Transfer of value

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The value transfer is based on the theory of Karl Marx next to the conservation of value is a function of concrete and useful labor in the capitalist production process.

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The starting point is the question of how in the production process, which is essentially the value creation process, the value that was previously created finds its way into the new product. The answer is that this process apparently consists of two processes, namely

One and the same expenditure of work shows the two-sided result of maintaining old value and creating new value. But since it is one and the same work, it can only be the result of the double character of this expenditure of work itself. It is clear which side of the work forms the new value: The work adds value to its material, not because it “has a particularly useful content, but because it lasts a certain time. In its abstract, general quality, therefore, as the expenditure of human labor (...) ”(Marx). If the yarn spinner looks for a new job and becomes a carpenter, that doesn't change the fact that he creates value in his work. As a carpenter, however, he will no longer “transform the cotton into yarn, ie also not transfer the values ​​of cotton and spindle to the yarn”. The value transfer of the old value depends on the other side of his work, it is the result of the specifically useful spinning work.

The transfer of values ​​is indeed the result of specifically productive, specifically useful work . Conversely, this does not mean that it is a natural quality of concrete useful work to transfer values. The concrete useful work in the work process is nothing other than the use of existing use values ​​to create new use values. If values ​​are transferred in the process, then only because the work process is subordinate to a valorisation process , because from the start it is about the production of values.

So work has two sides, it is value-creating and value-maintaining, and at the same time. The cotton spinner cannot create new value without transferring the value of the cotton to the yarn. Conversely, the useful work of spinning is always work as well, so the spinner also spins value.

These two effects of living work become clear when one imagines a work process in which the effectiveness of work is enhanced by an invention, e.g. B. sixfold. Using the example of a cotton spinner, this would mean that instead of 6 pounds of cotton before, it spins 36 pounds of cotton into 36 pounds of yarn in 6 hours. If you consider the result of 6 hours of spinning work, this work product contains the same newly created value, but six times more transferred. If one considers the value of a pound of cotton, it contains the same transferred value, but only one-sixth of the value as new.

Suppose the value of cotton falls to one sixth of its previous value. If one now looks at the result of six hours of spinning work, one again has the same newly created, but six times less transferred value. The same is true here of the single pound of cotton, because the productive power has not changed.

The relationship between value formation and value transfer depends on the conditions of work: “Given constant production conditions, the more value he adds, the more value the worker receives, but he does not receive more value because he adds more value, but because he afflicts him under conditions that remain the same and are independent of his own work. "(Marx)

Cotton gives its value to the yarn by giving up its use value to the yarn. The cotton has disappeared after spinning, but not without a trace. Its use value is not simply “gone”, but - like the use value of the spindle - it changes into a new use value. And as is well known, the value does not care what use value carries it, as long as someone does it. So it follows the use value in a kind of “transmigration of souls”. The old use-value goes under, and precisely to the extent that it goes under, and thus loses its value, new use-value arises and the value is retained in this new body shape.

However, the different use values ​​that go into the work process as objective factors are also lost in very different ways. The case with raw and auxiliary materials is quite clear because they are simply consumed, because it is quite obvious that they transfer their value to the extent that they are consumed. The case is different with the actual work equipment, which retains its original shape and takes part in the work process again the next day in this same form. So machines are not simply used up. However, they wear out. Just like a person "dies" by 24 hours a day, so does a machine. If it usually lasts a year, it has lost 1/365 of its utility value after one day.

The concrete calculation that the capitalist undertakes here is of course not based on the concept of the thing. Instead, he has his empirical values ​​here.

In contrast to raw materials, which are included in the recycling process to the same extent as they are used in the work process, the machine is included in the work process as a whole , but only in part in the recycling process, which is the difference between the work process and the recycling process reflected. The reverse is also possible. If a certain percentage of a raw material is lost during production, this raw material, including “ devil's dust ”, goes into the recycling process in its entirety, but only partially into the work process.

The transfer of value from “the consumed body into the newly formed body”, as Marx expresses it figuratively, is a free gift of labor for the capitalist. The worker produces new value, and that is what matters to the capitalist. It ultimately draws its added value from this new value. But this value formation does not work without the preservation of value, because as much as abstract work is important, just as little can the worker perform abstract work without at the same time working in a concrete and useful way and thus preserving the value of his means of production for the capitalist. If the production process stalls, on the one hand the formation of new value stalls, on the other hand there is a threat of a loss in value of the means of production.

The capitalist notices that his dead capital is still a right to more capital when the creation of new values ​​is blocked, after all he has acquired it so that it absorbs living work.

In addition, the stagnation also leads to a loss of value of the means of production available, and in this the capitalist notices the second benefit that living labor has for him, namely that of maintaining value. The loss of value is twofold: On the one hand, not only use but also non-use wears out the means of production. On the other hand, there is always a threat of moral wear and tear , ie devaluation through technical progress, which is why the capitalist is concerned with the fastest possible "consumption" of machines, and this consumption is slowed down by the stagnation of production.

Web links

Karl Marx on the maintenance and transfer of the value of constant capital