Charlie wrote: > In addition, Walker tells us: "By 'socially necessary [labor time],' Marx > meant necessary to the expanded reproduction of capital." Nonsense. Marx's > Capital I makes no distinction between simple and expanded reproduction. He > does not need it to investigate the value of a commodity. Reproduction > comes up in volume two.
Ballet of elephants, eh? The tune I am dancing to is a section in the *Grundrisse* given the title "Necessary labour. Surplus labour. Surplus population. Surplus capital" Marx had not yet started to use the term "socially necessary labour time" but this is what he was talking about, albeit rather elliptically: Labour capacity can perform its necessary labour only if its surplus labour > has value for capital, if it can be realized by capital. Thus, if this > realizability is blocked by one or another barrier, then (1) *labour > capacity itself appears outside the conditions of the reproduction of its > existence*; it exists without the *conditions of its existence*, and is > therefore a mere encumbrance; needs without the means to satisfy them; (2) > necessary labour appears as superfluous, because the superfluous is not > necessary. It is necessary only to the extent that it is the condition for > the realization of capital. Thus the relation of necessary and surplus > labour, as it is posited by capital, turns into its opposite, so that a > part of necessary labour - i.e. of the labour reproducing labour capacity - > is superfluous, and this labour capacity itself is therefore used as a > *surplus* of the necessary working population, i.e. of the portion of the > working population whose necessary labour is not superfluous but necessary > for capital. I pause this discourse of inversions -- of the necessary becoming superfluous and the superfluous becoming necessary -- to point out that the second necessary is not identical to the first one. The first necessity is subsistence for labour capacity, the second necessary for the realization of capital. I also paused because this passage is hard slogging and has to be very meticulously taken apart and put back together. Marx continued: Since *the necessary development of the productive forces as posited by > capital* [emphasis added] consists in increasing the relation of surplus > labour to necessary labour, or in decreasing the portion of necessary > labour required for a given amount of surplus labour, then, if a definite > amount of labour capacity is given, the relation of *necessary* labour > needed by capital must necessarily continuously decline, i.e. part of these > labour capacities must become superfluous, since a portion of them suffices > to perform the quantity of surplus labour for which the whole amount was > required previously. The positing of a specific portion of labour > capacities as superfluous, i.e. of the labour required for their > reproduction as superfluous, is therefore a necessary consequence of the > growth of surplus labour relative to necessary. The term, "the necessary development of the productive forces as posited by capital" is, I would argue, what eventually gets abbreviated as "socially necessary labour time." That is NOT to say they are exact synonyms, as the first refers to a historical process and the second to a more immediate instance of that process. It is hard to talk about "the moment" and "the long run" at the same time. That is what Marx was attempting to do here and what, in my opinion, makes it difficult to follow. But I think it is worth trying. There is a direct parallel between the argument Marx was making here and his argument in chapter 25 of *Capital* vol. 1 about the growth of the industrial reserve army and official pauperism being "the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation." Marx was pretty emphatic. The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and > energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of > the proletariat and the productivity of its labour, the greater is the > industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power > of capital, also develop the labour power at its disposal. The relative > mass of the industrial reserve army thus increases with the potential > energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the > active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus > population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to the amount of torture it > has to undergo in the form of labour. The more extensive, finally, the > pauperized sections of the working class and the industrial reserve army, > the greater is official pauperism. *This is the absolute genera/ law of > capitalist accumulation*. 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