From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Apr 11 2007 - 06:35:56 EDT
>
>
>There is also a very strong appologetic import to identifying current monetary
>demand with 'social necessity'.
>
>Paul Cockshott
>
>www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc
>
But there is a kind of social necessity which monetary demand does have...
Theories of surplus value , part III, disintegration of Ricardian school
(Engels' letter to Kautsky, Sep. 20, 1884)
{In order that the commodities may be measured
according to the quantity of labor embodied in
them-and the measure of the quantity of labor is
time-the different kinds of labor contained in
the different commodities must be reduced to
uniform, simple labor, average labor, ordinary,
unskilled labor. Only then can the amount of
labor embodied in them be measured according to a
common measure, according to time. The labor
must be qualitatively equal so that its
differences become merely quantitative, merely
differences of magnitude. This reduction to
simple, average labor is not, however, the only
determinant of the quality of this labor to which
as a unity the values of the commodities are
reduced. That the quantity of labor embodied in
a commodity is the quantity socially necessary
for its production-the labor-time being thus
necessary labor-time-is a definition which
concerns only the magnitude of value. But the
labor which constitutes the substance of value is
not only uniform, simple, average labor; it is
the labor of a private individual represented in
a definite product. However, the product as value
must be the embodiment of social labor and, as
such, be directly convertible from one use-value
into all others. (The particular use-value in
which labor is directly represented is irrelevant
so that it can be converted from one form into
another.)Å@Thus the labor of individuals has to
be directly represented as its opposite, social
labor; this transformed labor is, as its
immediate opposite, abstract, general labor,
which is therefore represented in a general
equivalent, only by its alienation does
individual labor manifest itself as its opposite.
The commodity, however, must have this general
expression before it is alienated. This necessity
to express individual labor as general labor is
equivalent to the necessity of expressing a
commodity as money. The commodity receives this
expression insofar as the money serves as a
measure and expresses the value of the commodity
in its price. It is only through sale, through
its real transformation into money, that the
commodity acquires its adequate expression as
exchange-value. The first transformation is
merely a theoretical process, the second is a
real one.
Thus, in considering the existence of the
commodity as money, it is not only necessary to
emphasize that in money commodities acquire a
definite measure of their value-since all
commodities express their value in the use-value
of the same commodity-but that they all become
manifestations of social, abstract, general
labor; and as such they all possess the same
form, they all appear as the direct incarnation
of social labor and as such they all act as
social labor, that is to say, they can be
directly exchanged for all other commodities in
proportion to the size of their value; whereas in
the hands of the people whose commodities have
been transformed into money, they exist not as
exchange-value in the form of a particular
use-value, but as use-value (gold, for example)
which merely represents exchange-value. A
commodity may be sold either below or above its
value. This is purely a matter of the magnitude
of its value. But whenever a commodity is sold,
transformed into money, its exchange-value
acquires an independent existence, separate from
its use-value. The commodity now exists only as a
certain quantity of social labor-time, and it
proves that it is such by being directly
exchangeable for any commodity whatsoever and
convertible (in proportion to its magnitude) into
any use-value whatsoever. This point must not be
overlooked in relation to money any more than the
formal transformation undergone by the labor a
commodity contains as its element of value. But
an examination of money-of that absolute
exchangeability which the commodity possesses as
money, of its absolute effectiveness as
exchange-value which has nothing to do with the
magnitude of value-shows that it is not
quantitatively, but qualitatively determined and
that as a result of the very process through
which the commodity itself passes, its
exchange-value becomes independent, and is really
represented as a separate aspect alongside its
use-value as it is already nominally in its price.
This shows, therefore, that the "verbal observer"
understands as little of the value and the nature
of money as Bailey, since both regard the
independent existence of value as a scholastic
invention of economists. This independent
existence becomes even more evident in capital,
which, in one of its aspects, can be called value
in process-and since value only exists
independently in money, it can accordingly be
called money in process, as it goes through a
series of processes in which it preserves itself,
departs from itself, and returns to itself
increased in volume. It goes without saying that
the paradox of reality is also reflected in
paradoxes of speech which are at variance with
common sense and with what vulgarians mean and
believe they are talking of. The contradictions
which arise from the fact that on the basis of
commodity production the labor of the individual
presents itself as general social labor, and the
relations of people as relations between things
and as things-these contradictions are innate in
the subject-matter, not in its verbal
expressions.}
Ricardo often gives the impression, and sometimes
indeed writes, as if the quantity of labor is the
solution to the false, or falsely conceived
problem of an "invariable measure of value" in
the same way as corn, money, wages, etc., were
previously considered and advanced as panaceas of
this kind, In Ricardo's work this false
impression arises because for him the decisive
task is the definition of the magnitude of value.
Because of this he does not understand the
specific form in which labor is an element of
value, and fails in particular to grasp that the
labor of the individual must present itself as
abstract general labor and, in this form, as
social labor. Therefore he has not understood
that the development of money is connected with
the nature of value and with the determination of
this value by labor-time.
Bailey's book has rendered a good service insofar
as the objections he raises help to clear up the
confusion between "measure of value" expressed in
money as a commodity along with other
commodities, and the immanent measure and
substance of value. But if he had analyzed money
as a "measure of value", not only as a
quantitative measure but as a qualitative
transformation of commodities, he would have
arrived at a correct analysis of value. Instead
of this, he contents himself with a mere
superficial consideration of the external
"measure of value"-which already presupposes
value-and remains rooted in a purely frivolous
approach to the question.
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