“We use machines to make our labor more productive. Productivity is a measure of the amount of use-value created in a span of time. Since, for Marx, value is determined by labor time an increase in productivity (in use-values) does not create a corresponding increase in value. The same amount of value is created, just spread out over a larger quantity of use-values. This difference between use-value production and value production is one of the hallmarks of Marx’s theory of value. It allows Marx to explain many of the most important contradictions at the heart of capitalism: the domination of living labor by dead labor, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, ETC. This also explains why unit prices tend to fall as productivity rises. If we were to argue, contrary to Marx, that machines create value then we wind up with a theory in which use-value production is the same as value production. An increase in productivity would mean an increase in value-production. This results in a very different theoretical understanding of the economy. Such an understanding cannot derive any of the same contradictions that Marx’s theory does. There is no tendency for the profit rate to fall with rising productivity, living labor is not dominated by dead labor, profit doesn’t come from exploiting workers, and prices do not fall with rising productivity.

…

Caffentzis makes, in my opinion, the only possible argument: “if labor is to create value while machines do not, then labor’s value creating capacities must lie in its negative capability, its capacity to refuse to be labor.” [“Why Machines Cannot Create Value” Caffentzis 1997 in “Cutting Edge” ed. Jim Davis] In other words, what makes humans different than machines is that humans can refuse to work. This makes human labor a social relation. Humans must be coerced/convinced to do work. They do not operate like machines that can be just turned on and off. This distinction brings out the coercive side of value relations. Feudal society had knights and the Catholic Church to make the serfs work the land. Capitalism has value relations which are their own form of coercion.

Of course if robots ever evolved to the point in which they could refuse to work then their work would also become a social relation and thus would be value creating. Of course, if this ever happens we might have more important problems on our hands…”

The above passages come from an essay by Brendan Cooney titled “On Labor as the Substance of Value.”

Tags:economicslabormachinesmarxrobotsvalue