commodities more cheaply and more abundantly in relation to their competitors who continue to produce at the socially necessary labor-time and thus have to sell their commodities at the socially necessary average price. Producing more cheaply means the ability to sell more cheaply and this also means the capacity to sell more and to appropriate a greater segment of the market, and“ if [ the capitalist ] attains the object he is aiming at …[ and ] prices his goods only a small percentage lower than his competitors. He drives them [, i. e. his competitors,] off the field, he wrests from them at least a part of their market, by underselling them”[ 11 ]. In this regard, according to Marx, competition drive capitalists to everincreasingly produce below the average time periods set by the regulating mechanism of socially necessary labor-time.
Notwithstanding, this Marxist concept of a law-like mechanism, i. e. socially necessary labortime, regulating capitalist production, is predicated on the assumption that value, by Marx’ s own definition, is only scientifically quantifiable labor-time and nothing else. For Marx,“ the substance of value [ is ] labor-time”[ 12 ], specifically socially necessary labor-time, measured in scientifically exact quantities of time deemed socially necessary. However, is Marx correct in his definition? Or has he missed the amplitude, multitude and magnitude of value, namely has Marx reduced the concept of value to the narrow confines of scientific measurement and by doing so, missed the importance, malleability and fluidity by which multi-dimensional value, informs, shapes and influences price, wage, profit, production, consumption, distribution and capitalism, in general.
Principally, Marx is correct when he argues that labor-power is the source value, but Marx fails to discern that labor-power is in fact the source of a specific type of value, namely scientific quantifiable value, which also means that labor-power is itself scientifically quantifiable akin to scientifically quantifiable value. For Marx, labor-power is a quantity of measurable labor-time applied to the coefficient measurement of socially necessary labor-time, which also means, that labor-power is in essence scientifically quantifiable as value, due to the fact that it manifests scientifically quantifiable value. Marx has reduced both the concept of value, and in the process, labor-power as well, to scientifically quantifiable measurements. In actuality, value is multi-varied, it can be both quantifiable and unquantifiable; in addition, labor-power is multi-varied it can be both quantifiable and unquantifiable. By reducing and condensing value and labor-power to the rigors of the narrow limits of scientific quantification, Marx has missed a variety of socio-economic phenomena that escape scientific quantification and more or less can never be quantified, such as the importance of networking and / or position within the capitalist hiearchy etc.( more will be said on this later in part 3). As a result, a reformulation and elaboration of value and labor-power is necessary, if a more comprehensive understanding of capitalism and the capitalist modes of production, consumption and distribution are to be developed, which both expands and progresses from Marx’ s analysis and is in turn able to explain the vast array of socio-economic phenomena that cannot be explained via Marx’ s labor theory of value, i. e., the law of value.
First and foremost, a broader concept of labor-power is needed in order to encapsulate the variety of corporeal, incorporeal, physical and mental activities that enrich, influence and inform capitalist processes and more importantly value, which are outside scientific quantification. The best concept that encapsulates this variety and multiplicity is creative-power. It is in fact creative-power, which embodies labor-power within itself, that is, the source of value, both quantifiable value and unquantifiable value. Contrary to Marx, labor-power is only the source of a specific type of value, i. e., scientific quantifiable value, while value, in general and par excellence, embodies scientific quantifiable value within itself, in a vast plethora of both quantifiable and unquantifiable values. More importantly, creative-power emanates from an insatiable drive for ownership / knowledge housed in human consciousness; while, labor-power is a specific type of creative-power that specifically produces scientific quantifiable value when subjected to the rigors and artificial parameters of socially necessary labor-time. On the other hand, more broadly,