Universal pragmatics

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The volume that universal pragmatics appears in

Universal pragmatics (UP), more recently placed under the heading of formal pragmatics, is the philosophical study of the necessary conditions for reaching an understanding through communication. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas coined the term in his essay "What is Universal Pragmatics?" where he suggests that human competition, conflict, and strategic action are attempts to achieve understanding that have failed because of modal confusions. The implication is that coming to terms with how people understand or misunderstand one another could lead to a reduction of social conflict.

By coming to an "understanding," he means at the very least, when two or more social actors share the same meanings about certain words or phrases; and at the very most, when these actors are confident that those meanings fit relevant social expectations (or a "mutually recognized normative background").

For Habermas, the goal of coming to an understanding is "intersubjective mutuality ... shared knowledge, mutual trust, and accord with one another". In other words, the underlying goal of coming to an understanding would help to foster the enlightenment, consensus, and good will necessary for establishing socially beneficial norms. Habermas' goal is not primarily for subjective feeling alone, but for development of shared (intersubjective) norms which in turn establish the social coordination needed for practical action in pursuit of shared and individual objectives (a form of action termed "communicative action").

As an interdisciplinary subject, universal pragmatics draws upon material from a large number of fields, from pragmatics, semantics, semiotics, informal logic, and the philosophy of language, through social philosophy, sociology, and symbolic interactionism, to ethics, especially discourse ethics, and on to epistemology and the philosophy of mind.

History

Universal pragmatics (UP) is part of a larger project to rethink the relationship between philosophy and the individual sciences during a period of social crisis. The project is within the tradition of Critical Theory, a program that traces back to the work of Max Horkheimer.

UP shares with speech act theory, semiotics, and linguistics an interest in the details of language use and communicative action. However, unlike those fields, it insists on a difference between the linguistic data that we observe in the 'analytic' mode, and the rational reconstruction of the rules of symbol systems that each reader/listener possesses intuitively when interpreting strings of words. In this sense, it is an examination of the two ways that language usage can be analyzed: as an object of scientific investigation, and as a 'rational reconstruction' of intuitive linguistic 'know-how'.

Goals and methods

Universal pragmatics is associated with the philosophical method of rational reconstruction.

The basic concern in universal pragmatics is utterances (or speech acts) in general. This is in contrast to most other fields of linguistics, which tend to be more specialized, focusing exclusively on very specific sorts of utterances such as sentences (which in turn are made up of words, morphemes, and phonemes).

For Habermas, the most significant difference between a sentence and an utterance is in that sentences are judged according to how well they make sense grammatically, while utterances are judged according to their communicative validity (see section 1). (1979:31)

Universal pragmatics is also distinct from the field of sociolinguistics, because universal pragmatics is only interested in the meanings of utterances if they have to do with claims about truth or rightness, while sociolinguistics is interested in all utterances in their social contexts. (1979:31, 33)

Three aspects of universal pragmatics

There are three ways to evaluate an utterance, according to UP. There are theories that deal with elementary propositions, theories of first-person sentences, and theories of speech acts.

A theory of elementary propositions investigates those things in the real world that are being referenced by an utterance, and the things that are implied by an utterance, or predicate it. For example, the utterance "The first Prime Minister of Canada" refers to a man who went by the name of Sir John A. Macdonald. And when a speaker delivers the utterance, "My husband is a lawyer", it implies that the speaker is married to a man.

A theory of first-person sentences examines the expression of the intentions of the actor(s) through language and in the first-person.

Finally, a theory of speech acts examines the setting of standards for interpersonal relations through language. The basic goal for speech act theory is to explain how and when utterances in general are performative. (1979:34) Central to the notion of speech acts are the ideas of illocutionary force and perlocutionary force, both terms coined by philosopher J.L. Austin. Illocutionary force describes the intent of the speaker, while perlocutionary force means the effect an utterance has in the world, or more specifically, the effect on others.

A performative utterance is a sentence where an action being performed is done by the utterance itself. For example: "I inform you that you have a moustache", or "I promise you I will not burn down the house". In these cases, the words are also taken as significant actions: the act of informing and promising (respectively).

Habermas adds to this the observation that speech acts can either succeed or fail, depending on whether or not they succeed on influencing another person in the intended way. (1979:35)

This last method of evaluation—the theory of speech acts—is the domain that Habermas is most interested in developing as a theory of communicative action.

Communicative action

There are a number of ways to approach Habermas's project of developing a formal pragmatic analysis of communication. Because Habermas developed it in order to have a normative and philosophical foundation for his critical social theory, most of the inroads into formal pragmatics start from sociology, specifically with what is called action theory. Action theory concerns the nature of human action, especially the manner in which collective actions are coordinated in a functioning society.

The coordination and integration of social action has been explained in many ways by many theories. Rational choice theory and game theory are two examples, which describe the integration of individuals into social groups by detailing the complex manner in which individuals motivated only by self-interest will form mutually beneficial and cooperative social arrangements. In contrast to these, Habermas has formulated a theory of communicative action. (Habermas 1984; 1987) This theory and the project of developing a formal pragmatic analysis of communication are inseparable.

Habermas makes a series of distinctions in the service of explaining social action. The first major differentiation he makes is between two social realms, the system and the lifeworld. These designate two distinct modes of social integration:

• The kind of social integration accomplished in the system is accomplished through the functional integration of the consequences of actions. It bypasses the consciousness of individuals and does not depend upon their being oriented towards acting collectively. Economic and industrial systems are great examples, often producing complex forms of social integration and interdependence despite the openly competitive orientations of individuals.
• The social integration accomplished in the lifeworld, by contrast, depends upon the coordination of action plans and the conscious action-orientations of individuals. It relies on processes of human interaction involving symbolic and cultural forms of meaning. More specifically, as Habermas maintains, the coordination of the lifeworld is accomplished through communicative action.

Thus, communicative action is an indispensable facet of society. It is at the heart of the lifeworld and is, Habermas claims, responsible for accomplishing several fundamental social functions: reaching understanding, cultural reproduction, coordinating action-plans, and socializing individuals.

However, Habermas is quick to note, different modes of interaction can (in some ways) facilitate these social functions and achieve integration within the lifeworld. This points towards the second key distinction Habermas makes, which differentiates communicative action from strategic action. The coordination of action plans, which constitutes the social integration of the lifeworld, can be accomplished either through consensus or influence.

Strategic action is action oriented towards success, while communicative action is action oriented towards understanding. Both involve the symbolic resources of the lifeworld and occur primarily by way of linguistic interaction. On the one hand, actors employing communicative actions draw on the uniquely impelling force of mutual understanding to align the orientation of their action plans. It is this subtle but insistent binding force of communicative interactions that opens the door to an understanding of their meanings. On the other hand, actors employing strategic actions do not exploit the potential of communication that resides in the mutual recognition of a shared action-oriented understanding. Instead strategic actors relate to others with no intention of reaching consensus or mutual understanding, but only the intention of accomplishing pre-determined ends unrelated to reaching an understanding. Strategic action often involves the use of communicative actions to achieve the isolated intentions of individuals, manipulating shared understanding in the service of private interests. Thus, Habermas claims, strategic action is parasitic on communicative action, which means communicative action is the primary mode of linguistic interaction. Reaching a reciprocally defined understanding is communication's basic function.

Keeping in mind this delineation of the object domain, the formal pragmatics of communication can be more readily laid out. The essential insight has already been mentioned, which is that communication is responsible for irreplaceable modes of social integration, and this is accomplished through the unique binding force of a shared understanding. This is, in a sense, the pragmatic piece of formal pragmatics: communication does something in the world. What needs to be explained are the conditions for the possibility of what communication already does. This is, in a sense, the formal piece of formal pragmatics: a rational reconstruction of the deep generative structures that are the universal conditions for the possibility of a binding and compelling mutual understanding.

From here, Habermas heads the analysis in two directions. In one direction is a kind of linguistic analysis (of speech acts), which can be placed under the heading of the validity dimensions of communication. The other direction entails a categorization of the idealized presuppositions of communication.

Communicative competence

Habermas argues that when speakers are communicating successfully, they will have to defend their meaning by using these four claims.

1. That they have uttered something understandably — or their statements are intelligible;
2. That they have given other people something to understand — or are speaking something true;
3. That the speaker is therefore understandable — or their intentions are recognized and appreciated for what they are; and,
4. That they have come to an understanding with another person — or, they have used words that both actors can agree upon. (1979:4)

Habermas is emphatic that these claims are universal—no human communication oriented at achieving mutual understanding could possibly fail to raise all of these validity claims. Additionally, to illustrate that all other forms of communication are derived from that which is oriented toward mutual understanding, he argues that there are no other kinds of validity claims whatsoever. This is important, because it is the basis of Habermas' critique of postmodernism.

The fundamental orientation toward mutual understanding is at the heart of universal pragmatics, as Habermas explains:

"The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding... other forms of social action—for example, conflict, competition, strategic action in general—are derivatives of action oriented toward reaching understanding. Furthermore, since language is the specific medium of reaching understanding at the sociocultural stage of evolution, I want to go a step further and single out explicit speech actions from other forms of communicative action."

Any meaning that meets the above criteria, and is recognized by another as meeting the criteria, is considered "vindicated" or communicatively competent.

In order for anyone to speak validly — and therefore, to have his or her comments vindicated, and therefore reach a genuine consensus and understanding — Habermas notes that a few more fundamental commitments are required. First, he notes, actors have to treat this formulation of validity so seriously that it might be a precondition for any communication at all. Second, he asserts that all actors must believe that their claims are able to meet these standards of validity. And third, he insists that there must be a common conviction among actors that all validity claims are either already vindicated or could be vindicated.

Examining the validity of speech

Habermas claims that communication rests upon a non-egoistic understanding of the world, which is an idea he borrowed from thinkers like Jean Piaget. A subject capable of a de-centered understanding can take up three fundamentally different attitudes to the world. Habermas refers to such attitudes as dimensions of validity. Specifically, this means individuals can recognize different standards for validity—i.e., that the validation of an empirical truth claim requires different methods and procedures than the validation of subjective truthfulness, and that both of those require different methods and procedures of validation than claims to normative rightness.

These dimensions of validity can be summarized as claims to truth (IT), truthfulness (I), and rightness (WE). So the ability to differentiate between the attitudes (and their respective "worlds") mentioned above should be understood as an ability to distinguish between types of validity claims.

M. Cooke provided the only book length treatment of Habermas's communication theory. Cooke explains:

"when we adopt an objectifying attitude we relate, in the first instance to the objective world of facts and existing states of affairs [IT]; when we adopt a norm-conformative attitude we relate, in the first instance, to the social world of normatively regulated interactions [WE]; when we adopt an expressive attitude we relate, in the first instance to the subjective world of inner experience [I]". (Cooke 1994)

This is fundamental to Habermas's analysis of communication. He maintains that the performance of any speech act necessarily makes reference to these dimensions of validity, by raising at least three validity claims.

One way to grasp this idea is to take an inventory of the ways in which an attempt at communication can misfire, the ways a speech act can fail. A hearer may reject the offering of a speech act on the grounds that it is invalid because it:

1. presupposes or explicates states of affairs which are not the case (IT);
2. does not conform to accepted normative expectations (WE);
3. raises doubts about the intentions or sincerity of the speaker (I).

Of course, from this it follows that a hearer who accepts the offering of a speech act does so on the grounds that it is valid because it:

1. presupposes or explicates states of affairs that are true (IT);
2. conforms to accepted normative expectations (WE);
3. raises no doubts concerning the intentions or sincerity of the speaker (I).

This means that when engaging in communication the speaker and hearer are inescapably oriented to the validity of what is said. A speech act can be understood as an offering, the success or failure of which depends upon the hearer's response of either accepting or rejecting the validity claims it raises. The three dimensions of validity pointed out above are implicated in any attempt at communication.

Thus, communication relies on its being embedded within relations to various dimensions of validity. Any and every speech act is infused with inter-subjectively recognized claims to be valid. This implicitly ties communication to argumentation and various discursive procedures for the redemption of validity claims. This is true because to raise a validity claim in communication is to simultaneously imply that one is able to show, if challenged, that one's claim is justified. Communication is possible because speakers are accountable for the validity of what they say. This assumption of responsibility on the part of the speaker is described by Habermas as a "warranty", because in most cases the validity claims raised during communication are taken as justified, and communication proceeds on that basis. Similarly, hearers are accountable for their stance taken up in relation to the validity claims raised by the speaker. Both speaker and hearer are bound to the validity claims raised by the utterances they share during communication. They are bound by the weak obligations inherent in pursuing actions oriented towards reaching an understanding. Habermas would claim that this obligation is a rational one:

"With every speech act, by virtue of the validity claims it raises, the speaker enters into an interpersonal relationship of mutual obligation with the hearer: The speaker is obliged to support her claims with reasons, if challenged, and the hearer is obliged to accept a claim unless he has good reason not to do so. The obligation in question is, in the first instance, not a moral one but a rational one -- the penalty of failure to fulfill it is the charge not of immorality but of irrationality -- although clearly the two will often overlap" (Cooke, 1994).

This begins to point towards the idea of communicative rationality, which is the potential for rationality that is implicit in the validity basis of everyday communication, the shape of reason that can be extracted from Habermas's formal-pragmatic analyses.

"The modern -- decentered -- understanding of the world has opened up different dimensions of validity; to the extent that each dimension of validity has its own standards of truth and falsity and its own modes of justification for determining these, one may say that what has been opened up are dimensions of rationality" (Cooke, 1994).

However, before the idea of communicative rationality can be described, the other direction of Habermas's formal pragmatic analyses of communication needs to be explained. This direction looks towards the idealized presuppositions of communication.

Ideal presuppositions of communication

When individuals pursue actions oriented towards reaching an understanding, the speech acts they exchange take on the weight of a mutually recognized validity. This means each actor involved in communication takes the other as accountable for what they have said, which implies that good reasons could be given by all to justify the validity of the understanding that is being achieved. Again, in most situations the redemption of validity claims is not an explicit undertaking (except in discourses, see below). Instead, each actor issues a "warranty" of accountability to the other, which only needs to be redeemed if certain validity claims are thrown into question. This suggests that the validity claims raised in every communicative interaction implicitly tie communication to argumentation.

It is here that the idealized presuppositions of communication arise. Habermas claims that all forms of argumentation, even implicit and rudimentary ones, rest upon certain "idealizing suppositions," which are rooted in the very structures of action oriented towards understanding. These "strong idealizations" are always understood as at least approximately satisfied by participants in situations where argumentation (and communication) is thought to be taking place. Thus, when during communication it is discovered that the belief that these presuppositions are satisfied is not justified it is always taken as problematic. As a result, steps are usually taken to reestablish and maintain the belief that they are approximately satisfied, or communication is simply called off.

1. The most basic of these idealized presuppositions is the presupposition that participants in communicative exchange are using the same linguistic expressions in the same way. This is an obvious but interesting point, which clearly illustrates what an idealized presupposition is. It is a presupposition because communication would not proceed if those involved did not think it was at least approximately satisfied (in this case that a shared language was being used). It is idealized because no matter how closely it is approximated it is always counterfactual (because, in this case, the fact is that all meanings are to some degree personally defined).
2. Another, basic idealized presupposition of argumentation is the presupposition that no relevant argument is suppressed or excluded by the participants.
3. Another is the presupposition that no persuasive force except that of the better argument is exerted.
4. There is also the presupposition that all the participants are motivated only by a concern for the better argument.
5. There is the presupposition of attributing a context-transcending significance to validity claims. This presupposition is controversial but important (and becomes expanded and clarified in the presuppositions of discourse, see below). The idea is that participants in communication instill their claims with a validity that is understood to have significance beyond the specific context of their agreement.
6. The presupposition that no validity claim is exempt in principle from critical evaluation in argumentation;
7. The presupposition that everyone capable of speech and action is entitled to participate, and everyone is equally entitled to introduce new topics or express attitudes needs or desires.

In sum, all these presuppositions must be assumed to be approximately satisfied in any situation of communication, despite their being necessarily counterfactual. Habermas refers to the positing of these idealized presuppositions as the "simultaneously unavoidable and trivial accomplishments that sustain communicative action and argumentation".

Habermas calls discourses those forms of communication that come sufficiently close to actually satisfying these presuppositions. Discourses often occur within institutionalized forms of argumentation that self-reflectively refine their procedures of communication, and as a result, have a more rigorous set of presuppositions in addition to the ones listed above.

A striking feature of discourse is that validity claims tend to be explicitly thematized and there is the presupposition that all possible interlocutors would agree to the universal validity of the conclusions reached. Habermas especially highlights this in what he calls theoretical discourses and practical discourses. These are tied directly to two of the three dimensions of validity discussed above: theoretical discourse being concerned with validity claims thematized regarding objective states of affairs (IT); practical discourse being concerned with validity claims thematized concerning the rightness of norms governing social interactions (WE).

Habermas understands presupposition (5) to be responsible for generating the self-understanding and continuation of theoretical and practical discourses. Presupposition (5) points out that the validity of an understanding reached in theoretical or practical discourse, concerning some factual knowledge or normative principle, is always expanded beyond the immediate context in which it is achieved. The idea is that participants in discourses such as these presuppose that any understanding reached could attain universal agreement concerning its universal validity if these discourses could be relieved of the constraints of time and space. This idealized presupposition directs discourses concerning truth and normative certainty beyond the contingencies of specific communicative situations and towards the idealized achievements of universal consensus and universal validity. It is a rational reconstruction of the conditions for the possibility of earnest discourses concerning facts and norms. Recall that, for Habermas, rational reconstructions aim at offering the most acceptable account of what allows for the competencies already mastered by a wide range of subjects. In order for discourse to proceed, the existence of facts and norms must be presupposed, yet the certainty of an absolute knowledge of them must be, in a sense, postponed.

Striking a Piagetian and Peircean chord, Habermas understands the deep structures of collective inquiry as developmental. Thus, the presupposition shared by individuals involved in discourse is taken to reflect this. The pursuit of truth and normative certainty is taken to be motivated and grounded, not in some objective or social world that is treated as a "given", but rather in a learning process. Indeed, Habermas himself is always careful to formulate his work as a research project, open to refinement.

In any case, reconstructing the presuppositions and validity dimensions inherent to communication is valuable because it brings into relief the inescapable foundations of everyday practices. Communicative action and the rudimentary forms of argumentation that orient the greater part of human interaction cannot be left behind. By reconstructing the deep structures of these Habermas has discovered a seed of rationality planted in the very heart of the lifeworld. Everyday practices, which are common enough to be trivial, such as reaching an understanding with another, or contesting the reasons for pursuing a course of action, contain an implicit and idealized rationality.

In other words, communication is always somewhat rational. Communication could not occur if the participants thought that the speech acts exchanged did not carry the weight of a validity for which those participating could be held accountable. Nor would anyone feel that a conclusion was justified if it was achieved by any other means than the uncoerced force of the better argument. Nor could the specialized discourses of law, science and morality continue if the progress of knowledge and insight was denied in favor of relativism.

Criticism

It is a question how appropriate it is to speak of "communication" without tense, and of "everyday practices" as though they cut across all times and cultures. That they do cannot be assumed, and anthropology provides evidence of significant difference. It is possible to ignore these facts by limiting the scope of universal pragmatics to current forms of discourse, but this runs the risk of contradicting Habermas's own demand for (5). Moreover, the initial unease with the classical and liberal views of rationality had to do precisely with their ahistorical character and refusal, or perhaps inability, to acknowledge their own origins in circumstances of the day. Their veneer of false universality torn off by the likes of Foucault, it remains to be seen whether "universal" pragmatics can stand up to the same challenges posed by deconstruction and skepticism.

Communicative rationality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_rationality

Jürgen Habermas

Communicative rationality or communicative reason (German: kommunikative Rationalität) is a theory or set of theories which describes human rationality as a necessary outcome of successful communication. This theory, borne from the over inflation of education in an age of abundance, is in particular, tied to the philosophy of German philosophers Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, and their program of universal pragmatics, along with its related theories such as those on discourse ethics and rational reconstruction. This view of reason is concerned with clarifying the norms and procedures by which agreement can be reached, and is therefore a view of reason as a form of public justification.

According to the theory of communicative rationality, the potential for certain kinds of reason is inherent in communication itself. Building from this, Habermas has tried to formalize that potential in explicit terms. According to Habermas, the phenomena that need to be accounted for by the theory are the "intuitively mastered rules for reaching an understanding and conducting argumentation", possessed by subjects who are capable of speech and action. The goal is to transform this implicit "know-how" into explicit "know-that", i.e. knowledge, about how we conduct ourselves in the realm of "moral-practical" reasoning.

The result of the theory is a conception of reason that Habermas sees as doing justice to the most important trends in twentieth century philosophy, while escaping the relativism which characterizes postmodernism, and also providing necessary standards for critical evaluation.

Three kinds of (formal) reason

According to Habermas, the "substantive" (i.e. formally and semantically integrated) rationality that characterized pre-modern worldviews has, since modern times, been emptied of its content and divided into three purely "formal" realms: (1) cognitive-instrumental reason; (2) moral-practical reason; and (3) aesthetic-expressive reason. The first type applies to the sciences, where experimentation and theorizing are geared towards a need to predict and control outcomes. The second type is at play in our moral and political deliberations (very broadly, answers to the question "How should I live?"), and the third type is typically found in the practices of art and literature. It is the second type which concerns Habermas.

Because of the de-centering of religion and other traditions that once played this role, according to Habermas we can no longer give substantive answers to the question "How should I live?" Additionally, there are strict limits which a "post-metaphysical" theory (see below) must respect – namely the clarification of procedures and norms upon which our public deliberation depends. The modes of justification we use in our moral and political deliberations, and the ways we determine which claims of others are valid, are what matter most, and what determine whether we are being "rational". Hence the role that Habermas sees for communicative reason is formulating appropriate methods by which to conduct our moral and political discourse.

This purely formal "division of labour" has been criticized by Nikolas Kompridis, who sees in it too strong a division between practical and aesthetic reasoning, an unjustifiably hard distinction between the "right" and the "good", and an unsupportable priority of validity to meaning.

Post-metaphysical philosophy

There are a number of specific trends that Habermas identifies as important to twentieth century philosophy, and to which he thinks his conception of communicative rationality contributes. To look at these trends is to give a clear outline of Habermas's understanding of communicative rationality. He labels all these trends as being post-metaphysical. These post-metaphysical philosophical movements have, among other things:

1. called into question the substantive conceptions of rationality (e.g. "a rational person thinks this") and put forward procedural or formal conceptions instead (e.g. "a rational person thinks like this");
2. replaced foundationalism with fallibilism with regard to valid knowledge and how it may be achieved;
3. cast doubt on the idea that reason should be conceived abstractly beyond history and the complexities of social life, and have contextualized or situated reason in actual historical practices;
4. replaced a focus on individual structures of consciousness with a concern for pragmatic structures of language and action as part of the contextualization of reason; and
5. given up philosophy's traditional fixation on theoretical truth and the representational functions of language, to the extent that they also recognize the moral and expressive functions of language as part of the contextualization of reason.

Explanation

Habermas' conception of communicative rationality moves along with these contemporary currents of philosophy. Concerning (1) it can be said that:

[Communicative] rationality refers primarily to the use of knowledge in language and action, rather than to a property of knowledge. One might say that it refers primarily to a mode of dealing with validity claims, and that it is in general not a property of these claims themselves. Furthermore...this perspective suggests no more than formal specifications of possible forms of life... it does not extend to the concrete form of life...

Concerning (2), Habermas clearly and explicitly understands communicative rationality according to the terms of a reconstructive science. This means that the conception of communicative rationality is not a definitive rendering of what reason is, but rather a fallible claim. It can prescribe only formal specifications concerning what qualifies as reasonable, being open to revision in cause of experience and learning.

On (3) and (4), Habermas's entire conceptual framework is based on his understanding of social interaction and communicative practices, and he ties rationality to the validity basis of everyday speech. This framework locates reason in the everyday practices of modern individuals. This is in contradistinction to theories of rationality (e.g. Plato, Kant, etc.) that seek to ground reason in an intelligible and non-temporal realm, or objective "view from nowhere", which supposes that reason is able adequately to judge reality from a detached and disinterested perspective.

While Habermas's notion of communicative rationality is contextualized and historicized, it is not relativistic. Many philosophical contextualists take reason to be entirely context-dependent and relative. Habermas holds reason to be relatively context specific and sensitive. The difference is that Habermas explicates the deep structures of reason by examining the presuppositions and validity dimensions of everyday communication, while the relativists focus only on the content displayed in various concrete standards of rationality. Thus, Habermas can compare and contrast the rationality of various forms of society with an eye to the deeper and more universal processes at work, which enables him to justify the critique of certain forms (e.g, that Nazism is irrational and bad) and lend support to the championing of others (e.g, democracy is rational and good). The relativists on the other hand can compare and contrast the rationality of various forms of society but are unable to take up a critical stance, because they can posit no standard of rationality outside the relative and variable content of the societies in question, which leads to absurd conclusions (e.g, that Nazism is morally equivalent to democracy because the standards for both are relative).

Validity dimensions

Concerning (5), Habermas's communicative rationality emphasizes the equal importance of the three validity dimensions, which means it sees the potential for rationality in normative rightness (WE), theoretical truth (IT) and expressive or subjective truthfulness (I). The differentiation of these three "worlds" is understood as a valuable heuristic. This leaves each to its specific forms of argumentation and justification. However, these validity dimensions should be related to one another and understood as complementary pieces in a broader conception of rationality. This points towards a productive interpenetration of the validity dimensions, for example the use of moral insights by the sciences without their having to sacrifice theoretical rigor, or the inclusion of psychological data into resources of moral philosophy.

These last points concerning the breadth of communicative rationality have by far the most important implications. By differentiating the three validity dimensions and holding them as equally valuable and rational, a broader and multifaceted conception of rationality is opened. What this means is that Habermas has, through the formal pragmatic analysis of communication, revealed that rationality should not be limited to the consideration and resolution of objective concerns. He claims that the structure of communication itself demonstrates that normative and evaluative concerns can (and ought to) be resolved through rational procedures.

The clearest way to see this is to recognize that the validity dimensions implicit in communication signify that a speaker is open to the charge of being irrational if they place normative validity claims outside of rational discourse. Following Habermas, the argument relies on the following assumptions:

(a) that communication can proceed between two individuals only on the basis of a consensus (usually implicit) regarding the validity claims raised by the speech acts they exchange;

(b) that these validity claims concern at least three dimensions of validity:

I, truthfulness

WE, rightness

IT, truth

(c) that a mutual understanding is maintained on the basis of the shared presupposition that any validity claim agreed upon could be justified, if necessary, by making recourse to good reasons.

From these premises it is concluded that any individual engaging in communication is accountable for the normative validity of the claims they raise. By earnestly offering a speech act to another in communication, a speaker claims not only that what they say is true (IT) but also that it is normatively right (WE) and honest (I). Moreover, the speaker implicitly offers to justify these claims if challenged and justify them with reasons. Thus, if a speaker, when challenged, can offer no acceptable reasons for the normative framework they implied through the offering of a given speech act, that speech act would be unacceptable because it is irrational.

In its essence the idea of communicative rationality draws upon the implicit validity claims that are inescapably bound to the everyday practices of individuals capable of speech and action. A mutual understanding can be achieved through communication only by fusing the perspectives of individuals, which requires they reach an agreement (even if it is only assumed) on the validity of the speech acts being shared. Moreover, the speech acts shared between individuals in communication are laden with three different types of validity claims, all of which quietly but insistently demand to be justified with good reasons. Communicative rationality appears in the intuitive competencies of communicative actors who would not feel that a mutual understanding had been achieved if the validity claims raised were unjustifiable. Thus, the simple process of reaching an understanding with others impels individuals to be accountable for what they say and to be able to justify the validity claims they raise concerning normative (WE), evaluative (I) and objective matters (IT).

Standards of justification

Of course a very important issue arises from this, which is that what constitutes a good or acceptable justification varies from context to context. Even if it is accepted that rationality must be expanded to include normative and evaluative dimensions, it is not clear what it is that makes a speech act justified, because it is unclear what constitutes a good reason.

It must be understood that there are different kinds of reasons in relation to the different validity dimensions. This is apparent, because what defines a validity dimension are the procedures of justification that are unique to it. For example, if one claims or implies with their speech act that it is raining outside, a good reason for claiming this is that one saw it out the window. If this were called into question, the claim would be vindicated by looking out the window. This is a very simple way of describing the procedures of justification unique to objective validity claims. However, if one claims or implies with their speech acts that 'abortion is acceptable in certain cases', one's reasons for claiming this must be of a different nature. The speaker would have to direct the attention of the listener to certain features of the social world that are infused with meaning and significance. The speaker would have to draw on insights into, for instance, the vulnerability of individuals under the weight of life's circumstances, the kinds of rights that humans deserve, etc. These types of considerations make up the resources available for the justification of normative validity claims.

What constitutes a good reason is a more complex problem. Accepting the distinction between the different kinds of reasons that accompany the differentiation of the validity dimensions does not give any insight into what a good reason in a particular validity dimension would be. In fact, it complicates the issue because it makes it clear that there are different procedures unique to each validity dimension and that these dimensions cannot be reduced to one another. Habermas does suggest some general guidelines concerning the rationality of communicative processes that lead to conclusions (see Universal pragmatics). But his explanations regarding the specific procedures that are unique to each validity dimension are much more elaborate.

Critique

The theory of communicative rationality has been criticized for being utopian and idealistic, for being blind to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, and for ignoring the role of conflict, contest, and exclusion in the historical constitution of the public sphere.

More recently, Nikolas Kompridis has taken issue with Habermas' conception of rationality as incoherent and insufficiently complex, proposing a "possibility-disclosing" role for reason that goes beyond the narrow proceduralism of Habermas' theory.

One of the main critiques of Habermas's Communicative Rationality is eurocentrism, and the idea that the western civilization is the only way of life. According to "Public Sphere and Communicative Rationality: Interrogating Habermas's Eurocentrism", Habermas does not take into account that there are different societies that happen across the world because certain countries and societies suffer from different weaknesses. Habermas's theories are based on an utopian society while this just is not the case. The authors argue that this type of communication that Habermas offers could not actually be implemented because people do not have access to the resources they would need. This is not just other societies outside the west. European countries have problems with lack of education and the technology necessary to be prepared in order to participate in this community.

In Byron Rienstra and Derek Hook article titled, "Weakening Habermas: The Undoing of Communicative Rationality", they discuss that Habermas expected too much of the people he is talking about. Habermas insinuated that the people are participating in communicative rationality have a broad knowledge on the topic at hand. But according to the authors, this is too much to ask of the people. And since these people do not have the knowledge to participate in communicative rationality, they would have no reason to defend their reasoning or position in society. They even go on to say that the preconditions that Habermas has put forward are extremely demanding and taxing on the public.

Habermas also ignored the hindrances that people may face that may cause a person not to stay educated on the topics in order to participate in communicative rationality. For example, in "From Communicative Rationality to Communicative Thinking: A Basis for Feminist Theory and Practice" by Jane Braatan, it is discussed that women have a less advantage to be involved in communicative rationality due to the history of discrimination in schools. Women have not always had complete access to schooling, and according to Habermas they should not be able to defend their opinions.

Another issues that is raised on this topic is the idea that if this theory is developed in today's age, it will segregate people even more. Due to the discrimination that people in lower social classes face, people would not be able keep up with new developments and therefore not be able to continue to contribute.

Habermas wants communicative rationality to be considered an everyday language according to "Communicative versus Strategic Rationality: Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and the Social Brain". He believes everyone should strive for the ability to be educated and able to defend their position on every topic.

Labour power

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_power

Labour power (in German: Arbeitskraft; in French: force de travail) is a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of working, labour. Labour power exists in any kind of society, but on what terms it is traded or combined with means of production to produce goods and services has historically varied greatly.

Under capitalism, according to Marx, the productive powers of labour appear as the creative power of capital. Indeed, "labour power at work" becomes a component of capital, it functions as working capital. Work becomes just work, workers become an abstract labour force, and the control over work becomes mainly a management prerogative.

Definition

Karl Marx introduces the concept in chapter 6 of the first volume of Capital, as follows:

"By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."

He adds further on that:

"Labour-power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, nerve. brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored."

Another explanation of labour-power can be found in the introduction and second chapter of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital (1847). Marx also provided a short exposition of labour power in Value, Price and Profit (1865).

Versus labour

Marx adapted a distinction, in Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right between labour power (Arbeitskraft) and labour (Arbeit) and gave this distinction a new significance. For Marx, Arbeitskraft, which he sometimes instead refers to as Arbeitsvermögen ("labour-ability" or "labour-capacity") refers to a "force of nature": the physical ability of human beings and other living things to perform work, including mental labour and skills such as manual dexterity, in addition to sheer physical exertion. Labour power is, in this sense, also the aspect of labour that becomes a commodity within capitalist society and is alienated from labourers when it is sold to capitalists.

By contrast, "labour" may refer to all or any activity by humans (and other living creatures) that is concerned with producing goods or services (or what Marx calls use-values). In this sense, the usage of labour (per se) in Marxian economics is somewhat similar to the later concept, in neoclassical economics, of "labour services".

The distinction between labour and labour-power, according to Marx, helped to solved a problem that David Ricardo had failed to solve, i.e. explaining why the surplus value resulting from profit normally arises out of the process of production itself—rather than in the investment of capital (e.g. the advance of money-capital in the form of wages) in labour-power (acquired from labourers).

While Marx's concept of labour power has been compared to that of human capital, Marx himself may have considered a concept such as "human capital" to be a reification, the purpose of which was to imply that workers were a kind of capitalist. For instance, in Capital Vol. 2, Marx states:

Apologetic economists... say:... [the worker's] labour-power, then, represents his capital in commodity-form, which yields him a continuous revenue. Labour-power is indeed his property (ever self-renewing, reproductive), not his capital. It is the only commodity which he can and must sell continually in order to live, and which acts as capital (variable) only in the hands of the buyer, the capitalist. The fact that a man is continually compelled to sell his labour-power, i.e., himself, to another man proves, according to those economists, that he is a capitalist, because he constantly has "commodities" (himself) for sale. In that sense a slave is also a capitalist, although he is sold by another once and for all as a commodity; for it is in the nature of this commodity, a labouring slave, that its buyer does not only make it work anew every day, but also provides it with the means of subsistence that enable it to work ever anew.

— Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 2, chapter 20, section 10

As commodity

An advertisement for labour from Sabah and Sarawak, seen in Jalan Petaling, Kuala Lumpur

Under capitalism, according to Marx, labour-power becomes a commodity – it is sold and bought on the market. A worker tries to sell his or her labour-power to an employer, in exchange for a wage or salary. If successful (the only alternative being unemployment), this exchange involves submitting to the authority of the capitalist for a specific period of time.

During that time, the worker does actual labour, producing goods and services. The capitalist can then sell these and obtain surplus value; since the wages paid to the workers are lower than the value of the goods or services they produce for the capitalist.

Labour power can also be sold by the worker on "own account", in which case he is self-employed, or it can be sold by an intermediary, such as a hiring agency. In principle a group of workers can also sell their labour-power as an independent contracting party. Some labour contracts are very complex, involving a number of different intermediaries.

Normally, the worker is legally the owner of his labour power, and can sell it freely according to his own wishes. However, most often the trade in labour power is regulated by legislation, and the sale may not be truly "free"—it may be a forced sale for one reason or another, and indeed it may be bought and sold against the real wishes of the worker even although he owns his own labour power. Various gradations of freedom and unfreedom are possible, and free wage labour can combine with slave labour or semi-slavery.

The concept of labour power as a commodity was first explicitly stated by Friedrich Engels in The Principles of Communism (1847):

"Labor [power] is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition—as we shall see, the two come to the same thing—the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.

Value

Labour power is a peculiar commodity, because it is an attribute of living persons, who own it themselves in their living bodies. Because they own it within themselves, they cannot permanently sell it to someone else; in that case, they would be a slave, and a slave does not own himself. Yet, although workers can hire themselves out, they cannot "hire out" or "lease" their labour, since they cannot reclaim or repossess the labour at some point after the work is done, in the same way as rental equipment is returned to the owner. Once labour has been expended, it is gone, and the only remaining issue is who benefits from the results, and by how much.

Labour power can become a marketable object, sold for a specific period, only if the owners are constituted in law as legal subjects who are free to sell it, and can enter into labour contracts. Once actualised and consumed through working, the capacity to work is exhausted, and must be replenished and restored.

In general, Marx argues that in capitalism the value of labour power (as distinct from fluctuating market prices for work effort) is equal to its normal or average (re-)production cost, i.e. the cost of meeting the established human needs which must be satisfied in order for the worker to turn up for work each day, fit to work. This involves goods and services representing a quantity of labour equal to necessary labour or the necessary product. It represents an average cost of living, an average living standard.

The general concept of the "value of labour power" is necessary because both the conditions of the sale of labour power, and the conditions under which goods and services are purchased by the worker with money from a salary, can be affected by numerous circumstances. If, for example, the state imposes a tax on consumer goods and services (an indirect tax or consumption tax such as value-added tax or goods and services tax), then what the worker can buy with his wage-money is reduced. Or, if price inflation increases, then again the worker can buy less with his wage money. The point is that this can occur quite independently of how much a worker is actually paid. Therefore, the standard of living of a worker can rise or fall quite independently of how much he is paid—simply because goods and services become more expensive or cheaper to buy, or because he is blocked from access to goods and services.

Included in the value of labour power is both a physical component (the minimum physical requirements for a healthy worker) and a moral-historical component (the satisfaction of needs beyond the physical minimum which have become an established part of the lifestyle of the average worker). The value of labour power is thus a historical norm, which is the outcome of a combination of factors: productivity; the supply and demand for labour; the assertion of human needs; the costs of acquiring skills; state laws stipulating minimum or maximum wages, the balance of power between social classes, etc.

Buying labour power usually becomes a commercially interesting proposition only if it can yield more value than it costs to buy, i.e. employing it yields a net positive return on capital invested. However, in Marx's theory, the value-creating function of labour power is not its only function; it also importantly conserves and transfers capital value. If labour is withdrawn from the workplace for any reason, typically the value of capital assets deteriorates; it takes a continual stream of work effort to maintain and preserve their value. When materials are used to make new products, part of the value of materials is also transferred to the new products.

Consequently, labour power may be hired not "because it creates more value than it costs to buy", but simply because it conserves the value of a capital asset which, if this labour did not occur, would decline in value by an even greater amount than the labour cost involved in maintaining its value; or because it is a necessary expense which transfers the value of a capital asset from one owner to another. Marx regards such labour as "unproductive" in the sense that it creates no new net addition to total capital value, but it may be essential and indispensable labour, because without it a capital value would reduce or disappear. The larger the stock of assets which is neither an input nor an output to real production, and the wealthier society's elite becomes, the more labour is devoted only to maintaining the mass of capital assets rather than increasing its value.

Wages

Marx regards money-wages and salaries as the price of labour power (though workers can also be paid "in kind"), normally related to hours worked or output produced. That price may contingently be higher or lower than the value of labour power, depending on market forces of supply and demand, on skill monopolies, legal rules, the ability of negotiate, etc. Normally, unless government action prevents it, high unemployment will lower wages, and full employment will raise wages, in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. But wages can also be reduced through high price inflation and consumer taxes. Therefore, a distinction must always be drawn between nominal gross wages and real wages adjusted for tax and price inflation, and indirect tax imposts must be considered.

The labour-costs of an employer are not the same as the real buying power a worker acquires through working. An employer usually also has to pay taxes & levies to the government in respect of workers hired, which may include social security contributions or superannuation benefits. In addition there are often also administrative costs. So, in the United States for example, out of the total expenditure on labour by employers, the workers get about 60% as take-home pay, but about 40% consists of taxes, benefits and ancillary costs. Employers may be able to claim back part of the surcharge on labour by means of various tax credits, or because the tax on business income is lowered.

There is typically a constant conflict over the level of wages between employers and employees, since employers seek to limit or reduce wage-costs, while workers seek to increase their wages, or at least maintain them. How the level of wages develops depends on the demand for labour, the level of unemployment, and the ability of workers and employers to organise and take action with regard to pay claims.

Marx regarded wages as the "external form" of the value of labour power. The compensation of workers in capitalist society could take all kinds of different forms, but there was always both a paid and unpaid component of labour performed. The "ideal" form of wages for capitalism, he argued, were piece wages because in that case the capitalist paid only for labour which directly created those outputs adding value to his capital. It was the most efficient form of exploitation of labour power.

Consumption

When labour power has been purchased and an employment contract signed, normally it is not yet paid for. First, labour power must be put to work in the production process. The employment contract is only a condition for uniting labour power with the means of production. From that point on, Marx argues, labour power at work is transformed into capital, specifically variable capital which accomplishes the valorisation process.

Functioning as variable capital, living labour creates both use values and new value, conserves the value of constant capital assets, and transfers part of the value of materials and equipment used to the new products. The result aimed for is the valorisation of invested capital, i.e. other things being equal, the value of capital is maintained and has also increased through the activity of living labour.

At the end of the working day, labour power has been more or less consumed, and must be restored through rest, eating and drinking, and recreation.

Medical estimates of the average holiday time necessary for fulltime workers to fully recuperate in a physiological and psychological sense from work stress during the year differ from country to country; but as an approximate gauge, three weeks continuous holiday is physiologically optimal for the average worker.

ILO statistics show a wide range of average hours worked and average holidays for different countries; for example, Korean workers work the most hours per year, and Americans have fewer formal holidays than West Europeans.

Several researchers have questioned however to what extent additional hours worked really increase the marginal productivity of labour; particularly in services, the work that gets done in five days could often also be done in four. The most difficult aspect to measure is the intensity of work, though some argue the incidence of work accidents are a reliable yardstick. If workers are laid off by an organization, but the organization continues to produce the same amount of output or services as before, or even more, with the same technology, we can often conclude that the intensity of work must have increased.

Reproduction

Marx himself argued that:

"The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer's instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the labourer's individual consumption as far as possible to what is strictly necessary..."

This understanding, however, only captures the sense in which the reproduction of labour power comes at no cost to capitalists, like the reproduction of ecological conditions, but unlike the reproduction of, say, machine bolts and plastic wrap. Elites and governments have always sought to actively intervene or mediate in the process of the reproduction of labour power, through family legislation, laws regulating sexual conduct, medical provisions, education policies, and housing policies. Such interventions always carry an economic cost, but that cost can be socialized or forced upon workers themselves, especially women. In these areas of civil society, there has been a constant battle between conservatives, social reformists and radicals.

Marxist-Feminists have argued that in reality, household (domestic) labour by housewives which forms, maintains and restores the capacity to work is a large "free gift" to the capitalist economy. Time use surveys show that formally unpaid and voluntary labour is a very large part of the total hours worked in a society. Markets depend on that unpaid labour to function at all.

Some feminists have therefore demanded that the government pay "wages for housework". This demand conflicts with the legal framework of the government in capitalist society, which usually assumes a financial responsibility only for the upkeep of "citizens" and "families" lacking other sources of income or subsistence.

The role of the state

The state can influence both the value and price of labour-power in numerous different ways, and normally it regulates wages and working conditions in the labour market to a greater or lesser extent. It can do so for example by:

• Stipulating minimum and maximum wage rates for work.
• Stipulating maximum and minimum working hours, and the retirement age.
• Stipulating minimum requirements for working conditions, workplace health and safety issues and the like.
• Stipulating requirements for labour contracts, trade union organization and wage bargaining.
• Legally defining the civil rights and entitlements of the workers.
• Adjusting direct and indirect tax rates, levies and tariffs for wage earners and employers in various ways.
• Adjusting social insurance policies, pension charges/claims and the like.
• Instituting and adjusting unemployment benefits and other social benefits.
• Subsidizing workers or their employers in various ways through eligibility to various benefits or supplements to salary.
• Influencing the general price level, by means of fiscal policy and monetary policy, or by instituting price controls for consumer goods and services.
• Regulating the consumption of goods and services by workers.
• Policing workers on the job and off-work, and prosecuting criminal activity with respect to workers' lives.
• Requiring military service from young workers at fixed pay rates.
• Creating additional jobs and employment by means of various policies, or, permitting unemployment to grow.
• Encouraging or preventing labour mobility and job mobility.
• Permitting or preventing the inflow of immigrant workers, or the emigration of workers.
• Stipulating legal requirements relating to the accommodation, health, sex life, family situation and pregnancy of workers.

Marx was very aware of this and in Das Kapital provides many illustrations, often taken from the Blue Books and factory inspector's reports. Part of the role of the state is to secure those general (collective) conditions for the reproduction and maintenance of workers which individuals and private enterprise cannot secure by themselves for one reason or another—for example, because:

• providing those conditions practically requires an authority which stands above competing interests.
• meeting the conditions is too costly for private agencies, requiring investment funds not available to them.
• it is technically not possible to privatize those conditions.
• the conditions that have to be supplied are not sufficiently profitable, or too risky for private agencies.
• there is a specific political or moral reason why the state should intervene.

However, Marx did not provide a general theory of the state and the labour market. He intended to write a separate book on the subject of wages and the labour market (see Capital Vol. 1, Penguin edition, p. 683), but did not accomplish it, mainly because of bad health. Nevertheless, Marx made quite clear his belief that capitalism "overturns all the legal or traditional barriers that would prevent it from buying this or that kind of labour-power as it sees fit, or from appropriating this or that kind of labour" (Ibid., p. 1013). It is possible—apart from bad health—that he did not write a general critique of the state, because he lived himself as an exile in Britain, and therefore, he might have got into major trouble personally, if he had criticized the state publicly in his writings in ways not acceptable to the British state.

In modern times, the fact that the state has a big effect on wages and the value of labour power has given rise to the concepts of the social wage and collective consumption. If the state claims just as much money from workers through taxes and levies as it pays out to them, then it is of course doubtful whether the state really "pays a social wage". However, more often the state redistributes income from one group or workers to another, reducing the income of some and increasing that of others.

Quotation by Marx on the value of labour power and classical political economy

"Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category "price of labour" without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i.e., the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them, this "necessary price" (Physiocrats) or "natural price" of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected to penetrate to the value of labour through the medium of the accidental prices of labour. As with other commodities, this value was then further determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production-of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs. Occupied with the difference between the market-price of labour and its so-called value, with the relation of this value to the rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities produced by means of labour, &c., they never discovered that the course of the analysis had led not only from the market-prices of labour to its presumed value, but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself into the value of labour-power. Classical economy never arrived at a consciousness of the results of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories "value of labour," "natural price of labour," &c.,. as final and as adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradiction, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only."

— Marx, Capital Vol. 1, chapter 19

Labour market flexibilisation

The commercial value of human labour power is strongly linked to the assertion of human needs by workers as citizens. It is not simply a question of supply and demand here, but of human needs which must be met. Therefore, labour costs have never been simply an "economic" or "commercial" matter, but also a moral, cultural and political issue.

In turn, this has meant that governments have typically strongly regulated the sale of labour power with laws and rules for labour contracts. These laws and rules affect e.g. the minimum wage, wage bargaining, the operation of trade unions, the obligations of employers in respect of employees, hiring and firing procedures, labour taxes, and unemployment benefits.

This has led to repeated criticism from employers that labour markets are over-regulated, and that the costs and obligations of hiring labour weigh too heavily on employers. Moreover, it is argued that over-regulation prevents the free movement of labour to where it is really necessary. If labour markets were deregulated by removing excessive legal restrictions, it is argued that costs to business would be reduced and more labour could be hired, thereby increasing employment opportunities and economic growth.

However, trade union representatives often argue that the real effect of deregulation is to reduce wages and conditions for workers, with the effect of reducing market demand for products. In turn, the effect would be lower economic growth and a decline in living standards, with increased casualisation of labour and more "contingent labour". It is argued that, because the positions of employees and employers in the market are unequal (it is usually easier for an employer to loose an employee than an employee to loose an employer), employees must be legally protected against undue exploitation. Otherwise employers will simply hire workers as and when it suits them, without regard for their needs as citizens. A further twist in some countries is that unions are part of the political establishment, and not interested in collecting complaints and suggestions from individual employees, employing staff in proportion to dues received, backing employees' legal cases, or rocking the boat in their public statements. For example, in China some workers are in prison for criticising the official unions.

Often the demand for "labour market flexibility" is combined with the demand for strong immigration controls, to block any movement of labour which would be only a burden for capital accumulation. The term "flexibility" is used because, while capital must be able to move freely around the globe, the movement of labour must be strictly controlled. If that control does not exist, it is argued, it could mean additional costs to employers and taxpayers.

Criticism

It has been argued by Ian Steedman that Marx's own concept of labour power was in truth very similar to that of David Ricardo and Adam Smith and, therefore, that Marx was not saying anything really new. However, Marx's interpretation is (as he himself said) different from the "natural price of labour" of the classical political economists, because the "free play of market forces" does not gravitate spontaneously and automatically toward the "natural price" (the value) of labour power. Precisely because labour power is a unique and peculiar commodity, being lodged in the living worker, it does not conform to all the same laws as other kinds of commodities. Depending on social conditions, labour power may durably trade at prices well above, or below, its real value. Marx only assumed that labour power traded at its value, in order to show that even if that was the case, the worker was still economically exploited. But he was well aware that often labour power did not trade at its value, either because of unfavourable wage-bargaining conditions or because of labour scarcity.

A recent criticism by Prof. Marcel van der Linden is as follows: "Marx's thesis is based on two dubious assumptions, namely that labour needs to be offered for sale by the person who is the actual bearer and owner of such labour, and that the person who sells the labour sells nothing else. Why does this have to be the case? Why can labour not be sold by a party other than the bearer? What prevents the person who provides labour (his or her own or that of somebody else) from offering packages combining the labour with labour means? And why can a slave not perform wage labour for his master at the estate of some third party?" This difficulty was first noted in research conducted during the 1980s by Tom Brass, gathered together in his 1999 book.

The buying and selling of human work effort can and has taken many more different forms than Marx acknowledges—especially in the area of services. A modern information society makes possible all kinds of new forms of hustling. Marx said himself that "Above all [capitalism] overturns all the legal or traditional barriers that would prevent it from buying this or that kind of labour-power as it sees fit, or from appropriating this or that kind of labour". The concept of the value of labour power referred to the underlying economic relationship, not to be confused with the formalities of all the kinds of labour contracts which are possible.