d ) The Contradiction of Labour Time
 We mentioned the central role played by surplus labour in the production of surplus value. Marx emphasised the origin, the function and the limit of surplus labour. ". . . Only when a certain degree of productivity has already been reached -- so that a part of production time is sufficient for immediate production -- can an increasingly large part be applied to the production of the means of production. This requires that society be able to wait; that a large part of the wealth already created can be withdrawn both from immediate consumption and from production for immediate consumption, in order to employ this part for labour which is not immediately productive ( within the material production process itself )." [27] Wage labour is the means for developing the productive forces. "Real economy -- saving -- consists of the saving of labour time ( minimum ( and minimisation ) of production costs ); but this saving [is] identical with development of the productive force." [28] Wage labour makes possible the production of surplus value through the appropriation of surplus labour by capital. In that sense the miserable condition which is the lot of the worker is a historical necessity. The worker must be compelled to furnish surplus labour. This is how the productive forces develop and increase the share of surplus labour in the working day : Capital creates "a large quantity of disposable time... ( i.e. room for the development of the individuals' full productive forces, hence those of society also )." [29] The contradictory or "antithetical existence". [30] of surplus labour is quite clear :
Capital "is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone's time for their own development.". [32] In communism, the excess of time in relation to necessary labour time will lose the character of surplus labour which the historical limits of the productive forces had bestowed on it under capitalism. Disposable time will cease to be based on the poverty of labour. There will be no need to use misery to create wealth. When the relation between necessary labour and surplus labour is overthrown by the rise of the productive forces, the excess of time beyond labour needed for material existence will lose its transitory form of surplus labour. "Free time -- which is both idle time and time for higher activity -- has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then enters into the direct production process as this different subject.". [33] The economy of labour time is an absolute necessity for the development of mankind. It lays the foundation for the possibility of capitalism and, at a higher stage, of communism. The same movement develops capitalism and makes communism both necessary and possible. The law of value and measurement by average labour time are involved in the same process. The law of value expresses the limit of capitalism and plays a necessary part. As long as the productive forces are not yet highly developed and immediate labour remains the essential factor of production, measurement by average labour time is an absolute necessity. But with the development of capital, especially of fixed capital, "the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production." [34] The misery of the proletariat has been the condition for a considerable growth of fixed capital, in which all the scientific and technical knowledge of mankind is "fixed." Automation, the effects of which we are now beginning to see, is but one stage in this development. Yet capital continues to regulate production through the measurement of average labour time. "Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form." [35] What we said about the "contradictory existence" of surplus labour must be connected with the question of labour time. The well known contradiction productive forces/production relations cannot be understood if one does not see the link between the following oppositions : a ) contradiction between the function of average labour time as a regulator of "under-developed" productive forces, and the growth of productive forces which tends to destroy the necessity of such a function. b ) contradiction between the necessity of developing to a maximum the surplus labour of the worker in order to produce as much surplus value as possible, and the very growth of surplus labour which makes its suppression possible. The contradictory relation productive forces/production relations can only be understood as a concept to build, as a synthesis of several questions at different levels : problems of credit, of rent... [36] The contradiction of labour time and the dynamics of this contradiction are but one aspect of the opposition between the growth of productive capacities and the social relations of capitalist society. Marx attempted to give a synthesis of points a ) and b ) : "As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head." [37] "Human liberation," prophesied by all utopian thinkers ( past and present ), is then possible : "With that, production based on exchange value breaks down. . . . The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them." [38] What one might call the dialectics of labour time is also interesting as regards the subject of communist society and the necessary transition which leads to it. If one studies the question of labour time and measure as we have tried to, one will be able to understand assertions by Marx which might otherwise seem somewhat paradoxical or even contradictory. "Every child knows that a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs require different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labour of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labour in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance, is self evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves." [39] We have seen that the law of value organises what Bukharin calls "the socially indispensable proportions between the various branches of production," and creates "the state of equilibrium" [40] of society, with average labour time as the fundamental regulator. Yet we read in a letter written by Marx to Engels on January 8, 1868 : "No form of society can prevent the working time at the disposal of society from regulating production one way or another. So long, however, as this regulation is accomplished not by the direct and conscious control of society over its working time -- which is possible only with common ownership -but by the movement of commodity prices, things remain as you have already quite aptly described them in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher . . ." [41] There is in fact no incoherence in Marx's thought at this level. This letter has been interpreted in all possible ways in the debate which drew a fundamental opposition between Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, but the real content of Marx's ideas has not been presented in its true light. One thing is certain : Marx opposes regulation by socially necessary labour time to regulation by available time. Of course these are not two methods which could be used or rejected, but two historical objective processes involving all social relations. Many people know the pages from the Critique of the Gotha Programme where Marx explains that "within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour." [42] The following passage from the second volume of Capital is less frequently quoted : "If we conceive society as being not capitalistic but communistic, there will be no money-capital at all in the first place, nor the disguises cloaking the transactions arising on account of it. The question then comes down to the need of society to calculate beforehand how much labour, means of production, and means of subsistence it can invest, without detriment, in such lines of business as for instance the building of railways, which do not furnish any means of production or subsistence, nor produce any useful effect for a long time, a year or more, while they extract labour, means of production and means of subsistence from the total annual production. In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur. On the one hand pressure is brought to bear on the money-market, while on the other, an easy money-market calls such enterprises into being en masse, thus creating the very circumstances which later give rise to pressure on the money-market." [43] Marx states that in communist society there will be a high level of development of the productive forces. This level will make it possible for mankind not to measure with necessary labour time. Yet something will be needed to study the relative importance given to one or another branch. The calculation will not be made according to the social cost of the product, but by confronting the various needs. "To everybody according to his needs," in Marx's view, does not mean that "everything" will exist "in abundance"; the notion of absolute "abundance" is itself an ideological notion and not a scientific concept There will have to be some sort of calculation and choice, not on the basis of exchange value, but on the basis of use value, of the social utility of the considered product. ( Thereby the problem of "undeveloped countries" will be seen and treated in a new way. ) Marx was quite clear about this in The Poverty of Philosophy : "In a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of production devoted to different articles will be determined by the degree of their social utility." [44] Thus the text on the passage from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom" [45] is elucidated. Freedom is regarded as a relation where man, mastering the process of production of material life, will at last be able to adapt his aspirations to the level reached by the development of the productive forces. [46] The growth of social wealth and the development of every individuality coincide. "For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time." [47] Thus Marx is quite right to describe time as the dimension of human liberation. [48] Furthermore, it is clear that the dynamics analysed by Marx excludes the hypothesis of any gradual way to communism through the progressive destruction of the law of value. On the contrary, the law of value keeps asserting itself violently until the overthrow of capitalism : the law of value never ceases destroying itself -- only to reappear at a higher level. We have seen that the movement which gave birth to it tends to destroy its necessity. But it never ceases to exist and to regulate the functioning of the system. A revolution is therefore necessary. But at the same time one realises how revolution is possible. The driving force of revolution, and the sign of the strength of the proletariat, are not to be found in any "consciousness" or in the pure "spontaneity" of the workers ( as if they were "free" ), but in the growth of productive forces, which includes social struggles. The contradictory nature of labour time also underlies the two-fold character of labour itself, the source of the dialectic : use-value/exchange-value. Marx's analysis tries to give a definition of capital, and we have only attempted to present one aspect of his work. Marx's analysis is not the only thing revolutionaries must study, but we do think it necessary to be as familiar with it as possible. This is why we have concentrated on Marx. We have only tried to state a question, and we will take care not to imitate the thinker who, according to Marx, solved problems only by simplifying them. The theory of the management of society through workers' councils does not take the dynamics of capitalism into account. It retains all the categories and characteristics of capitalism : wage-labour, law of value, exchange. The sort of socialism it proposes is nothing other than capitalism -- democratically managed by the workers. If this were put into practice there would be two possibilities : either the workers' councils would try not to function as in capitalist enterprises, which would be impossible since capitalist production relations would still exist. In this case the workers' councils would be destroyed by counter-revolution. Production relations are not man-to-man relations, but the combination of the various elements of the process of labour. The "human" relation leaders/led is only a secondary form of the fundamental relation between wage-labour and capital. Or the workers' councils would consent to functioning as capitalist enterprises. In this case the system of councils would not survive; it would become an illusion, one of the numerous forms of association between Capital and Labour. "Elected" managers would soon become identical to traditional capitalists : the function of capitalist, says Marx, tends to separate from the function of worker. Workers' management would result in capitalism; in other words, capitalism would not have been destroyed. The Bolshevik bureaucracy took the economy under its control. The ultra-left wants the masses to do this. The ultra-left remains on the same ground as Leninism : it once again gives a different answer to the same question ( the management of the economy ). We want to replace that question with a different one ( the destruction of that economy, which is capitalist ). Socialism is not the management, however "democratic" it may be, of capital, but its complete destruction. Notes [27] Marx, Grundrisse, ( Pelican Books, 1973 ), p. 707. [28] Grundrisse, p. 711. [29] Grundrisse, p. 708. [30] Grundrisse, p. 708. [31] Grundrisse, [32] Grundrisse, [33] Grundrisse, p. 712 [34] Grundrisse, pp. 704-5. [35] Grundrisse, p.706. [36] See Capital Vol. III. [37] Grundrisse, p. 705. [38] Grundrisse, pp. 705-6. [39] Marx's letter to Kugelmann, July 11, 1868, in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 209 [40] N. Bukharin, Historical Materialism ( New York : Russell & Russell, 1965 ). [41] Marx is referring to Engels' Outline of a Critique of Political Economy ( See Engels, Selected Writings, Penguin, 1967 ). [42] Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, Vol. II, pp. 22-23. [43] Capital, Vol. II ( Moscow : Progress Publishers, 1967 ), pp. 318-319. [44] Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy ( New York : International Publishers, 1963 ), p. 63. [45] Capital, Vol. III, p. 820. [46] "The essence of bourgeois society consists precisely in this, that a priori there is no conscious social regulation of production. The rational and naturally necessary asserts itself only as a blindly working average." ( Marx's letter to Kugelmann, July 11, 1868, in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 209 ) [47] Grundrisse, p. 708. [48] M. Rubel, Pages choisies de Karl Marx ( Paris, 1948 ). |