Immaterial services and material commodities.

[revol68]

Thought I'd make a new thread for this instead of derailing the other one on tips for reading Capital.

On the issue of commodities having to be material, Mandel in the intro to Vol 2 makes the claim that services such as prostitution, teaching etc are not commodities because they aren't material because whilst they transform society they don't transform nature. A proper WTF moment.

Am I missing something or is that the actual argument and if so how on earth is Mandel taken seriously as a reader of Marx. I mean the whole point of Marx's work is to break down the artificial division between the society as immaterial and nature as material.

really dont' want to derail this thread, but quickly i don't think Mandel actually makes that claim - what he does is point out that marx (in theories of surplus value) classifies these things (prostitution, teaching et..) as commodities when they are produced through wage labour for capital (i.e. an exchange of labour for capital) - and in volume 2 he points out that while marx doesn't contradict this position, he does focus on a correlation between 'use values 'embodied' in commodities through a labour process which acts upon and transforms nature' and the 'production of value and surplus value' which goes someway to suggesting what you say above - but there is no contradiction - human beings are nature, services like teaching and prostitution have a transformatory impact on humans

 

[revol68]

yeah but Mandel makes the case that there is a distinction between transforming "nature" and transforming "society" because transforming the former produces commodities but not in the case of the latter. Mandel is arguing that immaterial goods aren't commodities and this rests on this arbitrary distinction. I find that properly baffling, as nothing in Marx's previous writings suggests such a distinction indeed it would stand in direct contradiction with everything he'd ever written on materialism.

basically I'm baffled as to how Mandel makes this leap of logic.

"The defintion of productive labour as commodity-producing labour, combining concrete and abstract value (i.e. combining creation of use-values and production of exchange values) logically excludes "non material goods" from the sphere of value production."

So not only does Marx not directly contradict himself from his remarks in Theories of Surplus Value about teaching, prostitution and circus acts being commodities but Mandel's argument that he does implicitly is based on an arbitrary division between nature and society, a division Marx had been tearing apart from back in the Theses on Feuerbach days.

 

[butchersapron]

Is this intro on-line ? I don't have that version of vol 2 and wouldn't mind having a look.

 

[love detective]

his logic and false distinctions do appear to be all over the place (is he saying concrete labour only produces 'concrete' things?) - however even using his false distinctions between nature & society, human beings are still part of nature, so you coud read around it that way

i'd just ignore it all if i were you though - seems bizarre

 

[revol68]

It's in this PDF, takes a while to load though, well atleast it did on mine.

Page 42-44 in the Intro.

 

[butchersapron]

Ta.

 

[revol68]

his logic and false distinctions do appear to be all over the place (is he saying concrete labour only produces 'concrete' things?) - however even using his false distinctions between nature & society, human beings are still part of nature, so you coud read around it that way

i'd just ignore it all if i were you though - seems bizarre

Makes me skeptical of him in general, I mean this is someone who is meant to be an authority on Marx, how anyone could read Marx in such a way is beyond me.

It has ramifications because Mandel is arguing that workers involved in immaterial goods and services are unproductive, which surely has massive implications for an analysis of contemporary capitalism. How does capital support all these unproductive spheres, is exploitation therefore limited to some mad Maoist notion of the proletariat.

 

[butchersapron]

takes a while to load though

You weren't joking were you.

 

[revol68]

You weren't joking were you.

French website what do you expect, it's still out at lunch on it's second bottle of Merlot.

 

[love detective]

Makes me skeptical of him in general, I mean this is someone who is meant to be an authority on Marx, how anyone could read Marx in such a way is beyond me.

It has ramifications because Mandel is arguing that workers involved in immaterial goods and services are unproductive, which surely has massive implications for an analysis of contemporary capitalism. How does capital support all these unproductive spheres, is exploitation therefore limited to some mad Maoist notion of the proletariat.

well things like say the credit system, banking etc.. are not productive of value in and off themselves but are integral to capital's 'efficient' functioning and facilitate the ability of capital to valorise itself by speeding up the circuit of capital etc.. so they are supported by allowing them to capture a share of the value produced elsewhere (same thing goes for things like merchants capital etc. - this process is covered in volume 3) and their existence allows for an expansion of the production of value elsewhere, so they pay for themselves in that way so to speak - so there's nothing outlandish about this in principle in terms of capital supporting 'unproductive' but necessary spheres (in the narrow definition of value production) - but i agree that what mandel says in that section seems wrought with contradictions not only with marx but with himself as well

 

[revol68]

well things like say the credit system, banking etc.. are not productive of value in and off themselves but are integral to capital's 'efficient' functioning and facilitate the ability of capital to valorise itself by speeding up the circuit of capital etc.. so they are supported by allowing them to capture a share of the value produced elsewhere (same thing goes for things like merchants capital etc. - this process is covered in volume 3) - so there's nothing outlandish about this in principle in terms of capital supporting 'unproductive' spheres (in the narrow definition of value production) - but i agree that what mandel says in that section seems wrought with contradictions not only with marx but with himself as well

Oh no I get that it not only supports such unproductive spheres but infact they are fundamental to it, but nonetheless considering the size of the immaterial goods spheres surely it would take it to the point of being massively unbalanced, if not actually impossible for the productive sphere to support all these others.

I mean either way, whether immaterial goods and services are by default unproductive or not, it's going to have a massive effect on the nature of any analysis of capitalism.

 

[love detective]

yeah i'm not suggesting this is the case - i was just commenting in general that the general implications that you drew from mandels point were not necessarily incompatible with marx's analysis or unsustainable within actually existing capitalism

 

[revol68]

Discussion of Mandel and the quotes he uses to support his argument here, there's quite a bit of waffle that can be skimmed past. Basically the argument is that Mandel misreads Marx by taking a section out of context, where Marx is paraphrasing Smith's view and in the wider context of criticising Smith for falling into the fetishising commodities and mistaking relations between people for relations between things.

Pretty fucking embarrassing for Mandel.

 

[revol68]

what a way to spend an afternoon

though in my defense I am waiting on an amazon delivery; Fortunati's Arcane of Reproduction, so expect me to revive that not at all played out argument soon enough.

 

[love detective]

to be fair, in reading theories of surplus value it is quite easy to get mixed up with what marx is actually saying and what others are saying (either them directly or through marx's mouth) - less so if you were methodically making your way through them and paying attention, but perhaps if you were just skiming them for quotes it would be easier done

not interested in housewifes anymore!

 

[revol68]

to be fair, in reading theories of surplus value it is quite easy to get mixed up with what marx is actually saying and what others are saying (either them directly or through marx's mouth) - less so if you were methodically making your way through them and paying attention, but perhaps if you were just skiming them for quotes it would be easier done

not interested in housewifes anymore!

yeah skimming something and taking a line out of context can cause all sorts

The thing is that if you read that bit from Marx and think oh he is saying immaterial goods are not commodities, it should jar with everything else you've read or atleast it's implications should. How someone as respected as Mandel could read it like that is beyond me, or perhaps the issue is how someone who read it like that could be as respected as Mandel is.

 

[love detective]

whereas reading something properly and methodically gives you the correct answer - you should try it

housewifes labour isn't abstract labour - it's definitional

 

[revol68]

whereas reading something properly and methodically gives you the correct answer - you should try it

housewifes labour isn't abstract labour - it's definitional

but then neither is that of slaves, prisoners and workfare participants.

 

[love detective]

this has been done to death a million times, so this is the only post I'm going to make on this - and remember the argument is within the context of marx's theory of value and abstract labour -

do housewifes, slaves, prisoners and workfare participants engage in concrete labour? yes

does the result of that labour result in the production of use value? generally yes

does that labour end up 'embedded' (poor choice of word i know) in a 'thing' and then becomes 'equalised' or 'homogenised' through the equation of products of labour on the market? Does that labour end up as part of the total aggregate social labour that is productively consumed by capital in the production process? For the labour of housewifes that is a definite no, it doesn't happen, therefore it's not abstract labour.

for prisoners/slaves/workfare particpants it's entirely possible that this would be the case

This doesn't mean that the labour of housewifes does not play a part in surplus value appropriation (although not production) by capital - primarily because it's existence reduces the value of labour power in general - reducing the amount that capital has to pay and increasing the amount that it is able to appropriate as surplus value

and it's not just about whether you are paid a wage or not - prisoners/slaves can produce value and have that surplus value (100% of what they produce less 'maintenance') appropriated from them i) in terms of production during the actual work process itself and ii) in terms of realisation through the ownership & sale by others of the commodities that they help to produce. the case with domestic labour is entirely different - while there is concrete labour and use value, there is no commodity, no abstract labour, no value produced, and no surplus value appropriated

the final outcome of domestic labour is not the production of use values for sale to others on the market (i.e. commodity production through wage labour). and just because the removal of domestic labour leads to a situation where the use values that were previously created within the home itself, have to be purchased on the market in the form of commodities (i.e. involving abstract labour), this doesn't mean that the labour that was previously performed in the creation of those use values was abstract labour. It's not the physical concrete act that is the determining factor, it's the social process where the labour involved is equalised through the equation of products of that labour on the market and productively consumed by capital in the value production process

your argument logically leads to the conclusion that even taking a shit produces value - if that is a theory of value you want to run with then i'm not arguing against it, i'm just saying that this is not compatible with marx's theory of value

edit: also just to add/clarify - it doesn't make sense to talk about abstract labour at the level of the individual - abstract labour is something that evolves through the social aggregation/equalisation/homogenisation process inherent in the use of labour for the production and sale of commodities and the interaction between the spheres of production and circulation/exchange - there's simply nothing that exists like this in relation to the disparate and disconnected concrete labour that is domestic labour

 

[revol68]

does that labour end up 'embedded' (poor choice of word i know) in a 'thing' and then becomes 'equalised' or 'homogenised' through the equation of products of labour on the market? Does that labour end up as part of the total aggregate social labour that is productively consumed by capital in the production process? For the labour of housewifes that is a definite no, it doesn't happen, therefore it's not abstract labour.

Labour power is the commodity, that becomes equalised and homogenised and ends up as part of the total aggregate social labour that is productively consumed by capital.

Taking a shit doesn't as it clearly doesn't produce something with an exchange value, housework and reproductive labour does, labour power.

The final outcome of domestic labour is not the production of use values for sale to others on the market (i.e. commodity production through wage labour). and just because the removal of domestic labour leads to a situation where the use values that were previously created within the home itself, have to be purchased on the market in the form of commodities (i.e. involving abstract labour), this doesn't mean that the labour that was previously performed in the creation of those use values was abstract labour.

Well Marx himself argues

"If we have a function which, although in and for itself unproductive, is nevertheless a necessary moment of [economic] reproduction, then when this is transformed, through a division of labour, from the secondary activity of many into the exclusive activity of a few, into their special business, this does not change the character of the function itself"

So if it domestic labour was unproductive when done by housewives it remains so when done by specialist companies and logically if it is productive when done by private companies it was productive. Ofcourse specialisation of these tasks and their formal integration into the market can increase the productivity.

Domestic work was abstract labour albeit one mediated through the direct social relation (oppression) of patriarchy, like slavery in the US.

 

[revol68]

I don't think recognising the role domestic and reproductive labour in general play in value expansion means one has to throw the Marxist baby out with the bath water and certainly many Marxist's don't eg Cleaver and Harvey etc

 

[revol68]

also just to add/clarify - it doesn't make sense to talk about abstract labour at the level of the individual - abstract labour is something that evolves through the social aggregation/equalisation/homogenisation process inherent in the use of labour for the production and sale of commodities and the interaction between the spheres of production and circulation/exchange - there's simply nothing that exists like this in relation to the disparate and disconnected concrete labour that is domestic labour

Oh come on there did arise standards of housework and expectations, the development of these norms may not have been imposed by key performance indicators or some other immediately quantified manner but they none the less existed and were often directly imposed by husbands as the foremen of the home. The labour of an author or actor involves disparate disconenected forms of concrete labour, it doesn't involve KPI's or such, but nonetheless they produce value through the work that their publisher then sells, that is the homgenisation of their labour happens with the commodity on the market being exchangeable for any other not in the work process itself, likewise domestic and reproductive labour is homogenised through the labour power it produces being bought and sold on the labour market.

 

[revol68]

Basically your argument would mean that those working in households in putting out set ups and who weren't in direct contact with the agent were not productive of surplus value either, because their direct relationship to their work was mediated through the direct social relation of the family.

 

[love detective]

bit drunk and should ignore this, but....

Labour power is the commodity, that becomes equalised and homogenised and ends up as part of the total aggregate social labour that is productively consumed by capital.

Taking a shit doesn't as it clearly doesn't produce something with an exchange value, housework and reproductive labour does, labour power.

Labour power as a commodity is definitionally labour that is exchanged for capital, once bought, capital makes use of it within the production process through the production of use values, not as an end in itself, but as a means to the production and realisation of surplus value. The commodity that is produced in that process belongs to the capitalist and is pregnant with surplus value.

Housewife's labour exhibits none of this things - the labour of housewife's does not enter this process. housework, along with eating, sleeping, having sex, breathing, looking after your teeth and, like it or not, taking a shit and all manner of other things play a part in the reproduction of labour, but they are not abstract labour, they do not end up 'embedded' in a commodity (containing a portion of surplus value) that belongs to the capitalist who can sell it and realise that surplus value - quite the reverse in fact, they end up, and only indirectly and to an extent accidentally, in a commodity (containing no surplus value in and off itself) that belongs instead to labour who, sells this to the capitalist.

Well Marx himself argues.........

.....So if it domestic labour was unproductive when done by housewives it remains so when done by specialist companies and logically if it is productive when done by private companies it was productive

See this is the danger of just picking up marx quotes from wikipedia that are generally taken out of context and without even being aware of the context it was written in. The quote from marx you gave was from the a chapter of volume 2 that focusses on the costs of circulation and touching on merchants capital.

The point being made here by Marx is the simple one that value is not produced within the sphere of circulation (i.e. it's not about the productive and unproductive types of labour in relation to the production of use values as commodities, it's a point on a different level in relation to the sphere of production being the only place where value is created) and that while it might seem on the surface that merchants capital through buying & selling produces a profit (and does indeed produce a profit for the individual) it is not productive of value at the societal level, it merely shifts things around, helps capital circulate and captures a share of value produced elsewhere as it does this.

So the point being made by Marx in that quote is that circulation as a function doesn't produce value - it doesn't produce value when done as a secondary activity of the industrial capitalist, and likewise if that industrial capitalist sub-contracts out that activity to a specialist it still doesn't produce value. The full quote with a bit more context (and from a different translation) is:-

To the capitalist who has others working for him, buying and selling becomes a primary function. Since he appropriates the product of many on a large social scale, he must sell it on the same scale and then reconvert it from money into elements of production. Now as before neither the time of purchase nor of sale creates any value. The function of merchant’s capital gives rise to an illusion. But without going into this at length here this much is plain from the start: If by a division of labour a function, unproductive in itself although a necessary element of reproduction, is transformed from an incidental occupation of many into an exclusive occupation of a few, into their special business, the nature of this function itself is not changed. One merchant (here considered a mere agent attending to the change of form of commodities, a mere buyer and seller) may by his operations shorten the time of purchase and sale for many producers.

I don't think recognising the role domestic and reproductive labour in general play in value expansion means one has to throw the Marxist baby out with the bath water and certainly many Marxist's don't eg Cleaver and Harvey etc

all manners of things play a role in value expansion (and as such are conditioned and disciplined by capitalist imperatives) - the credit system, banking, circulation activities, domestic labour, eating, sleeping, shiting, breathing, media, advertising, education, dominant ideology, etc.. this can be recognised and accommodated within marx's framework, without trying to shoehorn them into a conceptual category of abstract labour which they do not belong to.

Oh come on there did arise standards of housework and expectations, the development of these norms may not have been imposed by key performance indicators or some other immediately quantified manner but they none the less existed and were often directly imposed by husbands as the foremen of the home.

it's not abstract labour

The labour of an author or actor involves disparate disconenected forms of concrete labour, it doesn't involve KPI's or such, but nonetheless they produce value through the work that their publisher then sells

indeed, they produce use values, generally under some system of wage-labour, which are embedded in a commodity (containing surplus value) that they do not own and is sold on the market by those who provided the means of production to ultimately produce the finished commodity - the total social labour of these activities can be looked upon as abstract labour, housewife's labour does not do these things, it's not abstract labour.

likewise domestic and reproductive labour is homogenised through the labour power it produces being bought and sold on the labour market.

no, it isn't - you've misunderstood that categories & concepts you're using here. your mixing up two different kinds of labour, the labour of the housewife is not homeogenised/equalised and turned into abstract labour at the social level through social exchange

if you genuinely believe what you wrote there - you have to see that by that same logic eating, sleeping and shiting is 'homogenised through the labour power it (helps to) produce being bought and sold on the labour market' - because these activities also contribute to the reproduction of labour - so if the argument is made that housewife's labour is abstract labour then you can't get round the fact that shiting, sleeping and breathing is also abstract labour - which is of course nonsense

Basically your argument would mean that those working in households in putting out set ups and who weren't in direct contact with the agent were not productive of surplus value either, because their direct relationship to their work was mediated through the direct social relation of the family.

were they producing use values, under some kind of wage-labour relation (doesn't matter if it's piece wages, via another member family), which ultimately creates a commodity containing surplus value which in turn is realised through exchange on the market - then if so my argument would do no such thing as you suggest

Now seriously, this has been done time and time again all the arguments are there on libcom, where there was pretty much total agreement among all kinds of people (who generally never agree) that you are trying to shoe horn a conception of value into marx's theory of value that doesn't fit. There's nothing wrong with ditching marx's value theory for your own one, but you can't do this riding two horses at once - it doesn't work. Now don't be offended if i don't return to this discussion, but i really don't have the time for it at the moment, wasting so much time at the moment as it is...

 

[phildwyer]

if you genuinely believe what you wrote there - you have to see that by that same logic eating, sleeping and shiting is 'homogenised through the labour power it (helps to) produce being bought and sold on the labour market' - because these activities also contribute to the reproduction of labour - so if the argument is made that housewife's labour is abstract labour then you can't get round the fact that shiting, sleeping and breathing is also abstract labour - which is of course nonsense

Why is it nonsense? Seems about right to me. You should re-examine the philosophical heritage of Marx's concept of "labor-power," it doesn't mean what you think it means

Remember that it is not individual acts of labor in production that produce value, but labor-power: human subjective activity considered in the abstract.

For someone who claims to oppose capital, you endorse an awful lot of its assumptions.

 

[phildwyer]

DP

 

[kittyP]

OK, I do not know why I am getting involved in this as I know nothing of the 'teachings'/'reading material'/'ideas' that you guys do but I was caught by the first post.
I do get the functional comparison between prostitution and teaching but over all (to me) that is totally ridiculous.

I work in education but have always had (imho) the luxury of working in special education. Mainly with kids on the very sever end of the Autistic Spectrum (and I will say, a lot of me thinks the idea of an 'Autistic Spectrum' is totally wrong but that is another conversation).
It gives you a whole different perspective.

It's not just about training/prepping/engineering kids for the future of work and society's benefit.
The majority of the kids and young adults I have worked with will never go on to live alone or work.
Hell, some of them, it breaks my heart but even in this day and age will 'have' to be institutionalised. The ones that do... I cannot think of the right word... survive and come out the other side do so because they have learnt the ability to learn.
Not conform to society but to learn. To take in information, change it, use it, adapt it for their own (whether they know it or not) benefit.

I know a lot of (most) main stream education is fucked up.
The national curriculum is bullshit but what is the genuine realistic alternative?

I do know in my heart that there is need for schooing and teaching in some way.
Not to mould and train kids to just answer the right questions but what schooling started off as and fundamentally should be, it teaches kids the ability to 'learn'.

I know it is not like that most of the time but teaching people/children the ability to 'learn' in the first place is something that imho fundamentally important.

I accept that the education system we have is in a lot of ways fundamentally wrong but do any of you guys here have a genuinely workable alternative?
That's not a leading question. I actually want one of you to say "Yes I do".

Sorry, probably totally the wrong thread but the OP made me need to say this and I have been wanting to say it on urban for a long time and not been able to.
GnT and tapering off one med before another is making me act in a way I do not usually do.

I apologise if this is totally inappropriate

 

[love detective]

Why is it nonsense? Seems about right to me. You should re-examine the philosophical heritage of Marx's concept of "labor-power," it doesn't mean what you think it means

Remember that it is not individual acts of labor in production that produce value, but labor-power: human subjective activity considered in the abstract.

For someone who claims to oppose capital, you endorse an awful lot of its assumptions.

the whole discussion is about abstract labour you daft cunt - which is why the individual act of domestic labour is not productive of value for the simple fact that it is not and cannot be abstract labour

and yeah a good way to oppose something is to close your eyes & ears to it and refuse to acknowledge it for what it is, then if we think really hard it will go away

clown

(and it's nonsense because revol's argument, when logically expanded to other activities leads to a conclusion where sleeping (or taking a shit) creates value - which is nonsense)

 

[phildwyer]

the whole discussion is about abstract labour you daft cunt - which is why the individual act of domestic labour is not productive of value for the simple fact that it is not and cannot be abstract labour

Again with the immediate recourse to obscene abuse I see.

Of course the housewife's labor can be made into abstract labor in exactly the same way as the labor of a factory worker: through a mental act of abstraction, through being conceived in the abstract.

Activity does not have to be directly involved in the manufacture of a commodity in order to count as labor-power, as you wrongly suggest, because the concept of labor-power results from a mental act of abstraction imposed upon concrete acts of labor. Labor-power is human activity considered as a whole, and that includes the daily activities of life.

 

[love detective]

Of course the housewife's labor can be made into abstract labor in exactly the same way as the labor of a factory worker: through a mental act of abstraction, through being conceived in the abstract.

You don't have a clue do you - abstract labour is not made abstract labour through mental acts of abstraction - that is a fundamental point of Marx's Real Abstraction (which you clearly don't understand) - it's not a mental process, but a real process, that market exchange and the law of value carries out. The abstraction is "real" because it is not a mental abstraction, but one occurring in reality, one that reduces various disparate acts of concrete labour to abstract via market mechanisms and the imposition of the law of value

Activity does not have to be directly involved in the manufacture of a commodity in order to count as labor-power, as you wrongly suggest, because the concept of labor-power results from a mental act of abstraction imposed upon concrete acts of labor. Labor-power is human activity considered as a whole, and that includes the daily activities of life.

So you too believe that shitting and sleeping (two activities that help to ensure labour power is in a sufficient state to be sold on the market to capital) is abstract labour - god help us - and again abstract labour is not something that comes about through a mental abstraction. I'd advise you not to use terms that you haven't properly understood if you want to continue posting on this or other threads.