From: Nicola Taylor (n.taylor@student.murdoch.edu.au)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 18:22:45 EDT
Thanks to Chris and Riccardo for a stimulating and thought provoking discussion. I will take up only one point: Riccardo's invitation to discuss 'internal' contrasts of vf theories (taken as a general body of theories with a common thread, in Chris's sense): RICCARDO: >in your [CHRIS'S]definition of VFT, I am happy to feel part of the 'value >form' group (definitely, I am deeply influenced by Rubin and at least >the first Backhaus, the one I know from translation). and, as you, I >disagree with 90% of R&W (weel, may be a bit less, let'us say 80%; >and with 10% of you!), but I find relevant the point of contacts, and >I learn a lot ffom them. >I think, however, there ARE open issues in those who rightly stress >the centrality of the value form in Marxian Theory. I also I think >that a most effective answer to criticisms is in discussing OPENLY >these 'internal' contrasts. Sometimes, some 'outside' criticisms >against value form people come from 'good' points which would be >counterproductive to deny. in my opinion, of course I am not sure of what the 80-90% disagreements with R&W exactly consist (or whether the disagreements are the same for Riccardo as for Chris). In any case Geert can answer for himself. Below, I restrict to stating only what I see to be some important points of disagreement and some important points of agreement with Chris. 1. A common point in vft theories is the importance attributed to the starting point as an abstract universal concept for the domain under investigation. Did Marx begin with the commodity as a concept or did he begin with perceptions? Chris (1997, after Banaji, 1979) defends Marx's analysis of the commodity as an 'analytic' category with 'value' the true synthetic abstract universal starting point. I begin more like Geert with: dissociated labour. What is meant by this term dissociated? In my view three things. First, the form of macroeconomic organization: allocation of labor, production, distribution and consumption are separate processes. Second, the form of microeconomic organization: labor power and the means of production are separated prior to production and must be reunited in a production process that takes place in privately organized independent units. Third, the aim of production is external to the useful objects produced, motivated instead by a drive for monetary profit. Given that ultimately we want to arrive at a fully determined concept of capital as value form, dissociation in these THREE senses seems an appropriate starting point [NOTE: This view is consistent with Reuten and Williams, 1989, but not with Eldred et al,1982/85, who have a much simpler idea of dissociation than this. For the Sydney-Konstanz writers 'dissociation' is only dissociation of production and consumption and they begin like Marx with the commodity]. The key question that comes out of this is hardly original (it goes back to Adam Smith): how does such a dissociated system manage to exist? I would set out to answer the question by asking what are the NECESSARY conditions for the existence of dissociation (in the 3 senses above). First condition of existence: a means of association - lets call it 'exchange'. Exchange aligns production and consumption, and is also the pre-requisite for labour to be aligned with means of production; hence exchange constitutes the social interdependent of independent producers. Given the 3rd point of dissociation (above) - i.e. that a quantitative (rather than a qualitative) divergence of inputs and outputs is the driving force of social production - the exchange relation must necessarily be one where the exchange ratios have a non-arbitrary unitary form of expression (otherwise rational capitalists might as well gamble in a casino). Value is the social expression of this unitary form - in opposition to the heterogeneous particularity of useful objects. So, like Chris, I believe that we are dealing with a VALUE-FORM of the exchange relation: the value form gives historically specific social functions to THINGS as mediators of production relations (as Chris said in his mail). Let's now call the social form of things under the value form of exchange: commodities. The commodity is a value form determined product - as such it is an entity of double character (use-value and value). 2. The meaning of value form: I am not sure if the emphasis on form-determination has quite the same meanings in vf theories. It is my reading (please correct this if wrong Chris) that Chris takes dialectical relations as possible only because Capitalism really IS an inverted reality in Hegel's sense. I have some problems with this. Does Neuton's law exist before our formulation of it, does length exist before a concept of length becomes socially necessary and so on). Chris says 'yes' to the existence question (as I understand, Chris?), I say 'no' (I believe Geert also says no, Geert?). For me the social world may be mathematically tractable or may be tractable in a Hegelian sense - i.e. WE give to it these meanings; they are social constructions that are more or less effective depending on the particular problem at hand. For me the concept of form-determination works well in the explication of HOW the value form determines the doubling of all entities and processes in capitalism into (material form) and social (value form). >From the initial doubling of the commodity, I would go (like Chris) to increasingly complex form-determinations with functions corresponding to increasingly complex production relations: commodity, money, capital, profit, etc. In this system of form-determinations, money has a function central to the existence of value, that of measure. In commodity markets, the products of labour are validated as socially necessary only in so far as they exchange for a price (the monetary unit of measure); likewise labor power – the capacity to perform physiological labor – is verified as potentially useful only on labor markets when labor power itself takes on a value form, wages. BUT HERE IS THE REALLY IMPORTANT POINT: In addition to abstraction from the useful characteristics of labor-power and its products, MONETARY COMMENSURATION ABSTRACTS FROM THE LABOR TIME ACTUALLY EXPENDED IN PRODUCTION. Labor time is socially necessary only in terms of its proven ability to create value in the form of money. Thus, in its determinate value-form, the labour expended in production itself takes on a double character as concrete particular labour and as socially necessary abstract labour, (it is the SAME labour, but with a value form aspect expressing the transformation of labour time into money in addition to its concrete form). 3. The Double Character of Labour: If products, human capacities AND LABOR TIME are commensurate only in exchange, and if exchange is not accidental but systemic, then the price of a commodity may be anticipated in advance of production; i.e. private producers pre-commensurate by assigning an ‘ideal’ or anticipated ‘value’ to commodities (straight out of, R&W). Of course the average labour time socially required to produce a particular product may change over the course of a production process since it is only the process of actual exchanges that constrain production units (compare Chris's response, which refers instead to the 'long run'). For me, only the concept of pre-commensuration gives definite sense to the idea that the link between labour and value is determined by the form of exchange. Crucially, if production is orientated to value and surplus-value, then the material character of production is subsumed by this goal; hence wage labor expended in a production process also takes on a double aspect: it is AT ONCE concrete particular labor and abstract universal labor. Does this mean that labour in production can be measured in labour time: NO. Rather: production must be considered as a means for potential money expansion, as valorization (money – production – more money, M-C-M’, with M’>M). The commodities produced 'ideally' represent an amount of money, ideal money, and the activity of labor 'ideally' takes on the form of abstract labor. I do not know yet if this view is consistent with Napoleoni's treatment of living labour as activity and result (or how it is different from Riccardo's engagement with this view). A possible difference may be the *sense* in which production is considered to be form determined: for me, form (value) dominates content (use-value) subordinating production to valorisation imperatives, hence the value form is the 'prime determinant' of production (to borrow from Chris). Without the actualization of the valorization requirement, transformations of the 'ideal' into the 'actual' do not happen, the dissociated system of production collapses. BUT: Although form dominates content it is nevertheless true that the creation of useful products is a NECESSARY moment in the capitalist valorization process: form cannot exist without content. No difference with Chris (I hope!) on this last statement. The difference is that I do not see a metamorphosis of value from 'property' to 'non-material' substance as a necessary part of a systematic dialectical presentation. This is because I do not agree with him as to the commodity money starting point. So we are back at square one. 4. Labour as the source of value. Chris's most important and decisive disagreement with R&W, in my view, is his rejection of their conceptualisation of 'nature' as 'freely' available to capital. I think that this criticism of Chris is correct. The crux of the R&W argument in chapter 1, section 9 (pp.68-73) is that labour power and nature are not commodities (they are not produced within capitalist relations of production. Crucially, there is no relation between cost of production of labour power and the wage, labour power has a price but no value, it also does not have use-value - only labour has use value, and there is no NECESSARY association between the price of labour power and the use value that capitalists actually extract - it depends on class struggle, state imposed sanctions, etc). The important point is that, unlike means of production (which exchange among capitals) labour power represents a purchase external to capital. If nature is freely available, it follows that the labour power, converted into a use-value for capital (i.e. labour in production) is the source of value. What is wrong with this argument - and I believe that Chris is right about this - is that nature is excluded by assumption, at any rate without adequate argument. HOWEVER: I consider that the R&W insight need not be abandoned. What is needed, in my view, is an extension of the argument, such that the capital-labour exchange relation is seen to be macroeconomic in character while the capital-capital exchange relation is microeconomic. This way the purchase of labour power can be rethought (without losing anything of the R&W insights) as an 'external' purchase made by capitalists while the purchase of means of production AND land is conceptualised as an 'internal' purchases, or exchange among capitalists. This *tentative* idea of further determining the exchange relation comes originally from Graziani (1986), although he does not use it for this purpose. I want, in other words, to develop the NECESSARY consequences of the second 'dissociation' in R&W (i.e. separation of workers from means of production). This is for me a 'work in progress' and I would be very interested to know if there are any strong objections to this (Geert? Chris? Riccardo?). 5. Interpretation versus reconstruction. My way - and I want to emphasise this strongly ONCE AND FOR ALL - is NOT Marx's way. To recap: the commodity is the wrong starting point (according to me). I prefer the R&W 'dissociation' because it allows me to conclude that 'real abstraction' is ALSO an abstraction FROM labour time in production. I am coming even closer to Eldred here: I agree with him, that there is no sense in retaining labour time as causal in price determination (he concedes, according to Chris's latest OPE-L that it can be so, ceteris paribus - so what?). For me the 'determining' element [I don't like causal] is value form and the only quantitative theory possible IS a monetary one. This is because I do not need, as Marx does, to make a long (classical) preliminary inquiry into what enables commodities to exchange; therefore, I do not need commodity money. 6. 'Formalism' and 'Substantivism': I do not know what these words mean. 7. Forms of exchange as 'prime determinant'. I agree with Chris. The only reason that we are in production with dynamics affecting living labour and labour forced to struggle with capital is because the whole thing - level and structure of employment, duration and intensity of working day, distribution, composition of output etc - is all determined by value-form imperatives! Once we understand production as a form-determined process, then a study of dynamics becomes interesting. AT this point, I am happy to introduce Schumpeter's dynamic competition and the struggle of firms for extra profits. But I do not begin here. I begin by showing HOW this process is determined by value form imperatives. And I do not end here by concluding that production is fundamental, I end by concluding that this whole struggle in production is NECESSARY to the existence of capital as value form. MORE THAN THAT, it shows up a FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION in capital as 'value form' - that capital is NOT really and can NEVER be the autonomous 'subject' that form determination in the Hegelian sense seems to demand (the theory of the capitalist system cannot close with the resolution of contradictions as Hegel's does). On this last point in parentheses I believe value form theories are in general agreement (whatever our disagreements about how this system is to be theorised). 8. On Finance. My inclination is to agree with Riccardo; but FOR ME in the sense that the NECESSARY capitalist money is ultimately shown (in fully developed value form) as bank finance to production. But, on this I have much work to do, and cannot comment further. Thanks again Chris and Riccardo for an interesting discussion. In solidarity Nicky
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