Dialogus - Karl Marx

Adam Smith

campbebf@bc.edu
Despite the discouraging web page written in French I hope this message can be read. I am curious as to how Adam Smith influenced Marx regarding views on labor. I recognize that many of Marx's ideas differ greatly from Adam Smith yet there are points that Adam Smith recognized regarding the problems with industrial work and Marx takes one step farther. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

campbebf@bc.edu
What is the status of the e-mail I wrote on the 16th of March? I understand that Mr. Marx is busy but I hope he did not forget about my question regarding marxian and smithian views on labor. Have a wonderful nite or morning depending on when this email is received. Now I am going to bed. Good nite

Jenny Marx
Mister,

Mister Engels is working on a response to you. That involves litterally cleaning Karl's office and re-organising the scattered materials of volume 2 and 3 of his political economy. Mister Engels needs at least another week. Karl refuses to answer to your problem, claiming that the part of Das Capital titled "the Division of Labour in Manufactures" provides already the core of the answer to your question. Mister Engels, and I tend to agree with him, considers that we should not begin to answer to the correspondants of Dialogue with pedantic references to our published works. But since Karl refuses to collaborate, we need a little more time to organise an answer that will suit you. Thank you for your admirable patience vis a vis our small difficulties. Mister Dumontais is aware that some questions are longer to answer than others and, I dare imagine, supports us in that regrettable delaying. You will hear from us very soon.

Sincerely yours,

Jenny Marx, née von Westphalen

Laura Lafargue
Dear Mister Campbell

Mister Engels is still struggling to produce an answer to your delicate problem. Father is not exactly cooperative, and we think we owe you an explanation on the delicacy of the situation. Father is very reluctant to acknowledge any scientificity to the Physiocrats and to Smith. He, as you certainly know, attributes to Ricardo the introduction of some scientific accuracy in political economy, with the definition of the notion of value for example. But Smith, to him, is mainly pre-scientific. When Father observes that you address the notion of the influence of Adam Smith on his works as if it was business as usual, he gets very upset, and he gives us statements like: "To entertain the hypothesis on which that intervention is grounded slides me on the slope leading back to vulgar economy". Rejecting the postulate of a direct influence of Smith on his works, Father considers your intervention as one of these 20th century manifestations of the minimisation of the originality of his critical vision of political economy, symptomatic of the powerful bourgeois reflux in your epoch. Mister Engels shares that analysis, but considers that your intervention is worth an answer. He said to Father that a brief description of the influence of Smith on Marx on labor could be done as a sort of mirror effect of the description he (Mister Engels) made in 1875 of the influence of Marx on Eugen Duhring. Father was not even amused by the idea. Consequently, Mister Engels has to "elaborate" and "negociate" his text at the same time. That is a slow process. We are all very sorry for keeping you waiting like that.

Thank you immensely for your remarquable patience. You will hear from Mister Engels as soon as possible. Accept the expression of my most respectful salutations.

Laura Lafargue, née Marx

Friedrich Engels
Mister Campbell,

I believe the history of economical ideas will owe you something because of that question you raised about the influence of Adam Smith on Marx on the notion of labour. After finally cooling off on the matter, Marx has rediscussed the whole question with me. These new discussions lead him to the following important decision: he will include somewhere in the second volume of his political economy a chapter to be titled something like FORMER PRESENTATIONS OF THE SUBJECT, where he will review the conceptions on the reproduction and circulation of the Total Social Capital of the main economists of the classical tradition: Quesnay, Smith & Company. I finally surrendered to his argument. It is not acceptable to speak of an "influence" of Smith on the critical synthesis made by Marx. Since I surrendered, Marx surrendered too, and decided to write himself to you, explaining in what way Smith's theory of labour is not compatible with his vision of the question.

Thank you for that highly fruitful and influential intervention, and for your superb patience.

Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx
Mister,

Thank you for your question. The idea of an influence I would owe to Adam Smith on the theory of labour is not acceptable. The matter stands as follows:

1) Adam Smith defines the value of a commodity by the amount of labour that the wage-labourer 'adds' to the object of labour. He says in fact 'to the materials', as he is dealing with manufacture, which works up what are already products of labour; but this in no way affects the matter in hand. The value that the worker adds to a thing (and this 'adds' is our Adam's own expression) is quite independent of whether the object to which the value is added already has value before this addition, or whether it does not. The worker therefore creates a value in the commodity form. According to Adam Smith this is on the one hand an equivalent for his wage; this part being therefore determined by the value of the wage; depending on whether this is higher or lower, the value he has added here by his labour is in this respect that needed to produce or reproduce his wage. Another part, however, is added by the worker by further labour above this limit, and forms surplus-value for his capitalist employer. Whether this surplus-value remains entirely in the hands of the capitalist, or is partially taken off him by third parties, does not in the least affect either the qualitative determination of the surplus-value added by the wage-labourer (that it is all surplus-value), or its quantitative determination (the amount). It is value just the same as any value component of the product, simply distinguished by the fact that the worker has not received any equivalent for it, and does not receive one subsequently, for this value is instead appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent. The overall value of the commodity is determined by the amount of labour that the worker has spent in his production. One part of this total value is characterized as being equal to the value of the wage, i.e. an equivalent for wages. The second part, therefore, the surplus-value, is necessarily characterized, by the same token, as being equal to the total value of the product minus the value component that is the equivalent for the wage; i.e. equal to the excess value created in the production of the commodity over the value component contained in it that is the equivalent for wages.

2) What holds for a commodity produced in a single capitalist business by some individual worker holds also for the annual product of all branches of industry taken together. What applies to the day's labour of an individual productive worker applies also to the annual labour performed by the entire class of productive workers. This class 'fixes' (Smith's expression) in the annual product a total value determined by the amount of labour annually expended, and this total value breaks down into one part determined by that portion of the annual labour in which the working class creates an equivalent for its annual wage, in point of fact this wage itself, and another part determined by the additional annual labour in which the workers create a surplus-value for the capitalist class. The annual value product contained in the annual product thus consists of only two elements, the equivalent for the annual wage received by the working class and the surplus value annually supplied to the capitalist class. But the wage forms the revenue of the working class, and the annual sum of surplus-value the revenue of the capitalist class; the two therefore represent (and this viewpoint is correct where it is a matter of depicting simple reproduction) the relative share in the annual consumption fund, and are realized in it. There is therefore no room left for the constant capital value, for the reproduction of the capital functioning in the form of means of production. However, Adam Smith expressly says in the Introduction to his Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations that the parts of the commodity value that function together as revenue coincide with the annual product destined for the social consumption fund:

To explain in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people, or what has been the nature of those funds which... have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of these Four first Books (p. 106).

And in the very first sentence of this introduction, he states:

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consists always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations (p. 104).

Smith's first error, then, is to equate the value of the annual product with the annual value product. The latter is simply the product of the current year's labour; the former includes, on top of this, all those elements of value that were used in the production of this annual product, but which were produced in the previous year and partly in still earlier years; means of production whose value only re-appears - and which, as far as their value is concerned, have been neither produced nor reproduced by the labour spent during the current year. This confusion enables Adam Smith to juggle away the constant component in the value of the annual product. The confusion is itself based on a further error in his fundamental conception. He does not distinguish the two-fold character of labour itself: labour that creates value, by the expenditure of labour-power, and labour that creates objects of use (use-values) as concrete useful labour. The total sum of commodities annually produced, i.e. the total annual product, is the product of the useful labour operating in the current year; it is only by the social application of labour in an intricate system of varieties of useful labour that all these commodities have come into being; it is only in this way that the value of the means of production used up in their production is retained in their total value, and reappears in a new natural form. The total annual product is thus the result of the useful labour expanded during the year; but only one part of the value of this product has been created during the year; this part of the annual value product, which represents the amount of labour actually performed during the year itself.

When therefore, Smith says in the passage just quoted: The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, etc., he one-sidedly adopts the standpoint of useful labour, It is this, to be sure, that has brought all these means of subsistence into their consumable form. He forgets, here, however, that this would have been impossible without the collaboration of means of labour and objects of labour handed down from earlier years, and that the 'annual labour' therefore, in as much as it forms value, has in no way created the entire value of the products prepared by it; that the value produced is smaller than the value of the product. I cannot share that position, or even be "influenced" by it...

From several points of view, as my daughter Laura previously mentioned it to you, Adam Smith is far more pre-scientific than the Physiocrats. The case for labour is just one small example. I hope this is of help to you.

All yours,

Karl Heinrich Marx

				Adam Smith




campbebf@bc.edu				Despite the discouraging web page written in French I hope this message can be read. I am curious as to how Adam Smith influenced Marx regarding views on labor. I recognize that many of Marx's ideas differ greatly from Adam Smith yet there are points that Adam Smith recognized regarding the problems with industrial work and Marx takes one step farther. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you


campbebf@bc.edu				What is the status of the e-mail I wrote on the 16th of March? I understand that Mr. Marx is busy but I hope he did not forget about my question regarding marxian and smithian views on labor. Have a wonderful nite or morning depending on when this email is received. Now I am going to bed. Good nite


Jenny Marx				Mister, Mister Engels is working on a response to you. That involves litterally cleaning Karl's office and re-organising the scattered materials of volume 2 and 3 of his political economy. Mister Engels needs at least another week. Karl refuses to answer to your problem, claiming that the part of Das Capital titled "the Division of Labour in Manufactures" provides already the core of the answer to your question. Mister Engels, and I tend to agree with him, considers that we should not begin to answer to the correspondants of Dialogue with pedantic references to our published works. But since Karl refuses to collaborate, we need a little more time to organise an answer that will suit you. Thank you for your admirable patience vis a vis our small difficulties. Mister Dumontais is aware that some questions are longer to answer than others and, I dare imagine, supports us in that regrettable delaying. You will hear from us very soon. Sincerely yours, Jenny Marx, née von Westphalen


Laura Lafargue				Dear Mister Campbell Mister Engels is still struggling to produce an answer to your delicate problem. Father is not exactly cooperative, and we think we owe you an explanation on the delicacy of the situation. Father is very reluctant to acknowledge any scientificity to the Physiocrats and to Smith. He, as you certainly know, attributes to Ricardo the introduction of some scientific accuracy in political economy, with the definition of the notion of value for example. But Smith, to him, is mainly pre-scientific. When Father observes that you address the notion of the influence of Adam Smith on his works as if it was business as usual, he gets very upset, and he gives us statements like: "To entertain the hypothesis on which that intervention is grounded slides me on the slope leading back to vulgar economy". Rejecting the postulate of a direct influence of Smith on his works, Father considers your intervention as one of these 20th century manifestations of the minimisation of the originality of his critical vision of political economy, symptomatic of the powerful bourgeois reflux in your epoch. Mister Engels shares that analysis, but considers that your intervention is worth an answer. He said to Father that a brief description of the influence of Smith on Marx on labor could be done as a sort of mirror effect of the description he (Mister Engels) made in 1875 of the influence of Marx on Eugen Duhring. Father was not even amused by the idea. Consequently, Mister Engels has to "elaborate" and "negociate" his text at the same time. That is a slow process. We are all very sorry for keeping you waiting like that. Thank you immensely for your remarquable patience. You will hear from Mister Engels as soon as possible. Accept the expression of my most respectful salutations. Laura Lafargue, née Marx


Friedrich Engels				Mister Campbell, I believe the history of economical ideas will owe you something because of that question you raised about the influence of Adam Smith on Marx on the notion of labour. After finally cooling off on the matter, Marx has rediscussed the whole question with me. These new discussions lead him to the following important decision: he will include somewhere in the second volume of his political economy a chapter to be titled something like FORMER PRESENTATIONS OF THE SUBJECT, where he will review the conceptions on the reproduction and circulation of the Total Social Capital of the main economists of the classical tradition: Quesnay, Smith & Company. I finally surrendered to his argument. It is not acceptable to speak of an "influence" of Smith on the critical synthesis made by Marx. Since I surrendered, Marx surrendered too, and decided to write himself to you, explaining in what way Smith's theory of labour is not compatible with his vision of the question. Thank you for that highly fruitful and influential intervention, and for your superb patience. Friedrich Engels


Karl Marx				Mister, Thank you for your question. The idea of an influence I would owe to Adam Smith on the theory of labour is not acceptable. The matter stands as follows: 1) Adam Smith defines the value of a commodity by the amount of labour that the wage-labourer 'adds' to the object of labour. He says in fact 'to the materials', as he is dealing with manufacture, which works up what are already products of labour; but this in no way affects the matter in hand. The value that the worker adds to a thing (and this 'adds' is our Adam's own expression) is quite independent of whether the object to which the value is added already has value before this addition, or whether it does not. The worker therefore creates a value in the commodity form. According to Adam Smith this is on the one hand an equivalent for his wage; this part being therefore determined by the value of the wage; depending on whether this is higher or lower, the value he has added here by his labour is in this respect that needed to produce or reproduce his wage. Another part, however, is added by the worker by further labour above this limit, and forms surplus-value for his capitalist employer. Whether this surplus-value remains entirely in the hands of the capitalist, or is partially taken off him by third parties, does not in the least affect either the qualitative determination of the surplus-value added by the wage-labourer (that it is all surplus-value), or its quantitative determination (the amount). It is value just the same as any value component of the product, simply distinguished by the fact that the worker has not received any equivalent for it, and does not receive one subsequently, for this value is instead appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent. The overall value of the commodity is determined by the amount of labour that the worker has spent in his production. One part of this total value is characterized as being equal to the value of the wage, i.e. an equivalent for wages. The second part, therefore, the surplus-value, is necessarily characterized, by the same token, as being equal to the total value of the product minus the value component that is the equivalent for the wage; i.e. equal to the excess value created in the production of the commodity over the value component contained in it that is the equivalent for wages. 2) What holds for a commodity produced in a single capitalist business by some individual worker holds also for the annual product of all branches of industry taken together. What applies to the day's labour of an individual productive worker applies also to the annual labour performed by the entire class of productive workers. This class 'fixes' (Smith's expression) in the annual product a total value determined by the amount of labour annually expended, and this total value breaks down into one part determined by that portion of the annual labour in which the working class creates an equivalent for its annual wage, in point of fact this wage itself, and another part determined by the additional annual labour in which the workers create a surplus-value for the capitalist class. The annual value product contained in the annual product thus consists of only two elements, the equivalent for the annual wage received by the working class and the surplus value annually supplied to the capitalist class. But the wage forms the revenue of the working class, and the annual sum of surplus-value the revenue of the capitalist class; the two therefore represent (and this viewpoint is correct where it is a matter of depicting simple reproduction) the relative share in the annual consumption fund, and are realized in it. There is therefore no room left for the constant capital value, for the reproduction of the capital functioning in the form of means of production. However, Adam Smith expressly says in the Introduction to his Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations that the parts of the commodity value that function together as revenue coincide with the annual product destined for the social consumption fund: To explain in what has consisted the revenue of the great body of the people, or what has been the nature of those funds which... have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of these Four first Books (p. 106). And in the very first sentence of this introduction, he states: The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consists always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations (p. 104). Smith's first error, then, is to equate the value of the annual product with the annual value product. The latter is simply the product of the current year's labour; the former includes, on top of this, all those elements of value that were used in the production of this annual product, but which were produced in the previous year and partly in still earlier years; means of production whose value only re-appears - and which, as far as their value is concerned, have been neither produced nor reproduced by the labour spent during the current year. This confusion enables Adam Smith to juggle away the constant component in the value of the annual product. The confusion is itself based on a further error in his fundamental conception. He does not distinguish the two-fold character of labour itself: labour that creates value, by the expenditure of labour-power, and labour that creates objects of use (use-values) as concrete useful labour. The total sum of commodities annually produced, i.e. the total annual product, is the product of the useful labour operating in the current year; it is only by the social application of labour in an intricate system of varieties of useful labour that all these commodities have come into being; it is only in this way that the value of the means of production used up in their production is retained in their total value, and reappears in a new natural form. The total annual product is thus the result of the useful labour expanded during the year; but only one part of the value of this product has been created during the year; this part of the annual value product, which represents the amount of labour actually performed during the year itself. When therefore, Smith says in the passage just quoted: The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, etc., he one-sidedly adopts the standpoint of useful labour, It is this, to be sure, that has brought all these means of subsistence into their consumable form. He forgets, here, however, that this would have been impossible without the collaboration of means of labour and objects of labour handed down from earlier years, and that the 'annual labour' therefore, in as much as it forms value, has in no way created the entire value of the products prepared by it; that the value produced is smaller than the value of the product. I cannot share that position, or even be "influenced" by it... From several points of view, as my daughter Laura previously mentioned it to you, Adam Smith is far more pre-scientific than the Physiocrats. The case for labour is just one small example. I hope this is of help to you. All yours, Karl Heinrich Marx