The critical role of gold in labor theory analysis (part 2)

In the first part of this series, I make the following statements:

1. The role of a commodity money in labor theory analysis is not determined by the material the state designates as money in the territory under its control, but by society.
2. Gold (commodity monies generally) still performs the function of measure of value and standard of price despite this function not being recognized by any state within the world market.
3. It is critical to labor theory analysis that commodity money is recognized as the only money that can serve as measure of value in analysis.
4. There is an institutional bias, however, within Marxist scholarship, produced by decades of empirical research based on the mistaken idea fiat dollars are money in the full sense of the term and can serve as money in labor theory analysis. This fallacy serves to block recognition of commodity money as the only measure of value appropriate to labor theory analysis.
5. Thus there has been a complete failure on the part of Marxists academics to recognize the significance of the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971.
6. Even a cursory examination of the empirical data using gold as measure of value and nominal measures of economic activity produce starkly different results that have yet to be explained by Marxist academics.

These starkly different results demonstrate that state issued fiat money does not behave at all like commodity money and, moreover, there is no research (nor could there ever be research) that demonstrates state issued inconvertible debased fiat created out of nothing (“fiat” for short) can ever behave like commodity money for the ridiculously simple reason that while no institution in society determines what serves as money, the state alone creates fiat and forces it into circulation.

Money does not simply manifest the production relations of individuals engaged in a certain sort of social production, it implies those production relations are outside the control of the individuals creating them. Because the production relations individuals enter into are not mastered by them, these relation’s manifest themselves as an independent force standing over against them in the form of money.

It follows from this that gold did not formerly play a role in managing national or international transaction, as Caffentzis argues, but, rather, expressed the fact the relations of production and exchange were entirely unregulated.

The critical role of gold in labor theory analysis

1. Was Marx fundamentally wrong in his theory of money

Does the end of Bretton Woods and of the gold standard invalidate Marx’s argument on money? (When I say ‘gold’ in this case, of course, I mean any commodity serving in the role of money.) This is the question raised by George Caffentzis, in a 2009 paper, Marxism After the Death of Gold. Caffentzis writes:

“Marx clearly argues that gold is necessary for the functioning of capitalism; but since Nixon’s decision to “shut the gold window” on August 15, 1971, gold has played a peripheral role at best in the managing of national or international transactions. The last thirty-seven years have seen many crises in capitalism without, however, a crisis of capitalism (to use Lebowitz’s distinction) (Leibowitz 2003). Capitalism is surviving without the working class’s “cross of gold” in the same way it survived the end of chattel slavery. What might have seemed essential at one point in capitalist history has been shown to be a mere “accident” in the case of chattel slavery. Does the same error apply to gold as money? I.e., does the end of gold (and indeed of any precious metal) as the money commodity constitute the crucial negative experimental test of Marxism?”

This begs a question for labor theory analysis of post-1971 economic events: Who said gold was no longer a commodity money? It is by no means unprecendented to have an entire territory where an inconvertible debased state issued fiat created out of nothing serves as the currency of that territory. Indeed, inconvertible fiat dates at least to 13th century China.

“The most famous Chinese issuer of paper money was Kublai Khan, the Mongol who ruled the Chinese empire in the 13th century. Kublai Khan established currency credibility by decreeing that his paper money must be accepted by traders on pain of death. As further enforcement of his mandate, he confiscated all gold and silver, even if it was brought in by foreign traders.”

Did the establishment of inconvertible paper currency in China displace gold as a money commodity? Of course not. So the argument Caffentzis makes in his paper must be that because all nations have dispensed with commodity money as the standard of price, somehow this makes gold no longer a commodity money. Nothing happened to gold in the interim, the only change was what nation states defined as currency in the territories they control.

Restated, the argument that gold is not money means the fascist state determines what is money. This proposition is not consistent with labor theory. Mr. George Caffentzis, however, thinks labor theory must be ‘stretched’ to include the possibility of non-commodity money in analysis. He does not explain why this has to be done, however.

Can We Completely Abolish Labor, Right Now (Final)

7. The Centrality of Labor in Marx

At the start of this series I noted that, according to Elmar Flatschart, wertkritik states the abolition of labor is not the same as social emancipation. In his view, the abolition of value is only a condition of social emancipation, but social emancipation itself is a more complex problem.

At first glance this conclusion might be seen as very pessimistic, since it implies that even in the absence of any material need for labor, the great mass of society might still be trapped in compulsory labor and the debilitating division of labor to the sole benefit of an ever diminishing group of exploiters.

This is not a minor point. The concept of the abolition of labor is central to Marx’s and Engels’ theory. Uri Zilbersheid calls the abolition of labor one of Marx’s most important ideas; he notes the concept is central at least in “his early writings and to some degree in his later writings”. Yet, Zilbersheid observes, the abolition of labor receives little attention from Marxists:

“the radical Marxian vision—the abolition of labour—has not gained due recognition. Marxian thought is devoted to liberating humanity from all kinds of servitude, and the abolition of labour constitutes a major aspect of this liberation.”

What is the difference between Association and the State?

Certain Marxists have their own weasel words to cover their statist inclination. Unless pressed to demonstrate it, they routinely  refer to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (as one person stated to me) as “a ruling class’ instrument of the suppression of class enemies”. The employment of coercion against the capitalists, they assert, means the association of the working class is a working class state.

This idea is not to be found in Marx or Engels writings and it isn’t even in the anarchist criticism leveled against Marx by Bakunin.

This really makes it appear as if the difference between working class association and a bourgeois state is who gets suppressed by violence. It poses the problem of association in  a way that isn’t even close to understanding how association differs from the state.

Can Antistatist Communists work with Statist Communists?

In one of my earlier posts, I accused some Marxists of being fascists. Needless to say this did not go over well with those Marxists who might fall into the category of people who, although claiming to be communists, nevertheless believe any attempt to actually dismantle the present state amounts to a neoliberal assault on the so-called ‘social safety net’ allegedly provided by some fascist state spending.

One person on reddit who might fit the description of a statist communist responded to my argument this way:

1. That’s a lie; 2. Even if that were true, that analysis is bollocks.

Congratulations, you have posted something which does not actually raise any questions but instead goes on about Communists being fascists without any material analysis of what either is.

And aside from all that, all the article really does is state a fact, a fact that we are well aware of and spend our time actually analysising in a Marxist framework. The article does not analyse it in any framework, it just states it and rubbishes Communism at the same time. Absolutely useless.

Here’s a criticism: you are full of shit. Fuck you, fuck off.

Okay fine. I guess this writer and I aren’t going to find any common ground soon.

Can We Completely Abolish Labor, Right Now (Part 3)

5. Capitalistically Determined, Materially Determined and Superfluous labor times

If I understand Postone’s argument in his book Time, Labor and Social Domination, (and he can speak to this if I am misreading him) in the capitalist mode of production value (i.e., ‘socially necessary labor time’) appears in not one, but two distinct, historically determined forms. So far as I know, Postone is the first theorist since Marx and Engels to show how these two forms of labor time are embedded in the capitalist mode of production itself. He defines the two forms of value for us as,

“the total labor time determined as socially necessary by capital, on the one hand, and the amount of labor that would be necessary … were material wealth the social form of wealth, on the other”.

There is, as Postone explains, a duration of socially necessary labor time that arises from the material needs of the social producer, the combined body of all workers engaged in social production, and a distinct and separate duration of socially necessary labor time that arises from the needs of the capitalist mode of production itself. I will refer to the total labor time of society as the capitalistically determined labor time and the amount of labor that would be necessary if material wealth were the social form of wealth as the materially necessary labor time.

There is nothing to say that these two durations of socially necessary labor time must be the same. In fact, the recurrent crises of the capitalist mode of production is nothing more than the forcible adjustment of these two durations of socially necessary labor time. Moreover, as Postone shows in his reconstruction of Marx’s category of superfluous labor time, the aim of capitalist production is the constant and ever increasing extension of labor time beyond that duration required for the needs of the social producers. Which is to say, the aim of the mode of production is to maintain and increase, by all means at its disposal, an imbalance between the two durations of socially necessary labor time — to constantly generate labor that is completely superfluous to society.

Can We Completely Abolish Labor, Right Now? (Part 2)

3. The problem of identifying economic waste in a capitalist economy

As I argued in the previous section of this series, if we are going to set as our aim the complete abolition of labor, there is a big question posed by the problem of a capitalist economy. To reiterate it briefly: In an economy based on directly social labor, particular forms of concrete labor appear as abstract homogenous labor. The labor of the doctor, the janitor, the autoworker or the soldier do not appear in these concrete forms but only as wages, salaries, etc. The same is true for the various sectors of the economy — industrial, services, agriculture and the state. Finally, whatever waste might be present in the economy, and which would serve as the material basis for a reduction of hours of labor, appear in the economy as just another cost.

One expenditure of abstract homogenous labor is exactly identical in every way to every other expenditure of abstract homogenous labor

There is, therefore, no way to tell industrial production from industrial waste, medical care from murdering civilians simply by going through the North American Industry Classification System and cherry picking what labor is useful and what labor is not. If medical care is useful, is it still useful when it is being used to return a soldier to the battlefield? If industrial production is assumed to be useful, is it still useful when the product is military materiale? Is the industrial labor producing military boots more or less useful than the labor expended bussing a table in a restaurant? We can make moral judgments on this, but Obama’s morality is different than mine.