I find the third, and decisive, weakness of the theory of value to be the overgeneralization of a specific case of the subsumption of the lifeworld under the system. Even if we trace the dynamics of class conflict back to the "fundamental contradiction" between wage labor and capital, processes of reification need not appear only in the sphere in which they were caused-in the sphere of social labor. As we have seen, the economy steered by money depends on being functionally supplemented by an administrative system differentiated out via the medium of power. Thus, formally organized domains of action are able to absorb communicative contexts of life through both media-money and power. The process of reification can manifest itself just as well in public as in private domains, and in the latter areas it can attach to consumer as well as to occupational roles. By contrast, the theory of value allows for only one channel through which the monetarization of labor power expropriates from producers work activities abstracted into performances. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.342

There is in the action-theoretic foundations of the theory of value an error similar to the one found in Weber and in two lines of Weber reception, Western Marxism and Parsons: the model of purposive rationality is viewed as fundamental for social action as well. Marx was unable to conceive the transformation of concrete into abstract labor as a special case of the systemically induced reification of social relations in general because he started from the model of the purposive actor who, along with his products, is robbed of the possibility of developing his essential powers. The theory of value is carried through in action-theoretic concepts that make it necessary to approach the genesis of reification below the level of interaction, and to treat as derived phenomena the de-formation of interaction relations themselves-the deworlding of communicative action that is transferred over to media and the technicizing of the lifeworld that follows upon this. "The one-sided interpretation of basic action concepts, according to which action can be understood only as productive-objectifying activity, takes its revenge in underestimating the extent of neutralization that comes with the reduction of abstract labor. Marx is too harmless, in categorial terms, when it comes to determining the neutralizations of action required for system integration” Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.342

Marx was right to assign an evolutionary primacy to the economy in such societies: the problems in this subsystem determine the path of development of the society as a whole. But this primacy should not mislead us into tailoring the complementary relationship between the economy and the state apparatus to a trivial notion of base and superstructure. As opposed to the monism of the theory of value, we have to allow for two steering media and four channels through which the two complementary subsystems subject the lifeworld to their imperatives. Reification effects can result in like manner from the bureaucratization and monetarization of public and private areas of life. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.343

As against these revolutionary expectations, Weber's prognosis has proven correct: the abolition of private capitalism would not at all mean the destruction of the iron cage of modem industrial labor. Marx's error stems in the end from dialectically clamping together system and lifeworld in a way that does not allow for a sufficiently sharp separation between the level of system differentiation attained in the modern period and the class-specific forms in which it has been institutionalized Marx did not withstand the temptations of Hegelian totality-thinking; he construed the unity of system and lifeworld dialectically as an "untrue whole:' Otherwise he could not have failed to see that every modem society, whatever its class structure, has to exhibit a high degree of structural differentiation. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.340

Marx's misperception also has consequences for his theory of revolution. He does not want merely to describe how the systemically autonomous process of capital's self-realization is experienced from the lifeworld perspective of the wage laborer as a continual exploitation, how the subsumption of labor power under the commodity form tears the workers out of their traditional conditions of life, uproots feudal modes of existence in a plebian fashion, and then shapes them into proletarian forms. Rather, he projects a practical-political perspective for action, which, in its assumptions, is exactly contrary to the perspective tacitly adopted by systems functionalism. Systems theory presupposes that the world-historical process of instrumentalizing the lifeworld, particularly the sphere of social labor, in line with the imperatives of self-regulating systems - the process that Marx denounces-has already come to a close. The marginalized lifeworld can, it is supposed, survive only if it transforms itself in tum into a media-steered subsystem and leaves be- hind the communicative practice of everyday life as the empty shell of formally organized domains of action. As opposed to this, Marx has in view a future state of affairs in which the objective semblance of capital has dissolved and the lifeworld, which had been held captive under the dictates of the law of value, gets back its spontaneity. He foresees that the forces of the industrial proletariat, at first merely in revolt, will, under the leadership of a theoretically enlightened avant-garde, form them- selves into a movement that seizes political power for the purpose of revolutionizing society. Along with the private ownership of the means of production, the movement will also destroy the institutional foundations of the medium through which the capitalist economic system was differentiated out, and will bring the systemically autonomous process of economic growth back again into the horizon of the lifeworld. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.339-340

System and lifeworld appear in Marx under the metaphors of the "realm of necessity" and the "realm of freedom:· The socialist revolution is to free the latter from the dictates of the former. It seems as if theoretical critique has only to lift the spell cast by abstract labor (subsumed under the commodity form). The intersubjectivity ofworkers associated in large industries is crippled under the self-movement of capital; theo- retical critique has only to free it of its stiffness for an avant-garde to mobilize living-critically enlivened-labor against dead labor and to lead it to the triumph of the lifeworld over the system of deworlded labor power. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.340

This new equilibrium between normalized occupational roles and upgraded consumer roles is, as we have seen, the result of a welfare arrangement that comes about under the legitimation conditions of mass democracy. The theory of value was wrong to ignore the interchange relations between the political system and the lifeworld. For the pacification of the sphere of social labor is only the counterpart to an equilibrium established on the other side, between an expanded, but at the same time neutralized, citizen's role and blown-up client's role. The establishment of basic political rights in the framework of mass democracy means, on the one hand, a universalization of the role of citizen and, on the other hand, a segmenting of this role from the decision-making process, a cleansing of political participation from any participatory content. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.342

For Marx, this development toward a disenchanting "science" was theoretically and historically progressive. Adorno may have said more than he realized when he sardonically accused Marx of wanting to turn the whole world into a factory. For Marxian theory, the reduction of concrete labor into abstract labor is a historical as well as theoretical de­sideratum. Abstract labor may be a creature of capitalism but, like capi­talism itself, it is a necessary "moment" in the dialectic of history. Not only is it a medium for rendering exchange ratios possible on an exten­sive scale, but, from an even larger perspective, it becomes part of the technical substrate of freedom. By its very plasticity, abstract labor ren­ders human activity interchangeable, the rotation of industrial tasks possible, and the use of machinery flexible. Its capacity to flow through the veins of industry as mere undifferentiated human energy renders the manipulation and reduction of the working day possible and, con­ currently, the expansion of the "realm of freedom" at the expense of the "realm of necessity." If Marx's communism was meant to be a "society of artists," he was not prepared to recognize that the colors on their can­vases might be limited to varying tints of gray. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, p.230

To Marx, both the labor process and the cerebral design that guides it are essentially utilitarian: they have an irreducible technical ground, a modus operandi, that acquires the neutrality and rigor of scientific lawful­ ness. While their effectiveness may be enhanced or diminished by his­ tory, the design and the labor processes that execute it are to him ulti­mately a physical interaction. Indeed, without such an underlying, socially neutral interaction, Marx's theory of "historical materialism"­ with its deus ex machina called the "means of production"- would be as meaningless in Marxian social theory as Hegel's ruthless teleological system would be without the Hegelian notion of "Spirit." Both systems must be moved by something that is not itself bogged down in the con­tingent. Hence the design process and the labor process are necessarily equipped with a suprahistorical refuge from which they can preside over history-and into which Marx retreats from time to time with all the second thoughts that riddle so much of his theoretical corpus. That Marx and many of his Victorian contemporaries disparaged "nature idolatry" in extremely harsh terms is not accidental. The Ro­ mantic movement of the nineteenth century echoed a much broader and ancient sensibility: the view that production should be a symbiotic, not an antagonistic, process. Although the movement was primarily aesthetic, it combined with anarchist theories of mutualism - notably Kro­potkin's extraordinarily prescient writings-to ferret out a much broader "natural design": a "marriage" between labor and nature that was con­ceived not as a patriarchal domination of "man" over nature but as a productive relationship based on harmony, fertility, and creativity. Lib­ertarian and aesthetic movements in the nineteenth century were still heir to the image of a fecund interaction between humanity's craft and nature's potentialities. But labor was seen not as "fire," or industry as a "furnace." The imagery of these movements was drastically different. Labor was viewed as the midwife, and tools as the aids, in delivering nature's offspring: use-values. Such a view implied that the very "imagination" in which the "ar­chitect raises his structure" is socially and ethically derivative . Perceived reality involves an epistemology of domination-or liberation-that cannot be reduced to technical grounds alone. Hence the design images of production, the very figures reared in the minds of engineers, archi­tects, artisans, or laborers, are not socially or ethically neutral. There is no irreducible technical ground from which to formulate a value-free theory of technics and of labor. The images of labor as "fire" and of natural phenomena as enshrouded by a "death-sleep" are formed from the visual reservoir of a highly domineering sensibility. The imagery of modern technical design has its origins in the epistemologies of rule; it has been formed over a long period of time by our very specific way of "knowing" the world-both one another and nature-a way that finds its ultimate apotheosis in industrial agriculture, mass production, and bureaucracy. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, p.227-228

"Natural scarcity," "property," and "rule" thus persist in the very name of the critique of class society, exploitation, private property, and the acquisition of wealth. By veiling the primordial blood oath that con­strains the development of hierarchy and domination into class society, economic exploitation, and property, the class critique merely replaces the constraints of kinship with the constraints of economics instead of transcending both to a higher realm of freedom. It reconstitutes bour­geois right by leaving property unchallenged by usufruct, rule unchal­lenged by nonhierarchical relationships, and scarcity unchallenged by an abundance from which an ethical selectivity of needs can be derived. The more critical substrate of usufruct, reciprocity, and the irreducible minimum is papered over by a less fundamental critique: the critique of private property, of injustice in the distribution of the means of life, and of an unfair return for labor. Marx's own critique of justice in his remarks on the Gotha Program remains one of the most important contributions he made to radical social theory, but its economistic limitations are evi­dent in the tenor of the work as a whole. Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, p.87

That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter sells is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value. Marx, Capital Volume 1 (Progress Publishers, 1887), p.379

The capitalist who produces surplus-value – i.e., who extracts unpaid labour directly from the labourers, and fixes it in commodities, is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to share it with capitalists, with landowners, etc., who fulfill other functions in the complex of social production. Surplus-value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its fragments fall to various categories of persons, and take various forms, independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants’ profit, rent, &c. It is only in Book III. that we can take in hand these modified forms of surplus-value. On the one hand, then, we assume that the capitalist sells at their value the commodities he has produced, without concerning ourselves either about the new forms that capital assumes while in the sphere of circulation, or about the concrete conditions of reproduction hidden under these forms. On the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner of the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the representative of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, therefore, first of all consider accumulation from an abstract point of view – i.e., as a mere phase in the actual process of production. So far as accumulation takes place, the capitalist must have succeeded in selling his commodities, and in reconverting the sale-money into capital. Moreover, the breaking-up of surplus-value into fragments neither alters its nature nor the conditions under which it becomes an element of accumulation. Whatever be the proportion of surplus-value which the industrial capitalist retains for himself, or yields up to others, he is the one who, in the first instance, appropriates it. We, therefore, assume no more than what actually takes place. On the other hand, the simple fundamental form of the process of accumulation is obscured by the incident of the circulation which brings it about, and by the splitting up of surplus-value. An exact analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we should, for a time, disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner mechanism. Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (Progress Publishers, 1887), p.400

Such a fall in the value of labor-power [from 10 work-hours to 9 work-hours] implies, however, that the same necessaries of life which were formerly produced in ten hours can now be produced in nine hours. […] and this cannot be done, except by an alteration in his tools or in his mode of working, or in both. Hence, the conditions of production, i.e., his mode of production, and the labour process itself, must be revolutionised. By increase in the productiveness of labour, we mean, generally, an alteration in the labour process, of such a kind as to shorten the labour time socially necessary for the production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity of labour with the power of producing a greater quantity of use value. Hitherto in treating of surplus value, arising from a simple prolongation of the working day, we have assumed the mode of production to be given and invariable. But when surplus value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary labour into surplus labour, it by no means suffices for capital to take over the labour process in the form under which it has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the duration of that process. The technical and social conditions of the process, and consequently the very mode of production must be revolutionised, before the productiveness of labour can be increased. By that means alone can the value of labour power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day necessary for the reproduction of that value, be shortened. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 35 (International Publishers), p.319-320

In order to effect a fall in the value of labour power, the increase in the productiveness of labour must seize upon those branches of industry, whose products determine the value of labour power, and consequently either belong to the class of customary means of subsistence, or are capable of supplying the place of those means. But the value of a commodity is determined, not only by the quantity of labour which the labourer directly bestows upon that commodity, but also by the labour contained in the means of production. For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends, not only on the cobbler's labour, but also on the value of the leather, wax, thread, etc. Hence, a fall in the value of labour power is also brought about by an increase in the productiveness of labour, and by a corresponding cheapening of commodities in those industries which supply the instruments of labour and the raw material, that form the material elements of the constant capital required for producing the necessaries of life. But an increase in the productiveness of labour in those branches of industry which supply neither the necessaries of life, nor the means of production for such necessaries, leaves the value of labour power undisturbed. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 35 (International Publishers), p.320

Let us assume, that some invention enables the spinner to spin as much cotton in 6 hours as he was able to spin before in 36 hours. His labor is now six times as effective as it was, for the purposes of useful production. The product of 6 hours’ work was increased six-fold, from 6 lbs to 36 lbs. But now the 36 lbs of cotton absorb only the same amount of labor as formerly did the 6 lbs. One-sixth as much new labor is absorbed by each pound of cotton, and consequently the value added by the labor to each pound is only one-sixth of what it formerly was. On the other hand, in the product, in the 36 lbs of yarn, the value transferred from the cotton is six times as great as before. By the 6 hours’ spinning, the value of raw material preserved and transferred to the product is six times as great as before, although the new value added by the labor of the spinner to each pound of the very same raw material is one-sixth of what it was formerly. This shows that the two properties of labor, by virtue of which it is enabled in one case to preserve value, and on the other to create value, are essentially different. On the one hand, the longer the time necessary to spin a given weight of cotton into yarn, the greater is the new value added to the material; on the other hand, the greater the weight of the cotton spun at a given time, the greater is the value preserved, by being transferred from it to the product. Marx, Capital Volume 1 (Progress Publishers, 1887), p. 143

The exceptionally productive labour operates as intensified labour; it creates in equal periods of time greater values than average social labour of the same kind. […] the capitalist who applies the improved method of production, appropriates to surplus labour a greater portion of the working day, than other capitalists of the same trade. […] On the other hand, however, this extra surplus value vanishes, so soon as the new method of production has become general, and has consequently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the productiveness of labour. And so, too, is the value of labour power, because it depends on the values of commodities. Relative surplus value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling productiveness. […] if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value of the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day's labour power be thereby reduced from five shillings to three, the surplus value increases from one shilling to three. […] Hence there is immanent in capital an inclination and constant tendency, to heighten the productiveness of labour, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the labourer himself. The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the capitalist. What alone interests him, is the surplus value that dwells in it, and is realisable by sale. […] Now, since relative surplus value increases in direct proportion to the development of the productiveness of labour, while, on the other hand, the value of commodities diminishes in the same proportion; since one and the same process cheapens commodities, and augments the surplus value contained in them; we have here the solution of the riddle: why does the capitalist, whose sole concern is the production of exchange value, continually strive to depress the exchange value of commodities? […] The shortening of the working day is, therefore, by no means what is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labour is economised by increasing its productiveness. It is only the shortening of the labour time, necessary for the production of a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. he fact that the workman, when the productiveness of his labour has been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodities as before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labour time on each, by no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from producing in those 12 hours 1,200 articles instead of 120. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 35 (International Publishers), p.323-326

In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value; and vice versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour time required for the production of an article, and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 35 (International Publishers), p.50

The object of all development of the productiveness of labour, within the limits of capitalist production, is to shorten that part of the working day, during which the workman must labour for his own benefit, and by that very shortening, to lengthen the other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 35 (International Publishers), p.326

[…] let some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of labour, and to produce in the working day of 12 hours, 24 instead of 12 such articles. […] If therefore, the capitalist who applies the new method, sells his commodity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for threepence above its individual value, and thus realises an extra surplus value of threepence. […] This augmentation of surplus value is pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class of necessary means of subsistence that participate in determining the general value of labour power. Hence, independently of this latter circumstance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labour. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 35 (International Publishers), p.322-323

In so far as each single transaction invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodities, the capitalist buying labor-power, the laborer selling it, and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all of this is true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labor-power is itself but a portion of the product of other’s labor appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between capitalist and laborer becomes a mere semblance appertaining to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real nature of the transaction, and only mystifying it. The ever-repeated purchase and sale of labor-power is now the mere form; what really takes place is this – the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously materialized labor of others, and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living labor. At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man’s own labor. [...] Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its products, and to be the impossibility, on the part of the laborer, of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labor has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity. Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (Progress Publishers, 1887), p.412-413

In so far as each single transaction invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodities, the capitalist buying labor-power, the laborer selling it, and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all of this is true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labor-power is itself but a portion of the product of other’s labor appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between capitalist and laborer becomes a mere semblance appertaining to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real nature of the transaction, and only mystifying it. The ever-repeated purchase and sale of labor-power is now the mere form; what really takes place is this – the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously materialized labor of others, and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living labor. At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man’s own labor. [...] Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its products, and to be the impossibility, on the part of the laborer, of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labor has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity. Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (Progress Publishers, 1887), p.412-413

To be sure, the matter looks quite different if we consider capitalist production in the uninterrupted flow of its renewal, and if, in place of the individual capitalist and the individual worker, we view in their totality, the capitalist class and the working class confronting each other. But in so doing we should be applying standards entirely foreign to commodity production. Only buyer and seller, mutually independent, face each other in commodity production. The relations between them cease on the day when the term stipulated in the contract they concluded expires. If the transaction is repeated, it is repeated as the result of a new agreement which has nothing to do with the previous one and which only by chance brings the same seller together again with the same buyer. 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 connexion 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 seek here for relations between whole social classes. However long a series of periodical reproductions and preceding accumulations the capital functioning today may have passed through, it always preserves its original virginity. So long as the laws of exchange are observed in every single act of exchange the mode of appropriation can be completely revolutionised without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production. These 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 labour, and also 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 continually and ever afresh the unpaid labour of others. This result becomes inevitable from the moment there is a free sale, by the labourer himself, of labour-power as a commodity. But it is also only from then onwards that commodity production is generalised and becomes the typical form of production; it is only from then onwards that, from the first, every product is produced for sale and all wealth produced goes through the sphere of circulation. Only when and where wage labour is its basis does commodity production impose itself upon society as a whole; but only then and there also does it unfold all its hidden potentialities. To say that the supervention of wage labour adulterates commodity production is to say that commodity production must not develop if it is to remain unadulterated. To the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further, into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production change into the laws of capitalist appropriation. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, p.414-415