The Capitalization of Labour and the Sociality of Exchange

Abstract

In this chapter I focus on Marx’s claim that labour’s lack of a social identity in production accounts for its expression in exchange as a (social) relationship between things (commodities). In section (i) I argue that labour does possess a social identity in production — the social identity of capital. I make this claim on the basis of Marx’s own account of the ‘real subsumption of labour’ beneath capital. It follows that labour cannot be the source, substance and subject of value in exchange and an alternative explanation for the sociality of exchange is called for. In section (ii) I argue that Marx is unable to sustain his characterization of use-value as a mere bearer of sociality. On the contrary, Marx concedes that use-values are socialized in exchange independently of the labour they putatively objectify. Thus, there is no need to ground the sociality of exchange in self-objectifying labour, as exchange is a social process in its own right. In section (iii) I explore an alternative account of exchange, which seeks neither to reduce it to the subjectivity of labour (à la Marx) nor to the subjectivity of consumers (à la neoclassical economics), but rather views exchange as an inter-subjective process dirempted into the ‘objectivity’ of the system, on the one hand, and the ‘subjectivity’ of its agents, on the other. This dialectical account of exchange can be found in Georg Simmel’s writings on money.