The Concept of Labor in Marx: International Journal of Political Economy

International Journal of Political Economy
ISSN: 0891-1916 (Print) 1558-0970 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mijp20
The Concept of Labor in Marx
Riccardo Bellofiore
To cite this article: Riccardo Bellofiore (1998) The Concept of Labor in Marx, International
Journal of Political Economy, 28:3, 4-34, DOI: 10.1080/08911916.1998.11643968
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The Concept of Labor,in Marx
Labor seems a quite simple category. The conception of labor in this

general form-as labor as such--is also immeasurably old. Never-
theless, when it is economically conceived in this simplicity, "labor"
is as modem a category as are the relations which create this simple
abstraction. [Marx, 1973, p. 103]
With the publication of Marco Lippi's Value and Naturalism in

Marx I and the 1978 Modena conference on the labor theory of
value in Marx, which was followed by many discussion articles
in the review Rinascita, 2 debate on the issue came to the fore.
The innovation in this debate was that it moved the center of
gravity of the discussion. Previously, reflection had concentrated
on whether or not Marx's theory of value was compatible with
Sraffa's account of the determination of relative prices and of the
rate of profit. Now attention shifted to the foundation of the
category of value and so to the very meaning of the labor that
makes up its substance. In other words, there was a move from
Translation © 1999 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. from the original Italian, published in
Ricerche Economiche, 3-4 (1979), pp. 570-590, except for the section on
Marx versus Sraffa. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Academic Press.
Section 7 was part of the original manuscript, written in October 1978.
English translation by Richard Davies. I wish also to thank Chris Arthur for
bibliographical help. In the following, I have retained quotations from the
Italian sources but refer to the English version or translation, when known, in
brackets.
4
FALL 1998 5
analyzing the magnitude of value to its form and content.

This was a welcome theoretical move, essential for progress in
research and debate. Indeed, it concerned the specification of the
relation between Marx's categories and the object of his analysis,
namely, the capitalist mode of production, with a view to evaluating
the theoretical power of those categories. This operation opens
up two opportunities: One is the chance to see if and how far the
Marxian edifice is internally consistent and adequate to its own

subject matter. The other is the possibility of working out a com-
parison between Sraffa' s scheme and Marx's theory to uncover
the causes that determine the outcome of the "transformation
problem," and to check its consequences elsewhere in Marx's
works.
At the same time, however, there is a serious gap in the work
of the researchers who joined this debate. They all presuppose
that Marx defines the category of labor in a conceptual space that
is, at least in part, external to and independent of the critique of
political economy, where that critique is understood as the im-
manent analysis of the constitution and laws of the movement of
capital.
Our criticism and proposed alternative interpretation breaks
down into the following stages. First, we set out the parts of the
accounts of Lippi and Napoleoni that concern the issue in which
we are particularly interested. We then consider how Marx sets
up the relation of the human being to nature, which is fundamen-
tal for the two thinkers discussed.
This makes possible our own account of the matter. The defi-
nition of abstract labor as the expression of a contradiction de-
pends on Marx's treatment of the concept oflabor, which is itself
connected to a vision of the essence of the human being. There is
a close relation between the concept of labor and the vision of the
human essence, on the one hand, and, on the other, Marx's philo-
sophical and epistemological thought. But this is not external to
or independent of the subject matter of the analysis. Quite the
reverse. For Marx, the definition of labor as the essence of the
human being has an internal historical reference to the transition
6 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
from feudalism, understood as the expression of pre bourgeois

social forms, to capitalism. Indeed, it is only with the capitalist
mode of production that the social nature of labor comes to ex-
press itself in its universality. In capitalism, this universality is an
abstract universality, which takes no account of and is opposed
to the differences between types of useful labor; but it makes
possible the concrete universality in which the general social
relation connects with a recognition of those differences. 3 In this

way, the relation of human beings to nature and the concept of
labor are configured differently in precapitalistic economies than
in those modes of production that are founded on capita1. Marx
always begins by offering a scientific understanding of current
conditions.
We shall then examine the consequences of our reading of the
theory of value. In particular, we look at the relation between
exploitation and capitalism, and at how to clarify the relations
between Marx and Sraffa.
Marco Lippi: Abstract labor as real social cost
Lippi's interpretation can be summarized as follows: 4 Marx's

labor theory of value centers on the category of abstract labor. As
Lucio Colletti has argued, 5 abstract labor is not a mental general-
ization arrived at by comparison of the various sorts of useful
labor. Rather, it is a real abstraction arising out of the effective
equalization of concrete labors that comes about in and through
exchange, where exchange is understood as the form of reproduc-
tion and not as a moment in the reproductive process. Abstract
labor is precisely that labor that becomes social in opposition to
the immediately private character of concrete labor.
In Lippi's view, Colletti failed to see that the reduction to a
homogeneous quantity of different sorts of concrete labor in a
commodity society is, for Marx, precisely the form or the specific
mode in which a given historical epoch actualizes a "natural law"
of "production in genera1." For Marx, "[l]abor as a measure of
the difficulties that must be overcome, as real social cost, is the
FALL 1998 7
'immanent measure'[6) of the product, whatever the historical

mode of production."7 Thus, abstract labor is the estranged and
fetishized form under which the equalization of labor, which is
logically prior to the measurement of labor, comes about in the
capitalist mode of production. Abstract labor and value take on a
double role. On the one hand, because their magnitude, or quanti-
tative expression, is set by a principle of production in general,
they arise from "natural" determinants; in this, Marx follows

Smith and Ricardo. On the other hand, they express the way that
that principle applies to generalized commodity production. 8
To grasp Lippi's definition oflabor as the substance of value,
it is worth citing him at length:
[T]o fully understand labor as the substance of value three steps are
required. First, labor must be seen as the manifestation of a generic
human capacity to bend natural processes to the human will, ab-
stracting from the particular use to which this capacity is put. Sec-
ond, all the various individual labors must be reduced to a social
average, through another abstraction (different from and subordinate
to the flrst), this time from the varying levels of productivity conse-
quent to the differing abilities of the individual workers or the differ-
ent available tools. Third, this process of equalization must be seen
as the result of a process alien to the conscious decisions of the
producers themselves and imposed on them as an external necessity.
The abstraction from the useful characteristics of different types of
labor and from the variations among the individuals who perform
them is required for any measurement of the difflculties encountered
in production. In capitalist society, however, this abstraction is not
effected through the conscious regulation of social production; it
therefore "adheres to" the products of labor as their value. In the
consciousness of the producers, it therefore appears as a natural qual-
ity of those products.9
Following Rubin's account of the categories in play,IO Lippi's
claim can be articulated as follows: Labor that can be "positively
defined in terms of its components, 'brains, muscles, nerves,
hands, etc.,' "11 is physiologically equal and allows the reduction
of labor to simple labor, which is made homogeneous by abstrac-
tion from the various qualifications and skills involved in it, and
to socially equal labor, in which various rates of productivity are

reduced to a single measure. These determinations of labor are com-
mon to the various modes of production. Abstract labor merely gives
a different expression to those determinations in such a way as to
allow the generic measurement of the difficulties that production
confronts. This form of expression is geared to a mode of produc-
tion in which producers are indifferent to one another.
The reasoning thus moves from physiologically equal labor to

abstract labor. This is confirmed in Salvatore Veca's arguments
in support of Lippi's account of Marx. 12 For Veca, Marx is look-
ing at differences of form and at changes in the mode of produc-
tion; to do so, however, he has to assume that there are
permanent laws of material reproduction, expressed in the past
by the various forms, and that there are possible or nonactual
modes of production. Hence, we should interpret the claim that
products are labor as expressing (for Marx) the element of conti-
nuity in history, and, in terms of the history of ideas, as a notion
that Marx adopted from the classicals.
Claudio Napoleoni: The metahistorical ontology of labor
Napoleoni's criticisms of Lippi's claim are particularly interest-

ing. That claim is, he writes, "seriously partial and one-sided."l3
For Lippi's Marx, abstract labor is nothing but the ahistorical and
natural necessity that products in general (and not only commodi-
ties) should have labor as their only real social cost. At the same
time, Lippi follows Colletti in thinking that abstract labor is a
real abstraction and not a mental generalization. But "in order to
refer this real abstraction to 'production in general,' " Lippi re-
gards it as the expression of the "generic character of man as
natural entity," thus conflating "genericness and the alienation of
genericness: however, the genericness of natural human being,
understood as the infinite potentiality for every determination, is
quite different from the reduction of that genericness to separa-
tion from all determinations--namely, to abstraction from them."
The former, says Napoleoni, really is a mere mental generaliza-
FALL 1998 9
tion and not a real abstraction, which can only be referring to

alienated genericness and, so, only to commodity production.
According to Napoleoni, it is real abtraction that is both upper-
most in Marx and illuminating for the understanding of capital-
ism; moreover, it is this notion that radically distinguishes
Marx's position from that of classical economics. Indeed, for
Marx, labor is productive of value not because it produces an
output, considered as natural labor, but because of its historical

form, as "abstract" and "alienated" labor producing a generic
wealth-namely, money.
Napoleoni's article is important for two reasons. First, it picks
up the weak points in the views of Lippi and Veca. But, second,
it helps us see the reasons that led Napoleoni at the Modena
conference to declare the failure of the Marxian attempt to rediscover
labor in the value of commodities and that led him, more generally, to
resolve the critique of political economy into philosophy.
Read closely, the relation between nature and history, which is
fundamental for Lippi's interpretation, is equally fundamental for
Napoleoni. Lippi criticizes Marx for not having grasped the radi-
cal historicity of capitalism, and so the impossibility of reducing
capitalist production to a mere form, albeit a twisted one, of
production in general. Ringing the changes, Napoleoni allows
that Marx does talk about the natural human being, but he sees
that the conceptual cornerstone on which he can construct his
unit of the capitalist mode of production, based on the labor
theory of value, is the alienation of the genericness that belongs
to the natural human being, something that comes about only
with the dawn of capitalism.
Nevertheless, it is clear that, at this point, Napoleoni runs into
a difficulty. Abstract labor is the same as alienated labor. But, if
we are going to talk about alienated labor, we should have some
idea of what nonalienated labor would be. Hence, we should
clarify, on the one hand, what, for Marx, nonalienated labor is
and, on the other, the relation between alienated and nonalienated
labor. In other words, we should solve the puzzle of the rise of
abstract-alien labor and, so, of value.
This is precisely the route that Napoleoni takes in an article on

this issue in Rinascita,14 which picks up the main thread of his
contribution to the Modena conference. His starting point is the
opposition between Marx's conception of labor and that of the
classical economists. Where the latter regard work as "negative,
as naturally and essentially negative, for Marx, labor has an es-
sentially positive aspect. For labor is the realization of the human
being considered as a generic natural being."15 Nevertheless,

Marx recognizes that this essence is negated by a given historical
existence; this is the basis of his criticism that Smith confuses
historically determined labor with labor in general. 16
There are two points to stress:
1. In Napoleoni's view, when Marx refers to a natural being, he

means an essential being. Likewise, the adjective "natural"
should not be understood as referring to what comes before
history, but to what is, so to speak, metahistorical.
2. In Napoleoni's view, Marx derives his understanding of his-
torically determined labor by establishing its deviation from
its essence. This, in tum, has two corollaries. First, ifhistori-
cally given labor is defmed relative to its essence, and Marx
configures the essence "philosophically" rather than "scien-
tifically," then that definition is an ontological defmition,
with all the attendant baggage. Second, since this essence
contains within it an opposition between a negative (fmite)
moment, which is the acceptance of the law of the thing, and
a positive (infinite) moment, which is the assertion of the
genericness or universality of the human being as a being,
then there can always be a contradiction between essence
and existence, which, with the abstraction of labor, becomes
a contradiction within existence. 17
In other words, in open disagreement with Colletti and

Bedeschi,18 Napoleoni dissolves the identity between abstract
labor (as wage labor) and alienated labor. The alienation of labor
resides in the fact that labor is no longer experienced as the
FALL 1998 11
confirmation of the human essence and, so, existence and es-

sence are separated, or alienated. This is different from the
abstraction of labor, where labor takes on an existence distinct
from that of the subject (the worker) who performs it and who,
in tum, becomes an appendage of it. It is only with abstract
labor that we have value. But abstract labor is the apex of
alienated labor, the concept of which can be defined only by
beginning with an analysis of the human essence as a philosophi-

cal-ontological category.
The relation between the human being and nature in Marx
Thus, Lippi and Napoleoni agree that the Marxian theory of

value is based on categories that are external to the capitalist
mode of production, 19 and that are in some way involved in the
investigation of the relation between nature and history. We shall
see, however, that this view is mistaken. As a first step, we shall
try to reconstruct Marx's own view of the relation between
human beings and nature. 20 As is well known, this is a problem
with close links to epistemological issues. Let us see why.
For Marx, nature is "both an objective condition, independent
of the human being, and an objectification, a product of the activ-
ity of human labor."21 With the first part of this claim, Marx
places himself in the tradition of Kant and Feuerbach, a tradition
in which there is a clear distinction between human beings and
nature. In terms of the theory of knowledge, it is the distinction
between subject and object, where the latter cannot be reduced to
the former. Rather, regarded as an external reality, nature is inde-
pendent of and genetically prior to consciousness. But human
reality is itself part of nature, and historically determined human
beings can and do come into relation with it. As for the second
part of the claim, Marx picks up the the tradition of Hegel, ac-
cording to which the external world is, at one and the same time,
a human product and a self-production, an objectivization of the
subject. He nevertheless holds firmly to the way that human ac-
tivity is performed in given natural and social conditions, and
insists that the transformed and mediated nature to which that

activity gives rise constitutes a reality that is objective and inde-
pendent of the subject; as such, it is a condition of the labor
process, even if it is the result of an earlier productive process.
Against this theoretical background the importance of the con-
cept of labor is obvious. After all, in order to realize its aims,
human labor must allow itself to be determined by the properties
of matter and, more generally, by the external world. At the same

time that he subjects himself to it, the human being uses the
properties of nature to transform it for his own purposes.
There is an obvious epistemological analogy. We have to take
into account both the way that thought depends on the object that
is known and the fact that, if it is to be known, the object has to
be thought. The concept through which the object is thought is
therefore "both a result, a destination that depends on extralogi-
cal conditions," and "the original unity that we cannot do with-
out."22
On the one hand, humans must adapt their labor to external
objective conditions. On the other, they shape them on the basis
of their projects and concepts, which aim, through human activity
in accordance with the laws of nature, ultimately at the object
that they will have transformed. In this way, labor acquires and
appropriates nature, which is not "a thing given from all eternity,
remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the
state of society."23
This leads to a consequence that is not always noticed by
those, such as Colletti, who have made fundamental contribu-
tions to the understanding of Marx's thought. As we shall see in
detail in the corning sections, this is that the relation of human
beings to nature differs in different historical periods. 24 Specific-
ally, it is only in the historical phase in which the "positive"
aspect of labor, as the active transformation of nature, is domi-
nant over the passive appropriation of nature that it becomes
possible to hold the Marxian vision of the relation between the
human being and nature, and of labor as the mediating term of
human projects and naturalness. 25
FALL 1998 13
The radical immanence of the concept of labor in Marx
We accept that the definition of the essence of the human being

is central not only to the early Marx of the Manuscripts, but also
to the Marx of the critique of political economy. The point with
which we differ is the claim, variously made by the commentators,
that for Marx that category is ahistorical, metahistorical, or natu-
ral. Instead, the essence to which Marx refers can only be fully
thought through as the expression of circumstances that are his-
torically determined, and these circumstances are those of the
capitalist mode of production. In other words, our claim is that,
for Marx, labor as the essence of the human being qua generic
natural being, and the alienation of that essence in alienated-ab-
stract labor are both radically historical.
In support of this claim, we should examine the discontinuity
or profound break that Marx posits between precapitalist eco-
nomic forms and the capitalist mode of production. In the former,
the human being occupies a specific relation to nature. This rela-
tion is based on the basic relation with the land and, more gener-
ally, with the predominantly agricultural nature of this mode of
production. Let us consider the labor process characteristic of
these modes of production. This is strongly influenced by the
way nature seems and is external and extraneous because it has
not yet been mastered by the human being. Thus, nature is both
the external condition that sets and fixes the rhythms of the eco-
nomic and social process and the insurmountable limits of that
process. This is why prebourgeois society is static. On the other
hand, in the move to the capitalist mode of production, that spe-
cific relation is cut back and the natural limitation of the repro-
ductive process is broken. 26
For Marx, there is a distinction between the social relations
that obtain prior to the advent of capitalism and those found
within capitalism. In the former case, relations are a matter of
personal mutual dependence. In the latter, the dependence is ma-
terial. The mutual relations between given determinate individu-
als in a precapitalist society are squashed by the relation of
generalized exchange. In pre bourgeois social arrangements, the

relation between the human being and nature to which we have
referred corresponds to a "personal restriction of the individual
by another." Capitalism replaces this with "an objective restric-
tion of the individual by relations independent of him and suffi-
cient unto themselves."27
The move from the pre capitalist to the capitalist mode of pro-
duction, which is historically the transition from feudalism to

capitalism, is marked by the separation of the worker from own-
ership of the means of production, from the land as the "natural
workshop," and, so, from the means of subsistence. In one re-
spect, this separation is the worker's chance for emancipation
from the bond to a specific labor process, and, so, from the self-
objectification in a specific product and from the limitations of
his own social relations. That is to say, it is the worker's chance
to apply himself to any and every labor process, to acquire the
ability to produce any use value, and to enter into relations with
everyone. In another respect and at the same time, within the
capitalist mode of production, this separation is alienation from
the means of production. It is not separation from specific means
of production but from every means of production. Hence, it is
alienation from the objective conditions of production and from
the very product of his labor.
Capital is therefore the real possibility for the human being to
develop in all directions. It offers the historical conditions for this
through its own dynamic. But it is also the negation of this possi-
bility, given that the social process and the product to which it
gives rise are abstract, not concrete, universals.
The capitalist mode of production should be seen as the link
between two phases of human history. The first is "natural" in
that within the relation between the human being and nature the
latter is dominant. The second phase is "historical" in that human
activity is dominant over a nature that, though it remains exter-
nal, is ever more under his control; and society becomes truly
social, which is to say, generalized. Of necessity, these two
phases correspond to two different configurations of labor. Pick-
FALL 1998 15
ing Up Marx's way of expressing himself in criticizing Smith's

conception of labor,28 we may say that, in both phases, the aims
and the obstacles are always external givens. But, in the fIrst
phase, the purposes are dictated by external natural necessity; in
the second, they are set by the human being himself. An analo-
gous distinction holds, mutatis mutandis, for the obstacles.
In the capitalist mode of production, the human being is re-
leased from dependence on a nature that is still largely not medi-

ated by his activity. This release is transformed into another
dependence, which is no less a dependence for deriving from the
human being's alienated social forces. In this connection, one can
speak, as some have, of a "second nature" that makes itself felt
and makes what are in fact social relations seem like natural
laws. After all, it is only as the individual is ever more distanced
from his immediate natural environment, which becomes ever
more his product, that it is possible to speak of alienation in the
strict sense.
In short, the separation or split between the objective and
SUbjective conditions of production is a necessary historical
conditions of the process of human liberation from the "natu-
ral" bond that holds the human being to a determinate produc-
tive pattern and makes of him a particular, and not a universal,
being. The historical process that creates, on the one hand, the
proletariat and, on the other, capital, produces for the fIrst time
the real possibility that the human being can present himself
fully and consciously as the creator of his own world. This
makes him at once a natural being, one that has a nature inde-
pendent of himself, and a generic being, one that transforms
the objective world and that "confIrms" and realizes himself in
that objectivization. 29 But the real possibility that is in play
here comes out upside-down and contradictory, as a "total
evacuation."3o Labor is immediately private, particular, and
not social labor and it has to become social labor through the
mediation of exchange. This socialization has to come about
through opposition and has to give rise to universal but ab-
stract labor; it must also make itself felt as a "law of nature,"
as an objective social necessity that takes on the semblance of

naturalness.
To show that this is how, in his critique of political economy,
Marx takes up and develops the philosophical account of the
human essence and, so, of labor sketched in the Manuscripts, we
offer just one very explicit passage from the Grundrisse:
Universally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their

own communal relations, are hence also subordinated to their own
communal control, are no product of nature, but of history. The
degree and the universality of the development of the abilities by
virtue of which this individuality becomes possible, supposes pro-
duction on the basis of exchange values as a prior condition. Only
this mode of production generates at one and the same time the
universality and alienation of the individual from himself and from
others, but also the universality and comprehensiveness of his rela-
tions and capacities. 31
If we take into account the clear distinction under which Marx

operates in his discussion of the "precapitalist forms of produc-
tion" between "natural" or precapitalist connections, in which the
relations of production are specific and limited, and the historical
phases in which a rich individuality composed of universal rela-
tions develops, it seems reasonable to draw from this passage: (i)
confirmation that this individuality is described as a historical
product; (ii) the idea that production based on exchange values is
a historically necessary condition for the possibility of this indi-
viduality, for it is that production that permits and requires a
universal growth of capacities, and hence of wealth, as well as of
interhurnan relations;32 (iii) the argument that capitalist individu-
ality is contradictory, because it is only capitalism that organi-
cally produces such universally developed relations, which are
nevertheless extraneous and reified, and this naturally implies
that these relations have a particular character and structure; and
(iv) the conclusion that Marx defines alienation itself as the result
exclusively of production based on exchange values. 33
Let us bring together the threads of the argument. The concept
FALL 1998 17
of the human being as a generic natural being and of labor as his

essence is historically determined. However we define it, we do
not have to look to some "natural" sphere to explain either the
individual's ability to develop in all directions, from which the
definition of labor as alienated in capitalism follows, or the con-
tradictory nature of the capitalist relation. These are results of the
historical process, in particular of capitalism itself. Of course, the

"free social individual," whose essence is labor, is expressed in
capitalism only in an inverted form. In other words, the catego-
ries and the conception of the relation between the human being
and nature that correspond to this form are, at one and the same
time, both historically determined and yet not limited to capitalist
production, unlike abstract labor. This does not, however, mean
that Marx derives abstract labor from the standpoint of a subse-
quent historical phase. Rather, the presence of an objective ten-
dency toward that individuality allows him both to analyze this
mode of production and to anticipate the potential features of the
free social individual in the postcapitalist historical phase. The
"essence" to which Marx refers is, therefore, not a category that
has application only in the capitalist mode of production, but it is
only with the advent of the capitalist mode of production that it
appears as an effective tendency in history. And it is only by
beginning from capitalism that we can start to discern the devel-
opmentbeyondit.
There are two matters to be clarified. One is the closer specifi-
cation of the sense to be given to the "naturalness" that Marx
ascribes to precapitalist modes of production. The other is the
elucidation of the relation between, on the one hand, free individ-
uality, whose end-point Marx describes as given by association
based on the common ownership and control of the means of
production, and, on the other, the mode of production that is
founded on capital.
As for the first of these, we may observe that, for Marx, the
laborer is a natural individual, considered as a part of nature and
as having a nature that is external to him. This holds for any
mode of production. However, in certain historical phases, we
can add that the first objective condition of his labor seems to be
nature or the land, which are not produced by him but are already
in existence; this is natural existence, which is presupposed prior
and external to him.34 Moreover, in pre bourgeois relations, even
when it is not based on tribe membership, the community is a
factor that can quickly become a given condition of production to
be constantly reproduced as always identical to itself:
In all these forms, the reproduction of presupposed relations--more

or less naturally arisen or historic as well, but become traditional---{)f
the individual to his commune, together with a specific, objective
existence, predetermined for the individual, of his relations both to
the conditions of labor and to his coworkers, fellow tribesmen, etc.-
are the foundation of development, which is therefore from the out-
set restricted, but which signifies decay, decline, and fall once these
limits are removed. 35
In this way, Marx establishes a qualitative difference between

capitalism and the precapitalist economic forms that we have
been discussing. This difference affects both the concept of labor
and that of society. It attributes to the prebourgeois stages of
society the same "natural" characteristic relative to bourgeois
society on the basis of the scientific understanding of the modem
relations of production. 36 In one respect, the "naturalness" of
these earlier modes of production expresses nature's dominance
over a form that is as yet hardly mediated by human activity. In
another, it expresses the outstanding feature of reproduction of
what already exists, namely, the staticness of precapitalist eco-
nomic forms. For Marx, both these elements can be traced to the
fact that those forms are mainly agricultural.
This account arises not out of a reconstruction of the actual
course of history or in the light of a "philosophy of history," but
out of an inquiry that seeks the specific difference between pre-
bourgeois forms of production and capitalism. This inquiry,
therefore, examines the history of those earlier forms from the
point of view of the theoretician of capitalism. On the one hand, Marx
can investigate the historical process that leads to the isolation and
separation of "free" labor and of capital as the objective conditions of
FALL 1998 19
production. On the other hand, he can clarify the causes that

account both for the static nature of precapitalist modes of pro-
duction, and for the dynamic and contradictory nature of capital-
ist production. The ways that labor is constituted in these phases
give the fullest expression to the differences between the differ-
ent cases. 37
The second matter is this: Within bourgeois society, what rela-

tion is there between the development of the essence of the
human being and its alienation-abstraction? Might this not be a
judgment that Marx passes on bourgeois society based on an
ideal, namely, an image that he has of the future society, of
which the present one is the denial? This does not seem to be
right. To show that this is so, we should once more look at a
passage of Marx, from Volume I of Capital:
Modem industry never views or treats the existing form of a produc-

tion process as the definitive one. Its technical basis is therefore
revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes were essentially conserva-
tive. By means of machinery, chemical processes, and other meth-
ods, it is continually transforming not only the technical basis of
production, but also the functions of the worker and the social com-
binations of the labor process. At the same time, it thereby also
revolutionizes the division of labor within society, and incessantly
throws masses of capital and of workers from one branch of produc-
tion to another. Thus, large-scale industry, by its very nature, neces-
sitates variation of labor, fluidity of functions, and mobility of the
worker in all directions. On the other hand it reproduces the old division
of labor with its ossified particularities, but in its capitalist form .... But
if, at present, variation of labor imposes itself after the manner of an
overpowering natural law, and with the blindly destructive action of a
natural law that meets with obstacles everywhere, large-scale industry,
through its very catastrophes, makes the recognition of variation of
labor and hence of the fitness of the worker for the maximum num-
ber of different kinds of labor into a question of life and death. 38
Let us extract from this passage the ideas relevant to our dis-
cussion of Marx's concept of labor. Marx stresses that capital
subsumes the labor process under itself in such a way that this
process is not merely formally but really subjected to capital. As

is well known, this corresponds to a phase in which the extrac-
tion of relative surplus value is dominant. 39 When this real sub-
sumption takes place, the technical structure of production is
continually modified with a view to the extraction of the greatest
possible surplus value. Technical modification affects both the
functions and the social organization of labor within the labor
process. In one respect, this is the maximum enhancement of

workers' capacities. Within the labor process, the bond the indi-
vidual has both with the particular use value produced and in
consequence with his particular skills and branch of production is
broken. In another respect, this comes about by creating a re-
newed bond between the worker and the means of production. By
taking on their capitalist form, the means of production deter-
mine the functions of the worker and the quality of the commodi-
ties produced. The worker is hemmed in by the particular
determination imposed by the machines, at the same time that he
is alienated from the social knowledge embodied within them.
This seems to support our earlier claim that the late Marx
returns to labor as the "essence" of human being: but after 1857
the realization of himself qua universal or generic being is the
explication of the (modem) human being's capacity to be able
"to do anything" that is originated and expressed, albeit contra-
dictorily, as a tendency of capitalism itself.
What we have said so far allows us to reconsider Lippi's posi-
tion and to indicate why we feel it is incorrect. Recall that Lippi
regards abstract labor as the capitalist form of the social homoge-
nization of labor, which he subordinates to the reduction to phys-
iologically equal labor. Likewise, value is the capitalist
expression of measurement by labor, which for Marx ought to be
common to all modes of production. Lippi is thus committed to
the claim that physiological equality is the presupposition of
measurement in terms of labor, whereas we have argued that, for
Marx, the exact opposite is the case. Measurement in labor is
certainly possible given the (biological) fact that a generic labor
capacity is expended in any mode of production. But the physio-
FALL 1998 21
logical, as well as the social, equality of labor comes about in full

only within capitalism. Only, that is, when the particularity and
limitation of the precapitalist process of production is cut away,
when labor mobility and the individual's indifference to the con-
crete labor performed are realized historically; only then does the
physiological equality turn from being a mental abstraction and a
biological presupposition into an effective homogenization

within the concrete process of social production. 4o
In a more recent and careful contribution, Lippi seems to have
taken these issues into account and, in reiterating his view, he
offers a qualified version of it. 41 Measurement in labor in its pure
form would then be operative in the first phase of the collectivist
society, as we see in the Critique of the Gotha Programme:
[T]he general law, asserted under commodity production as the law

of value, if it is to be sufficiently rich to be of use in explaining the
whole gamut of successive modes of production, including commod-
ity production, must be drawn from a phase of this process subse-
quent to all others and in this sense the most general of all. This
phase is precisely the consciously organized production of coopera-
tive society.42
By now it should be clear where we agree and where we

disagree with Lippi's revised view. Two points of continuing
disagreement may be noted. First, Lippi does not see that the
capitalist mode of production is the starting point that allows
Marx to analyze the earlier modes of production and to outline
those that are to come. Second, following from the first, is that
measurement in labor continues into the first phase of the com-
munist society to which the Critique of the Gotha Programme
refers, precisely because production in that phase is still marked
by capitalist social relations. 43
Marx's concept oflabor and exploitation
In the remaining sections we shall look at how the redefmition of

the concept of labor affects discussion of two central themes in
Marxian theory: exploitation and the relation between Marx and

Sraffa.
First, exploitation. According to Napoleoni's interpretation,
proposed also at the Modena conference, Marx sees substantial
identity with superficial difference between capitalist and pre-
capitalist exploitation. In Napoleoni's view, this is untenable be-
cause the labor theory of value as an "economic" theory does not
bear scrutiny. The outcome of "transformation" would show that

the value of the surplus product and of the wage goods cannot be
referred back to labor alone. We must therefore go beyond Marx
and show that there is a substantive difference between capitalist
and precapitalist exploitation.
But if we have presented our reading coherently, this is exactly
what Marx's labor theory of value does show. For Marx, com-
modities can be reduced to nothing but labor only when labor is
abstract labor, and therefore only in capitalism. When, therefore,
it is said that labor is exploited because the commodities received
back by the wage-worker contain a lesser amount of labor than
the amount that he objectified in the product, this is something
that can only be said in capitalism.
It might be objected that Marx does speak of surplus labor and
of exploitation also for precapitalist societies. To this we would
reply as follows: Capitalism is the first society in which the pro-
duction of a surplus is made systematic. It is the first dynamic
society relative to the static societies that precede it. In those
societies, the dominant class has functions external to the produc-
tive process, and the deduction of the products of labor from the
laborers by the dominant class is based on a transparent relation
of personal dependence.
In other words, always and in every mode of production, use-
fullabor produces use-values only because it is joined to certain
objective conditions of production. The "natural" character of
precapitalist economic forms is, however, such that before capi-
talism labor is the prevalent factor in the labor process and the
configuration of the means of production tends to be fixed.
Hence, the amount of commodities produced depends wholly on
FALL 1998 23
labor as the active element in production, and the surplus can be

legitimately reduced to nothing but "surplus labor."
On the other hand, in capitalism, the capitalist figures as the
personification of capital. We may distinguish at least three as-
pects of his productive function. First, as the subject of an absten-
tion from consumption, which may open the way to the
reinvestment of the surplus value. Second, as he who compels the

wage-worker to produce ever greater surplus labor. And, most of
all, third, when the labor process, too, is really subsumed within
capital, it is really productive of material wealth. 44 In capitalism,
therefore, the presence of exploitation is not immediately obvi-
ous but has to be uncovered by a theoretical undertaking that
shows that the specific wealth of the capitalist society, which is
to say (surplus) value, is nothing but labor.
We may conclude on this matter: (i) that Vianello's claim at
the Modena conference that, in the capitalist mode of production,
it is impossible to refer the surplus value back to some contribu-
tion on the part of capital, which is a mere fetishistic appearance,
can only be sustained on the basis of the labor theory of value
that Vianello rejects;45 (ii) that capitalist exploitation is different
in substance and in form from precapitalist exploitation; and (iii)
that the labor theory of value provides the only way of avoiding
the difficulties that follow from defining exploitation as a conse-
quence of having a surplus (which would mean that there is
exploitation even in a communist society) without being driven
into the claim that exploitation is to be avoided only by workers'
control over the use of the surplus.
Marx Versos Sraffa
The recent debate on the transformation problem has led some

writers to argue that the derivation of prices of production from
values has to be seen, in the wake of Seton and Sraffa, as both
redundant and mistaken. 46
As for its being redundant, it is indeed possible to determine
production prices and the profit rate from a "value" scheme. But,
first of all, the results that can be reached this way do not main-
tain, except in some special cases, the two identities of Marx's
original transformation: that the sum of values equals the sum of
prices, and that the sum of surplus values equals the sum of
profits. And, second, the very quantities of labor that we start
with to fix relative prices and the profit rate are just one way of
measuring the methods of production (the "productive configura-
tion"), which could be replaced by any other. What is more, if we

do not know the methods of production, but do know the "val-
ues," prices and the profit rate are indeterminate.
As for its being mistaken, it is argued that, even with the given
quantities of (direct and past) labor needed to produce the various
commodities, prices vary with changes in distribution because of
the uneven temporal distribution oflabor. 47
Some more recent contributions to the debate seem to allow
modification of the previous conclusions. It has been shown48
that the transformation procedure Marx employs is only the first
step in the correct determination of production prices, which can
be arrived at by the repeated application of that first step.
There seem to us two possible sorts of objection, which are
opposed to each other. One is that, by taking this line on the trans-
formation, we have to call on a concept of labor that is not Marx's,
because it defmes labor in technical-natural terms rather than in
historical-social terms. The other is that, as argued earlier, it would
still be true that the system of "prices" does not in fact depend on
"values," but on the productive configuration. Only when the "pro-
ductive configuration" is given is there a one-to-one relation be-
tween the system of values and the system of prices.
To answer these objections, we should remind ourselves that
the specific characteristic of capitalism is the dialectic between
development and crisis. An adequate expression and scientific
account of the capitalist relation can be offered only from the
point of view of the real subsumption of labor under capital-the
complete revolution that goes ahead and is constantly being re-
peated, in the very mode of production, in labor productivity, and
in the relation between capitalists and wage-workers. 49 Altvater,
FALL 1998 25
Hoffmann, and Semmler50 are therefore absolutely right to claim

that it is the assumption of fixed technical coefficients or, rather,
of a given "productive configuration," that expels the theory of
value from the analyses offered by Sraffa and the neo-Ricardians.
If, then, we abstract from accumulation and, so, from variations
in the "productive configuration," we abstract from capital itself.
In that case, abstract labor cannot but be reduced to physical and
concrete labor, surplus value to a surplus product that mysteri-

ously seeps out of the technical structure of production, and the
crisis to a mere possibility of that reproduction's interruption
because of the anarchy of the market. 51
In the two conceptual constructions, therefore, the assumption
of the real wage as given has different meanings. In the neo-
Ricardian version, which assumes the "productive configura-
tion," it implies the simultaneous determination of the wage
share. Hence, distribution is independent of production. On the
Marxian account, which envisages the continual revolution of
production methods expressing and determining the reproduction
of the capital relation as the dominant social relation, the as-
sumption of the real wage as given means that there is a distinc-
tion between the real wage and the relative wage. The
determination of this relation is a variable that depends on the
accumulation of capital.
The labor theory of value is therefore not falsified. What we
have, rather, is a change in the subject matter under consideration
relative to Marx. This leads to the pointlessness of much recent
Marxist debate about whether or not to accept the results of Pro-
duction of Commodities by Means of Commodities, which, given
the premises, are unavoidable. And from this follows the fetishis-
tic outcome, according to which we cannot go back from prices
of production to values, and we should content ourselves with the
picture of a process of "things" producing "things."
Some further remarks may clarify this. The presupposition of
the neo-Ricardian undertaking is the capacity of the means of
production in conjunction with labor to produce use-values in
excess of those needed for self-replacement. This has an inherent
ambiguity. In one sense, this capacity expresses a natural fact

common to all modes of production. In another, it is expressed as
the fact that the surplus product depends on the technical struc-
ture of production. In this latter sense, it refers to a situation that,
according to Marx, comes about concretely only with the advent
of the capitalist mode of production. For, in capitalism, produc-
tivity and science seem, and to some extent are, the effect of the
development of capital. If this is how things are, then it is not

possible to discover values behind prices, precisely because what
this vision of the economic process expresses is the referral of the
material process to capital. But this vision can be sustained only
if, instead of looking at the economic and social process, it looks
at isolated moments of that process. In doing so, it undeniably
expresses a fact, a real aspect of capitalist production. But it does
so in a mystified and mystifying form because it expels from the
analysis the specifically capitalist mode by which the "general
productive force arising from social combination ... appears as a
natural fruit of social labor (although it is a historic product). "52
In conclusion, the derivation of prices of production along
neo-Ricardian lines does not contradict the labor theory of value,
for it does not show that theory to be logically flawed, as the
marginalist theory of distribution is. Rather, it shows only that
values are not the necessary starting point for the determination
of prices. But this nonessentiality of "values" arises from a slide
in the subject matter of the analysis to an issue that is different
from Marx's central concern. Therefore, a reprise of the Marxian
theory should begin by concentrating on the dynamic analysis of
capitalism, and of its development and crisis. This would bring to
the fore the problem implicit in what we have been saying. The
problem in question presents two aspects. One is whether or not
Marx's vision of the capitalist process is adequate to inquiry into
that process. The other is whether or not the labor theory of value
is the only theory that is coherent with that vision. Debate about
what sort of labor is, for Marx, the substance of value will there-
fore advance theoretical undestanding if, and only if, it helps
Marxist inquiry overcome the sharp divide between the recon-
FALL 1998 27
struction of the theory of value and the analysis of the reproduc-

tion of capital.
Notes
1. Lippi, 1976 [Lippi, 1979].

2. See Napoleoni, 1978; Garegnani, 1978; Vianello, 1978; Lippi, 1978b;
Colletti, 1978; Altvater, Hoffmann, and Semmler, 1978 (English translations

of all these papers appear in this issue of IJPE).
3. On this distinction, see Rubin, 1978.
4. We do not consider Lippi's contribution to the Modena conference here
(Lippi, 1978a), though we return to it later.
5. See Colletti's Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International
(1968, also in Colletti, 1969a) [Colletti, I 972a].
6. As cited by Rubin, Bauer stresses the Hegelian derivation of this tum
of phrase, which Marx uses in discussing the measure of labor: " 'Immanent
standard' does not here mean the quantity which is taken as a unit of measure,
but a 'quantity' which is connected with some kind of existence or some kind
of quy" (Rubin, 1976, p. 101 [Rubin, 1973, p. 126]). Lippi does not seem to
take account of this clarification. Rubin's work as a whole provides many
grounds for criticism of Lippi; see, especially, his chapter 14.
7. Lippi, 1976, p. 6 [Lippi, 1979, pp. xv-xvi].
8. Ibid., p. II. [pp. xix-xx]. See also Lippi, 1977.
9. Ibid., p. 42 [pp. 24-25].
10. See notes 3 and 6.
II. Lippi, 1976, p. 44 [Lippi, 1979, p. 26].
12. Veca, I 977a; see also Veca, 1977b.
13. Napoleoni, 1977, emphasis added.
14. Napoleoni, 1978 (quotation from the translation in this issue).
15. Napoleoni (1978) quotes from and comments on a weB-known passage
of Marx on Adam Smith (from the Grundrisse [Marx, 1968, pp. 277-279;
English edition: Marx, 1973a, pp. 6W-612]).
16. We might observe that Napoleoni's criticism of Lippi's account of
Marx echoes Marx's criticism of Smith. Lippi mistakenly regards as a law of
nature the reification of labor that occurs in the generalized production of
commodities, and that is the consequence of the alienation-abstraction of the
essence of man. He maintains that Marx asserts that the products are labor, not
because labor is alienated but because it is objectified.
17. See again Colletti's work, especially "Marxism: Science or Revolu-
tion?" (in CoBetti, 1969a, pp. 305-314 [Colletti, 1972a, pp. 229-236]), but
also 1970 [1972b] and 1974a [1974b].
18. Bedeschi,1977. See also Bedeschi, 1972.
19. For Lippi, it is the measure oflabor as a "law of nature" of production
in general; for Napoleoni, it is the definition of labor as the "essence" of man.
20. In what follows, we draw on the writings of Lucio Colletti (1969b
[1973], 1975b) and of Alfred Schmidt (1972, 1973a, I 973b). Schmidt (1969)
offers a critique of the early Marcuse, whose work of 1932 and 1933 [1975,
1969, respectively] is at the root ofNapoleoni's recent suggestions.
21. Colletti, 1973, p. x, emphasis added.
22. Colletti, 1969b, pp. 357-358 [1979, p. 193], both "as a resultant, a
point of arrival that depends on extra-logical conditions" as well as "an origi-
nal organic unity that is essential to them."
23. Marx and Engels, 1975b, pp. 40 ff [Marx and Engels, 1976, pp. 39 ff].
24. See Schmidt, 1973, pp. 27 ff On this issue more generally, Lukacs,
1973 [Lukacs, 1971].

25. See Schmidt, 1973, pp. 108 ff.
26. The following passage of Lukacs, from History and Class Conscious-
ness, encapsulates the meaning of this move:
Marx urged us to understand "the sensuous world," the object, reality, as
human sensuous activity. This means that man must become conscious of
himself as a social being, as simultaneously the subject and object of the
sociohistorical process. In feudal society man could not yet see himself as
a social being because his social relations were still mainly natural. Society
was far too unorganized and had far too little control over the totality of
relations between men for it to appear to consciousness as the reality of
man .... Bourgeois society carried out the process of socializing society.
Capitalism destroyed both the spatiotemporal barriers between different
lands and territories and also the legal partitions between the different
"estates." In its universe there is a formal equality for all men; the eco-
nomic relations that directly determined the metabolic exchange between
man and nature progressively disappear. Man becomes, in the true sense of
the word, a social being. Society becomes the reality for man. [Lukacs,
1973, p. 27] [Lukacs, 1971, p. 19]
The forms of the relation between the dominant and the dominated classes
are to be explained by this very "natural" limitedness of the process ofproduc-
tion. The same goes for the extemalness of the dominant class to the produc-
tive process. This extemalness shows itself both in the direction of the net
product to consumption and in the fact that the whole economic process is
subject to something "outside" the economic sphere (see, again, Lukacs, 1973,
p. 129, and Napoleoni, 1976, p. II). We thus find that there are important
features of the social process that are, and do not merely seem, independent of
the economic process.
27. Marx, 1968, vol. I, pp. 106-107 [Marx, 1973a, p. 164].
28. Marx, 1968, vol. II, pp. 277-279 [Marx, 1973a, pp. 610-612].
29. See the definition of the human being as the generic natural being in
the 1844 Manuscripts (Marx, 1975a [Marx I 975b]). For a masterly account,
see Colletti, 1969b, ch. II [Colletti, 1979, ch. 11]. Human beings' genericness
consists in their being the indifference of all differences, as a matter of ideas or
reason. This genericness is realized in the "practical creation of an objective
world," which is activity in which we see that "man is capable of producing
FALL 1998 29
according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its
inherent standard" (Marx, 1975a, pp. 7&-79 [Marx, 1975, pp. 32&-329).
30. Pennavaja, 1976 (pp. xxxiv-xxxv) provides an important discussion of
both the peculiar and contradictory nature of the relation of socialization and
particularization that is characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, and
the opposition that follows from it between the "natural and spontaneous"
division of labor in preexisting communities, and the "natural-spontaneous but
social" (naturwiichsig gesellschaftlich) division in capitalist society.
31. Marx, 1968, vol. I, p. 104, emphasis added [Marx, 1973, p. 162;
Nicolaus's translation has been slightly changed].
32. Social bonds are indeed themselves generated by production based on
exchange values, that is, production that shows itself to be social not through
the direct relation among producers but through the indirect and thing-based
mediation of the market. Indeed, as Marx argues,
this objective connection is preferable to the lack of any connection, or [as
in precapitalist forms of production] a merely local connection resting on
blood ties, or on primeval, natural or master-servant relations. Equally
certain is that individuals cannot gain mastery over their own social inter-
connections before they have created them. [Marx 1968, vol. I, p. 104,
emphasis added (pp. 160--161 of the English translation)].
33. Napoleoni has shown that, "according to Marx the derivation of ab-
stract labor from exchange as such rather than from capital is only an apparent
alternative. In fact, exchange without capital is inconceivable. One can equally
well say that abstract labor is that which produces exchange value in the only
social conditions in which this is possible, namely capitalist conditions, or that
abstract labor is wage labor, namely labor as opposed to capital, which is
precisely the labor that, because of that opposition, can have no product other
than exchange value" (Napoleoni, 1973, p. 143 [Napoleoni, 1975, p. 109, of
the English translation, which has been amended]).
From which it follows that "production based on exchange values," in the
quote from Marx, should be understood to mean the same as "capitalist pro-
duction." Only in generalized commodity production do social relations take
on the generality and comprehensiveness to which Marx refers.
We may further note that Marx opposes, on the one hand, the natural
connection in precapitalist modes of production and, on the other, capitalist
society, considered historically, and communism. According to, for example,
Colletti (1978), this last cannot therefore be regarded as the reunification of an
original and "natural" unity. As between the two cases there is a radical differ-
ence in the individual, likewise, in the relation between man and nature, in
society and in labor. To paraphrase Marx, we may say that the mere presence
of the "free" worker on the market is the outcome of a universal history and
announces a new epoch.
34. This theme permeates the entire section on "pre-capitalist forms of
production" in the Grundrisse (Marx, 1968, vol. II, pp. 94-147 [Marx, 1973,
pp.471-513).
35. Marx, 1968, vol. II, p. 86 [Marx 1973, p. 487 of the English translation;
slight amendements].
36. See Hobsbawn, 1974, pp. 18,41.
37. It therefore seems incoherent to suppose that there is a "philosophy of
history" in Marx's writings. Indeed, when Marx offers an "ordering" of the
various past and future modes of production, he starts with the capitalist social
form and on the basis of the relations of production that belong to it, and not
by starting with a conception of history as having a goal, as the late Colletti
pretends (Colletti, 1978 [English translation in this issueD. We rather agree
with Alfred Schmidt: "Only through the eyes of theory does the modification
of a form, without itself arising from that form, prove to be its higher stage of
development. ... The bourgeois social formation has a methodologically deci-
sive role in dialectical materialism in that it provides the starting point for
disclosing both the past and the possibilities of the future" (Schmidt, 1973b, p.
171 [Schmidt, 1971, p. 177]. See also Korsch, 1969, p. 89 [Korsch, 1963], for
whom Marx's critique of political economy "investigates the tendencies inher-
ent in capitalist commodity production which in the course of their further
develpmennt produce the necessary basis for the economic, political, and ideo-
logical struggle of the proletarian class, and which will ultimately overthrow
the bourgeois mode of production and advance to the higher production rela-
tions of a socialistic and communistic society."
38. Marx, 1970, Book I, vol. II, pp. 199-200 [Marx, 1976, pp. 617-618;
the translation has been amended]. Rossana Rossanda has highlighted this
passage in her "Note di Studio," Jl Manifesto (January 29, 1978).
39. On the importance of the fifth section of Volume I of Capital for an
understanding of Marx's project, see the writings of Claudio Napoleoni, espe-
cially his Lezioni suI capitolo sesto inedito (Napoleoni, 1972), and of
Gianfranco La Grassa, especially Valore e Jormazione socia Ie (La Grassa,
1979).
40. Rubin, 1976, p. 111 [Rubin, 1973, p. 138].
41. Lippi, 1978a, the written contribution to the Modena conference [the
same argument may be found in the postscript to the English translation, Lippi,
1979, pp. 120-133].
42. Lippi, 1978a, p. 10 [Lippi 1979, p. 130]. According to Lippi, this also
allows us to explain why Marx speaks of measuring labor even before com-
modities have been produced.
43. Compare with the Critique oj the Gotha Programme: "We are dealing
here with a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations,
but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society. In every respect,
economically, morally, intellectually, it is thus still stamped with the birth-
marks of the old society from whose womb it has emerged" (Marx, 1971, p.
960 [Marx, 1974, p. 346]).
44. On this, see Napoleoni, 1972, pp. 177 ff.
45. The point does not appear in the written contribution for Rinascita
(Vi anello, 1978 [English translation in this issue]).
46. See Seton, 1956, and Sraffa, 1960. The reader should be warned again
FALL 1998 31
that the following pages were written in 1978. The new approaches to the
labor theory of value, including my own, were still in their infancy. I must also
confess that today I would sharply distinguish Sraffa from the Sraffans.
47. For a short summary of the history of the "transformation problem,"
see the two last chapters of Napoleoni, 1972. For some of the negative conclu-
sions referred to in the text, see Steedman, 1977.
48. See Cini, 1974; Morishima and Catephores, 1978; Shaikh, 1977.
49. See the Results of the Immediate Process of Production (Marx, 1969, p.
69 [Marx, 1976b, p. 1035].
50. Altvater, Hoffmann, and Semmler, 1978 [the English translation is in-
cluded in this issue].
51. One more word on the third point, since the justification of the first two
is given by the whole of this paper: The real cause of crises is nothing but the
same incessant revolutions in social relations of production and in productive
forces. The internal dynamism of capital simultaneously gives way to a fall in
the relative wage and to a modification of the equilibrium exchange ratios
necessary for extended reproduction to go on undisturbed. As a consequence,
as accumulation goes on, the likelihood of disproportionality crises degenerat-
ing into a general glut of commodities increases. This train of thought may be
traced back to Rosa Luxemburg, if her two economic works (The Accumula-
tion of Capital, and the Introduction to Political Economy) are taken into
account together.
52. Marx, 1968, vol. II, pp. 394--395 [Marx, 1973, p. 700]. A powerful
criticism of the Sraffa-based approach to value theory is in Rowthorn, 1974.
References
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(1978), pp. 41-42. [English translation in this issue.]
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The Concept of Labor,in Marx

Labor seems a quite simple category. The conception of labor in this

With the publication of Marco Lippi's Value and Naturalism in

analyzing the magnitude of value to its form and content.

Marxian edifice is internally consistent and adequate to its own

from feudalism, understood as the expression of pre bourgeois

relation connects with a recognition of those differences. 3 In this

Marco Lippi: Abstract labor as real social cost

Lippi's interpretation can be summarized as follows: 4 Marx's

'immanent measure'[6) of the product, whatever the historical

they arise from "natural" determinants; in this, Marx follows

to socially equal labor, in which various rates of productivity are

The reasoning thus moves from physiologically equal labor to

Claudio Napoleoni: The metahistorical ontology of labor

Napoleoni's criticisms of Lippi's claim are particularly interest-

tion and not a real abstraction, which can only be referring to

output, considered as natural labor, but because of its historical

This is precisely the route that Napoleoni takes in an article on

being considered as a generic natural being."15 Nevertheless,

1. In Napoleoni's view, when Marx refers to a natural being, he

In other words, in open disagreement with Colletti and

confirmation of the human essence and, so, existence and es-

beginning with an analysis of the human essence as a philosophi-

The relation between the human being and nature in Marx

Thus, Lippi and Napoleoni agree that the Marxian theory of

insists that the transformed and mediated nature to which that

of matter and, more generally, by the external world. At the same

The radical immanence of the concept of labor in Marx

We accept that the definition of the essence of the human being

generalized exchange. In pre bourgeois social arrangements, the

duction, which is historically the transition from feudalism to

ing Up Marx's way of expressing himself in criticizing Smith's

leased from dependence on a nature that is still largely not medi-

as an objective social necessity that takes on the semblance of

Universally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their

If we take into account the clear distinction under which Marx

of the human being as a generic natural being and of labor as his

historical process, in particular of capitalism itself. Of course, the

In all these forms, the reproduction of presupposed relations--more

In this way, Marx establishes a qualitative difference between

production. On the other hand, he can clarify the causes that

The second matter is this: Within bourgeois society, what rela-

Modem industry never views or treats the existing form of a produc-

process is not merely formally but really subjected to capital. As

process. In one respect, this is the maximum enhancement of

logical, as well as the social, equality of labor comes about in full

biological presupposition into an effective homogenization

[T]he general law, asserted under commodity production as the law

By now it should be clear where we agree and where we

Marx's concept oflabor and exploitation