Paul B, thanks for the opportunity to clarify, and Paul C, I've made some comments on your 5876 at the end. Quoting from my post, Paul B writes in 5874, >>"As I understand it, exchange value is predicated upon the autonomy of independent producers >>who >>produce values useless to them for others. This is not a relationship of >>property, at least in any legal sense, but a relationship concerning the >>distribution of agents of production to the means of production." > >PB: Now this is where I have a problem. Exchange value exists in many societies, BUT subordinated to the central/ essential social relations of production of those societies which were not capitalistic. This exchange value is occasional, secondary etc, and begins to take on some significance with merchants acting between societies, or outside of their home base. The exchange value itself has not developed into a well established social form until then. Here is the key historical issue. Nevertheless to say that this is not a relationsghip of property is quite startling. The merchants purchased or had made up, the goods they traded. Are you saying they didn't own them? If they were 'agents' did the 'principles' not own the property?Do those involved in exchange not own their products? If not who does? What do you mean? (legal form is not the immediate issue here but I don't understand your note here either). Here you speak of 'agents of production' being distributed 'to' the means of production. This sounds more like the type of terms used by formal theory of ' games' type, not the exposition of an historical method. > > HE: I agree exchange value exists in many societies (although, unless I misunderstand, this has become a contentious point. I do not understand the position of value form theory that the value form does not make sense or is not causally efficacious before the rise of capitalism. Recently I browsed the Digest of Justinian. Value shapes the legal relations there presented enormnously. I can understand the argument that as a historical matter there was no mode of social production corresponding to "simple commodity production," but I cannot understand the position of value form theory that associated labor occurs only where there is universal commodity exchange, that is, capitalist production. Greek and Roman societies were not societies of simple commodity production, but the value form was a major generative force in their social and legal life. No doubt there is something I'm missing.) I also agree with you that where exchange value exists historically, to suppose that it was not embedded in relationships of property would be quite startling. But that is not what I am saying. Suppose we want to explain the action of the tides during a particular historical moment. We would have to account for the pull of the moon's gravity, ocean currents, wind, the shape of the seafloor, etc. But in order to give an account, we might isolate the contribution of each of these and then show how their intersection produces the particular result we observe. Of course exchange value always occurs historically embedded in particular relations of property. But can we consider the variety of forces operating separately and then show, in their intersection, how they work to produce a particular historical result? I interpret Marx as suggesting three distinct social forces: relations of labor, relations of force, and relations of consciousness. I also interpret Marx to say that of these, relations of labor tend to determine relations of force and consciousness. These are relations of reciprocal causality, to be sure, but we want first to explain superstructural relations in consequence of the "simpler abstractions" of the base; then we can show how, in particular cicrcumstances, actions at the level of the superstructure can in turn work to determine the base. Property, for Marx, is, in any sense of the word, a relationship of belonging. This is clear in the PreCapitalist Economic Formations (PCEF). If a relationship of belonging is supported by force, then it is a relationship of property in a juridical sense. (My assumption here is that law without force is not law. You may have regular standards of behavior that result from morality or custom, but if they are not in the last analysis supported by force, then I would not call them legal relationships.) So can we understand relations of labor without reliance on relations of force or consciousness? At the level of a particular historical conjuncture, the answer is no. Corvee, for example, is an economic, legal and ideological relationship all at once. But can we use abstraction to consider the distribution of the agents of production with respect to the means of production, without taking into account relations of force or consciousness? It is like understanding the tides by starting with the moon. The value form of labor (which, I should be clear, I think is not a concept of VFT) I understand to be a particular relation of agents of production to the means of production. As you emphasize, this occurs across many societies, and is recorded, for example, in the I Ching over 3000 years ago. By the value form of labor, I mean the circumstance of independent producers producing use values useless to themselves but useful to others. Now this does not historically occur without property relations, but analytically I can think of this as a bare relation of labor disposed toward means of labor and its result: a separation of producers who produce things not useful to them. A relationship of belonging necessarily will correspond to that -- if a productive unit is separate then its means of production must be beyond the zone of activity or control of other producers. That is what separate means. If it is not separate then I deal with some other form of production, not the value form. So from the condition of separation I can derive a particular relationship of belonging. The means of production and its results belong to the producer and this is given recognition by others. If it isn't they don't and we don't have separation. If we do have value production, other relations of consciousness are also implied. Because the producer has produced what is useless to his or her own reproduction, he or she has to resort to exchange. On the one hand there will be formed an intent to obtain from exchange and on the other an intent to induce by means of exchange. This gets codified in legal rules. So, for example, in Anglo Amnerican law where someone has promised x for y, in order for the promise to be binding the other must first manifest an intention to obtain x and must manifest an intention to obtain x by giving up y. Comparably, the relation of separation gets codified in the first rule of private property -- the exclusion by law from interference. So that's all I mean. Can we start with bare relationships of laboring producers to nature and each other and work out analytically relations of property, including private property (the exclusion by law from interference), from there. I think we can. Starting with separation we get private property as a relaiton of belonging enforced by law. >>Propertyrelations as legal relations are relations of force and consciousness >>derivative of that. So if we want to speak of commodity ownership we would >>speak of onwership of value and reach the reverse of your proposition, >>namely: private property is predicated upon the value form of labor. > >PB: I'm lost again I'm afraid what is the 'value form' of labour? Do you mean the commodity form, labour power sold in the market? If so why should I sell my labour power if I have property (ie means of reproducing myself). It is when property has been 'privatised' away from me that I sell my capacities to the property owner! The workers do not sell their labour power in order to bring into existence private property. Try to convince me otherwise, please. OR perhaps you mean by ''value form ' of labour' , money? But then I don't get the logic here either. > HE: I hope my meaning is clear above. I had no occasion to speak of the sale of labor power (another point which has become contentious). >>Capital is more complicated because it is intrinsically a relationship involving the >>subordination of will, nonetheless we can start with the >>distribution of agents in the sense of the separation of direct producers >>from the means of production. And this of course is immediately a class >relation.' > >PB: Well, now you seem to have reversed your initial position above.... 'in the sense of the separation of direct producers etc'... Once private property is established... separation.....class.. So it seems that 'primative accumulation does come first... (although of course we know that there is a drawn out battle involved with the social categories coming into being interdependently). The key point is that until we have labour power sold as a commodity we can't speak of systematic and self expanding value in exchange. > HE: Again, as a historical matter I agree with you. There cannot be self-expanding value without the primitive accumulation of capital. But what is the primitive accumulation of capital? It is (PCEF again) the separation of workers from the means of production (and on an ever increasing scale). So for the concept of capital (the capital form of labor), the question is whether we can start with a distribution of the agents of production of the means of production and work things out from there as we did with the value form of labor. I can take as raw foundation direct producers separated from the means of production and subsistence. But plainly no production can take place in such circumstances -- workers are without the objective conditions of production. These are held by nonproducers. So this circumstance is more complicated because we have added a new element. With respect to the value form of labor, the yoke connecting the producer to the means of production was presupposed and needed no explanation. In the language of PCEF the worker looks upon the objective conditions of production as an extension of his or her own being. But this is no longer possible with capital. Now we must take into account that joining. But the joining involves intrinsically a relationship of consciousness, a subordination of the will. And since in general a relationship of subordination, to be regularly reproduced, must be reproduced by force, capital is also necessarily and intrinsically a legal relation. I was interested in the following comment and wonder if you could explain it more fully: >Here you speak of 'agents of production' being distributed 'to' the means of production. >This sounds more like the type of terms used by formal theory of 'games' type, not the >exposition of an historical method. In solidarity! Paul C, We grasp reality under different aspects. We can grasp labor as this tailoring just as it is in itself as concrete labor, or, we can grasp the same labor as a proportionate part of the total labor expended by society on the totality of social needs. It is the same labor. If I understand you, you argue that abstract labor exists wherever there is the division of labor. But isn't Marx's meaning for the term narrower than this? Abstract labor emerges where producers are separate and the division of labor is a form in which their separateness is articulated. (A division of labor exists in a factory, but this, without more, does not give rise to abstract labor.) Moreover, the value form of labor requires that we compare labors in order to exchange them. So what we compare is the proportionate quantities of aggregate social labor. But our comparisons are as a means to serve purely private purposes. Certainly we compare labor quantities under socialism, but we compare them for the purposes of production, not as means of exchange, don't we? If I say I have to be at the train in an hour and a half and need 30 minutes to get there and 45 minutes to do x, that leaves me 15 minutes. I notice that y takes 15 minutes and z takes 15 minutes. I can do one or the other. If I choose y because it has gone longer undone, this is not the same sort of comparison made in exchange, is it? The equivalence of y and z makes a choice between them relevant, but as such it directs me to decide globally on my purposes and to choose the means that fit my chosen end. The global social comparison relating labor to social purpose in abstract labor goes on behind the backs of producers, is independent of their will, and is opaque to them. They search simply for equivalencies that will serve particular private ends. Marx's critique of the utilitarians was that in order to know what's useful to a dog, you need to know something about dog nature. Wouldn't a plan make decisions about social needs based on (fallible!) calculations of what our flourishing requires? Without a doubt this requires a social and economic calculation that in some form measures labor, but it is not comparable to the way we compare quantities of aggregate labor for the purpose of exchange and as means of exchange, is it? So while I would agree with you that the absence of an explicit (non-monetary) social and economic calculation was an impediment to the effectiveness of attempts at socialist planning during the last century, I wouldn't have thought that this was for lack of calculation in terms of abstract labor time. If we associate the meaning of abstract labor more narrowly with the production of value, then it does always involve monetary categories, explicit or covert. A social and economic calculation under socialism would have as its objective precisely the purpose of supplanting categories giving expression to abstract labor. In the last analysis this will depend on the plan being actually implemented in such a way that it succeeds in overcoming, not merely formally, but really, the separation of productive units that is the condition for the operation of the law of value. This in turn depends on overcoming the subordination of direct producers to the will of non-producers. In solidarity! Howard
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