Here is the first sentence of The Wealth of Nations:
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. (Smith lix)
Edwin Cannan footnotes the second word, “annual,” in the following way:
This word, with “annually” just below, at once marks the transition from the older British economist’s ordinary practice of regarding the wealth of a nation as an accumulated fund. Following the physiocrats, Smith sees that the important thing is how much can be produced in a given time. (Smith lix)
From Smith and Cannan, it’s quite clear: we must understand value as existing in and delimited by time. (This is why economic productivity, as a sort of value judgment about the quality and intensity of a nation’s workers, is measured over time.) So how do writing teachers talk about time? One obvious way, of course, is in our talk about process. Some of us even incorporate something like a Labor Theory of Value into the way we evaluate student writing, proposing to students that the work they put into composing stands in some relation of value to their performance in the course and the ultimate gradebook worth of their compositions. For writing teachers who base their pedagogies upon the process model, the Labor Theory of Value — for all its problems — is an economic reality in institutions that require grade-based valuation.
We’re familiar with the problems presented by the Labor Theory of Value. We know that Adam Smith tried to get away from it, David Ricardo promulgated it, and Karl Marx tried to re-think it. We know that contemporary mainstream economics has discarded it as thoroughly flawed and problematic, choosing to focus instead on the notion of marginality and how producers and consumers react to fluctuations in supply and demand at the marginal frontier. But I’d contend that the categories of “producer” and “consumer” are themselves too-easy oversimplifications in today’s information economy, and contend further that the notions of supply and demand are wholly inadequate in addressing the things that we can best characterize in economic terms as non-rivalrous experience goods: which is to say, essays.
I understand and largely agree with the critiques that have been made of the Labor Theory of Value, and I have strong reservations about how to enact the difference Marx draws between necessary and surplus labor. At the same time, though, understanding Time as the space in which Labor takes place seems to me an essential component of thinking about how the Value of that Labor gets used or appropriated. So here’s a question: if you’re a writing teacher, does part of your grading involve the Labor Theory of Value? Do you give students credit for the Time they take to do drafts, to do revision? And — if so — why? (I’ve got a tentative answer, but I’m curious to hear yours.)
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Ed. Edwin Cannan. New York: Random House, 1994.
I’m teaching Locke’s Second Treatise and A Letter Concerning Toleration to my fyc students this year, and next probably. The labor theory seems to spring from Locke’s notion that the amount of labor we put into work is what determines its value. He writes about this in chapter four of the second treatise, On Property (not sure about Petty in the Wikepedia link). I don’t know if he meant this as an absolute, though it seems he did. I see it more as a relative when it comes to student work–the more work the better it will be, but if I am a better writer than you are, or the other way around, I may not have to work as hard to create a better document, independent in terms of overall value from the disparate work we put into it. I sure wish the cost of pulling oil from the ground translated to what we pay at the pump. Damn that supply and demand!
Still, when it comes to essays, or anything in life, such as sport or other performance, you can work you ass off and still stink the joint up. Do we value the effort? I’d say yes. Do we reward based on effort that we can’t necessarily see as put into process or the product we see? Well, most standards push us to product. This is what the struggling writers are most disheartened by–busting their butts and still falling short. Still, I have to admit, if a student does engage in considerable effort, and they come to me for help, and I see clear and consistent evidence of revision, if nothing else, while it may not make their writing stellar, it does lead me to give them the benefit of the doubt when I have the opportunity to do so. Not very scientific or theory based, at least consciously.