Studying Marx's Grundrisse

From our week 14 discussion (pages 690-743), I offer notes here only on the passage on p.705, saying that with advanced technology:

"… labour-time ceases and must cease to be its measure [the measure of wealth], and hence exchange value {must cease to be the measure} of use-value".

"... muss aufhören die Arbeitszeit sein Mass zu sein und daher der Tauschwert [das Mass] des Gebrauchswerts".

Some hold that this means that the labour theory of value breaks down with advanced technology.

That makes no sense to me. For the flow of Marx's argument, a statement that with advanced technology a lot of good stuff becomes available with little labour time will do at that point. And it's true. You can buy a watch for £5, more reliable than the expensive ones available in 1857, and a mobile phone for £18. Clothes are, relatively speaking, much cheaper today than in 1857.

Marx's formulation says something different. It doesn't need to for the flow of the argument. And it makes no sense. None of Marx's arguments for (his) labour theory of value depend on low technology.

Exchange-value never was the measure of use-value, even with low technology. Adam Smith asserted that from the start.

"Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it…" https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1

In that case, exchange-value cannot "cease" to be the measure of use-value

Use-value can be measured on no linear scale. A hundred apples do not have more use-value for you than one. An apple is useful for eating and a pen for writing; an apple is useless for writing and a pen for eating; but there is no way of telling how much food one "unit" of writing (or keeping warm, or getting medications, or whatever) "equals" in use-value.

When we read something that makes no sense from a respected writer, there is a temptation to think that the passage is especially deep and to construct convoluted meanings. That approach may even make some (limited) sense when the passage is in a text finished and polished for publication. Maybe the writer was making a particularly deep argument, and was driven to paradoxical or odd working by the difficulty.

The approach makes little sense, though, in a text which was only ever written as rough notes, for the later use of the writer themselves. In such rough notes, the writer may well put down something which they know almost immediately to be wrongly-worded, but not bother to correct it, because they know they will come back to the issue under discussion later for any published writing.

Better to read the passage as a bit of over-convoluted writing produced by hurried scribbling late at night, rather than as a special profundity.