Introduction
In a previous post, I criticized the social-reformist economist (and former economist for the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW, now Unifor), Jim Stanford, who argues that what workers sell is their labour (time) (see Economics for Social Democrats–but Not for the Working Class, Part Five: Critique of Jim Stanford’s View that Workers Sell Their Labour (Time): Part One.) This is a continuation of such a criticism, but from a different point of view–from the point of view of Marx’s dual theory of labour.
Marx’s Dual Theory of Labour and the Impossibility of Selling Labour (Time)
An alternative way of considering the problem is to note that Marx had a dual theory of labour (concrete labour producing use values and abstract labour producing value)–a dual theory which Stanford simply ignores. Abstract labour, as I wrote in my criticism of Stanford’s theory of money as mere purchasing power (see Economics for Social Democrats–but Not for the Working Class, Part Two: Critique of the Social Democrat Jim Stanford’s Theory of Money, Part One) is not directly social labour but produces commodities that require a further social process if they are to be socially considered to form part of social labour (society’s labour):
Marx’s explanation of the purchasing power of money lies, on the one hand, in the specific nature of the labour that results in the existence of money as a monopoly power–abstract labour or general human labour or universal labour without distinction. This general social labour, unlike earlier societies, does not find its expression in the immediate results of the production process (the process of producing our lives as human beings).
The reference to the immediate results of a labour process that does not result in a social product directly means that it can only be expressed indirectly or through a process of mediation–the exchange process. Contrary to Stanford’s characterization of Marx’s theory of value, the kind of labour is therefore historically specific and not some general social labour that exists and acts as or functions exclusively as social labour regardless of the kind of society. Stanford, however, presents Marx’s labour theory of value as just that: as ahistorical.
Abstract labour is a kind of negative labour–it is not social labour as workers work concretely or materially, and it is this labour which produces the value of a commodity, say beer, and not the labour which produces the beer as beer concretely.
On the other hand, a definite kind of labour, concrete labour, produces a definite kind of use value, say beer. But the result of this concrete labour, since it is linked to abstract labour, is a commodity that is not yet social in its concrete form of beer. A further process–the exchange process–is required to convert the beer into a form where it can function as “purchasing power”–by being able to be converted into any form of commodity–money.
At one pole is the commodity, beer, which lacks “purchasing power,” and at the other pole is money, which monopolizes purchasing power.
The contradictions of Stanford’s theory of money (see my three-part criticism of his theory of money on this blog) are linked to the contradicitons of his theory of what the worker sells to the employer.
Labour in a capitalist society is not social labour as it is being performed–otherwise, its product would not need to be exchanged at all but would be socially appropriable in the immediate form of its product. Furthermore, money would not arise as the limit which both links labours and separates them.
One of the reasons labour cannot be sold is then that if it were sellable, it would be socially appropriable immediately (it would form part of total social labour while workers are working)–but then there would be no need for the sale of its product since it would already be a social product in its immediate form of, say, a case of beer.
As Dirk Damsma (2019) points out, using the concept of “insitutitionaled dissociation” for the concept of abstract labour, How Language Informs Mathematics: Bridging Hegelian Dialectics and Marxian Models, page 101:
Institutionalised dissociation means that privately undertaken production is only socialised when it is exchanged.
Similiarly, Samezo Kuruma (2018), in his Marx’s Theory of the Genesis of Money How, Why, and Through What is a Commodity Money?, has this to say on pages 141-142:
We know from the discussion thus far that the most fundamental condition for social production to be carried out is the social integration, in one way or another, of the labour of individuals so that they are connected with one another as parts of society’s total labour. The labour of commodity producers, however, is carried out as private labour, not socially
integrated labour. Yet labour must come to have the substance as one part of the total labour of society, as something that constitutes the overall system of the social division of labour.This represents a fundamental contradiction unique to commodity production. The problem comes down to identifying how this contradiction is mediated via the exchange relation of labour products or locating the moment within the exchange of commodity
producers’ labour products through which their private labour acquires existence as social labour.
Again, another author, Liana França Dourado Barradas (2014), affirms the importance of emphasizing the non-social nature of labour and, by implication, the impossibility of exchanging it for money. As he writes, in his Marx and the Division of Labour in Capitalism, page 64:
The transformation of the product of labour into a commodity bears the specific character of labour in capitalism: its realization as processes of private labour, independently from each other, which are related in the process of exchange of commodities, by means of the social division of labour. [my translation: see the Appendix at the end of this post for the original]
By way of contrast, the labour performed in the family is directly the social labour of the family and thus does not require a further process for it to be or function as social labour, as Kurmura (2015) states in his article, “A Critique of Classical Political Economy,” In pages 295-340, Transitions in Latin America and in Poland and Syria, pages 329-330:
Even today’s family provides an example, albeit in an infinitesimal and distorted form, of a
division of labor based upon the same basic principle as those ancient societies. For
instance, when a mother mends clothing or a son prepares food for a meal, this is not
carried out through the actions of ‘‘truck, barter, and exchange’’ where it is said, ‘‘this is mine and that is yours’’ and ‘‘I’ll give you this for that.’’ This is certainly not made possible by the products being brought ‘‘into a common stock’’ by means of the ‘‘general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange.’’ Instead, this labor-power exists to begin with as one part of the family’s communal labor-power, operating as one of its organs. The products of their labor, likewise, do not pass through the process of exchange, but directly and literally (rather than figuratively) become the family’s ‘‘common stock.’’
Conclusion
Stanford’s claim that what the worker sells is her or his labour (time) makes little sense–except from the point of view of appearances and everyday language and experiences. In the first post, it was shown that the distinction between labour power as what the worker sells when separated from the means of production and labour as what the worker does under the control of the employer when united with the means of production makes much more sense. In this post, it was shown that the idea that workers sell their labour (time) makes even less sense since Stanford’s view implies that labour can be immediately social–which is impossible in a capitalist context. Stanford’s views are populist and not class-based. Radical leftists would do well to distance themselves from his theory.
Appendix
The following is the original language version of one of the above authors’ quotes.
Liana França Dourado Barradas (2014), Marx e a Divisao do Trabalho no Capitalismo, page 64:
A transformação do produto do trabalho em mercadoria traz o caráter específico do trabalho no capitalismo: a sua realização como processos de trabalho privados, independentes uns dos outros, os quais se relacionam no processo de troca entre as mercadorias, por meio da divisão social do trabalho.
The Abolitionary 