°Differentia specifica
development proceeds at all times on the side of the predicate. […] an explanation which does not give the differentia specifica is no explanation - Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
Consider this post as a follow-up to the brief discussion below and a previous posting elsewhere, as it might elaborate on the difference between this labour and labour as such. As well as an extended footnote to a post on Spivak’s “Speculations on the Question of Value” yet to be written, since here the question of continuity-discontinuity (and of difference) is, well, decisive. I’m trying to be less subtle.
1. In Capital I, Marx turns to Aristotle’s discussion of value to reconsider the labour theory of value [ie., Ricardo, what Spivak refers to as a continuist theory of value). Or, more specifically, what Marx calls the three “peculiarities” of the equivalent form: i) that a given commodity is a “mirror of value”, exchangeable with other commodities, ii) that the concrete labour of, say, weaving is “undifferentiated” from and identical with “any other sort of labour”, and iii) that “labour of private individuals” assumes a directly social form.
According to Marx, Aristotle “sees that the value-relation which gives rise to this expression” - that 5 beds is equal to 1 house -
makes it necessary that the house should qualitatively be made the equal of the bed, and that without such an equalisation, these two clearly different things could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities. “Exchange,” he [Aristotle] says, “cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability” … Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value. “It is, however, in reality impossible that such unlike things can be commensurable” - ie., qualitative equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their real nature, “a makeshift for practical purposes”.
Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us, what barred the way to his further analysis: it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not?
Because what is equal to both - “human labour” - does not exist in a slave economy, that which is “founded upon” the naturalisation of inequality between -Marx will say - “men” and their “labour-powers”.
The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities.
2. It’s this point in the analysis of value that has always troubled me, as it relates to debates over the ‘transition’ and ‘primitive accumulation’, or as such questions specifically turn to a consideration of the geopolitics of value, the temporalities and asymmetry of the contract (or abstract labour more generally). (Hopefully those myriad links to various essays will elaborate what can’t be crammed into a blogpost, including perhaps the stakes here as I see them.)
Or, to put it another way still, as it raises the questions about the equality of abstract labour and - let’s call them - various populist prejudices regarding those who do not measure up and are therefore ‘less than human’, those not ‘man’, or those declared to be bereft of ‘value’.
Spivak, of course, spends some time emphasising discontinuity in terms of the “super-adequation” of labour-power (contra Goux’s analogy between the money-form and signification), and will trouble this as the the “European Marx” comes to the fore in continuist renditions of value. But more on that later …
Thanks for this. Looking forward to the post for which this serves as anticipatory footnote.
Jon [April 9, 2006 @ 9:08 pm]
Hi. I enjoyed your post very much, and I am writing to ask you for a favor: would it be possible, if it is not too much trouble, to have the bibliographical reference for the quotation/epigraph from Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of Right, as well as possibly also for the second quotation by Marx in your post? (Page numbers and edition would be more than enough). Thank you very much in advance….
CC
cesare casarino [June 9, 2007 @ 6:12 am]
The first you’ll find in what’s variously published as “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” or “Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, Part I, under “Private Right vis-a-vis the State”. You’ll have to go to the Collected Works. The next are from Capital, Volume I, Part I, Section 3, toward the end of the subsection titled “The Equivalent Form of Value”. The edition I’m looking at now is 1978, Moscow: Progress Press - pp.65-6 in that edition, but I’m not sure that was the same edition I was reading at the time I cited the above.
s0metim3s [June 9, 2007 @ 11:24 am]