Reply to Fred - B This relates to Fred's 5675 and 6591 I do not think it profitable to analyse the mess Marx makes of Ch.1; but since Fred and Nicky directly appeal for comment on the criticism of CPE here goes.... First, though, it is necessary to set the scene by distinguishing two quite different relations that have been discussed by Fred and Nicky under the rubric: form and content. First there is that between the ahistorical concretelabour/usevalue 'matter' (as I would prefer at this level) and its historically specific social form, namely value. So the focus here is the value form *of the product*; Second there is that between value considered as a content and the forms *of value* listed on 174 as commodity, money , capital, and including the transitions of sec. 3 one assumes. These have entirely different dynamics. The value form is entirely alien to the product and valorisation is entirely alien to production. The main problem for us is to theorise this almost impossible combination. Because it is a combination it is logically possible to examine each separately, and their relations will be ones of interaction such that Fred's preferred language of 'cause' is not too far off: the value form 'causes' the development of industry, this development in turn 'causes' changes in socially necessary labour times, in turn 'causes' the magnitude of value to vary. But the ontological difference is enormous and poses huge conceptual problems. It requires what I call 'bridging concepts' namely abstract labour, precommensuration, 'personified' instruments etc. But the other relation, that between value and *its* forms is where fully dialectical relations such as form and content, essence and appearance, have their place. It is literally senseless to separate value from money because value only exists in a money economy. Occasionally Marx sees this e.g. (but I concede he often fails to): " [without money] they definitely do not confront each other as commodities but as products or use values only." (180) (and a fortiori as products of concrete labour not abstract). The relation between the sides will be inneraction. It is because of the relative autonomy of the value form that two things are possible, namely the *self-development* of value a la Hegel's logic, regardless of the matter regulated, and the force which it exerts on production which underpins Fred's beloved quantitative changes. Once these two relations are firmly grasped (and not conflated as by Marx) it follows that there are *two* possible failures, both committed by CPE. Firstly the naturalisation of bourgeois production and hence a failure to make the first distinction and address how the product of labour acquires a value form. Secondly a failure to make the second distincton, and either dismiss money as a veil or bring it in ad hoc without connecting it to the value form systematically. Only now can I turn to the two passages where Marx makes *both* complaints but *fails to notice* he has made two different points. here they are: "Political economy has indeed analysed value and its magnitude, however incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms. But it has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that particular form, that is to say, why labour is expressed in value, and why the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of the value of the product." Marx elaborated his critique of political economy in the following footnote to this passage: "It is one of the chief failings of classical political economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and in particular of their value, in discovering the form of value which in fact turns value into exchange-value. Even its best representatives, Adam Smith and Ricardo, treat the form of value as something of indifference, something external to the nature of the commodity itself." Focus on the term 'value'. It plays the role of form in the first passage and that of content in the second passage! Transparently therefore they are two different points. The first is that CPE failed to grasp 'the value form of th product of labour' (as Marx says further down the note - for me this has to be concrete labour). The second is that CPE had not accomplished the derivation of money and more broadly the development of the value form as Marx did in sec. 3. IMO Fred too muddles these points. In his 5664 he glosses Marx's point as about commodity production per se i.e. in terms of the first distinction; but in 5675 he totally misreads the first passage as about prices, whereas Marx speaks of values, thereby conflating the two relations; then in 5691 he says the passage is about the content and form *of value* i.e. the second relation. Finally Fred in 5675 says: "There are other issues to discuss: 1. whether abstract labor is physiological or social? (I agree with Rubin that it is social.) 2. whether or not abstract labor exists as a separate entity from money and prices? (I argue yes, although as explained above, necessarily expressed as money and prices.)" This seems incoherent. If abstract labour is a social determination this is due to its being the way labour is represented in value and therefore cannot exist separately from money. On my reading it is concrete labour that exists separately and the value form determines what of it is to count as abstract. While on Marx criticism: it is truly astonishing he did not provide an introduction stressing the first relation as the context of his work, as both R&W and my 1993 felt impelled to do, Instead he dives straight in with given commodity relations. Comradely Chris 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Jul 15 2001 - 10:56:28 EDT