The Practical Truth of Abstract Labour - Chris Arthur

Arthur 14-Dec-12 34
In the context of capitalist production the product is what has value but
as such it is a formless substrate. This allows the transubstantiation of
the material body of the commodity into a value ‘substance’. Because of
this, the fetish form has effectivity but it is a borrowed effectivity; the
commodity is posited as ‘a value’ yet its apparent power (of
exchangeability) registers the effectivity of the form within which the
object is inscribed.
If the commodity is fetishised it is reasonable to surmise that the activity
producing it may be fetishised. This is true of those who claim to have
seen through the vulgar form of commodity fetishism on the market to
the production of commodities. So productive labour is taken as value-
positing in classical political economy (and especially by Ricardian
socialists), yet its apparent power of creating value really registers the
effectivity of the social form within which production is carried on.
How does this happen? Just as value inhabits the natural body of the
commodity so we find value positing is carried by living labour. This
makes it look as if it is living labour itself that ‘produces’ value as well as
use value. This is nonsense if taken as a natural property of labour, but
this attribution of a power of producing value has a certain ‘objective
validity’ just as in the parallel case of the commodity itself. No matter that
we show how this fetish-character occurs, it is not merely an illusion. Just
Cedar Paul, got it right.) But it is interesting that in the first edition of Capital ‘Der Fetischismus der
Waarenform….’ is found in the sub-head. Marx 1976a, p. 59.