March 26, 2020 | By Su Karagoz (A20)

Samuel Dreyer is from Washington, DC. His senior essay is entitled “Social Labor: Marx’s Critique of Vulgar Economy”​​​​​​.​

What was at the heart of your argument?

Throughout the essay, I argue that the value of a commodity is socially real and a quantity measurable by the labor time socially necessary for its production. I make this economic argument by starting with an analysis of the philosophical account Marx gives of materialism, as he lays out briefly in his Theses on Feuerbach, and then utilize a few of the key insights found therein to consider Marx’s theory of value as laid out in the first four chapters of Capital. One of those insights was of principle importance: his assertion that “human essence... is an ensemble of social relations.” This account holds true for the commodity just as much as it does for the persons, since the epoch of capital is the epoch of the commodity man, and so I applied this principle to understanding the essence of a commodity, its value. The value of a single commodity, under the microscope, unfolds into a million different reflections of qualitatively equivalent values. Its essence is only given reality by us, the social producers, who exchange the goods that we deem to be of equal values. And what do we evaluate these goods based on? The amount of labor it might take us to produce the thing ourselves, or the amount of time we have to spend working to produce an equivalent amount of value that we can exchange. I finish off with a discussion of the all-important fourth chapter of Capital—in which Marx discusses commodity fetishism—and try to understand how the social reality of value is obscured by it.

What drew you to write about the economy and value of commodities?

One of my tutors asked a very important question to our seminar towards the end of the Marx readings: Why should we take Marx’s criticism of capitalism seriously if value does not, in fact, derive fully from human labor? This comment struck me and stuck with me leading up to my time studying Capital Vol. 1 for my precept. It became clear to me that all of Marx’s theories rest on the validity of his economic analysis, and that to verify, for myself, the validity of his philosophical and political beliefs, it was necessary that I investigated the economic argument Marx made about how capitalism functions. One of Marx’s great insights about the economy is that it is a sort of mediator of the social relations between people. It is an inherently social concept that can only exist because people come into relation with each other, and that, therefore, any economic investigation will inevitably turn over into a social investigation, and vice versa.

How did your essay connect to different aspects of the Program from throughout your four years?

Politically and economically, my essay is most related to the second semester of junior year. Marx is very much responding to the liberal political theory of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and I discuss some of those figures as well—Rousseau and his state of nature are briefly discussed, for example. Adam Smith and David Ricardo’s economic theories are both touched on as well. Philosophically, the essay is most related to senior year authors, Hegel especially.

In what way do you think working on your essay changed the way you view the economy?

More and more, I see the farcical nature of our relationship to the economy. A concept that we ourselves brought into being has become a sort of god, and this god demands sacrifices. I write this as the COVID pandemic is ravaging the centers of global capitalism, and the wealthiest among us (or their representatives) go on TV to discuss how many lives ought to be sacrificed so that they can save the “value” of their stock and hoard even more resources once this crisis ends. But all of this is part and parcel with the essence of capitalism; crises of one form or another arise, all but the wealthiest lose much or everything, and all the while the wealthiest pick up the pieces that are left. Wealth is concentrated in their hands while the many are left to die, and then, when the current crisis subsides, the process starts anew until the next crisis. Marx has given me a framework I can use to think about the world, and the tools to imagine new ways to break this vicious cycle. He has led me to the conclusion that not only can things change, but they must change.

What was the writing process like for you?

Honestly, it was just a lot of reading and writing. The hardest part of this essay was forcing myself to sit down and write it.

What is the most important lesson you learned during your time at St. John’s?

I learned how to read.