Capital, Labour and Time: The Marxian Monetary Labour Theory of Value as a Theory of Exploitation

Abstract

The last point to which attention is still to be drawn in the relation of labour to capital is this, that as the use value which confronts money posited as capital, labour is not this or another labour, but labour pure and simple, abstract labour; absolutely indifferent to its particular specificity, but capable of all specificities…. This economic relation — the character which capitalist and worker have as the extremes of a single relation of production — therefore develops more purely and adequately in proportion as labour loses all the characteristics of art; as its particular skill becomes something more abstract and irrelevant, and as it becomes more and more a purely abstract activity, a purely mechanical activity, hence indifferent to its particular form…. Here it can be seen once again that the particular specificity of the relation of production, of the category — here, capital and labour — becomes real only with the development of a particular material mode of production and of a particular stage in the development of the industrial productive forces. (This point in general to be particularly developed in connection with this relation, later; since it is here already posited [gesetzes] in the relation itself, while, in the case of the abstract concepts, exchange value, circulation, money, it still lies more in our subjective reflection.)

We wish to thank Chris Arthur, Mino Carchedi, Werner de Haan, Duncan Foley, Gilbert Faccarello, Heinz Kurz, Chai-on Lee, Simon Mohun, Geert Reuten and Aijt Sinha for comments and criticisms. We would like to thank Richard Davies for his help in translating the Italian original into English. MURST 40 per cent and 60 per cent grants have financed one of the two author’s researches.