HISTORY AND THE LAW OF VALUE
IN DEFENSE OF ENGELS AGAINST JOHN WEEKS, Part 1
HISTORY AND THE LAW OF VALUE:
IN DEFENSE OF ENGELS AGAINST JOHN WEEKS
JAMES MILLER, 1993
Part 1
INTRODUCTION
John Weeks argues, in his 1981 book, Capital and Exploitation, that there is a need to place "value theory at the center of the analysis of capitalism." (Weeks, p. 6) He approaches the analysis of value by means of a criticism of the writings of Frederick Engels, Karl Marx's lifelong collaborator. As Weeks puts it: "Engels completely misconstrued Marx's value theory." (Weeks, p. 8)
The task of dividing Engels from Marx extends through the first two chapters of Weeks's book, and continues in an appendix to the second chapter. In that appendix Weeks claims, "our purpose in this appendix is to reach into the work of Marx and Engels to demonstrate that their views on fundamental issues differed diametrically." (Weeks, p. 50)
The intent of the present essay is to refute Weeks's assertion that Marx and Engels differed in their fundamental views. It is hoped that, in the course of the arguments presented, it will be demonstrated that it is Weeks, and not Engels, who misconstrues the ideas of Marx—ideas that were developed, in large part, through the joint work of Marx and Engels.
In Weeks's attempt to conjure up an anti-Marxian Engels, he completely sets aside the biographical data of the two men's lives, and the richly-documented record of their practical and theoretical unity. The record provides no evidence of public or private quarreling between Marx and Engels on any substantive political or theoretical questions. To the contrary, they succeeded in arriving at complete accord on fundamental questions very early in their collaborative efforts.
Throughout a lifetime of struggle to develop the scientific foundation of the class struggle of the modern proletariat, and to take the first steps in constructing a leadership party for that class, Marx was accompanied and aided by Engels every step of the way. Together they formed a bond that constituted an irreplaceable nucleus for the gathering of revolutionary forces in the construction of a workers' leadership organization. Their collaboration in the Communist League and in the German revolution of 1848, and later in the International Working Men's Association, represents the highlights of their joint political work.
Their theoretical collaboration, which dates from their meeting in 1844, initially produced just works as The Holy Family and The German Ideology. Later, in the 1850s and 1860s, as Marx worked through the elaboration of his economic ideas, Engels communicated constantly with him and provided considerable assistance, both financial and literary. After Marx's death in 1883 Engels continued the work on Capital, editing and publishing the second and third volumes, and contributing, where necessary, to the text of the work. In his own works, such as Anti-Duhring (which Marx read and approved prior to publication) and Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels developed and defended ideas, which the two men shared.
This assessment of the practical and theoretical unity of Marx and Engels is chronicled and explained in a number of biographies, among them Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: an Introduction to Their Lives and Work, by David Riazanov, and Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, by Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen. Weeks, of course, acknowledges the historical record, saying,
“In beginning this way, we immediately encounter the work of Marx's closest friend and repeated collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Engels was a towering figure in the world communist movement, a brilliant theoretician himself and responsible for the publication of Volumes II and III of Capital, which were left in various degrees of completion when Marx died. Every person who picks up either of the last two volumes of Capital owes a debt to Friedrich Engels.” (Weeks, p. 8)
How is it possible then, for Weeks to claim that their "views on fundamental issues differed diametrically?" Weeks offers no hypothesis to explain this remarkable assertion, nor does he attempt to review the historical record looking for divergences. Rather, he relies entirely on an analysis of Engels's essay, "Law of Value and Rate of Profit," which is printed as an appendix to the third volume of Capital, and was written in 1895 just prior to its publication (although at one point Weeks draws on Engels's book Anti-Duhring as well). And it is in this essay that Weeks encounters views, which he believes, are strikingly at odds with those of Marx. Let's examine Engels's essay and Weeks's criticism of it. And as we proceed it will become clear who diverges from whom.
ENGELS AND SOMBART
Engels begins "Law of Value and Rate of Profit" by responding to some of the early commentary on Marx's third volume from eminent European intellectuals, among them Werner Sombart. Sombart had written a review of Marx's ideas for a German periodical. Engels does not provide any direct quotations from Sombart's review, but paraphrases him as saying,
“Value is not manifest in the exchange relation of capitalistically produced commodities; it does not live in the consciousness of the agents of capitalist production; it is not an empirical, but a mental, a logical fact . . .” (Engels, 1962, p. 871)
The definition of value provided by Sombart here, and rendered in Engels's words, appears rather unclear, but represents an attempt by a sympathetic intellectual to paraphrase Marx's definition of value. Weeks begins his attack on Engels in the following way:
“In his defense of Marx, Engels begins by considering the interpretation of Marx's theory of value by Sombart, a nineteenth-century German economist who argued that value is not an empirical, but a mental construct.” (Weeks, p. 13)
Here Weeks has substituted the word "construct" for "fact." (And he indicates in a footnote that his source for Sombart's definition is Engels's paraphrase, not the Sombart original.) By making this substitution, he then feels justified in indicating that Sombart held an idealist view of value, and that Engels, in agreeing with Sombart, did also. But a "construct" is not a "fact." A "construct" might well be thought of as the opposite of a "fact." Sombart had said that value was a "fact," albeit a "mental" one.
Weeks continues, interpreting Sombart's meaning,
“That is, in a capitalist economy, value is not something of the real world, does not exist independently of one's conceiving it, but is a concept that one creates in order to explain reality. Engels agreed with this view, but objected that it was incomplete . . .” (Weeks, p. 14)
In saying, "Engels agreed with this view," Weeks is accusing Engels of adapting to an idealist philosophical standpoint, even if only in this one passage. In making this assessment, it would have been better had Weeks expanded upon it a bit to clarify whether he views Engels as an idealist in general.
Now it should be admitted at this point that, lacking access to Sombart's review, it is difficult to make any definitive interpretation of the definition of value contained in it. But in any case, Sombart's supposed idealism is not the issue; Engels's is. But for the sake of argument, let's consider for a moment what justification there might be for saying that value is "a mental, a logical fact."
Marx characterized value as follows:
“Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity of commodities as physical objects. . . . let us remember that commodities possess an objective character as values only in so far as they are all expressions of an identical social substance, human labor, that their objective character as values is therefore purely social.” (Marx, 1977, p. 138)
Later, Marx uses other descriptive terms to characterize the non-materiality of value:
“The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, quite distinct from their palpable and real bodily form; it is therefore a purely ideal or notional form.” (Marx, 1977, p. 189)
If Marx says that value is "purely ideal," "notional," then isn't Sombart more or less on the right track if he says that value is a "mental, a logical fact"? If value is a "social substance" its objective reality can only be determined and measured on a social scale, but since society is made up of individuals, the registration of this social reality takes effect through the activities of individuals in association with others, which then becomes reflected in their consciousness (although not in a rational way). The social relations can only become real to the extent that corresponding ideas take shape in the minds of all the participating individuals. But this does not mean that individual mental processes are the determinants of social relations. The immediate determinants are social, but individual minds absorb and reflect these social processes and facilitate the social interactions of economic life. It is in this sense that, "individuals are now ruled by abstractions, whereas earlier they depended on one another." (Marx, 1973, p. 164)
Thus Marx can say that value takes "a purely ideal or notional form" in the minds of individuals. And of course, the recognition of value as social or "mental" does not in the least detract from its objective existence. It is "of the real world," because, under certain circumstances, it forms the social framework within which definite acts of production and distribution are carried out, and thus it can be judged by its results, which are objective, verifiable facts. Social relations are not the same as physical objects, but they are no less a part of the objective world.
Sombart undoubtedly did not progress very far in his attempt to understand Marx's theory of value. Yet he made an effort, and Engels wanted to encourage him. Thus after paraphrasing Sombart's interpretation of Marx a bit further, Engels concludes,
“. . . it cannot be said that this conception of the significance of the law of value for the capitalist form of production is wrong. [thus Weeks says, "Engels agreed"] But it does seem to me to be too broad, and susceptible of a narrower, more precise formulation. . .” (Engels, 1962, p. 871)
We have seen in what sense Sombart's formula ("a mental, a logical fact") can be regarded as congruent with Marx. Weeks substitutes the word "construct" for "fact" in this formula, thus making Sombart into an idealist, and making Engels, in agreeing with Sombart, an idealist by association. But even if it were true that Engels overlooked an idealist expression in Sombart's words, and merely attempted to focus on what was positive or promising, that in itself would not make an idealist of Engels. One would have to examine Engels's own works as evidence.
And as far as the present essay is concerned, we do not have to wait long for Engels to make his standpoint clear. After his comments on Sombart, Engels deals with an article on the same topic by Conrad Schmidt. Schmidt had written in a letter to Engels that he believed "the law of value within the capitalist form of production to be a pure, although theoretically necessary, fiction." (Engels, 1962, p. 872) Engels rejects this view, saying,
“Sombart, as well as Schmidt . . . does not make sufficient allowance for the fact that we are dealing here not only with a purely logical process, but with a historical process and its explanatory reflection in thought, the logical pursuance of its inner connections.” (Engels, 1962, p. 872)
This is a clear materialist formulation, but Weeks overlooks it. He has advanced the notion that Engels might be an idealist, but doesn't carry through with an attempt to prove the point.
ENGELS'S APPROACH TO THE LAW OF VALUE
A good deal of supposed evidence for Weeks's claim that the fundamental views of Marx and Engels "differed diametrically" is found in a four-page section of the essay by Engels currently under consideration. In this section Engels analyzes particular aspects of the history of economic relations, showing how the law of value took shape and evolved over the centuries. For the purposes of this paper, it will be useful to summarize Engels's sketch and reproduce here the key passages, which Weeks finds so un-Marxist.
In introducing his theme that, in precapitalist exchange, commodities tended to exchange according to the amount of labor required for their production, Engels quotes Marx as saying,
“The exchange of commodities at their values, or approximately at their values, thus requires a much lower stage than their exchange at their prices of production, which requires a definite level of capitalist development. . . .
Apart from the domination of prices and price movement by the law of value, it is quite appropriate to regard the values of commodities as not only theoretically but also historically prius to the prices of production. This applies to conditions in which the laborer owns his means of production, and this is the condition of the landowning farmer living off his own labor and the craftsman, in the ancient as well as in the modern world. This agrees also with the view we expressed previously, that the evolution of products into commodities arises through exchange between different communities, not between members of the same community. It holds not only for this primitive condition, but also for subsequent conditions, based on slavery and serfdom, and for the guild organization of handicrafts, so long as the means of production involved in each branch of production can be transferred from one sphere to another only with difficulty and therefore the various spheres of production are related to one another, within certain limits, as foreign countries or communist communities.” (Cited by Engels, 1962, p. 873; from Marx, 1962, p. 174)
Engels then gives an example of an early form of exchange through which the law of value expressed its development. He points to the barter that was carried on by medieval peasants, a form of exchange in which "the labor time required for the manufacture of the articles obtained . . . in barter" was "fairly accurately" known by the exchanging peasants, since the labor processes involved were easily observable locally. (Engels, 1962, p. 874) In this barter, Engels maintains that,
“Not only was the labor time spent on these products the only suitable measure for the quantitative determination of the values to be exchanged; no other was at all possible. Or is it to be believed that the peasant and the artisan were so stupid as to give up the product of ten hours' labor of one person for that of a single hour's labor of another?” (p. 874)
At this point, Engels is only concerned with barter. Later he contemplates the introduction of money into the bartering communities:
“From the moment money penetrates into this mode of economy, the tendency towards adaptation to the law of value (in the Marxian formulation, nota bene!) grows more pronounced on the one hand, while on the other it is already interrupted by the interference of usurers' capital and fleecing by taxation; the periods for which prices, on the average, approach to within a negligible margin of values begin to grow longer.” (p. 874)
But how, in this barter on the basis of quantity of labor, was the latter to be calculated, even if only indirectly and relatively, for products requiring longer labor, interrupted at irregular intervals, and uncertain in yield—e.g. grain or cattle? And among people, to boot, who could not calculate? Obviously, only by means of a lengthy process of zigzag approximation, often feeling the way here and there in the dark, and as is usual, learning only through mistakes. But each one's necessity for covering his outlay on the whole always helped to return to the right direction; and the small number of kinds of articles in circulation, as well as the often century-long stable nature of their production, facilitated the attaining of this goal. (p. 875)
“From the practical point of view, money became the decisive measure of value, all the more as the commodities entering trade became more varied, the more they came from distant countries and the less, therefore, the labor time necessary for their production could be checked. . . . partly their own consciousness of the value-measuring property of labor had been fairly well dimmed by the habit of reckoning with money; in the popular mind money began to represent absolute value. (p. 876)
“In a word: the Marxian law of value holds generally, as far as economic laws are valid at all, for the whole period of simple commodity production, that is, up to the time when the latter suffers a modification through the appearance of the capitalist form of production. Up to that time prices gravitate towards the values fixed according to the Marxian law and oscillate around these values, so that the more fully simple commodity production develops, the more the average prices over long periods uninterrupted by external violent disturbances coincide with values within a negligible margin. Thus the Marxian law of value has general economic validity for a period lasting from the beginning of exchange, which transforms products into commodities, down to the 15th century of the present era. But the exchange of commodities dates from a time before all written history, which in Egypt goes back to at least 2,500 B.C., and perhaps 5,000 B.C., and in Babylon to 4,000 B.C., perhaps 6,000 B.C.; thus the law of value has prevailed during a period of from five to seven thousand years.” (p. 876)
WEEKS VS. ENGELS ON BARTER AND MONEY
On the topic of medieval peasant barter, Weeks objects to Engels's assertion that the peasants were able rely on their knowledge of local conditions of production to enter into barter relations involving the exchange of products representing equal amounts of labor. Initially, what concerns Weeks is not so much the question of whether or not the peasants consciously used labor time as a standard of measuring values, but that it doesn't seem to him likely that they would abandon the labor-time standard once money is brought into the local economy. Weeks argues:
“. . . it is not obvious why money should play an obfuscating role. If peasants and artisans have direct knowledge of the concrete labor time expended in production of commodities, and exchange is based on this knowledge, the introduction of money merely requires the seller to keep in mind how much of his labor time is exchanged against a given quantity of the money commodity when he becomes a buyer of a commodity whose embodied labor time he knows. In other words, if labor times are known, they are known whether exchanges involve money or not.” (Weeks, p. 18)
Engels had said that the tendency toward adaptation to the Marxian law of value grew more pronounced with the penetration of money into the local economy. But the introduction of money only initiated a process of change in the habits and thinking of the peasants. Engels argued that their consciousness of labor time became "fairly well dimmed" by the use of money—implying that the transition to money exchange extended over many generations. Of course, the time period of the transition from barter to money exchange varied at different historical periods where this process occurred in different parts of the world. But it could not have taken place in an overnight fashion as Weeks assumes. One must also take into account the growth of market relations, so that the products offered for exchange in each locality increasingly came from more remote areas.
In terms of the historical transition to commodity exchange with money as medium of exchange, Marx, like Engels, was of the view that money played an "obfuscating role." As he explained,
“It is not at all apparent on its face that its character of being money is merely the result of social processes; it is money. This is all the more difficult since its immediate use value for the living individual stands in no relation whatever to this role, and because, in general, the memory of use value, as distinct from exchange value, has become entirely extinguished in this incarnation of pure exchange value.” (Marx, 1973, p. 239)
Further, the idea that barter was based on labor time would not have seemed strange to Marx. He maintained,
“Since labor is motion, time is its natural measure. Barter in its crudest form presupposes labor as substance and labor time as measure of commodities; this then emerges as soon as it becomes regularized, continuous, as soon as it contains within itself the reciprocal requirements for its renewal. [Regarding barter, Marx adds that] if it should happen to continue, to become a continuing act which contains within itself the means of its renewal, then little by little, from the outside and likewise by chance, regulation of reciprocal exchange arises by means of regulation of reciprocal production, and the costs of production, which ultimately resolve into labor time, would thus become the measure of exchange.” (Marx, 1973, p. 205)
The meaning of "regulation of reciprocal exchange by means of regulation of reciprocal production," is captured in Engels's phrase, "each one's necessity for covering his outlay on the whole always helped to return to the right direction." (Engels, 1962, p. 875) In other words, long term bartering of the same goods must be able to correct its own tendency toward unequal exchange. Otherwise, one side is always losing, the other side always gaining, and there would be a tendency for the perpetually disadvantaged party to opt out of the bartering. The long-term stability of barter relations depends on the capacity of the parties to correct inequalities over the long run, generally by trial and error. (This assumes that the bartering parties stand in a voluntary relation of equality to one another, so that one cannot impose its will upon the other.)
"PERCEPTION" OF LABOR TIME
Thus far we have only commented on Weeks's opinion that the introduction of money into an economy based on bartering would not cause the exchanging groups or individuals to lose track of labor times, if they had been accustomed to use these as standards of exchange. But his criticism goes further. He believes that Engels has advanced a theory of value based on the direct perception of labor time, and the exchange of products based on this observed time. In this view, Engels, failing to learn from Marx, simply repeated the errors of Proudhon, Boisguillebert and others. Weeks states:
“Marx could have been commenting on 'Law of Value and Rate of Profit' when he wrote, 'Boisguillebert's work proves that it is possible to regard labor time as the measure of value of commodities, while confusing the labor which is materialized in the exchange value of commodities and measured in time units with the direct physical activity of individuals.'” (Weeks, p. 28)
Later, Weeks claims:
“This is Engels's argument: each buyer measures labor time in production by observation, then exchange reflects this assessment.” (Weeks, p. 56)
But the reference to Boisguillebert (and a later, similar, reference to Proudhon) is a distraction. In pointing to "the mistake of Engels's stress on perception of labor time . . .," (p. 28) Weeks should have more closely examined Engels's words.
When Engels discussed the "perception" of labor time, he did not refer to observation of the labor time taken up by the producer of the particular article in question, only that the peasant "knew fairly accurately the labor time required for the manufacture of the articles obtained by him in barter." It is important to keep in mind that when labor time becomes the basis for measuring the quantities of goods to be exchanged, the labor-time measurement is based on social averages, established by generations of experience, and not on direct observation of the laboring activities of one person by another for each particular product. And this applies whether the exchange system involves conscious recognition of labor time or not.
As we have seen, when Engels discusses medieval peasant barter, he refers to the peasants' knowledge about labor time as a necessary element in determining exchange ratios of some (though not all) locally-produced goods. He then adds, "from the moment money penetrates into this mode of economy, the tendency towards adaptation to law of value (in the Marxian formulation, nota bene!) grows more pronounced . . .". (p. 874) Note here that there is a distinction in Engels's mind between labor-time barter, on the one hand, and the law of value, on the other.
There was an economy of labor time in the middle ages. Feudal services were often determined by the length of time required to perform the task, i.e., the obligation was defined by so many days or hours of such-and-such a kind of work.
Marx points to why, in his view, there was a tendency toward conscious recognition of labor time as a basis for the regulation of economic activity in precapitalist societies. Speaking of "patriarchal rural industry of a peasant family . . .," Marx comments,
“The distribution of labor within the family and the labor time expended by the individual members of the family, are regulated by differences of sex and age as well as by seasonal variations in the natural conditions of labor. The fact that the expenditure of the individual labor powers is measured by duration appears here, by its very nature, as a social characteristic of labor itself, because the individual labor powers, by their very nature, act only as instruments of the joint labor power of the family.” (Marx, 1977, p. 171)
Regarding labor-time accounting in feudal societies, Ernest Mandel notes,
“In Japan there were in the eighth century A.D. two kinds of non-agricultural obligatory labor, called cho and yo. The statute of Taiho fixed the amount of these two obligations both in length of labor time (ten days), in quantity of cloth (26 shaku, i.e. approximately 10 yards) and in quantity of corn (1 to, i.e. approximately two bushels). Thus, among the producers in a society of this kind, the length of time needed to produce a given commodity was quite clear.” (Mandel, p. 62)
Undoubtedly, barter by labor-time accounting occurred historically, as Engels claimed, and Weeks does not dispute this. Also, it must be kept in mind that Engels also called attention to another form of barter in cases where the labor time was either not known or difficult to calculate, that of "zigzag approximation." In any case, these forms of barter were at some point superseded by money exchange, either through the necessary evolution of bartering itself, or by the penetration of developed exchange from the outside. And, Engels noted, it is the introduction of money that promotes the adaptation of the natural exchange systems to the law of value.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PRECAPITALIST EXCHANGE
As we have seen, in his brief sketch Engels focuses on the development of exchange in precapitalist societies, leaving aside any analysis of the dominant modes of production that predated capitalism. This apparent lapse on Engels's part—to omit from this section any description of feudalism, bondage, slavery, etc.—gives Weeks the opportunity to accuse Engels of painting a picture of a precapitalist society exclusively composed of petty commodity producers for five to seven thousand years.
Here is how Weeks develops this theme:
“As the argument develops, we begin to get a picture of the society being considered, which presumably endured for five to seven thousand years: a society of independent, exchanging producers ("working peasants . . . with . . . their own farmsteads"), specializing within a social division of labor, and with property rights to the entire product of their labor. It is unclear how such a society allows for exploitation and classes, since the basis of class society is the appropriation of the surplus product of the direct producers, but this anticipates the critique of Engels's argument.” (Weeks, p. 16)
For an exposition of Engels's views of the development of class society, readers are urged to take a look at his book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, which is only one text in which his views on the subject are set out. In the essay under consideration, however, his task was not to recapitulate what he had written elsewhere, but to say what was relevant to his theme. That he omits reference to the relationship between commodity production and exchange, on the one hand, and the major modes of production, which existed before the rise of capitalism, on the other, in no way detracts from the validity of his analysis.
Throughout the history of civilization, a variety of precapitalist modes of production rose and fell, some of them polarizing society into exploited and exploiting classes. At the same time, alongside these class-divided forms, and partly intertwined with them, there developed a sphere of production for exchange, commodity production, production for others mediated by exchange. As Marx explained,
“No matter what the basis on which products are produced, which are thrown into circulation as commodities—whether the basis of the primitive community, of slave production, of small peasant and petty bourgeois, or the capitalist basis, the character of products as commodities is not altered, and as commodities they must pass through the process of exchange and its attendant changes of form.” (Marx, 1962, p. 320)
EQUALITY IN EXCHANGE
Weeks continues summarizing Engels,
“Explicit here is a view that those in the exchange process meet each other in the marketplace as equals—'the peasants, as well as the people from whom they bought, were themselves workers; the exchanged products were each one's own products'. We must keep in mind that Engels is not describing a class society in which the surplus products are appropriated and exchanged by the ruling class, but a society of equals, exchanging the products of their labor.” (Weeks, p. 16)
Here Weeks casts doubt on the idea that independent small commodity owners—peasants and artisans—met as equals in the precapitalist market, exchanging the products of their own, or their family's, labor. It is true that the ruling classes of the middle ages, in certain instances, exchanged the products appropriated from the peasants or serfs, as, e.g. in the cases of the medieval wool trade, wineries, etc. But at the same time the historical record shows peasants and artisans meeting as equals in village markets, fairs, etc., to exchange the products of their labor.
As commodity exchange develops, however, the principle of equality between commodity owners—however these products may have been obtained—asserts itself the more this exchange is institutionalized. The equal status of those engaging in exchange is a necessary basis for the evolution of the law of value. (And this principle applies whether the exchangers are peasants, artisans, merchants or aristocrats.) Marx maintained,
“Indeed, in so far as the commodity or labor is conceived of only as exchange value, and the relation in which the various commodities are brought into connection with one another is conceived as the exchange of these exchange values with one another, as their equation, then the individuals, the subjects between whom this process goes on, are simply and only conceived of as exchangers. . . . Each of the subjects is an exchanger; i.e. each has the same social relation towards the other that the other has towards him. As subjects of exchange, their relation is therefore that of equality. . . . Furthermore, the commodities which they exchange are, as exchange values, equivalent, or at least count as such.” (Marx, 1973, p. 241)
The principle of equality of exchangers was recognized in the legal system of ancient Rome. Marx pointed out, referring to this system,
“. . . in so far as it was developed in a limited sphere, it was able to develop the attributes of the juridical person, precisely of the individual engaged in exchange, and thus anticipate (in its basic aspects) the legal relations of industrial society, and in particular the right which rising bourgeois society had necessarily to assert against medieval society.” (Marx, 1973, p. 246)
HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF EXCHANGE
Weeks restricts his discussion of value to its form of expression in capitalist society. His statements indicate a certain skeptical attitude toward "forms of value" that he thinks probably did not exist prior to the rise of capitalism in Europe, although he does not make a definite statement on this point. He leaves out of consideration the analysis of precapitalist trade and commodity production that was developed by Marx and Engels. As Weeks explains in his introduction,
“We begin with three chapters on value theory and its implications, in which it is demonstrated that the general production of useful objects ('use values,' Marx called them) for exchange ('exchange values') necessarily implies a capitalist society, which is a society based on exploitation (the appropriation by the capitalist class of unpaid labor performed by the working class).” (Weeks, p. 5)
It is true that only under the capitalist mode of production do the vast majority of the products of labor take the form of commodities. The commodity form occupies a relatively modest niche in precapitalist societies. But where does capitalism come from? It doesn't appear out of nowhere. Capitalism arrives on the scene, historically, as a result of a concurrence of economic and social developments, the most important of which, from the economic point of view, is that the production and exchange of the products of labor as commodities has reached a high level, as a result of a lengthy process of development. And the history of commodity production, as Engels points out, goes back five to seven thousand years.
Marx pointed out that commodity production began first, in ancient times, in the relations between communities, beginning with gift exchange, proceeding to barter, and evolving into buying and selling.
“However, as soon as products have become commodities in the external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become commodities in the internal life of the community. . . . The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social process. In the course of time, therefore, at least some part of the products must be produced intentionally for the purpose of exchange. From that moment the distinction between the usefulness of things for direct consumption and their usefulness in exchange becomes firmly established. Their use value becomes distinguished from their exchange value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion in which things are exchangeable becomes dependent on their production itself. Custom fixes their values at definite magnitudes.” (Marx, 1977, p. 182)
But though the products of labor may be produced in the form of commodities for thousands of years, this form of production remains subordinate to the non-commodity-producing social regimes in which it subsists as a subordinate, supplementary element. This persists until the sixteenth century in Britain, and later, on the continent of Europe, when the capitalist mode of production begins to take shape. But Weeks cannot accept that small-scale commodity production could endure such a long time without generating capitalism. He says,
“To argue that the law of value ruled for five to seven thousand years, as Engels does (and Meek for a more modest period), is to argue that exchange can occur among independent, self-employed producers without generating capitalism. That is, it posits a world of competing producers, exchanging their labor, without any contradictions that would give rise to the concentration and centralization of production. In short, implicit in the argument is that commodity exchange itself can be equal and socially egalitarian, and is characterized by exploitation only when it comes under the domination of capital. This view, commodity production and the competition among producers that it implies, treats exchange as intrinsically benign, capable of regulating and reproducing a society of equals.” (Weeks, p. 45)
But commodity production did exist for thousands of years without giving rise to bourgeois production relations, arising first among primitive or barbarian communities, and later becoming regularized as a subordinate element within societies based on slave labor and tribute from conquered peoples that often were characterized by marked inequalities in wealth and social power. Capitalism could not be born until the historical preconditions for its existence had ripened. Marx explained it this way:
“One thing, however, is clear: nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their labor power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production.
“The production and circulation of commodities can still take place even though the great mass of the objects produced are intended for the immediate requirements of their producers, and are not turned into commodities, so that the process of social production is as yet by no means dominated in its length and breadth by exchange value. The appearance of products as commodities requires a level of development of the division of labor within society such that the separation of use value from exchange value, a separation which first begins with barter, has already been completed. But such a degree of development is common to many economic formations of society, with the most diverse historical characteristics. . . .
“It is otherwise with capital. The historical conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It arises only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence finds the free worker available, on the market, as the seller of his own labor power. And this one historical precondition comprises a world's history.” (Marx, 1977, p. 273, 274)
PROPERTY RIGHTS OF THE COMMODITY PRODUCER
Marx held that one historical precondition for the appearance of the capitalist mode of production was the separation of the producers from their means of production, so that free labor power could meet in the marketplace with capital. The existence of merchants' or usurers' capital in itself is not a sufficient condition for this transition. Marx explained:
“But the mere presence of monetary wealth, and even the achievement of a kind of supremacy on its part, is in no way sufficient for this dissolution into capital to happen. Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc., would have ended their history with free labor and capital, or rather begun a new history. . . . Capital does not create the objective conditions of labor. Rather, its original formation is that, through the historic process of the dissolution of the old mode of production, value existing as money wealth is enabled, on the one side, to buy the objective conditions of labor; on the other side, to exchange money for the living labor of the workers who have been set free.” (Marx, 1973, p. 506)
One decisive factor that enabled this process of separation was the rise in the productivity of labor in the middle ages. It was this rise in productivity, particularly of agricultural labor, which allowed the freeing up of excess labor power in the countryside. As Marx claimed,
“It will likewise be found on closer observation that all the dissolved relations were possible only with a definite degree of development of the material (and hence also the intellectual) forces of production.” (Marx, 1973, p. 502)
By the sixteenth century, in England at least, history had finished its labor of building the stage upon which moneyed wealth could at last begin to extend itself into artisan production and assume its role of industrial capital. It is at this point, however, that equality in exchange—equality between the exchangers of commodities—begins to be transformed into apparent equality, in the case of the exchange between capital and labor. Initially, capital and labor appear as equals in the labor market, each standing in relation to the other as "property owners" according to the tradition established by simple commodity production and exchange. The means of subsistence (property of one party), are exchanged for labor power (property of the other). But capital's monopoly over the conditions of production promotes the development of a fundamental inequality between the two classes, even while the appearance of equality persists.
This historical transition is problematical for Weeks, however, since he has not examined the development of precapitalist commodity production, and does not see how the law of value evolved in and through this historical process. This makes it difficult for him to appreciate the historical transition in the exchange relations that occurred with the rise of capital. Weeks argues:
“Engels begins with commodity exchange on the basis of equivalent exchange (commodities exchanging at their values) in a context in which each producer has the right to his labor. Marx begins similarly, with no explicit statement as to the social relations of production involved. But from this starting point, the two distinct approaches emerge and the theoretical arguments go separate ways. In the former case, the presumption that individuals hold right to their labor is never questioned, but maintained throughout, and social relations of production are not considered at all, until it becomes necessary to deal with the historical reality of capitalism. In the latter case, the analysis reveals, step by step, that the assumption of individual private property is inconsistent with the actual operation of the law of value and must be discarded. For Marx, the right to one's labor was merely an assumption; for Engels it characterized an actual society.” (Weeks, p. 41)
Weeks argues here that Marx discarded the assumption of individual private property because he considered it "inconsistent with the actual operation of the law of value." And that this "individual private property" in the product of one's own labor, or, "the right to one's labor," was "merely an assumption," and did not characterize an "actual society." Here Weeks seems to be saying that Marx first made an assumption, and then later discarded it, thinking it was wrong. He seems to believe that while Marx discarded this erroneous assumption, Engels did not.
Weeks buttresses his argument by using this quote from Marx:
“At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own labor. At least, some such assumption was necessary since only commodity-owners with equal rights confronted each other.” (Weeks, p. 42, taken from the 1970 Progress edition of Capital, Vol. I, p. 547. See Marx, 1977, p. 730)
But the assumption of the "right to one's labor" was based on an actual society, for Marx as well as for Engels. As Marx pointed out:
“The private property of the worker in his means of production is the foundation of small-scale industry, and small-scale industry is a necessary condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality of the worker himself. Of course, this mode of production also exists under slavery, serfdom and other situations of dependence. But it flourishes, unleashes the whole of its energy, attains its adequate classical form, only where the worker is the free proprietor of the conditions of his labor, and sets them in motion himself: where the peasant owns the land he cultivates, or the artisan owns the tool with which he is an accomplished performer.” (Marx, 1977, p. 927)
Marx goes on to explain that as capitalism emerges and becomes dominant, the unity of the small producer with the means of production is annihilated, the scattered properties of the small producers are socially concentrated, that forcible means are used in this process, and then concludes,
“Private property, which is personally earned, i.e. which is based, as it were, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent working individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on the exploitation of alien, but formally free labor.” (Marx, 1977, p. 928)