as commodities, presupposes a very particular ‘communicational infrastructure’ (Harris, 1996, p. 24) whose ‘existence predetermines the range of communicational possibilities’ which, in turn, ‘structures our communication universe’ (1996, p. 24). But the individuals caught up in this infrastructure, even though they create it and maintain it, may not be aware of what it is that they have created or how it works. As Harris argues, there are ‘macrosocial practices, or features of such practices, of which there is no general awareness at all’ (1996, p. 31). Exchange-value, of course, is clearly not such a feature, since people are very much aware of what items cost, although they have little influence over it. Value, however, is quite a different matter. Here, arguably, we have a case of a macrosocial phenomenon ‘that may be brought about by the voluntary behaviour of individuals, even though those individuals are quite unaware of the phenomenon or their contribution to it’ (1996, p. 30). In the case of value, then, we have a case of ‘macrosocial conformity (with the proviso that this is not understood in the sense of conscious alignment)’ (1996, p. 30). This is a good way, I think, to understand what Marx means by commodities’ ‘objectivity as values’ (1973, p. 166). It is the macrosocial practices of independent (private) production of goods followed by general (social) exchange of goods on the market that induces the macrosocial conformity Marx calls ‘socially necessary labour time’. In this way, through this massive macrosocial cyclotron, the expenditure of labour power on the part of particular individuals becomes transformed, transmogrified into an abstract property of the products they have produced. But this property is not created in the act of exchange. On the contrary, the proportions in which commodities exchange on the market can only be explained by appeal to this property. On the other hand, the value property does not exist independently of exchange since it is only in these many times repeated communicational acts of exchange that the time and effort that private individuals have put in is weighed on the scale of social necessity and thereby attains a socially recognizable and socially measurable form. 8. Balance sheet My interrogation of Marx’s version of the labour theory of value seems to suggest that his treatment is compatible with integrationist principles. But I am sure that other, and more astute, integrationists, or those less sympathetic to Marx’s approach, may disagree and find problems in his account which have passed me by. I can only hope that they continue the debate and take up from where I have left off. Obviously I have only scratched the surface of Marx’s economic analysis here. But Marx’s account of value is crucial to the whole of his further dissection of capitalist production and directly underlies his treatment of money, price, capital and, most crucially of all, surplus value. If we were to detect a problem with his explanation of value, then the theoretical edifice erected on it would surely fall. On the other hand, the fact that Marx’s position has, arguably, held up well against my critical probing may mean that it is exceptionally well thought through and free from the uncritical banalities, reifications and mystifications that are all too common in economic theorising. In that case, Marx would be an interesting and perhaps unexpected example not of an integrationist avant la lettre, surely, but of a thinker whose theoretical creations may offer a starting point, and open up valuable perspectives, for a future integrationist critique of economics. References Harris, R., 1996. Signs, Language and Communication. Routledge, London. Harris, R., 2009. After Epistemology. Bright Pen, Gamlingay. Marx, K., 1973. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1. Penguin. Wheen, F., 2006. Marx’s Das Kapital. A Biography. Atlantic Books, London.