of social movements (some of which go far beyond what the workers themselves might directly struggle for). There may be social democratic parties that insist on universal healthcare, access to education, adequate housing, public infrastructure—parks, water, public transportation, sanitation—as well as full employment opportunities at a minimum wage. All these things can be considered fundamental obligations of civilized countries, depending on the social and political situation.
The upshot is that labor-power is not a commodity like any other. It is the unique creator of value at the same time as a historical and moral element enters into the determination of its value. And this historical and moral element is subject to influence by a wide array of political, religious and other forces. Even the Vatican has produced powerful encyclicals on the conditions of labor, and the theology of liberation, when it was at its height in Latin America, played a key role in fomenting revolutionary movements in the 1960s and 1970s that focused on the standards of living of the poor. So the value of labor-power is not a constant. It fluctuates not only because the costs of subsistence commodities vary but also because the commodity bundle needed to reproduce the laborer is affected by all these wide-ranging forces. Plainly, the value of labor-power is sensitive to changes in the value of the commodities needed to support them. Cheap imports will reduce that value; the Wal-Mart phenomenon has thus had a significant impact on the value of labor-power in the United States. The hyperexploitation of labor-power in China keeps the value of labor-power down in the United States through cheap imports. This also explains the resistance, in many quarters of the capitalist class, to putting barriers to entry or tariffs on Chinese goods, because to do so would be to raise the cost of living in the US, leading to a demand from workers for higher wages.
Marx, having briefly mentioned issues of this sort, shunts them aside to conclude that, “nevertheless, in a given country at a given period, the average amount of the means of subsistence necessary for the worker is a known datum” (275). Marx fixes what he concedes is fluid and in perpetual flux as the “known datum” in a given country at a given time. How reasonable is this move? Theoretically, it permits him to move on to explain how surplus-value can be produced, but it does so at a price.
In most national economies, ways have indeed been found to determine what this datum might be. Legislation concerning a minimum wage, for example, recognizes the importance of a fixed datum in a given place and time, while the politics over whether to raise it or not is an excellent illustration of the role political struggle plays in determining the value of labor-power. Local struggles in recent years over a “living wage” also illustrate the idea of both a general datum and social struggle over what the datum should be.
An even more interesting parallel with Marx’s formulation exists in the determination of the so-called poverty level. In the mid-1960s, Mollie Orshansky devised a method to define the poverty level by fixing it in terms of the money needed to buy that particular commodity bundle deemed necessary for the reproduction of, say, a family of four at some minimally acceptable level. This is the sort of known datum that Marx is referring to. Since the 1960s, however, there has been incessant debate regarding this definition, which became the basis of public policy (e.g., welfare and Social Security payments). Exactly what the market basket of commodities should be—how much for transportation, how much for clothing, how much for food, how much for rent (and do you really need a mobile phone nowadays?)—became a matter of controversy. The figure for a family of four now stands at more than $20,000 a year. The right wing says we have all along been looking at the wrong bundle and thereby overestimating poverty; in high-cost locations like New York City, however, studies suggest the level should be $26,000 or so. Obviously, historical, political and moral arguments are going to factor in here.
Let us return to the idea of the circulation of labor-power through the C-M-C circuit and the difference between that and the capitalists working in the C-M-C + ΔC circuit. Marx comments:
The use-value which the [capitalist] gets in exchange manifests itself only in the actual utilization, in the process of the consumption of the labour-power … The process of the consumption of labour-power is at the same time the production process of commodities and of surplus-value. The consumption of labour-power is completed, as in the case of every commodity, outside the market or the sphere of circulation. (279)
And now follows the large shift in perspective:
Let us therefore, in company with the owner of money and the owner of labour-power, leave this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in full view of everyone, and follow them into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there hangs the notice ‘No admittance except on business’. Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is itself produced. The secret of profit-making must at last be laid bare. (279–80)
Marx then concludes with a swinging indictment of bourgeois constitutionality and law. Leaving the sphere of circulation and exchange means leaving that sphere constitutionally set up as “a very Eden of the innate rights of man.” The market is “the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham.”
Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, let us say of labour-power, are determined only by their own free will. They contract as free persons, who are equal before the law … Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to his own advantage. The only force bringing them together, and putting them into relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interest of each. Each pays heed to himself only, and no one worries about the others. And precisely for this reason, either in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an omniscient providence, they all work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal, and in the common interest. (280)
Marx’s deeply ironic description of the standard form of liberal bourgeois constitutionality and market law brings us to the final phase of transition in his argument:
When we leave this sphere of simple circulation or the exchange of commodities, which provides the ‘free-trader vulgaris’ with his views, his concepts and the standard by which he judges the society of capital and wage-labour, a certain change takes place, or so it appears, in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and knows he has nothing else to expect but—a tanning. (280)
These further reflections on bourgeois rights, echoing the duality of the supposed freedom of the laborer, provide a segue in the argument into a consideration of the far less visible moment of production that occurs, typically, in the factory. And it is into this realm that we will follow Marx next.
The Labor Process And The Production Of Surplus-Value
I want to cast a backward look at the direction Marx’s argument has taken thus far. I do so with the help of a diagrammatic representation of his dialectical chain of argumentation (see figure above). Reducing Marx’s argument to this format inevitably does an injustice to the richness of his thinking, but I think it useful to have some sort of cognitive map of his argument so that you can more easily navigate its swirling crosscurrents.
He begins with the unitary concept of the commodity, which embodies the duality of use- and exchange-values. What lies behind exchange-value is the unitary concept of value defined as socially necessary labor-time (“socially necessary” implies someone wants or needs the use-value). Value internalizes a duality of concrete and abstract labor, which conjoin in an act of exchange through which value gets expressed in the duality of relative and equivalent