The labour theory of value and the coordination of economic activities Gilbert Faccarello ∗

I. I. Rubin (1886-1937)

I On the occasion of the various celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, and while the pace of Marxian studies is slackening after so many lively controversies, perhaps is it worth drawing attention to an author who was disregarded for a long time and who, ∗

Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris. E-mail: [email protected]. Translation of ‘La loi de la valeur et le problème de la coordination des activités économiques’, L’homme et la société, 67-68, 1983: 153-177. Misprints and typos in the French text have been corrected. The list of references has been adapted, especially to take account of the availability of the texts in 2017. The underlying theoretical principles of the analysis are to be found in Faccarello (1983), and are summed up in English in Gilbert Faccarello, “Some reflections on Marx’s theory of value”, published in Riccardo Bellofiore (ed.), Marxian Economics: A Reappraisal. Essays on Volume III of Capital. Volume I: Method, Value and Money, London: Macmillan, 1997: 29-47.

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almost as soon as he emerged from obscurity, was already neglected: Isaak Illich Rubin.1 Recently rediscovered thanks to a translation of his Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (third edition, Moscow, 1928) — his major work — his thought can be better understood after the publication of his History of Economic Thought (second edition, 1929) and a series of talks he made in 1927 and 1929 on “Abstract Labour and Value in Marx’s System” (Rubin, 1927) and “The Dialectical Development of Categories in Marx’s Economic System” (Rubin, 1929b). The importance of Rubin’s work is fundamental. As early as the 1920s, he had raised or solved certain problems that other authors thought to raise or to solve some decades later. The question of the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, for example, recently settled by Catherine Colliot-Thélène (1975), had already been solved in the Essays (1928a, chapter 19). The major themes of the nature of “abstract” labour, the substance of value, and of the links between the theory of value and the theory of “fetishism” — a major strand in the thought of Lucio Colletti (see for example Colletti 1968, 1969) — already formed a main theme in Rubin’s work. Likewise, the ambiguous status of the deduction of concepts in Capital, to which Hans-Georg Backhaus drew attention some twenty years ago in a short article (Backhaus, 1967), was implicitly stressed by Rubin in 1928-1929. But the interest of Rubin’s work does not simply lie in an anteriority that we should acknowledge. His originality lies in the fact that he simultaneously and lucidly deals with problems that others were only to discover separately and bit by bit: here lies his strength. His weakness was that he did not follow his approach to the end and draw the conclusion to which all his developments implicitly lead: the questioning of Marx’s developments and of 1

Rubin’s biography is not well known. See the translator’s foreword in the French edition of the Essays (in Rubin 1928b: 7-11). [Since the publication of this essay, research on Rubin has made notable progress: see for example Ivan Boldyrev and Martin Kragh, “Isaak Rubin: historian of economic thought during the Stalinization of social sciences in Soviet Russia”, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 37(3), 2015: 363-386.]

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their meaning.2 But the analysis of Rubin’s main ideas is also of interest for another reason, on which we focus here. His thought is the culmination of a singular interpretation of the theory developed in Capital : the understanding of the labour theory of value as the way in which, in a society of independent producers, economic activities are regulated and coordinated. This line of interpretation has always remained marginal — and, at times, totally inexistent — among Marx’s interpreters. It emerged and, so to speak, died during the interesting period, full of debates, formed by the five decades that followed Marx’s death.3 Why is this approach so singular? Because it was at the same time useful in debates with the opponents to Marxism, and dangerous for the emerging (and then dominant) orthodoxy. To grasp this point, it is necessary to situate Rubin’s work within the history of this approach, even if only in broad terms. Of course, in this perspective many problems are neglected, which do not directly concern the subject. II To deal with the problem of the status and meaning of the theory of value, one point must be stressed: while the question of the “transformation” of labour values into production prices is also here implied, this was not in today’s view dictated by Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz in 1906-1907. Today, it is well known that Marx’s attempt, in Volume 3 of Capital, is a failure.4 In retrospect, the questions raised during the years 1880-1910 about the relevance of the concept of value seem justified. But, at that time, this questioning could seem arbitrary. 2

The present paper is a brief historical inquiry about some theoretical principles developed in two previous papers (Faccarello, 1981, 1982) and in a book (Faccarello, 1983). 3

For an overview of these debates, see Colletti (1968, 1969), Dostaler (1978, especially chapters 2 and 4), Finzi (1977, papers on Antonio Graziadei), and the first volumes of Histoire du marxisme contemporain, Paris: UGE 10/18, 1976. 4

See Faccarello (1983, chapters 6 to 8).

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The discourse was generally the following. Insofar as commodities are not exchanged according to their values, but to their production prices, the meaning of the theory of value becomes less clear, as does the theory of exploitation that it is supposed to establish. The labour theory of value was in fact conceived as determining the exchange ratios between commodities, and everything that might question this determination undermines the very foundations of this theory. This opinion might have seemed natural to authors like Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk for example, but it is surprising to find it in Werner Sombart and above all in Conrad Schmidt:5 does not the latter also acknowledge that “the way in which Marx’s derivation of average profit rate from surplus-value provides an answer, for the first time, to the question never even raised by previous economists as to how the level of this average profit rate is determined, and how it comes to be, say, 10 per cent or 15 per cent and not 50 per cent or 100 per cent” (Engels, 1895: 1032)? The obvious solution — that the prices and the rate of profit could not be known without value calculations — is thus curiously discarded from the outset.6 As a consequence, those who, like Sombart and Schmidt, intended to maintain a role for the concept of value, tried to justify their views in a more indirect way. Sombart insists on the fact that value represents a theoretical idea that only expresses the particular way in which the social division of labour acts in a commodity society. He [Sombart] . . . arrives at the following result. Value is not present at the phenomenal level, in the exchange relationship of capitalistically produced commodities; it does not dwell in the consciousness of the agents of capitalist production; it is not an empirical fact but an ideal or logical one; Marx’s concept of value, in its material specificity, is nothing more 5 6

On Conrad Schmidt, see Besnier (1976).

It is, however, accepted by Rubin (1928a: 223 and 250-253). In the Essays, the understanding of the transformation is traditional and certainly forms the less interesting aspect of the book (chapter 18: 223-257). Surprisingly, Rubin did not grasp the pertinence of Bortkiewicz’s arguments — an author that he knows and occasionally quotes (Rubin, 1928a: 102, n. 4).

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than the economic expression of the fact that the social productivity of labour is the basis of economic existence; the law of value is what ultimately governs economic processes in a capitalist economic order, and its general content for such an economic order is that the value of commodities is the specific historical form in which the productivity of labour which ultimately governs all economic processes has its determining effects. (Engels, 1895: 1031-32) Obviously embarrassed by this view, Engels just adds that “it cannot be said that this conception of the significance of the law of value for the capitalist form of production is incorrect”, but that “it in no way exhausts the whole significance that the law of value has for those stages of society’s economic development that are governed by this law” (1895: 1032). As for Conrad Schmidt, value is for him a simple scientific hypothesis, a necessary fiction. He calls it a scientific hypothesis put forward to explain the actual exchange process, which proves the necessary theoretical point of departure, illuminating and indispensable even for the phenomena of prices under competition, which appear completely to contradict it. Without the law of value, in his opinion too, any theoretical insight into the economic mechanism of capitalist reality is impossible. (1895: 1032) Curiously enough, Engels at first misinterprets Schmidt’s assertions: “you reduce the law of value to a fiction, a necessary fiction”, he writes, “in much the same way as Kant reduced the existence of God to a postulate of practical reason. Your objections to the law of value apply to all concepts regarded from the standpoint of reality . . . [T]he concept of an object and its reality run side by side like two asymptotes which, though constantly converging, will never meet . . . Because a concept . . . does not ipso facto and prima facie correspond to the reality from which it has had first to be abstracted, that concept is always something more than a fiction, unless you declare all reasoned conclusions to be fictive” (letter to

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Conrad Schmidt, 12 March 1895, in Marx and Engels, 1892-1895: 46364). However, Engels realised that he was mistaken: the question is not that of the relationship of a concept (value) to the reality (the price), but of the theoretical validity of a conceptual discourse. “I am most indebted to you for your tenacity over the ‘fiction’. There is in fact a difficulty here which I only mastered as a result of your insistence upon the ‘fiction’ ” (to Schmidt, 6 April 1895, in Marx and Engels, 1892-1895: 492). The solution he proposes, on the basis of a passage excerpted from Volume 3 of Capital, hinges on the understanding of the transformation process as essentially a historical question, the concepts of value and price corresponding to two steps in the empirical transformations of markets.7 It is well known that Engels’s answer does not solve the problem but increases the difficulty instead. “The ‘historical’ setting of the problem”, Rubin was correctly to note, “thus leads to ignoring the historical character of the category value” (Rubin, 1928a: 257). But for our purpose, part of the stage is set: the question is that of the law of value as a historical expression of the social division of labour, or as a simple conceptual tool, a necessary fiction. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first approach was developed by Rudolf Hilferding (1904 and 1910); and the second especially by Franz Petry (1915), who, in the context of 7 While Rubin generally accepts some of Engels’s methodological assumptions, he rejects the “historical” conception of the transformation and tries to explain the related passages from Marx’s writings that Engels quotes in support of his own view (see Rubin, 1928a: 254-57). “The historical question of whether commodities were exchanged in proportion to labour expenditures before the emergence of capitalism”, he rightly writes, “must be separated from the question of the theoretical significance of the theory of labour-value. If the first question were answered affirmatively, and if the analysis of the capitalist economy did not require the labour theory of value, we could regard that theory as a historical introduction to political economy, but not in any way as a basic theoretical foundation on which Marx’s political economy is built. Inversely, if the historical question were answered negatively, but if the indispensability of the labour theory of value for the theoretical understanding of the complex phenomena of the capitalist economy were proved, this theory would still be the starting-point of economic theory, as it is now. In brief, no matter how the historical question about the influence of the law of labour-value in the period before capitalism were solved, this solution would not in the least free Marxists from their responsibility to accept the challenge of their opponents on the question of the theoretical significance of the law of labour value for an understanding of the capitalist economy” (Rubin, 1928a: 256).

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“interpretative” sociology, made a radical division between the quantitative aspect of Capital, belonging to the realm of the natural sciences and being a crippling legacy of political economy, and the qualitative aspect, belonging to the realm of the historical and social sciences, allowing an “interpretative” analysis of the capitalist reality, and presented as a legacy of Hegelian idealism and the real meaning of the Marxian theory of value. III For our purpose, the other elements to consider are Böhm-Bawerk’s pamphlet (1896) against Marx’s theory of value — and at the same time against Sombart’s defence of it — and Hilferding’s response (1904). Marxists have too often focused their attention on the first three sections of the 1896 pamphlet and on the rather obvious responses provided in 1904. The fourth and fifth sections, “The error in the Marxian system: its origin and ramifications”, and “Werner Sombart’s apology”, were on the contrary neglected. Yet, developing some points already expressed in 1884 (Böhm-Bawerk, 1884), they have much more important critical weight. There, Böhm-Bawerk criticised especially the way in which Marx introduces the concept of value; the link established between value and embodied labour alone; and the way in which “abstract” labour, the substance of value, is introduced. He questioned the relevance of a discourse in terms of “natural prices” independent from demand. Finally, he sharply criticised the meaning of the conception of value as a “conceptual fact” (Sombart). All these points are in fact delicate issues, which are often avoided by Marx’s followers. Hilferding deserves credit for having tried to answer one of BöhmBawerk’s strong arguments: the arbitrary nature of the identification of value and labour in Capital. As this point was not well understood afterwards, it is necessary to focus on it for a while. Rubin’s developments often refer to this question. Böhm-Bawerk’s critique is based on the implicit hypothesis that the

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labour theory of value is nothing other than a theory of exchange ratios between commodities: Marx’s deduction of the commensurability of commodities and of the equality of values in the exchange, through abstract labour, seems to depend on it. Although he contradicts himself at a later stage, Hilferding shifts the question. The theory of value, he stresses, is not essentially a theory of exchange ratios, and the foundations of value in labour is neither deduced nor proved by Marx, but it simply and more immediately expresses the very object of the inquiry. “Böhm-Bawerk’s critical question to which Marx is alleged to have given so fallacious an answer is the question: what right had Marx to proclaim labour to be the sole creator of value? Our counter-criticism must in the first instance consist of a demonstration that the analysis of the commodity furnishes the desired answer” (Hilferding, 1904: 129). Hilferding’s ability is to state an “analysis of the commodity” different from the traditional one presented in the first pages of Capital. Picking up a theme outlined by Sombart, his response stresses the particular character of the social division of labour in a market society. Of course, this theme is also explicitly present in many pages of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital, and above all in those devoted to the “fetishism of the commodity”. But it is probably a letter from Marx to Kugelmann, dated 11 July 1868, which inspired Hilferding in his response.8 There, Marx stresses that “even if there were no chapter on ‘value’ in my book, the analysis of the real relationships which I give would contain the proof and demonstration of the real value relation” (Marx to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868, in Marx, 1862-1874: 73). The meaning of the phrases “real relationships” and “real value relation” remains of course to be explained. “The nonsense about the necessity of proving the concept of value”, Marx goes on, “arises from complete ignorance both of the subject dealt with and of the method of science. 8

Marx’s letters to Kugelmann were published in 1902, after the death of their recipient. We also know that, according to Hilferding, the main part of the response to Böhm-Bawerk, published in 1904, had already been written in 1902. The striking analogy between Marx’s celebrated letter dated 11 July 1868 and the developments of Hilferding’s text suggests that Hilferding drew inspiration from it.

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Every child knows that a country which ceased to work . . . would die” (Marx, 1862-1874: 73). Contrary to the usual approach, the analysis is then led at the global level of the branches and of the distribution of “social labour”. Every child knows, too, that the mass of products corresponding to the different needs require different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labour of society. That this necessity of distributing social labour in definite proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of social production, but can only change the form it assumes, is selfevident” (Marx, 1862-1874: 73) This “necessity” has the strength of a “natural law”. But, in this global perspective, what is the meaning of the notion of “value”? In a society where any a priori regulation of the production is lacking, it is simply the particular “form” through which “social labour” is distributed. “What can change, in changing historical circumstances, is the form in which these laws operate. And the form in which this proportional division of labour operates, in a state of society where the interconnection of social labour is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products.” (Marx, 1862-1874: 73: 73-74). In a society of separate and independent producers, exchange alone forms the social link, which is lacking prima facie. Individual and private labour is not immediately social, but must become so. How and by what means? Through the proof of its social utility, that is, by the fact that its product finds a buyer in the market. The role of exchange, of the market, and, implicitly, of money, is now propelled to the fore. In 1904, Hilferding picked up this approach in the same terms as the letter to Kugelmann. He summed it up clearly in 1910 in the first chapter of Finance Capital, referring more, this time, to the analysis of “commodity fetishism”. In principle the human productive community may be constituted in either of two ways. First, it may be consciously

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regulated. Whether its scale is that of a self-sufficient patriarchal family, a communistic tribe, or a socialist society, it creates the organs which, acting as the agents of social consciousness, fix the extent and methods of production and distribute the social product thus obtained among the members. Given the material and man-made conditions of production, all decisions as to method, place, quantity and available tools involved in the production of new goods are made by the pater familias, or by the local regional or national commissars of the socialist society. The personal experience of the former gives him a knowledge of the needs and productive resources of his family; the latter can acquire a like knowledge of the requirements of their society by means of comprehensively organised statistics of production and consumption. They can thus shape, with conscious foresight, the whole economic life of the communities of which they are the appointed representatives and leaders in accordance with the needs of the members. The individual members of such a community consciously regulate their productive activity as members of a productive community. Their labour process and the distribution of their products are subject to central control. Their relations of production are directly manifest as social relations, and the economic relations between individuals can be seen as being determined by the social order, by social arrangements rather than by private inclination . . . Matters are different in a society which lacks this conscious organisation. Such a society is dissolved into a large number of mutually independent individuals for whom production is a private matter rather than a social concern. In other words, its members are individual proprietors who are compelled by the development of the division of labour to do business with one another. The act by which this is accomplished is the exchange of commodities. It is only this act which establishes connections in a society otherwise dismembered into disparate units by private property and the division of labour. (Hilferding, 1910: 27; see also Hilferding, 1904: 130-132) Exchange and exchange ratios settle the place of everybody in the social division of labour, in production, in an indirect and compelling way. This is the form of regulation specific to the commodity society

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(1904: 133-134).9 It is now easy to see why, according to Hilferding, the foundation of “value” in “labour” arises from the very way in which the question is asked and does not require any other “proof”. “Value” is but the “social” aspect of commodity, its use value being its “natural” side. This is the first meaning of Marx’s assertion that value must be brought back to the “socially necessary labour time”. “But labour time as such is not expressed directly, as it is in the society envisaged by Rodbertus, in which the central authority establishes the unit of labour time which it will accept as valid for each commodity. Labour time is expressed only in the exchange commensurability of two articles. Thus the value of an article, i.e., its average time of production, is not expressed directly as eight, ten or twelve hours, but as a specific quantity of another article” (Hilferding, 1910: 31), money (1910: 32). The value of an article is a social relationship and is always represented in terms of another article . . . Such a definition of value is implicit in, and inseparable from, the nature of commodity production. A use value belonging to one person becomes a commodity and then a use value to another person, thereby giving rise to the social relationship peculiar to members of a commodity producing society in which all are under the same compulsion to exchange their goods. The producer does not learn whether his commodity really satisfies a social need or whether he has made the correct use of his labour time until after the completion of the exchange. The confirmation that he is a fully-fledged member of a commodity producing society does not come to him from some person authorised to speak in its name . . . The only proof he has of his usefulness as a member of society is another article which he obtains in exchange for his own. (Hilferding, 1910: 31-32)

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Rubin uses here a rather accurate comparison. “The fluctuations of market prices are in reality a barometer, an indicator of the process of distribution of social labour which takes place in the depths of the social economy. But it is a very unusual barometer; a barometer which not only indicates the weather, but also corrects it” (Rubin, 1928a: 78).

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IV It is now easy to imagine how Hilferding’s approach could have been at the same time welcome and embarrassing. While it seems to directly counter an important argument of Böhm-Bawerk’s critique, it nevertheless raises important problems for the traditional interpretation of Marxist theory. The role of market and exchange — and not “production” strictly speaking — as the place for the socialisation of individuals can be bewildering, especially if it is realised that it implicitly questions the content of the labour theory of value. “It is therefore because labour is the social bond uniting an atomised society, and not because labour is the matter most technically relevant, that labour is the principle of value and that the law of value is endowed with reality” (Hilferding, 1904: 134).10 This simple sentence, which sums up the previous developments, is certainly not insignificant: it implies a specific, sociological and historical understanding of political economy and its concepts, limited to the study of the capitalist mode of production and its reified reality. But BöhmBawerk could have legitimately answered that this characterisation is not sufficient, and that Marx’s theory of value entails an unavoidable quantitative aspect, which seems to be omitted here. Is Hilferding’s approach compatible with the definition of value as a quantity of “socially necessary” labour embodied in a commodity? Does the global, sociological, perspective not conflict here with the individual and technical perspective linked to the expense of labour? Just like Marx, Hilferding does not see any contradiction between the different aspects of the analysis: The outcome of the social process of production thus qualitatively determined is quantitatively determined by the sum total of the expended social labour. As an aliquot part of the social product of labour . . . the individual commodity is 10

See Rubin, 1928: 61: “However, Bohm-Bawerk’s entire critique stands or falls together with the assumptions on which it is built: namely, that the first five pages of Capital contain the only basis on which Marx built his theory of value. Nothing is more erroneous than this conception”.

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quantitatively determined by the quota of social labour time embodied in it. (Hilferding, 1904: 132) Yet, how is it possible to reconcile this assertion with the previous statements, that the quantity of labour which forms a value cannot be expressed as such, before the exchange, and that it is only after the latter occurs that it is possible to know the quantity of value? It seems that value no longer determines the exchange ratios, but instead that exchange ratios determine value: and to call the latter “quantity of labour” validated through exchange seems purely arbitrary. This is a question of taxonomy, which makes the analysis confused. The transfer of the determination of the quantity of value to the global level of the society and the branches is thus an important issue. To consider that “[t]he total product of labour presents itself as a total value, which in individual commodities manifests itself quantitatively as exchange value” (Hilferding, 1904: 131), is it not in a way to neutralise the market? The global quantity of value, determined by the “social labour”, is given and is diversely distributed over the different masses of commodities according to the volume of the social needs. It thus matches adequately, partially, or imperfectly, the actual quantities of labour expended in the different branches or by the different producers within each branch. The exchange does not create anything and limits itself, at the most, to generating “transfers”, if one is allowed to reason by analogy with the “transformation” scheme (from which Hilferding could have been inspired) and though this term is improper here. Such is Hilferding’s approach, as it can be deduced from some brief and rather confused passages dedicated to this last point. “We must therefore discover the law which governs this society as a producing and working community. Individual labour now appears in a new aspect, as part of the total labour force over which society disposes” (Hilferding, 1910: 29-30). “The quantity which is turned over in exchange, however, counts only as a part of social production, which itself is quantitatively determined by the labour time that society assigns to it. Society is here

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conceived as an entity which employs its collective labour power to produce the total output, while the individual and his labour power count only as organs of that society. In that role, the individual shares in the product to the extent that his own labour power participates, on average, in the total labour power (assuming the intensity and productivity of labour to be fixed)” (1910: 30). If the worker works too slowly or produced useless things, Hilferding adds, “his labour power is scaled down to average labour time, i.e., socially necessary labour time” (1910: 30). Of course, this reasoning — independently of the problems it raises at the level of internal logic (the combination of the two levels of the analysis: private-individual and social-global) — depends on the definition of this “collective” or “social” labour. Is it a structure or a sum? The first solution (a vector of quantities of concrete labours) does not have any meaning here. But if it is a sum, what is to be added? All the quantities of labour spent in commodity production? Or only those that are validated through exchange? The second case supposes the problem solved; only the first is thus to be retained: it corresponds to the idea, already expressed, of a correspondence between private and social. But the problem remains of the homogeneity of the magnitudes to be added together. And, on this point, Hilferding is evasive. When he speaks of the process of abstraction of labour, he refers to the social determination; when he deals with the “collective labour”, he speaks of “abstractly human” labour, or labour in its “universal human form”. To be short, he does not realise that the problem of the abstraction of labour in Marx, raised by Böhm-Bawerk, to which he believed he had responded (Hilferding, 1904: 131-132), does not disappear with the shift in the level of the analysis, and remains unsolved. V A certain orthodoxy, in the end, has the upper hand and Hilferding misses the mark. But his approach, while remaining a minority view, was nevertheless developed later. To my knowledge, very few authors adopted

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it. One finds it in Nikolai Bukharin, in the first pages of his Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (1919: 48-49), where it is implemented in relation to the problem of commodity fetishism and the simultaneous end of the capitalist mode of production and of political economy as a science. It is developed more extensively by Rubin. But it would be a mistake to neglect an important intermediary link: Rosa Luxemburg. Why this rarefaction of the theme? Perhaps it was enough for a generation of authors to learn, often by hearsay, that the 1904 essay had “once and for all” refuted Böhm-Bawerk’s arguments, for them not to worry anymore about these questions. They could stick more quietly to the Engelsian-Kautskyan (and soon Leninist) vulgate and possibly opt for point-scoring in the other debates — in particular about the theory of imperialism, and then about the building of the Soviet society: to discuss value was supposed to be the problem of the opponents of the second, and then the third, International. The subsequent political evolution of Hilferding also helped to discredit his principles, as did the minority position of Luxemburg, whose final failure buried her thought with the opprobrium and oblivion that are the fate of the vanquished. Stalinism was to complete the job. Compared with the previous developments, Rosa Luxemburg’s views form at the same time a partial retreat and a notable strategic progress: it is a partial retreat insofar as, in order to maintain the consistency of her discourse, she is less faithful than Hilferding to the global approach, and resorts to classical economic mechanisms; but it is a strategic progress because of the rigorous developments she confers on the socio-economical themes. This last point is obvious if one compares the first pages of The Accumulation of Capital (1913), in which the problem of coordination is only recalled, with Introduction to Political Economy (posthumously published in 1925), where it is brilliantly detailed and developed (see 1925, chapter 4 in particular, concerning a commodity society) and dictates the structure of the essay. Better than Hilferding, and with remarkable theoretical acuteness, Luxemburg develops the link with the theory

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of fetishism11 (1925, chapter 1), an important aspect of which consists in the identification of the categories of political economy with reified social relationships (see for example 1925: 234-242), and with the necessary monetary aspect of the exchanges of commodities (1925: 244 ff). Commodity exchange without money is in fact inconceivable, and the price fluctuations that these people wanted to abolish are in fact the only means for indicating to commodity producers whether they are making too little of a particular commodity or too much, whether they are spending more or less labour on its production than it requires, whether they are producing the right commodities or not. If this sole means of communication between the isolated commodity producers in the anarchic economy is abolished, they are completely lost, being not only struck dumb, but blind into the bargain. Production necessarily comes to a standstill, and the capitalist tower of Babel shatters into ruins. The socialist plans for making capitalist commodity production into socialist simply by the abolition of money were thus pure utopia (Luxemburg, 1925: 260) Of course, all the problems are posed again: in particular, what relationship to establish with the labour theory of value? How to specify the role of the market? “Not all labour, therefore, be it ever so diligent and solid, now has a definite purpose and value in advance from the point of view of society; only a product that is exchangeable has value; a product that no one takes in exchange, no matter how solid, is valueless work, work thrown away” (Luxemburg, 1925: 238), a work that remains private and does not become social. It is on this point however that Luxemburg’s approach is more timid than that of Hilferding. On the one hand, the 11

Rubin considers that the theory of fetishism is of the utmost importance and devotes seven chapter to it (Rubin, 1928a, first part of the book: 5-60). “Marx did not only show that human relations were veiled by relations between things, but rather that, in the commodity economy, social production relations inevitably took the form of things and could not be expressed except through things. The structure of the commodity economy causes things to play a particular and highly important social role and thus to acquire particular social properties . . . The theory of commodity fetishism is transformed into a general theory of production relations of the commodity economy, into a propaedeutic to political economy” (Rubin, 1928a: 6).

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definition she gives of global “social labour” as the “sum of the labours of the members of society for each other” (1925: 238 and 543, n. 91) seems to imply, in this context, the effective (and not only potential) role of the exchange: labour embodied in overproduced commodities is not social labour (1925: 238-239). This is probably an ad hoc definition that brings us back to the questions of taxonomy referred to above. On the other hand, Luxemburg clearly abandons the “global” definition of value when she implements a purely “economic” discourse. Her consistency is thus different from that of Hilferding. It simply consists in avoiding the problem and sticking to the classical mechanism of the gravitation of market prices around natural prices: this is at least what it is possible to infer from the first pages of The Accumulation of Capital (1913: 11). This is obviously a bogus solution because, to say the least, the gravitation mechanism supposes everything that the new approach precisely questions, and is moreover itself in need of proof. VI Such is the theoretical legacy accepted by Rubin in the midst of controversies, the subjects of which are given by the titles of articles and books quoted in the 1928 Essays but which are still not very well known (for an example, see Rubin 1929b). Faced with the partially convergent analyses just recalled above and with the many questions they raise, Rubin tried his best to clarify the various theoretical positions and, through an accurate and logical analysis of Marx’s works, to define rigorously the concepts used and their reciprocal relationships in Capital. Only after Hilferding’s work did one begin to understand accurately the sociological character of Marx’s theory of value. The point of departure of the labour theory of value is a determined social environment, a society with a determined production structure. This conception was often repeated by Marxists; but until Hilferding’s time, no one made it the foundation-stone of the entire edifice of Marx’s theory of value. Hilferding deserves great praise for this, but unfortunately he

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confined himself to a general treatment of the problems of the theory of value, and did not systematically present its basis. (Rubin, 1928a: 61) It is of course impossible to review here the different aspects of Rubin’s comments. Only what forms a direct attempt to solve or clarify the problems mentioned in the previous sections will be retained. In order to better grasp them, it is necessary to recall the starting point of the analysis: the outright reversal of the traditional approach. The theoretical development no longer starts from value and the exchange ratios in order to trace the substance of value, that is, labour; it starts from “labour” to characterise the concept of value. Rubin stressed this point repeatedly and very clearly. Here our starting point is not value, but labour. It is erroneous to represent the matter as if Marx had started with the phenomena related to value in their material expression and, analysing them, had come to the conclusion that the common property of exchanged and evaluated things can only be labour. Marx’s train of thought moves precisely in the opposite direction. In the commodity economy, the labour of individual commodity producers, which directly has the form of private labour, can acquire the character of social labour, i.e., can be subjected to the process of mutual connection and coordination, only through the ‘value’ of the products of labour. Labour as a social phenomenon can only be expressed in ‘value’. The specific character of Marx’s labour theory of value lies in the fact that Marx does not base his theory on the properties of value, i.e., on the acts of equalisation and evaluation of things, but on the properties of labour in the commodity economy, i.e., on the analysis of the working structure and production relations of labour. (Rubin, 1928a: 81; see also 1928a: 61-62) Thus, “the subject matter of the theory of value is the interrelations of various forms of labour in the process of their distribution” (Rubin, 1928a: 67). In this perspective, the qualitative aspect of the theory of value is first stressed: that is, its sociological, historical character, as the

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expression of reified social relationships. But is this reversed approach capable of dealing with the quantitative aspect of the labour value, on which the traditional approach almost exclusively insists? This is what Rubin asserts, criticising Franz Petry12 for having rejected the quantitative aspect of the theory after rightly insisting on the sociological foundation of Marx’s view. Therefore, the questions stressed above arise again: what is value if it is not only the “form of exchangeability” of the products of labour? How are social labour and abstract labour to be defined, if they are not simple qualitative characteristics, but also magnitudes, which can and should be determined? Finally, what is the role of the market and exchange in this view? In the end, in spite of all his efforts, Rubin could not stick together again the pieces of the vase which he had himself helped to break. After the writings of Rudolf Hilferding and Rosa Luxemburg, Rubin’s work certainly represents the final step of a Marxist commentary of Marx. The 1928 Essays thus try to develop simultaneously a double analysis, quantitative and qualitative, starting from the initial concept of “labour”. In what follows, and in order to examine the validity of his construction, the different strands of his argumentation must be disentangled. We are already familiar with the qualitative approach. The structure of a commodity economy demands that the social link be established in the market, through the exchange of products. The equality of products in exchange, their permutation, generates the social equality of independent producers, and hence the equality of their labours. But is it possible to specify the very nature of this “equality”, which transforms private labour into social labour? Three kinds of “equal labour” must be distinguished: the “physiologically equal” labour, the “socially equalised” labour and “abstract” labour (Rubin, 1927, section II; 1928a, chapter 2). Criticising the physiological conception of abstract labour (1928a, chapter 14), Rubin immediately discards the first meaning. In contradistinction to Marx’s socio-historical conception, the concept of a physiological 12

See Rubin, 1928a: 87 and 133-34. On Petry, see Faccarello, 1983, chapter 13.

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labour can only be a very general condition of the division of labour, of the changing distribution of labour within society: “this physiologically homogeneous labour is not the object but rather the presupposition of economic research. In reality, if labour as the expenditure of physiological energy is a biological presupposition of any human economy, then the physiological homogeneity of labour is a biological presupposition of any social division of labour” (Rubin, 1928a: 137). What about socially equalised labour and abstract labour? Insofar as, in organised economies, concrete labour is immediately social, the concept of abstract labour is specific to a commodity economy: it means that the process of socialisation, linked to exchange, equalises in an indirect way the various forms of labour, abstracting from any concrete character of commodities and labour. Moreover, in a “planned” economy, labour is not necessarily “equalised” or, at least, this character is only a side aspect of the process of the distribution of social labour (1928a: 65-66, 95-96). In a commodity economy, by contrast, labour becomes social only insofar as it is “equalised”, and it is “equalised” only because, in the market, any difference is ignored:13 Thus if a commodity economy is compared to a socialist community, the property of social labour and the property of socially equalised labour seem to have changed places. In the socialist community, the property of labour as equal or equalised was the result of the production process, of the production decision of a social organ which socialised and distributed labour. In the commodity economy, labour becomes social only in the sense that it becomes equal with all other forms of labour, in the sense that it becomes socially equalised. Social or socially-equalised labour in the specific form which it has in the commodity economy can be called abstract labour. (Rubin, 1928a: 97) Obviously, however, the word “equal” does not have here any quantitative or “substantial” connotation. It only denotes the matching of a 13

On this point, Rubin simply adopts Hilferding’s formulations.

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given type of labour with all others through exchange. It confirms the social equality of independent producers. In this sociological approach, with this first definition, Rubin then connects abstract labour, value and labour. As market prices act as correcting barometers (see above, footnote 9), the distribution of social labour changes with the modification of the exchange ratios. One climate can replace another without an indication on a barometer. But one phase of the distribution of social labour replaces another only through the fluctuation of market prices and under their pressure. If the movement of market prices connects two phases of the distribution of labour in the social economy, we are right if we assume a tight internal relation between the working activity of economic agents and value. We will look for the explanation of these relations in the process of social production, i.e., in the working activity of people, and not in phenomena which lie outside the sphere of production or which are not related to it by a permanent functional connection. (Rubin, 1928a: 78-79) In this way, a link is re-established between value, abstract labour and the process of labour. This link is obviously not the one that is usually stressed. In particular, it does not say anything about the quantitative determination of exchange ratios (see below, section VIII). But the traditional vocabulary is kept, and this allows Rubin to connect with the quantitative analysis. Through abstract labour, value is at the same time connected with the social form of the social process of production and with its material-technical content. (Rubin, 1928a: 73) The transition to this second kind of analysis is imperceptible, in spite of the fact that it entails substantial modifications. The definition of the process of abstraction is apparently maintained (1928a: 73), but abstract labour is now understood as “socially necessary labour”, defined by Rubin as technically necessary on average for the production of a given

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commodity (whatever the definition of this average: see 1928a, chapter 16). He thus reverts here to the traditional, technical analysis in terms of “embodied labour”. The role of the market and of exchange vanishes, and the conditions of production alone matter. The analysis leaves the global and social level to revert to an individual and private aspect, which shapes again the end chapters of the Essays (chapters 16 to 18, and an important part of the previous chapters). The only echo of the previous developments is the frequent occurrence of the gravitation mechanism, which is supposed to cancel out, as in Rosa Luxemburg, the disturbances due to the intrusion of the market. The deviation of market prices from values is the mechanism by means of which the overproduction and underproduction is removed and the tendency toward the reestablishment of equilibrium among the given branches of production of the national economy is set up. The exchange of two different commodities according to their values corresponds to the state of equilibrium among two given branches of production. (Rubin, 1928a: 65) VII Obviously, Rubin is convinced that he has brought together the two aspects of Marx’s analysis. “The definition of value as the expression of production relations among people does not contradict the definition of value as an expression of abstract labour which we gave earlier. The difference lies only in the fact that earlier we analysed value from its quantitative aspect (as a magnitude), and now from its qualitative aspect (as a social form). Consistently with this, abstract labour was presented earlier in terms of its quantitative side, and is now being treated in terms of its qualitative side, namely as social labour in its specific form which presupposes production relations among people as commodity producers” (Rubin, 1928a: 69-70). However, the restatement of his discourse leads us to a different conclusion: the theoretical unity is illusory and only based on a common

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vocabulary, which takes on a different meaning in each kind of analysis. Whatever the author may say, the fact of having reversed the traditional analysis to establish the sociological conception of the theory of value does not allow him surreptitiously to pick up the traditional view again in order to determine the normal exchange ratios. The two approaches conflict radically.14 The assimilation of the two is only possible through a misuse of language: because two different realities are both called “abstract” or “equal” labour, because the price movements and the role of the market, so specific to the historical approach, and the classical mechanism of gravitation are seen as equivalent, and finally because, for the historical view, a link is stated between value, abstract labour and the production process, which only shows a vague homonymy relationship with the analysis of “embodied labour”. Despite all its qualities, Rubin’s reasoning displays, on this point, a rhetoric involving simple analogies.15 Orthodoxy finally holds the upper hand. The following excerpt, which mixes the different kinds of analysis, is a good illustration thereof. The magnitude of value changes in dependence on the quantity of abstract, socially-necessary labour, but because of the twofold character of labour the changes in the quantity of abstract, socially-necessary labour are caused by changes in the quantity of concrete labour, i.e., by the development of the material-technical process of production, in particular the productivity of labour. Thus, the entire system of value is based on a grandiose system of spontaneous social accounting and comparison of the products of labour of various types and performed by different individuals as parts of the total social abstract labour. This system is hidden and cannot be seen on the surface of events. In turn, this system of total social abstract labour is put into motion by the development of material productive forces which are the ultimate factor of development of society in general. Thus Marx’s theory of value is connected with his theory of historical materialism. (Rubin, 1928a: 119-20) 14

See Faccarello, 1983, chapters 5 and 14.

15 The ambiguous character of Rubin’s developments obviously did not escape his opponents: see Rubin, 1929b.

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VIII A good illustration of the previous conclusions can be provided by examining what Rubin says of “social labour” and the role of the market. His hesitations on this subject are noticeable, and express well the conflict between two contrary and irreconcilable approaches. The total social labour, on the one hand, is conceived as the sum of the quantities of labour expended in the different branches of production. This definition remains implicit, but forms the background of numerous passages. “The production of cloth thus either outruns the demand . . . or lags behind it . . . In other words, the quantity of social labour which is expended on the production of cloth is either too large or not large enough” (Rubin, 1928a: 64). “Labour is social if it is examined as part of the total mass of homogeneous social labour or, as Marx frequently said, if it is seen in terms of its ‘relation to the total labour of society’ ” (1928a: 141). Or again: An hour of labour of the bootmaker and an hour of labour of the clothmaker are equal to each other, each of them representing an equal share of the total labour of society distributed among all the branches of production. Labour, which creates value, thus appears not only as quantitatively distributed labour, but also as socially equalised (or equal) labour, or more briefly, as ‘social’ labour which is understood as the total mass of homogeneous, equal labour of the entire society. (Rubin, 1928a: 65) This approach obviously presupposes the traditional view that labour is already considered as “abstract” in the production process, and thus homogeneous and aggregable. The process of abstraction remains of course problematic. On the other hand, some other passages define social labour as the one that is validated through exchange, the one that produced a commodity which met a buyer. Stress is put here on the real exchange, and not simply on production aimed at exchange.

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Private labour of separate commodity producers is connected with the labour of all other commodity producers and becomes social labour only if the product of one producer is equalised as a value with all other commodities . . . This means that the private labour of separate individuals does not acquire the character of social labour in the concrete form in which it was expended in the process of production, but through exchange which represents an abstraction from the concrete properties of individual things and individual forms of labour . . . But, first of all, this equalisation of labour carries with it a preliminary character ‘represented in consciousness’. The equalisation must still be realised in the actual act of exchange. (Rubin, 1928a: 70) The analysis is pursued in chapter 14 (1928a: 131-158), after Rubin had specified the essential role played by the general equivalent (chapter 13). The exchange of cloth for gold “equalises” the labour of the tailor and that of the producer of gold, and the former “is thus also equalised and connected with all concrete forms of labour. Equalised with them as a form of labour equal to them, the labour of the tailor is transformed from concrete to general or abstract. Being connected with the others in the unified system of total social labour, the labour of the tailor is transformed from private to social labour. The comprehensive equalisation (through money) of all concrete forms of labour and their transformation into abstract labour simultaneously creates among them a social connection, transforming private into social labour” (Rubin, 1928a: 129-30).16 Here the sociological approach prevails, and the quantitative determination is, in turn, problematic. Faced with these difficulties, Rubin’s trouble becomes visible when he tries to answer his opponents (Rubin, 1928a: 147ff.). To the question 16

It is also possible to find intermediary formulations in which social labour seems to refer to the totality of the expended labour, and abstract labour to the fraction which is validated through exchange. “Abstract labour is the designation for that part of the total social labour which was equalised in the process of social division of labour through the equation of the products of labour on the market” (Rubin, 1927: 118).

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of whether abstract labour, defined as a “social substance”, can receive a quantitative determination, he simply reaffirms his position,17 and the parallel he draws with the measure of labour (equally problematic) in a socialist society remains unconvincing. As for the question of the role of exchange, he tries to overcome it with a distinction between exchange proper — a step succeeding the production process — and exchange in general, the structure of a commodity society.18 Abstract labour would result from the second meaning, and would exist prior to the first. However, Rubin cannot help but add that this pre-existence is finally only virtual and “still subject to very rough verification in the process of exchange” (1928a: 150) in the first meaning of the word. And he specifies: “All of these statements show that we must not think of the problem too literally” (1928a: 151). Here one may beg to differ. If the problem is to be solved, it is only by taking seriously and literally Marx’s statements, neglecting none of them. This is the price to pay to understand his discourse and reconstruct its possible coherence — thus discarding any over-simplifying discourse that only selects suitable passages. But it is true that this consistency does not necessarily imply the cohesion of the various statements it is formed of. It seems, however, that the logic initiated by Hilferding and interrupted after Rubin led to this reappraisal. Perhaps the one proposed in another publication, of which the present historical note forms the complement, is not the only possible one. This is possible, and even probable: but, at least, one should finally take seriously the many questions raised during the years 1883-1933. Even if in a confused way, they express real difficulties that only dogmatism could conceal.19 17 “Abstract labour means ‘social determination of labour’, and value, the social property of the product of labour” (Rubin, 1928a: 152). 18 19

See Rubin, 1928a: 149-51.

Only one aspect — essential, it is true — of Rubin’s thought is examined here. Some other problems, such as the dialectical deduction of the concepts in Capital, are left aside: they are dealt with in Faccarello, 1983, chapters 15 and 16. Note also that, if Rubin reasons on value and “simple commodity production”, while rejecting Engels’s historical interpretation, it is because, for him, this theme has a logical status. For

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References Backhaus, Hans-Georg (1967). Zur Dialektik der Wertform. In Alfred Schmidt (ed.), Beiträge zur marxistischen Erkenntnistheorie, second edition, 1970, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 128-152. As in H.G. Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur Marxschen Ökonomiekritik, Freiburg: Ca Ira Verlag, 1997, 41-64. Besnier, Bernard (1976).

Conrad Schmidt et les débuts de la littérature

économique ‘marxiste’. In [Auctores varii], Histoire du Marxisme Contemporain, Paris: UGE 10/18, 1976, volume 1, 383-445. Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von (1884). Kapital und Kapitalzins. Erste Abtheilung: Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorien. Innsbrück: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1884. English translation by William Smart, Capital and Interest. A Critical History of Economical Theory, London: Macmillan, 1890. —— (1896). Zum Abschluss des Marxschen System. in Otto von Boenigk (ed.), Staatswissenschaftliche Arbeiten. Festgaben für Karl Knies, Berlin: Haering, 1896, 87-205. English translation by Alice M. Macdonald and Paul M. Sweezy, Karl Marx and the Close of his System, in Paul Marlor Sweezy (ed.), Karl Marx and the Close of his System, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949, 1-118. Bukharin, Nikolai (1919). The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class. English translation, New York: International Publishers, 1927. Colletti, Lucio (1968). Bernstein e il marxismo della seconda internazionale. Introduction to Eduard Bernstein, Socialismo e Socialdemocrazia, Bari: Laterza. English translation by John Merrington and Judith White, Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International, in L. Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin. Studies in Ideology and Society, New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1972, 45-108. —— (1969). Il Marxismo e Hegel. Bari: Laterza. English translation of Part some other views on the Essays, see for example Colliot-Thélène (1979), NeusüssFögen (1973), Perlman (1972), Projekt Klassenanalyse (1975), and A. Cutler et alii (1977).

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II by Lawrence Garner, Marxism and Hegel, London: New Left Books (NLB), 1973. Colliot-Thélène, Catherine (1975). Contribution à une analyse des classes sociales. Critique de l’Économie Politique, 19, 27-47, and 21, 93-126. —— (1979). Afterword. In I. I. Rubin, A History of Economic Thought, English translation by Donald Filtzer, London: Ink Links, 385-431. Cutler, Antony, Barry Hindess, Paul Hirst, and Athar Hussain (1977). Marx’s Capital and Capitalism Today. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dostaler, Gilles (1978). Valeur et prix: histoire d’un débat. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble and François Maspéro. Engels, Friedrich (1895). Ergänzung und Nachtrag zum III. Buche des Kapitals. English translation by David Fernbach, Supplement and Addendum to Volume III of Capital, in K. Marx, Capital, Volume 3, London: Penguin Books and New Left Review, 1027-47. Faccarello, Gilbert (1981). KarI Marx et la problématique des prix naturels. Revue d’Économie Politique, 91(4), 373-397. —— (1982). L’échec de Marx: pour rouvrir un débat. Cahiers d’Économie Politique, 8, 65-85. —— (1983). Travail, valeur et prix. Une critique de la théorie de la valeur. Paris: Anthropos. Finzi, Roberto (ed.) (1977). Neo-Ricardiana: Sraffa e Graziadei. Bologna: Il Mulino. Hilferding, Rudolf (1904). Böhm-Bawerks Marx-Kritik. in Max Adler and Rudolph Hilferding (eds), Marx Studien. Blätter für Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus, I, 1904, 1–61.

English translation, Böhm-

Bawerk’s Criticism of Marx, in Paul Marlor Sweezy (ed.), Karl Marx and the Close of his System, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949, 119-196. —— (1910). Das Finanzkapital. Eine Studie über die jüngste Entwicklung des Kapitalismus. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung Ignaz Brand (Marx-Studien, vol. III), 1910. English translation by Morris Watnick and Sam Gordon, Finance Capital. A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist De-

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velopment, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Luxemburg, Rosa (1913). Die Akkumulation des Kapitals. Berlin: Buchhandlung Vorwärts Paul Singer. English translation by Nicholas Gray, The Accumulation of Capital, in The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Vol. II, Economic Writings II, edited by Peter Hudis and Paul Le Blanc, London and New York: Verso, 2015, 1-342. —— (1925). Einführung in die Nationalökonomie. English translation by David Fernbach, Introduction to Political Economy, in The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Vol. I, Economic Writings I, edited by Peter Hudis, London and New York: Verso, 2013, 89-300. Marx, Karl (1862-1874). Letters to Dr. Kugelmann. London: Martin Lawrence, 1934. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels (1892-1895). Collected Works. Digital edition, Vol. 50, Letters 1892-1895. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010. Neusüss-Fögen, Annette (1973).

Einleitung.

In I. I. Rubin, Studien zur

Marxschen Werttheorie, Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1973, 7-30. Perlman, Fredy (1972). Introduction. In I. I. Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, English translation by Miloš Sarmardźija and Fredy Perlman, 1972, Detroit: Black & Red, ix-xxxviii. Petry, Franz (1915). Der soziale Gehalt der Marxschen Werttheorie. Iena: Gustav Fischer. Projekt KIassenanalyse (1975). Zur Debatte über das System der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie in der UdSSR. In I. I. Rubin, S. A. Bessonow et alii, Dialektik der Kategorien, Berlin: Verlag für das Studium der Arbeiterbewegung (VSA), 1975, 137-190. Rubin, Isaak Illich (1927). Abstraktny trud i stoimost w systeme Marksa. Pod Znamenem Marksizma, 6, 88-119. English translation by Kathleen Gilbert, Abstract Labour and Value in Marx’s System, Capital and Class, July 1978, 109-139. —— (1928a). Ocherki po teorii stoimosti Marksa. Third edition, Moscow and

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Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdate. English translation by Miloš Sarmardźija and Fredy Perlman, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, New York: Black & Red, 1972. —— (1928b). Ocherki po teorii stoimosti Marksa. Third edition, Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdate. French translation from the English edition by Jean-Jacques Bonhomme, Essais sur la théorie de la valeur de Marx, Paris: François Maspéro, 1978. —— (1929a). Istoriya ekonomicheskoi mysli. Second edition, Moscow: Gosizdat RSFSR. English translation by Donald Filtzer, A History of Economic Thought, London: Ink Links, 1979. —— (1929b).

Dialekticheskoe razvitie kategorii v ekonomicheskoi sisteme

Marksa. Probleme Ekonomiki, 4/5. German translation by Eva Mayer and Peter Gerlinghoff, Die dialektische Entwicklung der Kategorien im Ökonomischen System von Marx, in I. I. Rubin, S. A. Bessonow et alii, Dialektik der Kategorien, Berlin: Verlag für das Studium der Arbeiterbewegung (VSA), 1975, 55-68 and debate, 68-135.