HISTORY AND THE LAW OF VALUE:

IN DEFENSE OF ENGELS AGAINST JOHN WEEKS

(UNPUBLISHED PAPER)

by Jim Miller


INTRODUCTION

   John Weeks argues, in his 1981 book, _Capital and Exploitation_, that there
is a need to place "value theory at the center of the analysis of capitalism."
(Weeks, p. 6) He approaches the analysis of value by means of a criticism
of the writings of Frederick Engels, Karl Marx's lifelong collaborator. As Weeks
puts it: "Engels completely misconstrued Marx's value theory." (Weeks, p. 8)
   The task of dividing Engels from Marx extends through the first two
chapters of Weeks's book, and continues in an appendix to the second chapter.
In that appendix Weeks claims, "our purpose in this appendix is to reach into
the work of Marx and Engels to demonstrate that their views on fundamental
issues differed diametrically." (Weeks, p. 50)
   The intent of the present paper is to refute Weeks's assertion that Marx and
Engels differed in their fundamental views. It is hoped that, in the course of
the arguments presented, it will be demonstrated that it is Weeks, and not
Engels, who misconstrues the ideas of Marx--ideas which were developed,
in part, through the joint work of Marx and Engels.
   In Weeks's attempt to conjure up an anti-Marxian Engels, he completely
sets aside the biographical data of the two men's lives, and the richly-
documented record of their practical and theoretical unity. The record provides
no evidence of public or private quarreling between Marx and Engels on any
substantive political or theoretical questions. To the contrary, they succeeded
in arriving at complete accord on fundamental questions very early in their
collaborative efforts. 
   Throughout a lifetime of struggle to develop the scientific foundation of the
class struggle of the modern proletariat, and to take the first steps in constructing
a leadership party for that class, Marx was accompanied and aided by Engels
every step of the way. Together they formed a bond that constituted an
irreplaceable nucleus for the gathering of other forces in their efforts to put
together the workers' leadership. Their collaboration in the Communist League
and in the German revolution of 1848, and later in the International Working
Men's Association, represent the highlights of thier joint political work.
   Their theoretical collaboration, which dates from their meeting in 1844,
initially produced just works as _The Holy Family_ and _The German
Ideology_. Later, in the 1850s and 1860s, as Marx worked through the
elaboration of his economic ideas, Engels communicated constantly with
him and provided considerable assistance, both financial and intellectual.
After Marx's death in 1883 Engels continued the work on _Capital_, editing
and publishing the second and third volumes, and contributing, where
necessary, to the text of the work. In his own works, such as _Anti-Duhring_
(which Marx read and approved prior to publication) and _Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State_, Engels developed and defended ideas which
the two men shared.
   This assessment of the practical and theoretical unity of Marx and Engels
is chronicled and explained in a number of biographies, among them _Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels: an Introduction to Their Lives and Work_, by
David Riazanov, and _Karl Marx: Man and Fighter_, by Boris Nicolaievsky
and Otto Maenchen-Helfen. Weeks, of course, acknowledges the historical
record, saying,

   "In beginning this way, we immediately encounter the work of Marx's closest
friend and repeated collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Engels was a towering figure
in the world communist movement, a brilliant theoretician himself and responsible
for the publication of Volumes II and III of _Capital_, which were left in various
degrees of completion when Marx died. Every person who picks up either of
the last two volumes of _Capital_ owes a debt to Friedrich Engels." (Weeks, p. 8)

   How is it possible then, for Weeks to claim that their "views on fundamental
issues differed diametrically?" Weeks offers no hypothesis to explain this 
remarkable assertion, nor does he attempt to review the historical record looking
for divergences. Rather, he relies entirely on an analysis of Engels's essay,
"Law of Value and Rate of Profit," which is printed as an appendix to the third
volume of _Capital_, and was written in 1895 just prior to its publication.
(Although at one point he draws on Engels's book _Anti-Duhring_ as well.)
And it is in this essay that Weeks encounters views which he believes are
strikingly at odds with those of Marx. Let's examine Engels's essay and
Weeks's criticism of it. And as we proceed it will become clear who diverges
from whom.

ENGELS AND SOMBART

   Engels begins "Law of Value and Rate of Profit" by responding to some of the
early commentary on Marx's third volume from eminent European intellectuals,
among them, Werner Sombart. Sombart had written a review of Marx's ideas for
a German periodical. Engels does not provide any direct quotations from
Sombart's review, but paraphrases him as saying,

   "Value is not manifest in the exchange relation of capitalistically produced
commodities; it does not live in the consciousness of the agents of capitalist
production; it is not an empirical, but a mental, a logical fact..." (Engels, 1962,
p. 871)

   The definition of value provided by Sombart here, and rendered in Engels's
words, appears rather unclear, but may not be altogether off the track. Weeks
approaches his attack on Engels in the following way:

   "In his defense of Marx, Engels begins by considering the interpretation of
Marx's theory of value by Sombart, a nineteenth-century German economist
who argued that value is not an empirical, but a mental construct."
(Weeks, p. 13)

   Here Weeks has substituted the word "construct" for "fact." (And he indicates in
a footnote that his source for Sombart's definition is Engels's paraphrase, not the
Sombart original.) By making this substitution, he then feels justified in indicating
that Sombart held an idealist view of value, and that Engels, in agreeing with
Sombart, did also. But a "construct" is not a "fact." A construct is a hypothesis or
theory; it may or may not correspond to facts. Sombart had said that value was a
"fact," albeit a "mental" one.
   Weeks continues, interpreting Sombart's meaning,

   "That is, in a capitalist economy, value is not something of the real world, does
not exist independently of one's conceiving it, but is a concept that one creates
in order to explain reality. Engels agreed with this view, but objected that it was
incomplete..." (Weeks, p. 14)

   In saying, "Engels agreed with this view," Weeks is accusing Engels of
adapting to an idealist philosophical standpoint, even if only in this one passage.
In making this assessment, it would have been better had Weeks expanded upon
it a bit to clarify whether he views Engels as an idealist in general.
   Now it should be admitted at this point that, lacking access to Sombart's review,
it is difficult to make any definitive interpretation of the definition of value contained
in it. But in any case, Sombart's supposed idealism is not the issue; Engels's is.
But for the sake of argument, let's consider for a moment what justification there
might be for saying that value is "a mental, a logical fact." 
   Marx characterized value as follows:

   "Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values;
in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity of
commodities as physical objects. ...let us remember that commodities possess
an objective character as values only in so far as they are all expressions of
an identical social substance, human labor, that their objective character as
values is therefore purely social." (Marx, 1977, p. 138)

   Later, Marx uses other descriptive terms to characterize the non-materiality
of value:

   "The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally,
quite distinct from their palpable and real bodily form; it is therefore a purely
ideal or notional form." (Marx, 1977, p. 189)

   If value is a "social substance" its objective reality can only be determined
and measured on a social scale, but since society is made up of individuals,
the registration of this social reality takes effect through the consciousness
of individuals. The social relations can only be real to the extent that the same
ideas take shape in the minds of all the participating individuals. But this does
not mean that individual mental processes are the determinants of social
relations. The immediate determinants are social, but individual minds absorb
and reflect these social processes and enable the individuals to play the roles
assigned to them in economic life. It is in this sense that, "individuals are now
ruled by abstractions, whereas earlier they depended on one another." (Marx,
1973, p. 164)
   Thus Marx can say that value takes "a purely ideal or notional form" in the
minds of individuals. And of course, the recognition of value as social or
"mental" does not in the least detract from its objective existence. It is "of the
real world," because, under certain circumstances, it forms the social framework
within which definite acts of production and distribution are carried out, and thus
it can be judged by its results, which are objective, verifiable facts.
   But in addition to value being "mental," Sombart also had it as "logical."
I'm not sure whether he was referring to the objective logic of the development
of value, or to the logic in the mind of the investigator. But we needn't bother
with this since neither Engels nor Weeks commented on what Sombart may
have meant by this word. And the philosophical views of Sombart are not the
issue. In any case, Sombart is not being defended here as a consistent
materialist.
   Sombart undoubtedly did not progress very far in his attempt to understand
Marx's theory of value. Yet he made an effort, and Engels wanted to encourage
him. Thus after paraphrasing Sombart's interpretation of Marx a bit further,
Engels concludes,

   "...it cannot be said that this conception of the significance of the law of value
for the capitalist form of production is wrong." (thus Weeks says, "Engels
agreed") "But it does seem to me to be too broad, and susceptible of a narrower,
more precise formulation..." (Engels, 1962, p. 871)

   We have seen in what sense Sombart's formula ("a mental, a logical fact") can
be regarded as consonant with Marx. Weeks substitutes the word "construct" for
"fact" in this formula, thus making Sombart into an idealist, and making Engels,
in agreeing with Sombart, an idealist by default. But even if it were true that
Engels overlooked an idealist expression in Sombart's words, and merely
attempted to focus on what was positive or promising, that in itself would not
make an idealist of Engels. One would have to examine Engels's own words
as evidence.
   And as far as the present essay is concerned, we do not have to wait long for
Engels to make his standpoint clear. After his comments on Sombart, Engels
deals with an article on the same topic by Conrad Schmidt. Schmidt had written
in a letter to Engels that he believed "the law of value within the capitalist form
of production to be a pure, although theoretically necessary, fiction." (Engels,
1962, p. 872) Engels rejects this view, saying,

   "Sombart, as well as Schmidt ...does not make sufficient allowance for the
fact that we are dealing here not only with a purely logical process, but with a
historical process and its explanatory reflection in thought, the logical
pursuance of its inner connections." (Engels, 1962, p. 872)

   This is a clear materialist formulation, but Weeks overlooks it. He has
advanced the notion that Engels might be an idealist, but doesn't wish to argue
the point.

ENGELS'S APPROACH TO THE LAW OF VALUE

   A good deal of supposed evidence for Weeks's claim that the fundamental
views of Marx and Engels "differed diametrically" is found in a four-page section
of the essay by Engels currently under consideration. In this section Engels
analyzes particular aspects of the history of economic relations, showing how
the law of value took shape and evolved over the centuries. For the purposes
of this paper, it will be useful to summarize Engels's sketch and reproduce here
the key passages which Weeks finds so un-Marxist.
   In introducing his theme that, in precapitalist exchange, commodities tended
to exchange according to the amount of labor required for their production,
Engels quotes Marx as saying,

   "The exchange of commodities at their values, or approximately at their
values, thus requires a much lower stage than their exchange at their prices
of production, which requires a definite level of capitalist development. ...
    "Apart from the domination of prices and price movement by the law of
value, it is quite appropriate to regard the values of commodities as not only
theoretically but also historically prius to the prices of production. This applies
to conditions in which the laborer owns his means of production, and this is
the condition of the landowning farmer living off his own labor and the
craftsman, in the ancient as well as in the modern world. This agrees also
with the view we expressed previously, that the evolution of products into
commodities arises through exchange between different communities, not
between members of the same community. It holds not only for this primitive
condition, but also for subsequent conditions, based on slavery and serfdom,
and for the guild organization of handicrafts, so long as the means of production
involved in each branch of production can be transferred from one sphere to
another only with difficulty and therefore the various spheres of production are
related to one another, within certain limits, as foreign countries or communist
communities." (Engels, 1962, p. 873; from Marx, 1962, p. 174)

   Engels then gives an example of an early form of exchange through which
the law of value expressed its development. He points to the barter that was
carried on by medieval peasants, a form of exchange in which "the labor time
required for the manufacture of the articles obtained ...in barter" was "fairly
accurately" known by the the exchanging peasants, since the labor processes
involved were easily observable locally. (Engels, 1962, p. 874) In this barter,
Engels maintains that,

   "Not only was the labor time spent on these products the only suitable
measure for the quantitative determination of the values to be exchanged;
no other was at all possible. Or is it to be believed that the peasant and the
artisan were so stupid as to give up the product of ten hours' labor of one
person for that of a single hour's labor of another?" (p. 874)

   At this point, Engels is only concerned with barter. Later he contemplates
the introduction of money into the bartering communities:

   "From the moment money penetrates into this mode of economy, the
tendency towards adaptation to the law of value (in the Marxian formulation,
nota bene!) grows more pronounced on the one hand, while on the other it
is already interrupted by the interference of usurers' capital and fleecing by
taxation; the periods for which prices, on the average, approach to within a
negligible margin of values begin to grow longer." (p. 874)

   "But how, in this barter on the basis of quantity of labor, was the latter
to be calculated, even if only indirectly and relatively, for products requiring
longer labor, interrupted at irregular intervals, and uncertain in yield--e.g grain
or cattle? And among people, to boot, who could not calculate? Obviously,
only by means of a lengthy process of zigzag approximation, often feeling
the way here and there in the dark, and, as is usual, learning only through
mistakes. But each one's necessity for covering his outlay on the whole
always helped to return to the right direction; and the small number of kinds
of articles in circulation, as well as the often century-long stable nature of
their production, facilitated the attaining of this goal." (p. 875)

   "From the practical point of view, money became the decisive measure
of value, all the more as the commodities entering trade became more varied,
the more they came from distant countries, and the less, therefore, the labor
time necessary for their production could be checked. ...partly their own
consciousness of the value-measuring property of labor had been fairly well
dimmed by the habit of reckoning with money; in the popular mind money
began to represent absolute value." (p. 876)

   "In a word: the Marxian law of value holds generally, as far as economic
laws are valid at all, for the whold period of simple commodity production,
that is, up to the time when the latter suffers a modification through the
appearance of the capitalist form of production. Up to that time prices
gravitate towards the values fixed according to the Marxian law and
oscillate around these values, so that the more fully simple commodity
production develops, the more the average prices over long periods
uninterrupted by external violent disturbances coincide with values within
a negligible margin. Thus the Marxian law of value has general economic
validity for a period lasting from the beginning of exchange, which transforms
products into commodities, down to the 15th century of the present era. But
the exchange of commodities dates from a time before all written history,
which in Egypt goes back to at least 2,500 B.C., and perhaps 5,000 B.C.,
and in Babylon to 4,000 B.C., perhaps 6,000 B.C.; thus the law of value has
prevailed during a period of from five to seven thousand years." (p. 876)

WEEKS VS. ENGELS ON BARTER AND MONEY

   On the topic of medieval peasant barter, Weeks objects to Engels's
assertion that the peasants were able rely on their knowledge of local
conditions of production to enter into barter relations involving the exchange
of products representing equal amounts of labor. Initially, what concerns
Weeks is not so much the question of whether or not the peasants
consciously used labor time as a standard of measuring values, but that it
doesn't seem to him likely that they would abandon the labor-time standard
once money is brought into the local economy. Weeks argues:

   "...it is not obvious why money should play an obfuscating role. If peasants
and artisans have direct knowledge of the concrete labor time expended in
production of commodities, and exchange is based on this knowledge, the
introduction of money merely requires the seller to keep in mind how much of
his labor time is exchanged against a given quantity of the money commodity
when he becomes a buyer of a commodity whose embodied labor time he
knows. In other words, if labor times are known, they are known whether
exchanges involve money or not." (Weeks, p. 18)

   But Engels had said that the tendency toward adaptation to the Marxian law
of value grew more pronounced, with the penetration of money into the local
economy. He did not say that money was introduced all at once, as Weeks
seems to think he said. Engels argued that their consciousness of labor time
became "fairly well dimmed" by the use of money--implying that the transition
to money exchange extended over many generations. Of course, the time period
of the transition from barter to money exchange varied at different historical
periods where this process occurred in different parts of the world. But it could
not have taken place in an overnight fashion as Weeks assumes.
   In terms of the historical transition to commodity exchange with money as
medium of exchange, Marx, like Engels, was of the view that money played an
"obfuscating role." As he explained,

   "It is not at all apparent on its face that its character of being money is merely
the result of social processes; it is money. This is all the more difficult since its
immediate use value for the living individual stands in no relation whatever to this
role, and because, in general, the memory of use value, as distinct from
exchange value, has become entirely extinguished in this incarnation of pure
exchange value." (Marx, 1973, p. 239)

   Further, the idea that barter was based on labor time would not have seemed
strange to Marx. He maintained,

   "Since labor is motion, time is its natural measure. Barter in its crudest form
presupposes labor as substance and labor time as measure of commodities; this
then emerges as soon as it becomes regularized, continuous, as soon as it
contains within itself the reciprocal requirements for its renewal." Regarding
barter, Marx adds that "if it should happen to continue, to become a continuing
act which contains within itself the means of its renewal, then little by little,
from the outside and likewise by chance, regulation of reciprocal exchange
arises by means of regulation of reciprocal production, and the costs of
production, which ultimately resolve into labor time, would thus become the
measure of exchange." (Marx, 1973, p. 205)

   The meaning of "regulation of reciprocal exchange by means of regulation of
reciprocal production," is captured in Engels's phrase, "each one's necessity for
covering his outlay on the whole always helped to return to the right direction."
(Engels, 1962, p. 875) In other words, long term bartering of the same goods
must be able to correct its own tendencies toward unequal exchange. Otherwise,
one side is always losing, the other side always gaining, and there would be a
tendency for the perpetually disadvantaged party to opt out of the bartering. The
long term stability of barter relations depends on the capacity of the parties to
correct inequalities over the long run, generally by trial and error. (This assumes
that the bartering parties stand in a voluntary relation of equality to one another,
so that one cannot impose its will upon the other.)

"PERCEPTION" OF LABOR TIME

   Thus far we have only commented on Weeks's opinion that the introduction of
money into an economy based on bartering would not cause the exchanging
groups or individuals to lose track of labor times, if they had been accustomed
to use these as standards of exchange. But his criticism goes further. He
believes that Engels has advanced a theory of value based on the direct
perception of labor time, and the exchange of products based on this observed
time. Engels, failing to learn from Marx, simply repeated the errors of Proudhon,
Boisguillebert and others. Weeks states:

   "Marx could have been commenting on 'Law of Value and Rate of Profit' when
he wrote, 'Boisguillebert's work proves that it is possible to regard labor time as
the measure of value of commodities, while confusing the labor which is
materialized in the exchange value of commodities and measured in time units
with the direct physical activity of individuals.'" (Weeks, p. 28)

   Later, Weeks claims:

   "This is Engels's argument: each buyer measures labor time in production by
observation, then exchange reflects this assessment." (Weeks, p. 56)

   But the reference to Boisguillebert (and a later, similar, reference to Proudhon)
is a distraction. In pointing to "the mistake of Engels's stress on perception of
labor time...," (Weeks, p. 28) Weeks should have more closely examined
Engels's words.
   When Engels discussed the "perception" of labor time, he did not refer to
observation of the labor time taken up by the producer of the particular article
in question, only that the peasant "knew fairly accurately the labor time required
for the manufacture of the articles obtained by him in barter." It is important to
keep in mind that when labor time becomes the basis for measuring the
quantities of goods to be exchanged, the labor-time measurement is based on
social averages, established by generations of experience, and not on direct
observation of the laboring activities of one person by another for each particular
product. And this applies whether the exchange system involves conscious
recognition of labor time or not. 
   As we have seen, when Engels discusses medieval peasant barter, he refers
to the peasants' knowledge about labor time as a necessary element in
determining exchange ratios of some (though not all) locally-produced goods.
He then adds, "from the moment money penetrates into this mode of economy,
the tendency towards adaptation to law of value (in the Marxian formulation, nota
bene!) grows more pronounced...". (Engels, p. 874) Note here that there is a
distinction in Engels's mind between labor-time barter, on the one hand, and the
law of value, on the other.
   There was an economy of labor time in the middle ages. Feudal services were
often determined by the length of time required to perform the task, i.e., the
obligation was defined by so many days or hours of such-and such a kind of
work.
   Marx points to why, in his view, there was a tendency toward conscious
recognition of labor time as a basis for the regulation of economic activity in
precapitalist societies. Speaking of the "patriarchal rural industry of a peasant
family...," Marx comments,

   "The distribution of labor within the family and the labor time expended by the
individual members of the family, are regulated by differences of sex and age
as well as by seasonal variations in the natural conditions of labor. The fact
that the expenditure of the individual labor powers is measured by duration
appears here, by its very nature, as a social characteristic of labor itself,
because the individual labor powers, by their very nature, act only as
instruments of the joint labor power of the family." (Marx, 1977, p. 171)
 
   Regarding labor-time accounting in feudal societies, Ernest Mandel notes,

   "In Japan there were in the eighth century A.D. two kinds of non-agricultural
obligatory labor, called cho and yo. The statute of Taiho fixed the amount of
these two obligations both in length of labor time (ten days), in quantity of
cloth (26 shaku, i.e. approximately 10 yards) and in quantity of corn (1 To, i.e.
approximately two bushels). Thus, among the producers in a society of this
kind, the length of time needed to produce a given commodity was quite clear."
(Mandel, p. 62)

   Undoubtedly, barter by labor-time accounting occurred historically, as Engels
claimed, and Weeks does not dispute this. Also, it must be kept in mind that
Engels also called attention to another form of barter in cases where the labor
time was either not known or difficult to calculate, that of "zigzag approximation."
In any case, these forms of barter were at some point superseded by money
exchange, either through the necessary evolution of bartering itself, or by the
penetration of developed exchange from the outside. And, Engels noted, it is
the introduction of money that promotes the adaptation of the natural exchange
systems to the law of value.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF PRECAPITALIST EXCHANGE

   As we have seen, in his brief sketch Engels focuses on the development
of exchange in precapitalist societies, leaving aside any analysis of the
dominant modes of production that predated capitalism.This apparent lapse
on Engels's part--to omit from this section any description of feudalism,
bondage, slavery, etc.--gives Weeks the opportunity to accuse Engels of
painting a picture of a precapitalist society that was exclusively made up
of petty commodity producers for five to seven thousand years.
   Here is how Weeks develops this theme:

   "As the argument develops, we begin to get a picture of the society being
considered, which presumably endured for five to seven thousand years: a
society of independent, exchanging producers ("working peasants ...with
...their own farmsteads"), specializing within a social division of labor, and
with property rights to the entire product of their labor. It is unclear how such
a society allows for exploitation and classes, since the basis of class society
is the appropriation of the surplus product of the direct producers, but this
anticipates the critique of Engels's argument." (Weeks, p. 16)

   For an exposition of Engels's views of the development of class society,
readers are urged to take a look at his book, _The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State_, which is only one text in which his views
on the subject are set out. In the essay under consideration, however, his
task was not to recapitulate what he had written elsewhere, but to say what
was relevant to his theme. That he omits reference to the relationship
between commodity production and exchange, on the one hand, and the
major modes of production which existed before the rise of capitalism, on
the other, in no way detracts from the validity of his analysis. 
   Throughout the history of civilization, a variety of precapitalist modes of
production rose and fell, some of them polarizing society into exploited and
exploiting classes. At the same time, alongside these class-divided forms,
and partly intertwined with them, there developed a sphere of production
for exchange, commodity production, production for others mediated by
exchange. As Marx explained,

   "No matter what the basis on which products are produced, which are thrown
into circulation as commodities--whether the basis of the primitive community,
of slave production, of small peasant and petty bourgeois, or the capitalist
basis, the character of products as commodities is not altered, and as
commodities they must pass through the process of exchange and its
attendant changes of form." (Marx, 1962, p. 320)

EQUALITY IN EXCHANGE

   Weeks continues summarizing Engels,

   "Explicit here is a view that those in the exchange process meet each
other in the marketplace as equals--'the peasants, as well as the people
from whom they bought, were themselves workers; the exchanged products
were each one's own products'. We must keep in mind that Engels is not
describing a class society in which the surplus products are appropriated
and exchanged by the ruling class, but a society of equals, exchanging
the products of their labor." (Weeks, p. 16)

   Here Weeks casts doubt on the idea that independent small commodity
owners--peasants and artisans--met as equals in the precapitalist market,
exchanging the products of their own, or their family's, labor. It is true that
the ruling classes of the middle ages, in certain instances, exchanged the
products appropriated from the peasants or serfs, as, e.g. in the cases of
the medieval wool trade, wineries, etc. But at the same time the historical
record shows peasants and artisans meeting as equals in village markets,
fairs, etc., to exchange the products of their labor.
   As commodity exchange develops, however, the principle of equality
between commodity owners--however these products may have been
obtained--asserts itself the more this exchange is institutionalized. The
equal status of those engaging in exchange is a necessary basis for the
evolution of the law of value. Marx maintained,

   "Indeed, in so far as the commodity or labor is conceived of only as
exchange value, and the ralation in which the various commodities are
brought into connection with one another is conceived as the exchange
of these exchange values with one another, as their equation, then the
individuals, the subjects between whom this process goes on, are simply
and only conceived of as exchangers. ...Each of the subjects is an
exchanger; i.e. each has the same social relation towards the other that
the other has towards him. As subjects of exchange, their relation is
therefore that of equality. ...Furthermore, the commodities which they
exchange are, as exchange values, equivalent, or at least count as such."
(Marx, 1973, p. 241)

   The principle of equality of exchangers was recognized in the legal system
of ancient Rome. Marx pointed out, referring to this system,

   "...in so far as it was developed in a limited sphere, it was able to
develop the attributes of the juridical person, precisely of the individual
engaged in exchange, and thus anticipate (in its basic aspects) the legal
relations of industrial society, and in particular the right which rising
bourgeois society had necessarily to assert against medieval society."
(Marx, 1973, p. 246)

HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF EXCHANGE

   Weeks restricts his discussion of value to its form of expression in
capitalist society. His statements indicate a certain skeptical attitude toward
forms of value that may have existed prior to the rise of capitalism in Europe,
although he does not make a definite statement on this point. He leaves out
of consideration the analysis of precapitalist trade and commodity production
that was developed by Marx and Engels. As Weeks puts it,

   "We begin with three chapters on value theory and its implications,
in which it is demonstrated that the general production of useful objects
('use values,' Marx called them) for exchange ('exchange values')
necessarily implies a capitalist society, which is a society based on
exploitation (the appropriation by the capitalist class of unpaid labor
performed by the working class)." (Weeks, p. 5)

   It is true that only under the capitalist mode of production does the vast
majority of the products of labor take the form of commodities. The commodity
form occupies a relatively modest niche in precapitalist societies. But
where does capitalism come from? It doesn't appear out of nowhere.
Capitalism arrives on the scene, historically, as a result of a concurrence
of economic and social developments, the most important of which, from
the economic point of view, is that the production and exchange of the
products of labor as commodities has reached a high level, as a result of
a lengthy process of development. And the history of commodity production,
as Engels points out, goes back five to seven thousand years.
   Marx pointed out that commodity production began first, in ancient times,
in the relations between communities. Beginning with gift exchange,
proceeding to barter, and evolving into buying and selling.

   "However, as soon as products have become commodities in the
external relations of a community, they also, by reaction, become
commodities in the internal life of the community. ...The constant
repetition of exchange makes it a normal social process. In the course
of time, therefore, at least some part of the products must be produced
intentionally for the purpose of exchange. From that moment the distinction
between the usefulness of things for direct consumption and their
usefulness in exchange becomes firmly established.Their use value
becomes distinguished from their exchange value. On the other hand,
the quantitative proportion in which things are exchangeable becomes
dependent on their production itself. Custom fixes their values at definite
magnitudes." (Marx, 1977, p. 182)
 
   But though the products of labor may be produced in the form of
commodities for thousands of years, this form of production remains
subordinate to the non-commodity-producing social regimes in which
it subsists as a subordinate, supplementary element. This persists until
the sixteenth century in Britain, and later, on the continent of Europe, when
the capitalist mode of production begins to take shape. But Weeks cannot
accept that small-scale commodity production could endure such a long
time without generating capitalism. He says,

   "To argue that the law of value ruled for five to seven thousand years,
as Engels does (and Meek for a more modest period), is to argue that
exchange can occur among independent, self-employed producers without
generating capitalism. That is, it posits a world of competing producers,
exchanging their labor, without any contradictions that would give rise
to the concentration and centralization of production. In short, implicit in
the argument is that commodity exchange itself can be equal and socially
egalitarian, and is characterized by exploitation only when it comes under
the domination of capital. This view, commodity production and the
competition among producers that it implies, treats exchange as
intrinsically benign, capable of regulating and reproducing a society
of equals." (Weeks, p. 45)

   But commodity production did exist for thousands of years without giving
rise to bourgeois production relations. Capitalism could not be born until
the historical preconditions for its existence had ripened. Marx explained
it this way:

   "One thing, however, is clear: nature does not produce on the one hand
owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing
nothing but their labor power. This relation has no basis in natural history,
nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history.
It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many
economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations
of social production. ...
   "The production and circulation of commodities can still take place
even though the great mass of the objects produced are intended for the
immediate requirements of their producers, and are not turned into
commodities, so that the process of social production is as yet by no
means dominated in its length and breadth by exchange value. The
appearance of products as commodities requires a level of development
of the division of labor within society such that the separation of use value
from exchange value, a separation which first begins with barter, has
already been completed. But such a degree of development is common
to many economic formations of society, with the most diverse historical
characteristics. ...
   "It is otherwise with capital. The historical conditions of its existence
are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities.
It arises only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence
finds the free worker available, on the market, as the seller of his own labor
power. And this one historical precondition comprises a world's history."
(Marx, 1977, p. 273, 274)

PROPERTY RIGHTS OF THE COMMODITY PRODUCER

   Marx held that one historical precondition for the appearance of the capitalist
mode of production was the separation of the producers from their means
of production, so that free labor power could meet in the marketplace with
capital. The existence of merchants' capital in itself is not a sufficient 
condition for this transition. Marx explained:

   "But the mere presence of monetary wealth, and even the achievement
of a kind of supremacy on its part, is in no way sufficient for this dissolution
into capital to happen. Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc., would have
ended their history with free labor and capital, or rather begun a new history.
...Capital does not create the objective conditions of labor. Rather, its
original formation is that, through the historic process of the dissolution
of the old mode of production, value existing as money wealth is enabled,
on the one side, to buy the objective conditions of labor; on the other side,
to exchange money for the living labor of the workers who have been set
free." (Marx, 1973, p. 506)

   One decisive factor that enabled this process of separation to be carried
to a high degree was the rise in the productivity of labor in the middle ages.
It was this rise in productivity, particularly of agricultural labor, that allowed
the freeing up of excess labor power in the countryside. As Marx claimed,

   "It will likewise be found on closer observation that all the dissolved relations
were possible only with a definite degree of development of the material (and
hence also the intellectual) forces of production." (Marx, 1973, p. 502)

   By the sixteenth century, in England at least, history had finished its labor
of building the stage upon which moneyed wealth could at last begin to perform
its destined role of industrial capital. It is at this point, however, that equality in
exchange--equality between the exchangers of commodities--begins to be
transformed into apparent equality, in the case of the exchange between
capital and labor. Initially, capital and labor appear as equals in the labor
market, each standing in relation to the other as "property owners" according
to the tradition established by simple commodity production and exchange.
The means of subsistence (property of one party), are exchanged for labor
power (property of the other). But capital's monopoly over the conditions of
production promotes the development of a fundamental inequality between
the two classes, even while the appearance of equality persists.
   This historical transition is problematical for Weeks, however, since he has
not examined the development of precapitalist commodity production, and
does not see how the law of value evolved in and through this historical
process. This makes it difficult for him to appreciate the historical transition
in the exchange relations that occurred with the rise of capital. He argues:

   "Engels begins with commodity exchange on the basis of equivalent
exchange (commodities exchanging at their values) in a context in which
each producer has the right to his labor. Marx begins similarly, with no
explicit statement as to the social relations of production involved. But
from this starting point, the two distinct approaches emerge and the
theoretical arguments go separate ways. In the former case, the presumption
that individuals hold right to their labor is never questioned, but maintained
throughout, and social relations of production are not considered at all, until
it becomes necessary to deal with the historical reality of capitalism. In the
latter case, the analysis reveals, step by step, that the assumption of
individual private property is inconsistent with the actual operation of the
law of value and must be discarded. For Marx, the right to one's labor was
merely an assumption; for Engels it characterized an actual society."
(Weeks, p. 41)

   Weeks argues here that Marx discarded the assumption of individual private
property because he considered it "inconsistent with the actual operation of
the law of value." And that this "individual private property" in the product
of one's own labor, or, "the right to one's labor," was "merely an assumption,"
and did not characterize an "actual society." Here Weeks seems to be saying
that Marx first made an assumption, then later discarded it, thinking it was
wrong. He seems to believe that while Marx discarded this erroneous
assumption, Engels did not.
   Weeks buttresses his argument by using this quote from Marx:

   "At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own
labor. At least, some such assumption was necessary since only commodity-
owners with equal rights confronted each other." (Weeks, p. 42, taken from the
1970 Progress edition of _Capital_, Vol. I, p. 547. See Marx, 1977, p. 730)

   But the assumption of the "right to one's labor" was based on an actual
society, for Marx as well as for Engels. As Marx pointed out,

   "The private property of the worker in his means of production is the
foundation of small-scale industry, and small-scale industry is a necessary
condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality
of the worker himself. Of course, this mode of production also exists under
slavery, serfdom and other situations of dependence. But it flourishes,
unleashes the whole of its energy, attains its adequate classical form,
only where the worker is the free proprietor of the conditions of his labor,
and sets them in motion himself: where the peasant owns the land he
cultivates, or the artisan owns the tool with which he is an accomplished
performer." (Marx, 1977, p. 927)

   Marx goes on to explain that as capitalism develops the unity of the small
producer with the means of production is annihilated, the scattered properties
of the small producers are socially concentrated, that forcible means are
used in this process, and then concludes,

   "Private property which is personally earned, i.e. which is based, as it
were, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent working individual
with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalist private property,
which rests on the exploitation of alien, but formally free labor." (Marx, 1977,
p. 928)


THE HISTORICAL INVERSION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

   Yet when Weeks argues that for Marx, "the right to one's labor was merely
an assumption," he is not completely wrong. Marx did argue, "at first the
rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own labor. At
least some such assumption was necessary...". How is it possible then,
for Marx to say, in one place, that the property rights were an "assumption,"
and in another that "private property of the worker in his means of
production is the foundation of small-scale industry"? Were there two
Marxes? Was Marx self-contradictory?
   The answer to this problem lies in the recognition that the commodity form
contains within itself, potentially, all the contradictions of capitalist production
and exchange. These contradictions must initially germinate and exist for a
period of time as potentials, or in a latent or embryonic form; they cannot and
do not emerge as actual phenomena as soon as commodity production begins.
Further, the potential latent within the commodity form to express itself as the
relation of labor to capital can only emerge as a concrete social reality by
means of a negation of its initial form. But this process is, at the same time,
a further logical development of its potential.
   Earlier Marx had written,

   "As we have seen, in simple circulation as such (exchange value in its
movement), the action of the individuals on one another is, in its content,
only a reciprocal, self-interested satisfaction of their needs; in its form, it is
exchange among equals (equivalents). Property, too, is still posited here only
as the appropriation of the product of labor by labor, and of the product of alien
labor by one's own labor, in so far as the product of one's own labor is bought
by alien labor. Property in alien labor is mediated by the equivalent of one's
own labor. This form of property--quite like freedom and equality--is posited in
this simple relation. In the further development of exchange value this will be
transformed, and it will ultimately be shown that private property in the product
of one's own labor is identical with the separation of labor and property, so that
labor will create alien property and property will command alien labor." (Marx,
1973, p. 238)

   Initially, exchange served to satisfy the mutual needs of the producers who
exchanged the products of their labor. But it is the private property in the
product of one's own labor that is the basis for the claim on the property of
the other. Initially, the exchange process serves the needs of the producers,
but once a claim is established to the labor of another, and this claim is
exercised by alienating private property, then the possibility exists that the
products of labor offered in exchange may not be the products of one's own
labor, but the products of the labor of others. Property becomes separated
from labor. A merchant class arises, engaged exclusively in buying and
selling the products of the labor of others. In a further step, merchant wealth
buys the means of production from the direct producer, gaining command
over the product of that producer's labor.
   Returning now to the previous passage from _Capital_, Marx continues,

   "Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist,
to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its product, and the impossibility,
on the part of the worker, of appropriating his own product. The separation of
property from labor thus becomes the necessary consequence of a law that
apparently originated in their identity.
   "Therefore, however much the capitalist mode of appropriation may seem
to fly in the face of the original laws of commodity production, it nevertheless
arises, not from a violation of these laws but, on the contrary, from their
application." (Marx, 1977, p. 730)

   Thus when Marx claims that, "at first the rights of property seemed to us
to be based on a man's own labor. At least, some such assumption was
necessary...", he is referring to the way in which the thinking mind traces
the historical inversion of property rights in relation to the product of labor.
The assumption is based on a condition that no longer holds sway in the
exchange between labor and capital, but apparently still does. The reality
of equal exchange of the products of labor has been replaced by exchange
which is seemingly equal, but conceals appropriation of unpaid labor. The
assumption of property rights grounded in one's own labor is a necessary
assumption because it reflects the actual relation of the earlier stage, and
serves as the point of departure for the present stage. But if this assumption
is not recognized as having become outmoded, then it persists as an illusion
--the illusion of equal exchange between capital and labor.
   Almost from its inception, commodity production and exchange contains
within it the potential to proceed from equal exchange between producers to
unequal exchange between capital and labor. But this potential is hidden at
first, and only expresses itself as capital becomes a social power, and this
only occurs when the laborers are separated from their means of production.
And this separation is promoted not by changes in the laws of private property,
but by the evolution of commodity production itself. As Marx explained,

   "The same rights remain in force both at the outset, when the product
belongs to its producer, who, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, can enrich
himself only by his own labor, and in the period of capitalism, when social wealth
becomes to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position
to appropriate the unpaid labor of others over and over again.
   "The result becomes inevitable from the moment there is a free sale, by the
worker himself, of labor power as a commodity. But it is also only from then
onwards that commodity production is generalized and becomes the typical
form of production; it is only from then onwards that every product is produced
for sale from the outset and all wealth produced goes through the sphere of
circulation. Only where wage labor is its basis does commodity production
impose itself upon society as a whole; but it is also true that only there does
it unfold all its hidden potentialities." (Marx, 1977, p. 733)

   Weeks nevertheless insists,

   "Marx's entire treatment of exchange in precapitalist society is based on
the recognition that these societies were characterized by servile relations
of production in which the direct producers, while united with the means of
production, had no right of property." (Weeks, p. 53)
   
   But even if we recognize that the property rights of the direct producers
were sharply curtailed, or even eliminated altogether in the servile relations
of serfdom, we must also note that peasants in medieval Europe were affected
in different ways, and to different degrees, by serfdom. Some of them remained
outside the bounds of servility for certain periods of history. Some serfs
managed to win their emancipation, either individually or collectively. And
alongside the relations of bondage, there persisted a sphere of commodity
production. Further, serfdom disappeared, at least in England, well before
the rise of capitalism. As Marx pointed out,

   "In England, serfdom had disappeared in practice by the last part of the
fourteenth century. The immense majority of the population consisted then,
and to a still larger extent in the fifteenth century, of free peasant proprietors,
however much the feudal trappings might disguise their absolute ownership."
(Marx, 1977, p. 877)

   Marx referred to the period roughly from 1350 to 1450 as, "a golden age for
labor in the process of becoming emancipated." (Marx, 1973, p. 510) It is
undoubtedly this period Marx was thinking of when he wrote, "...(small-scale
production) attains its adequate classical form only where the worker is the
free proprietor of the conditions of his labor..." (quoted above, Marx, 1977,
p. 927)

MERCHANTS' CAPITAL AND THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM

   The second part of Engels's essay now under consideration deals with
merchant capital in medieval society, and in particular the prevailing methods
of determining the rate of merchants' profit. He discusses the penetration
of merchant's capital into the sphere of industrial production, and how that
process affected the determination of the rate of profit. And it now becomes
clear why Engels appended this essay to the third volume of _Capital_. It
provides background material for the discussion on the transformation of
values into prices of production (Chapters 9 and 10), as well as for the
discussion of the penetration of merchants' capital into production (Chap. 20).
   Engels first comments here on the organizational methods of medieval
merchant trading companies. He points out the pervasive influence of the
communal tradition, descending from the Germanic mark association
(originally a barbarian kinship-based social relation), on many medieval
institutions. The hallmark of this form of association was the equal property
rights of each participating member. Engels writes,

   "All later productive associations, particularly the guilds in the cities, whose
statutes were nothing but the application of the mark constitution to a craft
privilege instead of to a restricted area of land, followed the pattern of the
mark association. ... The same holds true of the mine guilds. ... And the same
holds good in no less degree of the merchant companies, which initiated
overseas trade. ... The Venetians and the Genoese ...formed complete trade
associations; they were closed to competitors and customers; they sold at
fixed prices among themselves; their commodities had a definite quality
guaranteed by public inspection and often by a stamp; they deliberated in
common on the prices to be paid by the natives for their products, etc. ...
   "Here for the first time we meet with a profit and a rate of profit. The
merchant's efforts are deliberately and consciously aimed at making this rate
of profit equal for all participants. ... The equal rate of profit, which in its fully
developed form is one of the final results of capitalist production, thus
manifests itself here in its simplest form as one of the points from which
capital started historically, as a direct offshoot in fact of the mark association,
which in turn is a direct offshoot of primitive communism." (Engels, 1962,
p. 877)

   After further commentary on merchant's capital, Engels brings up the topic
of the establishment of a connection between merchants' capital and the
artisan producer, a connection that leads to the subordination of the producer
to capital. Given the existence of an approximately equal rate of profit in
trade, Engels asks, "now what could induce the merchant to take on the the
extra business of a contractor?" (Engels, p. 881) In other words, to establish
a contractual relationship with an artisan (in this case, a weaver), to purchase
the weaver's cloths at a definite price for a definite period, and supply the
weaver with the yarn, also at a fixed price. Engels continues,

   "Only one thing: the prospect of greater profit at the same selling price
as the others. And he had this prospect. By taking the little master into his
service, he broke through the traditional bonds of production within which
the producer sold his finished product and nothing else. The merchant
capitalist bought the labor power, which still owned its production instruments
but no longer the raw material. By thus guaranteeing the weaver regular
employment, he could depress the weaver's wage to such a degree that
a part of the labor time furnished remained unpaid for. The contractor thus
became an appropriator of surplus value over and above his commercial
profit." (Engels, p. 881)

   This scenario is unacceptable to Weeks. He raises three objections. First,

   "Engels, then, hypothesizes that this basic change (the transition to
capitalist production) is achieved essentially without force;" secondly, that
"the explanation of the transition is situated at the individual level;" (Weeks,
p.21) and third, that Engels characterizes this historic transition as "a sort of
social contract in which one group chooses wage slavery and the other group
greater profit." (p. 22)

   Let's take the second objection first, that the explanation is "situated at the
individual level." The transition to capitalism can be explained in different ways,
depending on which aspect of the process is under consideration. It is useful to
describe individual "cases" that typify the kinds of relations that are being built
up on a broader scale, since these interactions among individuals of different
classes are the building blocks of the actual process by which capitalism
comes into being. As Marx indicated,

   "If, therefore, commodity production, or one of its associated processes, is
to be judged according to its own economic laws, we must consider each act
of exchange by itself, apart from any connection with the act of exchange
preceding it and that following it. And since sales and purchases are negotiated
solely between particular individuals, it is not admissible to look here for relations
between whole social classes." (Marx, 1977, p. 733)

   As to Weeks's third complaint, that Engels envisioned the transition to capitalism
as a "social contract;" as Engels made clear, the relation between the merchant
and the weaver is not a "social contract," but an economic, or business relation
between individuals. It begins as a relationship of equal exchange, but contains
within itself the potential to become an exploitative relation. The appearance of
equality, however, is maintained, even while the relationship evolves into one of
unequal exchange, or exploitation. Marx commented on this process:

   "The way in which money transforms itself into capital often shows itself quite
tangibly in history; e.g. when the merchant induces a number of weavers and
spinners, who until then wove and spun as a rural, secondary operation, to work
for him, making their secondary into their chief occupation; but then has them in
his power and has brought them under his command as wage laborers. ...All that
he has done is to restrict them little by little to one kind of work in which they
become dependent on selling, on the buyer, the merchant, and ultimately
produce only for and through him. He bought their labor originally only by buying
their product; as soon as they restrict themselves to the production of this
exchange value and thus must directly produce exchange values, must
exchange their labor entirely for money in order to survive, then they come
under his command, and at the end, even the illusion that they sold him
products disappears." (Marx, 1973, p. 510)

   The relationship between merchant and artisan does not necessarily begin
as exploitation, and is certainly not viewed as such by the artisan. Thus when
Weeks claims that, "Engels considers that the artisan willingly, voluntarily
accepts the exploitation that that profit making requires..." (Weeks, p. 22), he
misinterprets Engels. Engels said, "by thus guaranteeing the weaver regular
employment, he could depress the weaver's wage...". The weaver has a motive
for accepting the relation: "regular employment."
   Weeks, however, considers the idea that the merchant was able to guarantee
permanent employment to the weaver "astounding." He argues,

   "The idea that capitalists (and capitalism) can deliver 'regular employment' is
in-and-of-itself a quite astounding idea, when one realizes that the capitalist
mode of production is the first to generate idleness for a part of the laboring
population as an endemic and systematic characteristic of its operation."
(Weeks, p. 59)

   But it should be kept in mind here that the example Engels proposes is one
in which the two parties enter into a legal contract. It is this contract (and not
the capitalist system) which binds the merchant to buy a specific amount of
the weaver's output at a stipulated price over a specified period of time. This
could give such contracting weavers an advantage over their peers who did not
have such a contract, if buyers for their goods were hard to come by.
   The problem of unemployment is not restricted to the capitalist system, even
though, as Weeks argues correctly, capitalism is the first mode of production to
make it systematic. Unemployment occurred episodically in the middle ages,
and at times became acute. As Pirenne writes of the fifteenth-century Flemish
textile towns,

   "The crowds of workers in the great industrial towns seemed to have lived in
a condition very like that of the modern proletariat. Their existence was precarious,
and at the mercy of crises and stoppages. When work failed, the workmen
everywhere lost all means of subsistence, and bands of the unemployed spread
through the country, begging the bread they could no longer gain by their labor."
(Pirenne, p. 95)

   Pirenne then describes the social relations of the small producers, consisting
of masters and apprentices working in small shops. Merchants entered into
exchange relations with the textile artisans, and he describes the character
of these relations in the following way:

   "As we have already seen in dealing with the trade in the necessaries of life,
the economic liberty of the merchants was complete. Wholesale traffic in wool
and cloth was as free from municipal restrictions, as industrial labor was subject
to civic superintendence and control. The big merchants could buy and bring
into the towns indefinite quantities of merchandise as they pleased; the
associations which they formed among themselves brooked no control: no one
laid down a maximum for the price they demanded of the buyer...". (As Engels
pointed out, the merchant companies "sold at prices fixed among themselves.")
"They alone in their guilds or hansas, voluntary associations comparable to our
syndicates and trusts, could impose respect for certain rules and methods."
(Pirenne, p. 99)

   Given the unemployment problem, and the economic power of the merchants,
is it wrong for Engels to assume that weavers could initially benefit by entering
into contractual business relations with merchants? It is true that the growing
power of the merchants eventually reduced the artisans to proletarians, but at
first this power offered the artisans a guaranteed market for their goods.
   Another writer, Clapham, speaks of the problem of unemployment in the
Yorkshire textile industry in 1304, and attributes this, in part, to the tendency
on the part of merchants to get their work done in the countryside, rather than
going to the urban artisans' textile guilds. (Clapham, p. 156) Note that Marx,
in the quote above, referred to merchants contracting with rural producers.
   Lipson writes about a great depression in the English woollen industry in
1620. By this time, a special branch of merchants had developed, called
"clothiers," who contracted with, or exploited, large masses of weavers and
spinners. Lipson writes that the Privy Council

   "...summoned representatives of the clothiers to the capital, and issued a
circular letter to the Justices of the clothing counties enjoining them to keep
their workfolk in employment. The clothiers were not to be allowed to dismiss
their artisans at pleasure, for, 'those who have gained in profitable times must
now be content to lose for the public good till the decay of trade be remedied.'"
(Lipson, p. 109)

   This circumstance suggests that there was some public acceptance of the
idea that the clothiers were required to keep on their artisans in times of
distress. Of course, such social agreements deteriorated over time as the
merchants gradually fought their way to the control of industrial production,
and later, to state power, as industrial capitalists. Lipson takes note of this
change as well.

   "As regards unemployment the Government, after the Revolution [of 1688
--jm], no longer required the clothiers to keep their men employed in times of
trade depression, but distress was now relieved through the machinery of
the Poor Law." (Lipson, p. 116)

   Weeks, who was "astounded" at Engels's idea that "capitalists (and
capitalism) can deliver 'regular employment,'" finds it only "slightly less
astonishing ...that producers would willingly accept a lower standard of
living, even if such security of employment were magically guaranteed."
(Weeks, p. 60) Here Weeks disregards the social reality that unemployment
in feudal society often meant no income at all in an age before Poor Law
relief or unemployment compensation, and artisans who could find no
buyers were faced with the prospect of begging or starving.

THE ROLE OF FORCE IN HISTORY

   As mentioned above, Weeks had three objections to Engels's description
of the transition to capitalism. We have responded to the second and third
objections. Now the first one was that, according to Weeks, Engels does not
understand or recognize that force played an important role in the rise
of capitalism. He quotes Engels (here from _Anti-Duhring_) as saying,

   "The entire process [of the development of capitalism] is explained
[Engels's text says, "can be explained"] by purely economic causes,
without the necessity for recourse even in a single instance to robbery,
the state, or political interference of any kind." (Weeks, p. 20; see Engels,
1987, p. 151)

   Weeks then begins to recapitulate what he takes to be Engels's line of
argument, saying that the "rural and urban producers had control or ownership
of their tools and land," that, "under capitalist production relations it is the
capitalist who monopolizes the means of production, with the result that
the mass of the population must of necessity hire itself out to the capitalist."
He concludes, "Engels, then, hypothesizes that this basic change is achieved
essentially without force." (Weeks, p. 21)
   Here he distorts Engels's meaning. Engels did not argue that force was not
used, nor that the change was achieved "basically," "mainly," "essentially," or
even "partially" without force. He was making a different point. He believed that
force was irrelevant to explaining how capitalism arose. Engels argued that one
did not need to have recourse to force as an explanatory mechanism; that the
process could be explained by pointing to economic causes. Engels did not say
that force was not used. But Weeks would have Engels saying that the basic
change was "achieved essentially without force." By adding the qualifier
"essentially," Weeks avoids accusing Engels of saying that the change was
achieved completely without force, which would sound quite strange to people
familiar with Engels's writing, but using this adjective doesn't rectify the
misinterpretation of Engels's view that Weeks has introduced here.
   Further on Weeks returns to his argument that Engels belittled, or
downplayed, the use of force in the rise of capitalism, stating:

   "Marx devoted an entire section of Volume I of _Capital_ to the forceable
methods that accompanied the emergence of capitalism. Indeed the titles of
the chapters in this section indicate his view of the role of violence. Chapters
XXVI - XXXIII of Volume I  represent almost a continuous analysis of the
violence necessary for the emergence of the capitalist mode of production."
(Weeks, p. 57)

   He then quotes Marx saying that force is "an essential element of the
so-called primitive accumulation," and that force is "the midwife of every old
society pregnant with a new one." (Weeks, p. 57, 58. See Marx, 1977, p. 900,
916) But he does not indicate what he thinks about the relationship between
force and economic processes.
   The metaphor of the "midwife" is a good one for clarifying this relationship.
If one wants to understand the process of human reproduction (fertilization,
embryology, etc.) then having recourse to the role of the midwife is not much
use. It is better to study the facts of the reproduction process itself. The
midwife only comes in after the fetus has fully developed and is ready to be
born.
   Likewise if one wants to know how and why the embryo of bourgeois
society was conceived and germinated in the womb of feudal society, then
any reference to the role of the "midwife" of force would be out of place. This
was the point that Engels made in the passage quoted above. While force
was used in many ways during the rise of capital, and this process was
described and analyzed by Engels and Marx, force can't explain why this
rise occurred. Marx referred to this relationship in Chapter 27 of _Capital_,
Vol. I, in his discussion of the forcible separation of peasants from their
land:

   "We leave on one side here the purely economic driving forces behind the
agricultural revolution. We deal only with the violent means employed."
(Marx, 1977, p. 883)

   Marx and Engels set out their views on the role of force in history in their
joint work, _The German Ideology_, where they explain that the economic
evolution of the productive forces is the determining element in the history
of human society, and that class struggles, wars, conquests, etc., merely
determine which class or which nation will benefit from, or control, these
productive forces. (See Marx and Engels, 1976, V. 5, p. 84)

THE LAW OF VALUE IN HISTORY

   As indicated above, Weeks does not feel entirely comfortable with the idea
that the law of value existed at all prior to the rise of capitalism. But he is
not completely clear on this question. At one point he argues,

   "The recognition that the law of value first became operative under
capitalism and not before is a scientific insight of considerable political
importance. ..." (Weeks, p. 45)

   But this formula leaves open the possibility that Weeks believes that the
law existed prior to the rise of capitalism, only that it did not become operative
until then. But this would have to be explained. Earlier Weeks had stated:

   "It is important not to get caught up in a semantical argument. As value has
been defined here, it regulates price only under capitalist relations and can be
used as a tool of analysis only in capitalist society. Obviously value reaches
its full development as a historical process. Fine, whose analysis of value
and the law of value is essentially in agreement with the argument of this
chapter, refers to 'lower forms of value' which exist in precapitalist society.
Certainly this is a legitimate use of terms, though it has the danger of opening
the door to confusion and misinterpretation. The essential point to be made,
whatever terms are used, is that only under capitalism is concrete labor in
general metamorphosed into abstract labor, and only under capitalism is this
necessary in order to bring about the reproduction of class relations." (Weeks,
p. 38)

   Indeed, "lower forms of value" existed in history, and Marx and Engels
analyzed them extensively, as we have already seen. Perhaps in doing so
they "opened the door to confusion and misinterpretation," but isn't that true
of all genuinely scientific creative activity? Opening the door to confusion
and misinterpretation is unquestionably the byproduct of every scientific
discovery. But such discoveries also open the door to the future.
   Regarding "lower forms of value," Marx pointed out,

   "Hence, within the system of bourgeois society, capital follows immediately
after money. In history, other systems came before, and they form the material
basis of a less complete development of value." (Marx, 1973, p. 252)

   Not wanting to accept the law of value as the law which expresses the logical
development of the categories of commodity production, Weeks comes finally
to the conclusion that there were other laws that governed the process of
commodity production and exchange before the rise of the law of value in its
operational form. Since Marx did not speak of the existence of such laws,
Weeks, naturally, must step forward as the first enunciator of these laws.
There are two such laws, he claims: "the law of subsistence," and "the law of
monetary costs and subsistence." As he explains,

   "While not wishing to coin a phrase, we might say that, when exchange is
infrequent and the means of production unmonetized, it is ruled, for direct
producers, by the 'law of subsistence'." (Weeks, p. 39)

   In his formulation of the "law of subsistence," Weeks is concerned with the
quantitative aspect of the exchange of the products of labor, which comes
down to prices, and how prices are regulated. He envisions an environment
in which the means of production are home-made by the small peasant
producers, and only a portion of their products are marketed. In this situation
the prices they receive for these products are ruled by "the condition that the
exchange of use values cannot be on terms so unfavorable to the exchanging
parties that it leaves those on one side of the exchange unable to satisfy their
subsistence needs." (Weeks, p. 39)

   Once the level of exchange, and production for exchange, advances to the
point that a market exists for the buying and selling of the means of production
among the petty agrarian producers, a new law takes the place of the old,
according to Weeks. This is the "law of monetary costs and subsistence,"
because now the peasants have to take into account their costs of production.
   Weeks wants to make it clear that these two laws are not at all the same
thing as the "law of value," and are counterposed to it. Thus he maintains,

   "As long as labor power is not monetized, it is not possible to speak of
value, except as an externally, idealistically imposed benchmark; it would
be an anachronism to do so. When labor power becomes a commodity,
under capitalist relations of production, it first becomes possible to apply
the concept of value, and the indeterminacy of exchange disappears."
(Weeks, p. 40)

   To say that value can only be regarded as an "externally, idealistically
imposed benchmark" in precapitalist societies, is to say that it did not exist
as an actual social reality there. But again, Weeks does not make such a
definite statement, and thus we are forced to draw this conclusion from what
he does say. But Marx and Engels recognized and explained that the form of
value which prevails in capitalist society is the result of a long series of prior
forms of expression of value. To analyze the history of these previous forms
is to trace the history of the law of value. In this way it can be seen that there
is a continuity of development, and that capitalism did not suddenly come
out of nowhere, with its own completely new and unprecedented "law of value."
And further, this view corresponds with Engels's claim that the "law of value
has prevailed during a period of from five to seven thousand years." (Engels,
1962, p. 876)

THE QUANTITATIVE SIDE OF THE LAW OF VALUE

   But Weeks's claim that the law of value does not prevail in precapitalist
societies is rooted in the quantitative aspect of the law of value. He feels
that in order for value to really exist, products must exchange in the market
at an exchange rate that fluctuates around their value in labor time, or, at a
higher stage, their prices of production. If these conditions do not obtain,
Weeks believes, then value does not rule the exchange of commodities, and
if it does not rule it is not operative, and therefore, in his view does not exist.
Let's see how he develops this line of reasoning.
   Weeks strives to obtain confirmation from the pages of Marx's writings for
his view of value as something that could not really exist in precapitalist
commodity exchange. He seems to find it in the following passage from
_Capital_, Vol. III, in which Marx discusses a case of commodities selling
consistently below their values:

   "For the peasant owning a parcel, the limit of exploitation [lower limit] is
not set by the average profit of capital, in so far as he is a small capitalist;
nor, on the other hand, by the necessity of rent, in so far as he is a landlord.
The absolute limit for him as a small capitalist is no more than the wages
he pays to himself, after deducting costs. So long as the price of the product
covers these wages, he will cultivate his land and often at wages down to a
physical minimum." (Weeks, p. 37. See Marx, 1962, p. 785)

   Marx is referring here to a circumstance in which the product of the peasant
proprietor is sold at a price which covers the expenses of production and
provides a meager subsistence to the peasant. Because of the economic
conditions which affect this form of production (which are not explained here),
the peasant cannot sell the products at their value. Does this mean that the
law of value does not operate here? Weeks thinks so. He says,

   "This, of course, implies that exchange is not ruled by value, even if the
peasant exchanges in a society that is predominantly capitalist." (Weeks,
p. 37)

   What Weeks ignores here is that the law of value is not an iron-clad
regulator of prices, even in capitalist society where it develops to its fullest
extent. Rather, it operates as a tendency, having a more or less
pronounced influence on prices depending on circumstances. In the chapter
from which this passage is taken, Marx explains why the peasant proprietors
are unable to sell their products, on average, at prices that approximate their
values. The markets for the products of these small producers reflect the
underdeveloped conditions of commodity production, which limit the extent
to which the law of value can affect prices. As Marx explained,

   "For the peasant parcel holder to cultivate his land, or to buy land for
cultivation, it is therefore not necessary, as under the normal capitalist
mode of production, that the market price of the agricultural products rise
high enough to afford him the average profit, and still less a fixed excess
above this average profit in the form of rent. It is not necessary, therefore,
that the market price rise, either up to the value or the price of production
of his product." (Marx, 1962, p. 786)

   But this does not mean that the law of value does not exist, nor that it does
not operate, in these conditions. The law of value, in its quantitative aspect,
implies that prices are determined by the quantity of socially-necessary labor,
measured by the hour, day or week, required for the production of commodities.
The peasants, many of them subsistence farmers who only market the surplus
above their needs, sell on a market which has established customary prices,
however much these prices may fluctuate due to the varying conditions of
supply and demand, crop failures, etc. These customary prices reflect a
distorted and immature expression of their labor values. This is why Marx, in
the above passage, can refer to the "value or the price of production of his
product" as an underlying quantitative potential, to which the market price does
not rise. This is a fluid situation in which the law of value gains strength as
commodity production develops more fully, and as the precapitalist restraints
on this development are progressively overcome. This requires the fuller
development of trade, of world markets, of the circulation of money, of the
growth of money rent, the buying and selling of land, etc. From the standpoint
of the development of the law of value, all these trends point towards the
birth of a new mode of production which is founded on the full generalization
of commodity production. 
   As capitalist production develops, a moment is reached in which a
decisively predominant fraction of the total social product takes the form of
commodites, and it is this which allows the law of value to determine more
completely the prices of commodities; although the form of expression of
the law of value changes as market prices come to be determined by the
prices of production, which are modified expressions of value. But even in
this form, the law of value never achieves complete dominance over prices.
There are many kinds of monopoly which restrict the full development of
equality of all buyers and sellers who compete in the market, and therefore
interfere with the full expression of the law of value.
   However, Marx also pointed out that capitalist development was not
necessary for the law of value to have a strong influence on prices. As he
argued,

   "The exchange of commodities at their values, or approximately at their
values, thus requires a much lower stage than their exchange at their prices
of production, which requires a definite level of capitalist development.
   "Whatever the manner in which the prices of various commodities are first
mutually fixed or regulated, their movements are always governed by the law
of value. If the labor time required for their production happens to shrink,
prices fall; if it increases, prices rise, provided other conditions remain the
same." (Marx, 1962, p. 174)

   The flaw in Weeks's understanding of the development of the law of value
resides in his one-sided fixation on the quantitative side of the law, and in
overlooking its qualitative meaning as a historical fact. He does not
recognize the partial, limited expression of the law in precapitalist conditions,
and feels that unless prices correspond closely to labor values or prices of
production, the law of value does not operate. In the absence of the law of
value in precapitalist conditions, Weeks believes it is necessary to introduce
alternative laws, the "law of subsistence" and the "law of monetary costs and
subsistence," to explain price phenomena. 
   In explaining the operation of these laws, Weeks focuses on what he calls
the "determinacy" of prices. By this he seems to mean their stability or
predictability. Prices that are highly "indeterminate" are prices that are relatively
unaffected by market forces. He believes that in precapitalist societies, when
the means of production are not "monetized," there is "considerable
indeterminacy in exchange ratios." This stage corresponds to the operation of
the "law of subsistence." (Weeks, p. 39) Later, with the development of the
monetization of the means of production, the "law of monetary costs and
subsistence" comes into operation, since the producers are now buying their
productive equipment, and must must cover their production costs out of the
sale of their products. This reduces the "indeterminacy" of prices. Finally, with
capitalism, the law of value comes into operation and the price "indeterminacy"
disappears.

   "As value has been defined here, it regulates price only under capitalist
relations and can be used as a tool of analysis only in capitalist society."
(Weeks, p. 38)
   "When labor power becomes a commodity, under capitalist relations of
production, it first becomes possible to apply the concept of value, and
the indeterminacy of exchange disappears." (Weeks, p. 40)

   Thus Weeks puts himself in the position of proposing the historical
existence of money and prices before "value" itself arises. But the origin
of money can only be explained as a step in the evolution of the law of
value. Money came into existence thousands of years ago as a result of
regularized and systematic bartering, which increasingly posited the need
for a universal equivalent. As Marx explained,

   "The universal equivalent form comes and goes with the momentary
social contacts which call it into existence. It is transiently attached to this
or that commodity in alternation. But with the development of exchange it
fixes itself firmly and exclusively onto particular kinds of commodity, i.e.
it crystallizes out into the money-form. ...Nomadic peoples are the first to
develop the money-form, because all their worldly possessions are in a
moveable and therefore directly alienable form, and because their mode of
life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign communities,
encourages the exchange of products." (Marx, 1977, p. 183)

THE LAW OF VALUE -- QUALITY AND QUANTITY

   The law of value is the logic of the development of value as a social form,
from its beginings in barter to its highest expression in capital. But the early
appearance of the value form, stemming from regularized exchange and
production for exchange, occurs in societies that are dominated by class
relations that do not depend on commodity production. Because of this, the
law of value cannot be fully developed. Commodity production is confined to
a limited space within these precapitalist modes of production. And because
it is thus confined, the potential contained within the value form cannot be
unleashed. Further, the value form, enmeshed as it is within social forms
that are alien to it, is distorted and contaminated by them. Only when
commodity production is generalized, and the commodity becomes the
dominant form taken by the products of labor, can the law of value reveal
its potential in practice. 
   Regularized commodity exchange in ancient societies gives rise to the
money-form, which soon becomes attached to precious metals, silver and
gold. Buying and selling commodities, money dealing and money changing,
develop as separate activities taken on by groups of people who specialize
in exchange. Thus the value form becomes the basis for a way of life in the
ancient world. Independent wealth, in the form of stocks of commodites and
money, is built up by the merchant peoples or classes, and later becomes
one of the starting points for the rise of the capitalist mode of production.
   On the quantitative side, the exchange ratios of commodities produced for
the market are determined most fundamentally by labor time, however much
that determination fails to fully express itself in early commodity exchange.
As Marx wrote,

   "Since labor is motion, time is its natural measure. Barter in its crudest form
presupposes labor as substance and labor time as measure of commodities;
this then emerges as soon as it becomes regularized, continuous, as soon as
it containes within itself the reciprocal requirements for its renewal." (Marx,
1973, p. 205)

   When commodity production subsists as a marginal activity, embedded
within other social forms, the power of the law of value to force prices to
conform closely to their values in labor time is lacking. This is particularly
the case in the markets of peasants who produce primarily for their own
consumption, and only market the surpluses. But when commodity production
develops more strongly as a separate sphere, especially with the rise of the
towns in the middle ages, prices more closely approximate values. As
Engels explained in the essay under consideration,

   "In a word: the Marxian law of value holds generally, as far as economic
laws are valid at all, for the whole period of simple commodity production,
that is, up to the time when the latter suffers a modification through the
appearance of the capitalist form of production. Up to that time prices
gravitate towards the values fixed according to the Marxian law and oscillate
around those values, so that the more fully simple commodity production
develops, the more the average prices over long periods uninterrupted by
external violent disturbances coincide with values within a negligible
margin." (Engels, 1962, p. 876)

CONCLUSION

   We have seen how John Weeks set out to separate Marx from Engels, to
show that their "views on fundamental issues differed diametrically." We have
seen how Weeks based his arguments on a misreading of the main source
that he used, Engels's essay, "Law of Value and Rate of Profit." Beginning
by misinterpreting a phrase of Engels, Weeks accuses him of philosophical
idealism. He then charges Engels's with developing a theory of value based
on direct perception of labor time, when Engels was referring to peasant barter
in which social experience provided knowledge of the average labor time needed
for certain tasks. 
   Weeks misinterprets Engels again, and has him painting a picture of a society
of equal exchangers of commodities, instead of a precapitalist society of class
exploitation. Here he fails to recognize the history of a sphere of commodity
production in precapitalist societies, which existed as a subordinate element.
Thus he cannot analyze value as a category which developed through history,
implying instead that it did not exist prior to capitalism.
   Since he does not analyze value historically, he cannot recognize the facts
about property relations that developed out of commodity exchange. He does
not believe that a sector of small property-holders, who exchanged their products
on the market as equals, emerged out of the decline of feudalism in the later
middle ages, even though Marx analyzed this as part of the prehistory of
capitalism.
   Not appreciating how commodity production helped create the conditions for
the rise of capitalism, Weeks does not see how merchants' capital penetrated
into the commodity-producing sector, forming the initial shoots of industrial
capital. He sharply criticizes Engels for describing this transition as a process
that took place in accordance with economic laws. For Weeks, force, and not
economics, serves to explain why capitalism arose. He tries to accuse Engels
of denying that force was used, when Engels only explained that force cannot
be used to explain historical changes that are brought about by economic
causes.
   An indication of Weeks's view that value did not exist before capitalism is
his conclusion that it is necessary to invent alternative laws to fill the gap:
the "law of subsistence," and the "law of monetary costs and subsistence."
But here he only illustrates how far he has strayed from the views of Marx.
In the course of setting out these ideas, Weeks forgets entirely the relation
between money and value, bringing money onto the scene historically before
value.
   As Weeks's develops his theme, that Engels and Marx are at odds with each
other, he relies on his own views to attack Engels. He affirms that his own
views are derived from Marx's writings, or are inspired by Marx. But it has been
shown here that this is not the case. Weeks, in disagreeing with Engels,
actually disagrees with Marx as well. At least, it is clear that he disagrees with
Marx's analysis of precapitalist commodity production and exchange, and the
historical development of the law of value. As part of his attack on Engels, he
overlooks the many passages in _Capital_ and _Grundrisse_ which are so
necessary to understand Marx's views on the topic. It has been necessary to
quote several passages from Marx's writings to show this.
   When Engels wrote "Law of Value and Rate of Profit," he was defending
views which he shared with Marx. Although Marx led the way in developing
these ideas, Engels assisted in the work and assimilated the methods and
conclusions of Marx into his own outlook. Weeks does not analyze the record
of the relationship between the two great revolutionists. Nor does he bring into
his criticism of Engels those writings which contain the ideas of the latter on
a range of issues that are relevant to his theme. Instead of demonstrating a
divergence between Engels and Marx, he only offers evidence to the reader
of his own divergence from Marxism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clapham, J. _A Concise Economic History of Britain_. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Lipson, E. _The History of the Woollen and Worsted Industries_. London:
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Engels, F. _Anti-Duhring_. In _Collected Works of Marx and Engels_, Vol. 25.
   Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987.

   "Law of Value and Rate of Profit." In Marx, K. _Capital_, Vol. III. Moscow:
      Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962.

Mandel, E. _Marxist Economic Theory_, Vol. I. New York: Monthly Review
   Press, 1968.

Marx, K. and Engels, F. _The German Ideology_. In _Collected Works of Marx
   and Engels_, Vol. 5. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Marx, K. _Capital_, Vol. I. New York: Random House (Vintage), 1977.

   _Capital_, Vol. III. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publ. House, 1962.

   _Grundrisse_. New York: Random House, 1973.

Pirenne, H. _Early Democracies in the Low Countries_. New York: Harper and
   Row, 1963.

Weeks, J. _Capital and Exploitation_. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
   1981.


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