A Brief History of “Value”
By: Prole Rising
Tags: Marxism, Communism, Historical Materialism, Economy, Politics

But why are we talking about value? Because it’s the most important thing that we need to understand if we are serious about understanding how the world works, how capitalism functions, where it came from, and how we can go about building something which serves the needs of the many instead of the few. All of these discussions and topics center around this concept of “value”.

Marxists throw around the term “means of production” all the time, and unfortunately, almost never take the time to explain what they mean. Why do we want public ownership of the means of production? Why are the means of production so important? What do the means of production produce? Well, that brings me right back to this concept of “value”.

When we say “means of production”, we are referring to the means of producing value in society, whether that be in the form of use-value (substance of value), exchange-value (magnitude of value), or both, in the form of commodity production.

Means of producing value. That’s what we’re talking about. Anything that, worked on with human labor, produces use-value, exchange-value or both. When we conceptualize the “means of production” in this clear way, it’s immediately apparent why we need public, not private, ownership and control of them. After all, they’re where everything we value comes from! They’re kind of important! Goods, resources, everything that we consume, everything that we can conceive of which keeps society running — that’s all value. And it comes from the means whereby it’s produced — the means of production.

Means of production have always existed. Even before human beings there was land waiting to be tilled, etc. It was not until human beings began tilling that land that the land began producing value.

Over time, humans started forming into larger groups than their immediate families for purposes of survival. Tribes were formed, and it was at this point that “surplus-labor” first came into being. For the first time, it became necessary for members of the tribe to contribute more of their labor-power to producing items with use-value than was needed for their own immediate needs. With the advent of agriculture, this need for surplus-labor became even more explicit. As the development of human society progressed, the demand for surplus-labor increased, as the necessary things to keep society running increased. Buildings needed to be built, not just homes for you and your family. A surplus of agricultural goods needed to be produced to not only feed the immediate producers and their families, but to feed those who weren’t agricultural workers as well. From Chapter 37, Volume 3 of “Capital”:

The total agricultural labor, both necessary and surplus labor, of a segment of society must suffice to produce the necessary subsistence for the whole of society, that is, for non-agricultural laborers too. This means therefore that the major division of labor between agricultural and industrial must be possible; and similarly between tillers of the soil producing means of subsistence and those producing raw materials. Although the labor of the direct producers of means of subsistence breaks up into necessary and surplus labor as far as they themselves are concerned, it represents from the social standpoint only the necessary labor required to produce the means of subsistence.

At some point, this development led to the formation of classes. One group realized that, if they laid hold of the means of producing all this value in society (for instance, land and livestock), they could seize the surplus-value that was produced by the surplus-labor (surplus-labor which, remember, was already being done, and had to continue to be done to keep society running), and then exchange/distribute that surplus-value in whatever way they saw fit.

Thus, one group used violence to lay hold of the things which produced value in society, and used their private claim to those things as a way to practice extortion on a societal-scale. Here, “class interests” first began to develop, as it was in the immediate interests of the new ruling class to maintain their power and control over the means of producing value in society; and it was in the immediate interests of the new oppressed class(es) to take back control of those things in whatever degree possible, and by any means possible. Thus, two irreconcilable “class interests” developed, which were mutually-exclusive of each other. No compromise was possible. This is where classes came from, and class society continues to this day. The ancient slave-based societies have come and gone; feudalism has come and gone; capitalism has long reigned supreme.

Throughout this entire process of world history, one thing has remained the same: there has been a ruling class, who has controlled these means of producing value in society; and there have been oppressed classes, who have been forced into a position of subservience, forced to give up their surplus labor-time and the value-products that they produce in that time, in exchange for being allowed to use those means of producing value to create enough value for their own sustenance. This has remained the social contract, unchanged for millennia. Even as social systems have changed, been overthrown, grown up next to and out of each other, and a world of culture and experience has enriched our history, this basic fact has never changed. There are those who have, and those who work for those who have.

Engels wrote, in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”:

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.

This is the materialist conception of history. We look at who has access and control over all of the means of producing value in society (whether that be use-value alone, exchange-value, or both). This is how we identify the ruling class in any given place and/or time. Then we proceed to identify those who are forced to work for the ruling class, using the means of producing value to produce their own means of sustenance, and also producing surplus-value with their surplus-labor, which is appropriated by the ruling class. Who owns the means of producing value? Who has to work for those who own them? What interests do the two groups have, in either protecting the existing order, or overthrowing it?

In feudalism, for example, we can see that the feudal nobility were the ruling class, not just because they proclaimed themselves to be, but because they seized the means of producing value in society (common land, mostly), forcing serfs to work 2–4 days/week on the King’s land in exchange for allowing the serfs to work their own plot of land, just big enough to feed their immediate family and perhaps produce a small surplus they can sell at the market. From Chapter 47, Volume 3 of “Capital”:

“If we consider ground-rent in its simplest form, that of labor rent, where the direct producer, using instruments of labor (plough, cattle, etc.) which actually or legally belong to him, cultivates soil actually owned by him during part of the week, and works during the remaining days upon the estate of the feudal lord without any compensation from the feudal lord, the situation here is still quite clear, for in this case rent and surplus-value are identical. Rent, not profit, is the form here through which unpaid surplus-labor expresses itself. To what extent the laborer (a self-sustaining serf) can secure in this case a surplus above his indispensable necessities of life, i.e., a surplus above that which we would call wages under the capitalist mode of production, depends, other circumstances remaining unchanged, upon the proportion in which his labor-time is divided into labor-time for himself and enforced labor-time for his feudal lord. This surplus above the indispensable requirements of life, the germ of what appears as profit under the capitalist mode of production, is therefore wholly determined by the amount of groundrent, which in this case is not only directly unpaid surplus-labor, but also appears as such. It is unpaid surplus-labor for the “owner” of the means of production, which here coincide with the land, and so far as they differ from it, are mere accessories to it. That the product of the serf must here suffice to reproduce his conditions of labor, in addition to his subsistence, is a circumstance which remains the same under all modes of production.”

There’s a ruling class, and an oppressed class forced to trade their surplus labor-power (or surplus labor-time, if you like) for their basic sustenance. They don’t own or have access to the means of producing that sustenance, without the King allowing it. And the King won’t allow it unless he gets the surplus-value produced by the serfs in exchange. What do we usually call it, when someone steals something you need, then forces you to do something in order to get it back?

The dictionary defines “extortion” the following way: “Extortion is the act of extorting — using violence, threats, intimidation, or pressure from one’s authority to force someone to hand over money (or something else of value) or do something they don’t want to do.”

That’s right, it’s extortion. And this hasn’t changed since feudalism. The people who control the means of producing value has changed; the system of extortion on a societal-scale has not. Today, the capitalist class owns and controls the means of producing value in society (businesses, land, capital), and they only allow the working class to use those means to produce the value they need to survive, if the working class agrees to work most of every week for free. We do productive work, producing value, and we only see a portion of it. The rest — the “surplus-labor” we perform — is taken by the capitalist class. It’s the social contract. You either agree to be extorted, or you die. It really is that simple. After all, no matter which capitalist you “choose” to work for, the deal stays the same: you either work most of the time for free (and the value you produce with that labor goes into the pockets of people who did NOT work for it), or you aren’t allowed any access to the means of producing what you need to live (wages, in the capitalist context, which make up just a portion of the total value produced or realized by your labor).

Remember where “surplus-labor” came from? It first appeared at the genesis of human society, when tribes began to form, and individuals started laboring for the members of their tribe, in addition to the labor needed to feed and clothe themselves. Without this “surplus-labor” being done, there could be no division of labor (since every person would have to grow their own food). There could be no social systems, no exchange, no reproduction of life. Humanity will always need to perform labor for others, in addition to that which is necessary to fulfil individual needs. “We live in a society”, as the saying goes.

In capitalism, the value produced by surplus-labor is almost all diverted from meeting any social needs, and rather, stashed in offshore bank accounts and tax havens by the ultra-wealthy who own the means of production — or used by them to increase the scale of their operations, in order to temporarily offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as capital accumulation accelerates. But that’s a topic for another day. Today, I want to end by talking about what surplus-labor might look like in a more equitable, socialist society; how both its substance and magnitude will be changed in radical ways by the communist revolution. I’ll let Marx himself close out the piece with an excerpt from Chapter 48, Volume 3 of “Capital”:

We have seen that the capitalist process of production is a historically determined form of the social process of production in general. The latter is as much a production process of material conditions of human life as a process taking place under specific historical and economic production relations, producing and reproducing these production relations themselves, and thereby also the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence and their mutual relations, i.e., their particular socio-economic form. For the aggregate of these relations, in which the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered from the standpoint of its economic structure.

Like all its predecessors, the capitalist process of production proceeds under definite material conditions, which are, however, simultaneously the bearers of definite social relations entered into by individuals in the process of reproducing their life. Those conditions, like these relations, are on the one hand prerequisites, on the other hand results and creations of the capitalist process of production; they are produced and reproduced by it.

We saw also that capital — and the capitalist is merely capital personified and functions in the process of production solely as the agent of capital in its corresponding social process of production, pumps a definite quantity of surplus-labor out of the direct producers, or laborers; capital obtains this surplus-labor without an equivalent, and in essence it always remains forced labor — no matter how much it may seem to result from free contractual agreement. This surplus-labor appears as surplus-value, and this surplus-value exists as a surplus-product. Surplus-labor in general, as labor performed over and above the given requirements, must always remain. In the capitalist as well as in the slave system, etc., it merely assumes an antagonistic form and is supplemented by complete idleness of a stratum of society.

A definite quantity of surplus-labor is required as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive expansion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development of the needs and the growth of population, which is called accumulation from the viewpoint of the capitalist. It is one of the civilizing aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus-labor in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations, and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the preceding forms of slavery, serfdom, etc. Thus it gives rise to a stage, on the one hand, in which coercion and monopolization of social development (including its material and intellectual advantages) by one portion of society at the expense of the other are eliminated; on the other hand, it creates the material means and embryonic conditions, making it possible in a higher form of society to combine this surplus-labor with a greater reduction of time devoted to material labor in general.

For, depending on the development of labor productivity, surplus-labor may be large in a small total working-day, and relatively small in a large total working-day. If the necessary labor-time = 3 hours and the surplus-labor = 3 hours, then the total working-day = 6 hours and the rate of surplus-labor = 100%. If the necessary labor = 9 hours and the surplus-labor = 3 hours, then the total working-day = 12 hours and the rate of surplus-labor only = 33⅓%. In that case, it depends upon the labor productivity how much use-value shall be produced in a definite time, hence also in a definite surplus labor-time.

The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labor, but upon its productivity and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed. In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.

With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.