Jacques Bidet

The Start Of The Exposition And Its Development

This chapter proposes to analyse how Marx gradually overcame certain flagrant ambiguities that the earlier versions display, aspects that are aberrant in relation to the general theory at work there. These incoherences follow from the interference between certain a priori conceptions of the theoretical order, borrowed from Hegel’s Logic, and the particular constraints of the ‘specific logic of the specific object’. The concept of value, its definition by socially necessary labour-time, thus owes its pertinence to the law of value understood as the law of the market. The category of extra surplus-value must be defined as the application to the theory of surplus-value of certain constitutive elements of the theory of value, more precisely those that define the competitive situation within a branch, as implied by this abstract market structure to which the ‘law of value’ in the specific sense refers. Keywords: constitutive elements; Hegel’s logic; labour-time; Marx

Relations Of Production And Class Relations

This chapter examines the notion of ‘productive labour’, within the strict limits of Marx’s own texts. It studies the articulation of this with the category of ‘social class’ in the classifying or teleological conceptions that the workers’ movement has frequently drawn from it. Marx opposes two concepts of production or ‘productive labour’: production in general, i.e. production of use-value, and specifically capitalist production or production of surplus-value. The chapter analyses the category of ‘working class’, in the sense that the French Marxist tradition gives to the political aspect of the relationship that defines the category of productive labour at the economic level, and shows how the reference to the relationship of structure and tendency is at the basis of both its relative pertinence and its tendency to swing between theoretical and mythic status. Keywords: French Marxist tradition; productive labour; social class relations; surplus-value

Value And Price Of Labour-Power

This chapter begins with the formulations in Wages , Price and Profit , which are substantially repeated in both the Grundrisse and Capital . ‘The value of the labouring power is formed by two elements – the one merely physical, the other historical and social.’ Two conditions are actually required for the reproduction of labour-power in its normal quality: a minimum of subsistence and a maximum of labour, with a certain trade-off existing between the two. The concept of price ‘modifies’ the concept of value, giving it an original modification. Value is established in a struggle defined by the question of price, which expresses the concept of value as a concept of class struggle. Marx puts forward a capitalist ‘law of population’, characterised by the alternation between technical innovations generating unemployment and extensive developments requiring new labour. Keywords: capitalist ‘law of population’; labour-power; Marx

The Economy In General And Historical Materialism

The discourse of Capital is articulated to a variety of more general notions and ideas that constitute its presuppositions. This chapter shows how a re-examination of this kind leads to a radical re-reading of Marx’s discourse, and can contribute in this way to the current debate concerning the foundations of his theory of capitalist production. The text of the Grundrisse introduces almost all the determinations to be found in the corresponding section of Capital: activity, raw material, instrument, object, result, precondition, objectified (past) labour, product. The chapter examines the most abstract categories with which Capital commences, those defining the two ‘factors of the commodity’ and the ‘double character of labour’. The appearance of Sraffa’s system brought reflection on the categories of Capital to a critical point. Keywords: capitalist production; Grundrisse ; Marx’s discourse; Sraffas system

Value As Sociopolitical Concept

The articulation labour-value/money/capital is the place where the key question of the capitalist mode of production is defined, that of socialisation. Intensity would seem the element most readily recoverable for the conception of value as quantity. This chapter needs to elucidate the political-economic significance of the ‘physiological’ reference. The metaphor of ‘consumption of labour-power’, frequently present in the texts but neglected by the tradition, does have a theoretical meaning, connecting the political theme of ‘domination’ with the economic determination of labour as expenditure and as quantity. In the function of capitalist direction Marx distinguishes two aspects, one concerning the connection necessary for any process of collective work, the other concerning exploitation. The capitalist mode of production contains an imminent principle of socialisation of labour. Keywords: articulation labour-value; capitalist mode; economic determination; Marx; socialisation