Should Workers Get the Full Value of their Labour? | Marx’s Critique of Value

Is equitable distribution of value one of Marx's central propositions? Or did Marx's critique of the capitalist mode of production indicate a more radical departure from work as we know it?
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Many thanks to Renée (Robot Uprising Supporter) for writing this script! Thank you to Val and Elasmodon for reviewing the scripts and providing important inputs.
Narration by Z.
Visuals and editing by M.
Animated intro by Jack, co-host of the Auxiliary Statements podcast @AuxStatements on Twitter.
Intro music by Charles Tristan:
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Sources:
• Marx, Karl. “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1.” Penguin
Classics, 1992.
• Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy,
Vol. 3.” Penguin Classics, 1993.
• Marx, Karl. “Critique of the Gotha program.” 1975.
• Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. “The Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto.” Prometheus Books,
2009.
• Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. “Collected Works, Vol. 25: Anti-Dühring,
Dialectics of Nature.” International Publishers, 1987

[themarxistproject]

Footnotes:
1. Even here we can easily trip. “Productive labour” refers to workers who do labour of a productive sort, and not the activity of labour. As we will see, what is bought from productive labour is not the labour itself, but the capacity to labour, or, in other words, labour-power. The process of exchange assigns to the products of labour, according to Marx, value according to an abstraction of the actual labour done to produce them. If the capitalist was buying labour rather than labour-power, then, like any other commodity, the value in it would simply be transferred to the product. However, value certainly increases in production.
2. “The market” is not a term Marx uses, preferring to speak of commodities in exchange. Markets usually imply competition and openness, but exchanges do not always happen in a market. Occasional exchange between communities exists even where and when markets have never developed, and in capitalism, exchanges often happen directly through relationships between institutions, rather than in markets. Referring to these special contexts as “the market”, as well as grouping all markets into one general market, are imprecise. We chose to use “the market”, and similar imprecisions throughout this script, for the sake of ease of comprehension.
3. Although Marx expresses value as a quantity, there is some debate as to whether it has a quantity prior to measurement by the value form. Values are definitely magnitudes, but quantity entails a universal basis for comparison; a magnitude may be lesser than, greater than, or equal to any individual magnitude with which it interacts, but it is only a quantity when it is compared to an ordered set of known magnitudes. In other words, the measure, or form, may be said to be what gives quantity to value.
4. Some forms of labour produce more value than others. In which case, it can be accounted for as a ratio of some reference rate of value production. This is not important to the dynamics Marx is trying to express, however.
5. In proper Hegelian fashion, the progressive development of value throughout the opening chapters of Capital vol. I is both a logical and historical account. That is, it’s not just that the multiple forms of value create a consistent and necessary whole, but that the maturation of one form leads to the next. Engels’ historical account serves to ground and justify both elements, demonstrating the use of time-cost tradeoffs in pre-capitalist commodity exchange. This genealogical account produces a system, which subsequent developments alter and perturb, hence the fundamental nature of value is preserved, if new developments change the distribution of values. Its essence remains congealed social labour. It should not be held to be the case that Marx is elaborating a set of stages; it’s not that one form develops, followed by the other, rather, it’s that as one begins to develop, it gives way to the next. One does not have to complete before the next starts, because they are a dynamical process.
6. A boss could do some of the work, but we can treat the money they make as part wage and part surplus and recover the same analysis. Owners of capital need not do any of the work to hold title to profit, and the size of their profit is not related to the value they contributed, as they have the right to decide what it is all by themselves. In this analysis, profit can be immediately reinvested rather than realized as capital gains, and rents and interest are paid out of the surplus value of production. Surplus can also be directed towards savings, or, as Marx refers to them, hoards, but this adds too much complication to the analysis to address here. Hoarding is addressed in vol. I of Capital. Preliminary notes on rents come from Rent of Land, which appears in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. A more extensive theory of rents (which we’ve discussed in another video) appears in vol. III of Capital.
7. What about “gig workers”, who get paid for the time they put in? They typically aren’t compensated for equipment expenses, and wind up making less even than is necessary to get by for any reasonable length of time. On some rare occasions, the gig economy can even generate enough revenue to reinvest, although its expansion is mostly driven by surplus from other sectors, and it remains to be seen whether it can actually profit on its own, even in the first world, which buffers profits with values displaced from the third. There could be a whole script on how the gig economy works. In any case, gig workers’ hourly pay seems to be a false choice, a false relation to labour or profitability: it’s calculated (and actualized via “flooding the market”) so that you have to work a certain amount to meet your expenses, and so that you have the incentive to work when you are needed, and you cannot expect to do any better than a typical wage in your area.

8. Marx is pretty keen to note that, in fact, this presupposed state was created, and it was not accepted in the beginning. He notes in particular the British acts of enclosure, which drove peasants into the city because they could no longer use traditionally common land they depended on. Many other instances of similar practices have taken place. These processes of dispossession have always been violent, are often violently resisted, and are still ongoing.
9. While volume III of Capital explores how prices and values, profits and surplus values do not wind up the same, the economy is always overall extracting a surplus value.
10. Taken from volume III. Previous economists, notably Ricardo, also had a “law of value”, but where Marx expressed a dynamical, or in other terms, dialectical relationship between price and value, Ricardo expressed a linear one: goods are expected to sell at their values. Engels shows how this was the case, at points in the past, but capitalism had already evolved to the point that price was disconnected from value in his time. Some Marxists disagree with Marx’s expression of the law of value in vol. III, using it in a broader sense. For the sake of an arguable fidelity to Marx, and ease of understanding, the account from vol. III has been used over subsequent discussions.
11. The use of “firm”, “business”, “capitalist”, “boss”, “employer”, and so on, are useful shorthands that ground the analysis, but the object of the analysis is not so much these concrete entities as it is capitals, which we might think of as productive investments. People are always the agents of whatever capital does, but it would be misleading to say that just abolishing the bourgeoisie as a distinct class of people fixes the problem; their functions as agents of capital can be absorbed by other people, in different social positions. Engels considers this in his account of state capitalism in Anti-Dühring.

[Lalabug]

The work you do on this channel to educate people on Marxism is incredible. Thank you so much for your labor in making these succinct videos.

[angelmarauder]

This exploitation explanation is extremely apt for Silicon valley. The engineers here put in millions of dollars of work into a year but only receive a few hundred thousand in recompense. No wonder these companies market caps are greater than the GDP of the vast majority of countries in the world

[apestogetherstrong]

Right! Marx saw surplus value as a means to grow capital, and under socialism he probably saw surplus product just being used for the benefit of the people, like some kind of tax.

[mv]

Elas, Robot, and Val are all megaminds. Props!

[shady]

I think one thing to realize is that some some of managerial positions in general, while debatably being needed/not needed in certain circumstances, are far from what makes a society capitalist. Capitalism is what allows such positions to have complete autocratic control as it gives the capitalist leverage over the proletariat that without organized collective bargaining, is impossible to overcome. So in other words you can still have a boss, you just aren't inevitably stuck with a shitty one. And also the more relevant aspect is the fact that the profits obviously would go to the capitalist or capitalists, while the proletariat are wage laborers in which their wage has nothing to do with profits. Whether or not de-centralized or centralized organization is desirable I would say is a decent debate, as both sides I say make good points, but its a different debate, since managers have nothing to do with capitalism inherently. That being said, if managers are required they would still obviously have to be compensated in some capacity imo, maybe at a lower level than the proletariat but at some level, so how would that fit into

[rainerlippert]

In this video some things are not shown correctly, I suspect:
* Labor products and goods
- According to Marx, no goods can be produced at all:
- A work product only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange (!).
- That only happens on the market.
- Consequently, it will only be decided on the market whether the labor expended on the labor product was socially useful and thus “value-creating”.

* Wages for the "full value" of the work results?
- You would also notice that if you answered YES to the question in the title of the video:
- It is not the work that is paid, but the values of the workforce.
- One could then pay the workers the wages for the sale of their labor in the full amount of the value of the labor products (W = c + v + m) only in cases when the labor products were also sold, that is, when these values are formed in the first place.
- Before the work products are sold, there is no surplus value - the buyer only pays for it on the market.
- Since the surplus value according to Marx is part of the value, it can be before the surplus value is not paid (positive, zero or "negative", i.e. not even the costs c + v are reimbursed when the product is sold).

- However, there is only surplus value if the buyer fully (!) reimburses the costs c + v beforehand.
- This makes it clear that the value is not calculated from the production costs c + v and the expected surplus value, but from the replacement of the costs plus the surplus value actually paid.
- This also corresponds with Marx's statement that only socially useful work creates value. The social usefulness cannot be determined by words like “This product is very useful!”, but only by exchanging this product for a value equivalent.
- The fact that a product has to be exchanged in order to recognize its usefulness corresponds in turn to Marx's statement that a labor product only becomes a commodity if it becomes a use value for others through exchange.

- If one were to pay the workers the wages for the products that could not be sold, then money would come into circulation that would not be clogged by goods or services. That would be inflation money, an excess money compared to the supply of goods and services.

- Another problem would be noticed: You couldn't pay the workers the “s” portion of the work products, because you can't produce the surplus value, the buyers have to pay for it on the market.
- In the production area of the commodity society there are only costs and an expected surplus value.

* Value as a social relationship
- Only the prerequisites for value relationships, surplus value and so for values can be produced.

- Value is a social relationship, a relationship between people that is formed in order to exchange a commodity for a value equivalent.
- Only when it comes to an exchange is the value formed - not from the production costs plus the expected surplus value, but from the replacement of the costs plus the real added value!
- This corresponds to Marx's statement that only socially useful work creates value.

* Is the formula W = c + v + s still correct if c + v reflect the production costs?
- Yes, but only on average, that does not apply to every single product!
- If production is to be maintained, improved and expanded, it is necessary that when the products are sold, the production costs usually have to be reimbursed and an surplus value that is estimated to be sufficient has to be paid.
- If one uses the costs c + v and not the replacement of these, the formula is indirectly valid - it indicates an economic necessity.

* Absolute and relative usefulness
- Economics is not about absolute usefulness, i.e. about a potential use value!
- It is always about relative use values, use values that are recognized through exchange with other potential use values in the economic sense through exchange:

- For every human being, the needs are usually greater in scope than their ability to satisfy them.
- For this reason, he must weight his exchange or purchase decisions.
- Only when the weighted need for a product in a buyer is so great that he buys it does he recognize the potential usefulness of this product as a real usefulness for him and thus for society.
- For the exchange, in turn, the buyer and the seller form a value relationship, the reference points of which are both the product and the value equivalent.
- In relation to these reference points, the value is formed on the social level between the exchange partners and assigned to both the commodity and the value equivalent.

- There are no intrinsic values. Value is a social phenomenon that is only formed between people, specifically between exchange partners, and only works between them.
- The value is determined objectively by social and natural conditions, but is individually influenced.
- There cannot be a purely objective value, because that would be independent of people.
- Without question there are things, processes and phenomena that are independent of people, but these cannot be social relationships.

* Value and exchange value
- There is no difference between value and exchange value - the value is identical to the exchange value.
- Marx defines the difference because he starts from a "produced" value, but he also states that the products are not exchanged according to this "produced" value.
- In reality the “produced value” is only an expected one - see above.
- There is no produced value, Marx contradicts himself - see above.

* Work and value
- Work determines the value, but this is not just about human work.
- Value is assigned and assigned to a product screwed together by a machine in the same way as a product screwed together by a person.

[jnr]

Hey, do you make available the transcripts to be able to add translations?

[Gaff.]

I don't know if this is a thing with this video specifically or something to do with my settings or something, but the subtitles want to be either in Turkish or translated from automatically generated Turkish subtitles. The results, while admittedly quite amusing, are not particularly useful for actually watching the video.

[animeloco]

Where can I find part 2? On the playlist it says it's hidden and unavailable ):

[erosharcos]

How do we begin to think about modern day branding from a Marxist sense? Surely there are plenty of commodities whose use value (quality) are nearly identical or only nominally different but sold for drastically different prices. Do we consider these commodities the same or not the same for socially necessary labor time and value?

Like… hand bag A vs hand bag G. Both made from the same materials and production time is roughly the same, but hand bag A is perceived to be inferior despite having the same use value and product life as hand bag G, which sells for 10x the price. Are they both hand bags for the purposes of socially necessary labor time and value, or are they distinct from one another on the basis of the brand?

[DadeSociety]

Thank you for your explanation of Marx's labour theory of value. We are a small team in Hong Kong and have also tried to explain these concepts in the form of short animations. Our latest video has English subtitles, and we're looking for constructive comments as well!

[distortiontildeafness]

Have u made a video on the transformation problem

[jakovvodanovic]

I absolutely didn't understand the need for a third kind of abstract value. Value is extremely subjective. And every good or service is valued to optimize profits, so you have to attract maximum number of people for the biggest price tag (of course these in most cases are counterbalanced) and that's it, that's value of the object. Of course, subjective value may not match this value, that determines if you will buy it or not.

[Lysander_Spooner]

TL:DR
Marx defines things incorrectly, makes a strawman argument, gullible people repeat this nonsense. Now pay me for this information.

[TheJayman]

Workers live by the laws of value out of necessity. An artisan operates on the motion of C-M-C and so do cooperatives. Neither an artisan, nor a member of a co-op is inherently incentivised to maximise the growth of their enterprise but rather to secure their own long-term happiness which is objectively best served by co-operating with other artisans and co-ops. So, under certain conditions with as of yet generalised commodity production, society should be able to move further away from capital and commodity production and towards communism. It's probably not going to be a sudden break from the concept of value on a scale large enough to achieve communistic autarky.

[thebronywiking]

Isn't value subjective though? If a thousend workers proudce red shirts, but no one wants a red shirt, then those shirts will not have any value on the market even though plenty of labor has been used to create them.

[lautaroparada]

Why still use plastic to cover the wood ? I mean, that's the reason why you built the shelt, right?

[Otaku]

Your labor is only valuable if the product you produce has value.

[leonascar]

good to see y'all are still cooperating in the discord : )

-bran