From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 30 2002 - 17:43:02 EDT
From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <J.Bendien@wolmail.nl> To: <rakeshb@Stanford.EDU> Subject: Re: law of value Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 16:14:35 +0200 X-Priority: 3 Rakesh, While I thought of it... as you have seen, I defined the law of value as the determination of the value of commodities offered in exchange by the labourtime normally required to produce them (real production costs), other things being equal (leaving aside unequal exchange, specific profit margins etc.), arguing that Marx tries to work out how this determinism works out in practice, under conditions of a universal market, where commodities are produced by means of commodities. Suppose, following Weeks, that you argue the law of value exists only within the capitalist mode of production. Then you have to explain what determined commodity values in precapitalist society, where you also had markets, be it not a universal market. Since it cannot be normal production costs measurable in labour time, then what determines these market values ? Scarcity ? Marginal utility ? Accidents of supply and demand ? If so, it seems to me you are commited to saying that historical materialism applies to the capitalist epoch, but not to precapitalist epochs (never mind postcapitalist epochs, for now). As a matter of fact, Weeks argues that commodity production only occurs under capitalism. He writes, "Without analysing what commodity production is, equating it with the law of value is purely a tautology. Once commodity production is itself analysed, it is discovered that it involves the ingredients of production being commodities, so it occurs only under capitalism" (Capital and exploitation, p. 91-92). In other words, Weeks argues that commodity production means exclusively "production of commodities BY MEANS of commodities", in other words generalised commodity production. But this seems to me hardly credible, since goods were produced for exchange in precapitalist society as well (partial commodity production) - this way you turn the very origins of capitalism into a mystery, as well as how the withering away of commodity production might occur. That is to say, the idea that "commodity production" requires all the inputs of production to be commodities is just false. Regards Jurriaan
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