From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Fri Sep 10 2004 - 08:59:25 EDT
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@hetnet.nl> Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 7:22 AM Jerry, A final reply on this vexed issue. You write: You misunderstood my point: I did not suggest that was a definition of SCP; it is the commonly accepted definition of 'commodity' used by economists, historians, anthropologists and others. Reply: Okay then, have it your way. The problem with these unspecified "economists, historians, anthropologists and others" is that they project categories belonging to the bourgeois epoch back into history, in order to trace the evolution of markets based specifically on cash economy. But the elementary form of a commodity, Marx insists, is a traded labour-product which has a socially known and established value, a use-value and an exchange-value, which does not presuppose money, but only the knowledge that X amount of tradeable object A is worth Y amount of tradeable object B. Rather than naturalise money and capital, Marx aims precisely to show that trading processes have a history which goes beyond money and capital, which makes money and capital historical categories, rather than ahistorical categories. In neo-classical econmics, money-prices are always assumed, and therefore no intelligible discussion of the development of exchange relations can take place - that discussion is mostly relegated to anthropology. Neo-classical economics has no more use for the categories value, use-value and exchange-value precisely because it assumes cash economy and trade with money-prices as a given datum. You argue: What I objected to was the historical claim that commodities and commodity production existed in pre-capitalist *classless* societies -- a claim that is not supported by the weight of the historical evidence that I am aware of. Most of the rest of Jurriaan's post rests on this misunderstanding of the point I was making. Reply: A lot of anthropological research has been done on tribal societies which are either stateless, classless societies, or proto-class societies, which shows that surpluses were traded without use of money on the basis that X amount of commodity A is known to be worth Y amount of commodity B, as an ancillary activity to subsistence production. These findings generally support Marx's hypothesis, that trade historically begins at the boundaries of separate economic communities, and involves goods which those communities cannot produce themselves, or not in sufficient quantity and quality. Those exchanges refer to the most primitive forms of simple commodity production which are the progenitors of market economy. You wrote: Jurriaan's interpretation rests critically on the belief that where there is production for barter there is commodity production. Reply: No, I do not say that, and my interpretation does not "critically rest on that belief". Anthropologists know very well that bartering may occur on a incidental, episodic basis, or occur on the basis of production explicitly aimed at exchanging the products on the basis of known relative values. My interpretation is based on understanding the evolution of the commodity form itself, through increasingly more sophisticated forms of trade. At least a sixth of the value of world trade nowadays takes the form of counter-trade (or offset agreements), but obviously money does play a role in it as valuation and accounting referent. Barter on that scale could not easily occur without monetary valuations. You wrote: An (unstated) corollary of Jurriaan's position is this: if 'commodities' existed in pre-capitalist classless societies, then there is every reason to believe that commodity production will persist under communism! This is a position which some 'market socialists' might take comfort in, but it is not a position which seems consistent with other stated positions of Jurriaan. Reply: I do not see how this would follow at all. Communism is normally thought of as a form of world society in which, with highly developed productive forces of labor, there is abundance of a type which enables the direct allocation of resources according to need, without resorting to trade, but on the basis of a collectivist morality of freely associated producers. The possibility of that happening does not depend on the economy that existed 15,000 years ago but on the development of technology and on human development. But I could live with the idea that some trade might still occur under communism. What I have stated previously is, that the generalised hostility of "orthodox" Marxists to markets, and the absolute counterposition of market economy and planned economy, is mistaken and wrong. This hostility has its main origin in the Stalinist industrialisation project in the Russian republics, based on forced collectivisation and forced labor, which aimed to resolve the "scissors crisis" affecting the trade between industrial goods and agricultural goods, and subordinate the peasantry to the rule of the Soviet polity. It is an hostility which prevents any clear discussion of the pro's and con's of different kinds of markets as instruments for allocating resources, and how they could be combined with social planning. You wrote: If commodity production existed even before recorded history in pre-capitalist classless societies and will continue to persist under communism, then 'commodity' becomes natural and eternal. The belief myth that commodities have always existed and will always exist is asserted by some bourgeois economists but it is not a belief that Marxists should be associated with. Reply: I do not see why that follows either. As I have said, the real point is to understand the historical evolution of trade, from ceremonial gifts, silent barter and casual/episodic trade as activities which are ancillary to subsistence production, to increasingly more developed forms of commodity trade, in which production for exchange becomes a specialized activity, and ultimately begins to dominate social production. This insight is essential to understand the process of market formation and market integration, and it means we should clearly distinguish between pre-capitalist commodity production, and capitalist commodity production. My main aim has been to show that the spurious Marxist controversy about whether or not "a society of simple commodity producers" existed, overlooks the real matter at stake: that capitalism is, as Marx says, "generalised commodity production" (verallgemeinte Warenproduktion). Generalised commodity production means that both the inputs and outputs of production are all commodities (traded objects) which means that labor-value rules production. This however cannot exist other than as the production of capital, precisely because the generalisation of commodity production itself is dependent on the use of money as universal equivalent, and as soon as the circuit C-M-C' gives rise to the circuits M-M' and M-C-M', then commodity exchange becomes a means for capital accumulation. In turn, that gives rise to a new class, the bourgeoisie, which is able to make labor itself an object of capital accumulation, and eventually is able to subordinate the whole production process to the requirements of capital accumulation. Even so, we should distinguish clearly between the existence of capital and wage-labor, which originates and develops in the interstices of the old modes of production, and capitalist society based on the production of capital, which emerges only after a lengthy process of the growth of trade, and all sorts of social upheavals and class struggles. I'll leave it at that. Jurriaan
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