Online research in philosophy

A society is capitalist if most production is carried on by employees working with means of production (equipment and materials) belonging to their employer, producing commodities which belong to the employer. (Employees: those whose services are treated as commodities. 'Labour is a commodity like any other', 'an article of trade' - Edmund Burke, Thoughts on Scarcity , 1795.).

Prominent neo-Marxists have recently acknowledged longstanding criticisms of Marx's labor theory of value as at best a cumbersome and redundant price model but continue to variously defend the doctrine as an interpretation of historically observed class conflict between exploiters and exploited. This essay counters that value theory also fails badly as a "labor theory of exploitation." The fundamental flaw is the canonical premise that labor alone is productive, with normative implications closer to the entrepreneurial work ethic than to socialist standards of distributive justice. The essay then identifies an alternative theory of exploitation implied by Marx's earlier writings on alienation but obscured by his later association of exploitation with surplus value. What capital appropriates is not "surplus value" produced by labor, but the capacity to produce it, creating asymmetric interdependence within the division of labor. Exploitation arises in the mediation of this interdependence through the exchange of commodities.

Many pr oblems present themselves in at tempting t o discuss Marx's noti on of the fetish characteristics of commodities. It has been argued that it is one of the central points of Marx's en tir e c or pus. 1 It has also been argued that it i s merely "a brilli an t s oci olog i cal genera lization l ! and, even furth er, that it is an Hi ndependent and separate entity, internally hardly related t o Marx's economic theory" .2 How could such a theory be understo od i n such drastically diff erent ways? Perhaps the clue is to be f ound somewhere in Marx' s discussion of the fetishism of commodities itself. Because of the difficulty in un derstanding fetishism , I intend t o examine what Marx himself has t o say first befor e dealing with any points related to the notion of fetishism. Thus , the first parts of this thesis will c onsist of l ong qu otations and repetition of what Marx has t o say. If a noti on may be called ' central' and yet 'hardly related' t o Marx's wor k at the same time, surely a clear examination of this section is necess ary. Aft er an examination of the initial secti ons of Cae ital ] I intend t G examine the f ollowing : the r e lation of fetishism t o the t he ory of alienati on; how one may regard f etishism as a pr oblem f or philosophy; and how, in f act, the theory of fetishism is of prime imp ortance f or an understan ding of Marx's wr itings. What I want to stress throughout is that with o u~ an understanding of what is inherent in the pr oduction of the commodity causing i t t o be necessarily fetishistic, it is practically imp ossible t o understand much of Marx's other writin gs. A commodity appears, at fir st sight, a very trivial thing and easi ly un derst ood. Itsanalysis shows that it i s , in r eality , a very queer thing , abo unding in ~taphysical s ubtleties and theological nic eties.

In Volume I of Capital, Marx invokes the distinction between labor power and labor to explain how surplus value might arise from the circuit of capital, given that all commodities exchange at their respective labor values. Contrary to Marx's representation, however, the stipulation of price-value equivalence is neither necessary nor adequate for a coherent account of capitalist exploitation. The significance of the labor-labor power distinction is instead best understood in historically contingent strategic terms that are essentially independent of Marx's value theory. Historical-strategic analysis suggests that the distinction has implications extending beyond the labor extraction problem typically emphasized in the modern literature on class struggle in production.

In social science commodities frequently stand for economic rationality and commercial gain, while gifts are presumed to be bearers of moral obligation and social concerns. "Commodity versus gift" often acts as metaphor for "market versus non-market." From the perspective of Marxist political economy, the binary opposition between commodities and gifts is unwarranted. Analysis of the neglected role of use value in commodity exchange as well as of the relationship between substance and form of commodity value shows that commodities are not pure representatives of market relations. Rather, commodities rest on, and give rise to, non-market relations. Capitalist markets are sites of rational economic give-and-take, but also provide new terrain for trust, commitment, custom, and power among exchange participants. Non-market relations do not shrink inexorably in the capitalist mode of production, but are mobilized to sustain accumulation, especially through the credit system.

Marx was an exponent of the 'Labour theory' of value, held also by Adam Smith, Ricardo, James Mill, John Stuart Mill and some early 19th century political economists. This is the theory that human labour is the sole source of value (of exchange value), and that the value of a commodity is the quantity of socially necessary labour embodied in it. When we exchange commodities they exchange in the ratio of the quantities of labour required to produce them and bring them into the market.

Ulrich Steinvorth ('Marx's Analysis of Commodity Exchange?, Inquiry, Vol. 19 [1976]) and C. J. Arthur ('Labour: Marx's Concrete Universal?, Inquiry, Vol. 21 [1978]) rely on the two?fold character of labour in arguing that the mysteries of money and profit have been correctly interpreted by Marx. However, Marx's own arguments for his distinction between abstract and concrete labour are faulty, as is his identification of labour and material products. They also claim that the exchange of commodities and distribution of resources in capitalist society validate Marx's theory that the determination of value by labour?time is the ?secret? behind capitalist crises. These claims are insufficiently justified, and provide no additional reason for accepting the two?fold character of labour.

Aristotle’s economic thinking in the Nicomachean Ethics 5.5 and Politics 1 provides one of the earliest analyses of the economic nature exchange. Establishing the significance of Aristotle in this area has often led modern commentators to equate Aristotle’s descriptive analysis of use and exchange to the definitions of use-value and exchange-value as it is found in Karl Marx. In this article, I show that Aristotle’s understanding of use and exchange is qualitatively different from this interpretation, focusing in particular on the ethical nature of use and how, for Aristotle, exchange is an extension of practical deliberation.

The present paper aims to analyse Marx’s concept of “fetishism of commodities” by explaining the mechanism of a social genesis of determined illusions, arising in the sphere of production and circulation of commodities. It highlights the existence of an auto-sustained autarkic system of 4 variables – reification, objectification, duplicity and habit - sustaining and leading to the fetishism of commodities.

Carver's interpretation of Marx's value theory (Terrell Carver, ?Marx's Commodity Fetishism?, Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975]) is accepted, but his rejection of it criticized by explicating the reasons Marx gives for his theory after his faulty analysis of exchange-value at the very beginning of Capital. The central concept of abstract labour is shown to relate commodity exchange to other forms of distribution; by being compared to these the function of commodity exchange is recognized as the attachment of an amount of abstract labour to a commodity, and exchange-value as that which determines that amount What it means to say value is thought to inhere in commodities is explicated.