----- Original Message ----- From: "Jurriaan Bendien" j.bendien@wolmail.nl>> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2002 5:47 PM Subject: Marx on solving human problems (again) Jerry, Sorry that I offended you by calling the alleged "indifference" of capitalists to the use-values produced an instance of "infantile Marxism". From my point of view though, capitalists are always engaged in a twofold competitive battle, namely a battle for profits and a battle for sales - and use-value is a crucial aspect of the latter. I realise that Marx concentrates mostly on the valorisation process, and assumes usually for the sake of argument that the goods are sold, but that is an abstraction from reality, and we should not assume that the abstraction fully describes real capitalist behaviour, individually or in aggregate. "The very construction of Capital", George Lukacs reminds us in his The Ontology of Social Being (Part 2, p. 49-50), "shows that Marx is dealing with an abstraction, for all the evidence adduced from the real world. The composition of Capital proceeds by way of successive integration of new ontological elements and tendencies into the world originally depicted on the basis of this abstraction, and the scientific investigation of the new categories, tendencies and relationships that arise from this, until finally the entire economy as the primary dynamic centre of social being is encompassed in thought before our eyes. The next step that has to be taken here leads to the overall process itself, initially only conceived in a general way. For even though the whole society always forms the background to Volume One of Capital, the central theoretical presentations only grasp individual acts, even when dealing with such things as a whole factory with many workers, with a complex division of labour, etc. Later on the individual processes that have been previously considered separately have to be dealt with from the standpoint of the entire society. Marx repeatedly stresses that the first thing is an abstract and therefore formal presentation of the phenomena. In this connection, for example, 'the bodily form of the commodities produced was quite immaterial for the analysis', for the abstract laws apply in the same way to any kind of commodity. It is only the fact that the sale of one good (C-M) in no way necessarily leads to the purchase of another (M-C), that indicates the distinctness of the overall process from the individual acts, in the form of an insuperable contingency. It is only when the overall process is investigated from the standpoint of its lawlike character, which affects the economy as a whole, that this formal comprehension is no longer sufficient: 'The reconversion of one portion of the value of the product into capital and the passing of another portion into the individual consumption of the capitalist as well as the working class form a movement within the value of the product itself in which the result of the aggregate capital finds expression; and this movement is not only a replacement of value, but also a replacement in material and is therefore as much bound up with the relative proportions of the valu components of the total social product as with their use-value, their material shape" (Marx, Capital Volume 2, Moscow 1961, p. 394). The quote I mentioned before in our discussion about "productive forces turning into destructive forces" occurs at the end of the first part of The German Ideology: "Finally, from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these further conclusions: (1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse [Verkehr] are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class" (The German Ideology, ed. Chris Arthur, p. 94). Regards Jurriaan
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