Abstract Labour and Concrete Labour - Criticism

Criticism

Marx believed that:

"It is not money that renders the commodities commensurable. Quite the contrary. Because all commodities, as values, are objectified human labour, and therefore in themselves commensurable, their values can be communally measured in one and the same specific commodity, and this commodity can be converted into the common measure of their values, that is into money. Money as a measure of value is the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is immanent in commodities, namely labour-time." - Capital Vol. 1, Penguin ed., p. 188

In other words, tradeable products do not all have a value because they can all be equated with sums of money, but because they are the products of social labour (cooperative labour producing things for others); consequently, such product-value exists quite independently of the use of money, and indeed independently of whether the products at any point in time happen to be traded or not (see also value-form). It is just that what the magnitude of that value is, can become apparent and visible only via the comparisons of trading ratios, when products are being bought and sold on a regular basis. Marx did not think there was anything particularly mysterious about the fact that people valued products because they had to spend time working to produce them, or to buy them. However, academics have made many objections to his idea.

Without referring explicitly to Marx's solution of the problems of the labour theory of value of David Ricardo, the marginal utility theorist William Stanley Jevons clearly stated the main criticism of the concept of abstract labour in his 1871 treatise:

"Labour affects supply, and supply affects the degree of utility, which governs value, or the ratio of exchange. In order that there may be no possible mistake about this all-important series of relations, I will restate it in a tabular form, as follows:

• Cost of production determines supply;
• Supply determines final degree of utility;
• Final degree of utility determines value.

But it is too easy to go too far in considering labour as the regulator of value; it is equally to be remembered that labour is itself of unequal value. Ricardo, by a violent assumption, founded his theory of value on quantities of labour considered as one uniform thing. He was aware that labour differs infinitely in quality and efficiency, so that each kind is more or less scarce, and is consequently paid at a higher or lower rate of wages. He regarded these differences as disturbing circumstances which would have to be allowed for; but his theory rests on the assumed equality of labour. theory rests on a wholly different ground. I hold labour to be essentially variable, so that its value must be determined by the value of the produce, not the value of the produce by that of the labour. I hold it to be impossible to compare a priori the productive powers of a navvy, a carpenter, an iron-puddler, a school master and a barrister. Accordingly, it will be found that not one of my equations represents a comparison between one man's labour and another's." - W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, edited by R.D. Collison Black. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1970, p. 187.

Replying to this type of criticism, the Russian Marxist Isaak Illich Rubin argued that the concept of abstract labour was really much more complex than it seemed at first sight. He distinguished between "physically equal" labour; labour which is "socially equated" by means of consensual social evaluation or comparison; and labour efforts equated via the exchange of products using money as a universal equivalent .

To these three aspects we could add at least five others which are mentioned by Marx:

• the existence of normal labour-averages applying to different work tasks, which function as "labour norms" in any society;
• the gradation of many different labour efforts along one general, hierarchical dimension of worth, for the purpose of compensation;
• the universal exchangeability of labour efforts themselves, in a developed labour market;
• the general mobility of labour from one job or worksite to another; and
• the ability of the same workers to do all kinds of different jobs.

Some further aspects of the concept of abstract labour are provided by Marxian anthropologist Lawrence Krader in his works Labor and value and A treatise of social labor.

The conceptual issues associated with the concept of abstract labour have been one of the main reasons why many economists abandoned the labour theory of value. Possibly, these conceptual issues can be resolved, through a better empirical appreciation of the political economy of education, skills and the labour market. It may be that the problems have never been resolved because they have been approached far too abstractly, using conceptual distinctions not really adequate for the purpose.

One problem with Marx's own theory is, that he never completed a book he intended to write on the subject of wages and the labour market (see Capital Vol. 1, Penguin edition, p. 683). Nevertheless Marx made quite clear his belief that capitalism "overturns all the legal or traditional barriers that would prevent it from buying this or that kind of labour-power as it sees fit, or from appropriating this or that kind of labour" (Ibid., p. 1013). Clearly, Marx believed that capitalist development itself would establish a normal commercial value for any kind of labour, and thus that all kinds of labour would be judged socially according to the same kind of evaluative standards of effort.