A reflection on the value and meaning of “work” is of utmost importance due to the rise of automation and artificial intelligence in all areas of our lives. Every day we read about new developments in machine cognition that threaten to make redundant many jobs in the service sector or the invention of new robots that make human workers superfluous in an industrial setting. As part of an ongoing series of blog posts on “Reflections”, I plan to create a dialogue between economics, sociology and philosophy in an attempt to unpack some of the hidden ramifications that the quantification of our social relationships has on our lives. These blog posts will hopefully serve us something of an education for both myself and any readers who are interested in following the journey.
I studied economics as an undergraduate student but was disappointed at the time by the manner in which textbooks tend to abstract ideas from any social context and posit economic relationships as “models” that could describe real situations in only an approximate or simplified manner. By returning to some of the original texts that inform the writing of textbooks, I would like to restore the social and philosophical backgrounds that might have informed the development of such ideas. As part of my training as a literary scholar, I have delved deep into the history of philosophy and discovered an affinity for the economic theories of Karl Marx and the subsequent work of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. This interest led me to publish a comparative analysis of the work of Jurgen Habermas and Francois Lyotard and develop a concept of the “posthuman condition” that I think is relevant to understanding our contemporary situation. Ultimately, I plan to comment critically on some of the social trends that unfolding before us in the twenty-twenties and beyond, but before I can do this, I believe it is necessary to return to the origins of classical economics to lay bare some of the philosophical assumptions that remain hidden to the everyday reader.
A good place to start in laying bare the relationship between philosophy and economics is the work of Adam Smith, as the Scottish polymath was the first scholar to create a systematic economic theory that covers all parts of society. For the purposes of this blog on “Work and Experience”, Smith’s work is interesting as the “labour-theory of value” informs the work of Karl Marx, who subsequently developed a critical perspective towards the appropriation of a worker’s labour by the industrial capitalists in the nineteenth century. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, Smith invents the concept of the “quantity of labour” to develop a labour theory of value in which the usefulness of commodities are determined by the amount of labour that they command (or save) for the purchaser. The labour theory of value was an advance at the time as the periodic debasement or depreciation of money during the Victorian period (typically silver) made it difficult to compare the real value of commodities from year to year. It was also true, as it is now, that most people conflate the value of things with their monetary value or price, whereas most of us are unaware of the actual determinants of price. Indeed, in a chapter on money, Smith observes that the word “value” has two meanings in the context of economics: on the one hand, it “sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object”, which he calls the “value in use” of the object; on the other hand, it sometimes expresses “the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys”, which he calls the “value in exchange” of the object. Even from his original formulation of the problem, it can be seen that the labour theory of value involves some kind of comparison between the “exchange-value” and the “use-value” of any given commodity, for it is only by connecting the price of an object with its possible use that we can begin to decide whether or not we should purchase it or not. What was missing at the time was an appreciation of the value of labour as one of the key factors of production that determines the price of commodities (as well as rent, capital and resources).
The conceptual breakthrough that Smith made in The Wealth of Nations, however, was to realise that the real price of any commodity is in fact determined by the quantity of labour used to produce it, which means that we make a mental comparison between the value of our own labour and the value embodied in the object. As Smith puts it:
“The value of any commodity […] to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” [I, v: 47/44]
By suspending the use of an object and substituting it for the labour embodied in it, the individual can use the commodity as a means of exchange, which means that he can purchase or command the labour of other individuals through the act of exchange. This is, in fact, what occurs when we barter with each other. When a butcher sells the publican a cut of lamb, he commands the labour required to brew the beer and serve it in a pitcher. When we think of the relationship of exchange in the case of barter, it is easy for us to comprehend the comparison between the types of labour embodied in the two types of objects; yet even in Smith’s time, it was much more common for a money in the form of gold or silver to act as a medium of exchange, such that the utility of the object was more often being compared to the price attached to it in the marketplace. By tracing the value of objects back to the quantity of labour contained in them, Smith is effectively suggesting that there is a kind of virtual barter being enacted every time a transaction is made, which means that in psychological terms we can make a comparison between the quantity of labour embodied in our own produce to the utility of the object we wish to exchange it for. In Smith’s terms, the act of exchange would still involve some kind of social relationship of recognition, in which the buyer and seller make a comparison between the value of their respective commodities and agree to trade a similar quantity of labour.
Of course, viewed from a modern perspective, the reduction of most financial transactions to a virtual barter situation seems like an idealisation, as most exchanges appear to be completely abstracted from any real experience of living work. The example of the butcher trading with the publican makes sense, because both individuals own the products of their own labour, and can therefore compare the labour used to produce it (the slaughter of the cattle, its transportation and storage) with the quantity of labour preserved in the other (the brewing of the beer, its storage and serving). One of the reasons that this barter situation seems so unrealistic is the fact that most modern workers do not own the products of their labour, but rather receive a wage or salary for the part they play in the overall production process (whether that be a good or service). The distancing of the modern worker from the products of their labour is not simply a consequence of the division of the production process into its component parts (the so-called “production line”), but also an effect of the division of labour, which means that the production of any commodity involves a collaboration with a large number of different firms. It is worth reading Smith’s account of the production of a woolen coat to appreciate the importance of the division labour to the overall production process:
The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country? How much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world? What a variety of labour, too, is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting-house, the brickmaker, the bricklayer, the workmen who attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. [I, i: my emphasis BM]
When placed in the context of the division of labour and the rationalise of the production process into its constituent parts, it becomes clear that there are a multitude of different types of labour (and capital) embodied in the production of any commodity, which means that there is a kind of generalised labour that permeates all aspects of society. It is for this reason that Marx will subsequently develop the concept of “abstract labour”, which would account for the fact that the material differences in different types of labour tend to be erased when the labour embodied in one type of commodity is traded for another (or indeed incorporated as part of the production process). To use a political metaphor, it might be suggest that the work of the nation (today measured in GDP) might be considered the body of the nation, a kind of virtual mass of human minds and bodies working to provide the component parts of a national industrial machine.
It is one of the consequences of modernity that the modern individual perceives little or no relationship between the experience of working and the price or value of the commodities which he or she chooses to purchase in order to thrive or survive. Even though the concept of “ideology” did not exist in Smith’s time, it is clear that he considered the process of exchange to be governed by a kind of false consciousness, because he uses the following chapter title when analysing it: ““Of The Real And Nominal Price Of Commodities, Or Of Their Price In Labour, And Their Price In Money”. Here the use of the terms “real” and “nominal” reminds us of the Aristotelian categories used to distinguish between the “essential” and “accidental” properties that we predicate of a given subject. When Smith was writing, the influence of Locke’s empirical philosophy reigned supreme, so the use of the term “nominal” would have suggested that the price we associated with the value of commodities is simply a conventional significance that we attach to a name in our minds. Indeed, by mistaking the “value in exchange” for the quantity of labour embodied in any commodity, we are committing a fallacy that leads to a kind of collective false consciousness. Even in Smith’s time, the practice of bartering commodities of different values and amounts had largely been replaced by the use of gold and silver as a medium of exchange, so it was by no means obvious to the everyday worker that the true value of commodities was determined by the amount of labour they embodied rather than their market. Discussing the example of the butcher who “seldom carries his beef or his mutton to the baker or the brewer, in order to exchange them for bread or for beer”, Smith notes that the butcher instead “carries them to the market, where he exchanges them for money, and afterwards exchanges that money for bread and for beer”. [I, v: 46] As a consequence of the process of exchange, Smith notes that the consciousness of the worker and consumer is altered:
It is more natural and obvious to him, therefore, to estimate their value by the quantity of money, the commodity for which he immediately exchanges them, than by that of bread and beer, the commodities for which he can exchange them only by the intervention of another commodity; and rather to say that his butcher’s meat is worth three-pence or fourpence a-pound, than that it is worth three or four pounds of bread, or three or four quarts of small beer. Hence it comes to pass, that the exchangeable value of every commodity is more frequently estimated by the quantity of money, than by the quantity either of labour or of any other commodity which can be had in exchange for it. [I, v: 46]
From this passage, it can be seen that Smith’s purpose in developing the concept of the quantity of labour was to provide a measure of value that was grounded in an actual experience of work. For Smith, the shift from exchange value to the quantity of labour was an important first step in accurately measuring the contribution of labour to the overall production process (which also includes rent, capital and resources). Economic analysis therefore implied a process of demystification in which the nominal essence of price was replaced by its real essence. As Smith puts it, “Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.”
By linking exchange to the so-called “quantity of labour”, Smith opened up a new way of evaluating the price of commodities that took into account the perspective of the worker. By using the adjective “real”, Smith is in fact implying that the circulation of money in markets creates a slightly distorted view of the world, because we tend to mistake the “price” of a commodity for its real value, which is measured by the quantity of labour. Indeed, when I purchase a GUCCI handbag from the duty free store at the airport, I am probably aware that its nominal price is much higher than the real quantity of labour used to produce it, even if we can imagine the real work of the designers, advertisers and marketers who convince us that we really need one! The use of the word “real” here implies a reference to a world of real beings – either the existence of the object, the use of the object, or the experience of the labour used to produce an equivalent quantity of labour – which stands over and above the nominal world of prices which seem to have a fluid and fictional existence. Duty Free shops tend to epitomise this nominal world of fictional prices, as the mass produced and luxury items appear to float free of any real or tangible connection to the world of agricultural or industrial production. It is for this reason that Smith introduces the notion of “toil” into his exposition, because it demonstrates that prices must have a link to some kind of physical reality which underpins the exchange of commodities in the marketplace:
The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it and who wants to dispose of it, or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money, or with goods, is purchased by labour, as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money, or those goods, indeed, save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour, which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.
Here, Smith implies that labour is a kind of original “price” or “purchase money” that underlies the exchangeable value of all commodities, which means that money can be used either to save a certain quantity of labour (in purchasing something useful) or impose a certain quantity of labour upon someone else (who makes the useful thing for me). Contained in this opposition between savings and imposition is a social relationship between the buyer and seller in which they chose to trade a quantity of labour that is in some sense “equivalent”. At the origin, the concept of a “real” price in Adam Smith’s political economy can be traced back to the concept of human labour as a quantity or amount that can be measured in terms of the physical exertion of the body. It is perhaps telling that Smith uses the slightly poetic expression “toil and trouble” to describe the lived experience of accumulating money, because the word “toil” has connotation of hard labour in which the worker experiences the resistance of the material in the process of production, as well as the experience of fatigue that accompanies the performance of this labour for any extended period of time.
When searching for an origin of real prices, Smith went back to the agricultural labour of the peasant on a farm or the industrial worker on the production line, because this simple notion of toil implies a repetitive activity that is unpleasant to the worker and leads to fatigue. Interestingly, the Middle English word “toile” derives from the Anglo-French verb toiler, which means “to agitate, stir up, entangle, writhe about”, which creates connotations of a conflict between the worker and their material. Yet the original Latin verb retains a connection to the instrument of labour, because the verb tudiculare means “to crush with a small hammer,” which is formed from the tudicula, a “mill for crushing olives, instrument for crushing,” itself an evolution from the more simple word for hammer – namely, a tude. The crushing of olives with a mill to make oil therefore seems an appropriate illustration of the process of toil, for not only does it communicate a sense of the resistance of the grapes to the human feet that compress them, but also to the use of the oil that will eventually provide some relief from the labour. Once the olives have been processed, the oil has been barrelled, the oil bottled, the bottle of oil embodies the labour of those who picked the oils, as well as the maintenance of the trees used to grow them in the first place. Of course, such analysis does not even consider the cost of the land and the relationship between the owner, miller, bottler and olive picker, but it does serve to show that any agricultural or industrial product does contain a physical quantity of labour that can be measured in some way. The question is who we posit some kind of equivalence between the value of all these different things. It seems that Smith was aware that the market price for commodities was not necessarily a true measure for the amount of toil contained in the production of a commodity, for noting that “It is often difficult to ascertain the proportion between two different quantities of labour, he concedes that times is not the only factor, but also “The different degrees of hardship endured, and of ingenuity exercised”. Even in Smith’s early analysis, it clear that he perceived some source of social inequality in the exchange of equivalent amounts of physical labour or “toil”, but he reasons that prices are justified simply for the reason that they facilitate the division of labour and the distribution of commodities in the market-place: “In exchanging, indeed, the different productions of different sorts of labour for one another, some allowance is commonly made for both. It is adjusted, however, not by any accurate measure, but by the higgling and bargaining of the market, according to that sort of rough equality which, though not exact, is sufficient for carrying on the business of common life” [49/45].
To conclude this first posting, it might be worth shifting perspective from the worker to the capitalist, for it is clear that the “quantity of labour” concept implies a power to command labour that has real effects in society. By developing the concept of the quantity of labour, Smith not only laid bare for the first time the value of labour to the production process, he also showed that the possession of money involves the creation of a new type of power. In modern day terms, we might speak of a wealthy individual having a certain amount of “purchasing power”; however, when we translated this into real terms, the possession of money or wealth in fact involves an indirect ability to command the labour of others. Wealthy billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk not only have power over their employees, but also possess a unique amount of purchasing power that goes beyond the mere purchase of commodities to satisfy their personal needs. As opposed to the owner of a firm, or a manager who has administrative power of his workers, the wealthy individual possesses the power to command the labour of others. I will leave you with the words of Adam Smith to consider the power of those wealthy billionaires in our tech oligopoly today:
The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour which is then in the market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely in proportion to the extent of this power, or to the quantity either of other men’s labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men’s labour, which it enables him to purchase or command. The exchangeable value of every thing must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner. [I, v]
Bill Martin Jazz 
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