From: Nicola Taylor (n.taylor@student.murdoch.edu.au)
Date: Mon Sep 02 2002 - 05:46:40 EDT
Riccardo [7571], Thanks for your generous comments, providing me with a chance to better understand the many areas of overlap between us (and equally interesting differences). This is LONG, so make it clearer, my original points are indented. I don’t know if that will come through for everyone. 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. >This I would have liked to have had from the beginning. I would have understood much more the way you proceeded before, >in which Marx is a pale antecedent of your view. Here you recognize that you (as others) depart from Marx on the starting >point, on 'real abstraction', on labour time in production, on quantitative issues, etc. And you dusagree in such a fundamental >way that it's a bit strange to claim Marx as a forerunner. (I leave aside for later the issue of value theory and money as a >commodity). Riccardo, I acknowledge Marx as a forerunner not because he has an embodied (abstract) labour theory of value but because he has a value form theory, or at least some ideas about a value form concept that help me to construct a systematic dialectical theory of capitalism. He also has labour as the source of value, with which I agree (although I don’t agree with Marx’s way of constructing that argument). I think it would be dishonest of me to ignore the importance of Marx in my own thinking, don’t you? He is rather fundamental. Of course, it is a bit of a cliché to say that Marx is the giant upon whose shoulders we all stand (whatever our differences), but if the cliché fits…. 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? >Here my present guess is that Marx's starting point is phenomenological. The relevant reference, here, is Hegel, but the Hegel >of the Phenonenology of the Spirit. >here it would be interesting from you to understand: what's your interpretation? what's your reconstruction? My simple answer is that Marx starts with perceptions. In the notes on Wagner, written just before his death, Marx writes: In the first place I do not start out from ‘concepts’, hence I do not start out from ‘the concept of value’… What I start out from is that simplest social form in which the labour-product is presented in contemporary society, and this is the ‘*commodity*’ [** represents italics in original]. I analyse it, and right from the beginning, in the form in which it appears (Marx, 1879, p.198). It seems plausible, then, that the first two sections of ‘Capital’ have to do with perceptions and with the process of working these up into concepts. On this reading, the presentation proper does not commence until the reconstitution of the commodity as an entity of double (material-social) form, in the third section. I don’t believe I am being original here (see for eg, Murray, 1993). At the same time, I agree with you that the concept of the ‘commodity’ undergoes transformation from the inadequate beginning to the commodity as it appears in the Results. Chris Arthur has written brilliantly on the character of this transformation. On Hegel, I am a novice, even more so than for Marx. I take all my cues from: 1) Richard Norman, 1976, ‘Hegel’s Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction’ 2) Reuten and Williams, 1989, the ‘method’ section 3) Chris Arthur, especially his 2000 piece in Burns and Fraser (eds), ‘From the Critique of Hegel to the Critique of Capital’ 4) The A.V. Miller translation of ‘Hegel’s Science of Logic’. My other major debt is to a ‘Vygotskian’ tradition in the theory of mind (where the dichotomy of mind/reality is criticised as a false dichotomy, to be overcome by a theory of knowledge as practice). As I understand him, Hegel does not distinguish at all between ontology and epistemology. I do distinguish, but in the ‘constructivist’ sense that I get from Vygotsky where language/theory is a tool that bridges the gap between theory and reality, in a mutually determining way. I find a very similar position in R&W (1989, pp. 8-14) so it is hardly surprising that I agree on their views of magnitude and measure. … So the more complete answer to your question is that I see the reconstruction of Marx as an ongoing epistemological enterprise, an unfinished social practice if you like. 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. >may you explain 'value form of exchange'? If we begin with dissociation, then the first condition for existence is a moment of association: exchange. But exchange the character of exchange is not yet determined at this high level of abstraction as ‘capitalist’; i.e. exchange in its value form character. Once we have the value form of exchange we also have products as mediators of production relations, *determined* as things of double (material and social) aspects, i.e.: 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 Newton'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. >I doubt that existence issue (in the sense of independence from the observer) is apt here, and the reference to mathematics >enlightening. I think that all your problem, relative to natural science, may be resolved if you look at Ian Hacking, >Representing and Intervening. As for Marx, he of course thought that the commodity was a very strange 'thing' indeed (!): >that social 'objectivity' had nothing to do with natural 'objectivity', BUT THAT NEVERTHELESS THAT THE LAWS HE >WAS FORMULATING WERE NOT MORE OR LESS EFFECTIVE DEPENDING ON THE PARTICULAR >PROBLEM AT HAND, and that 'we' give these meanings to the social world (this, from an Italian point of view, looks like >Vattimo's postmodern rereading of Nietzsche and Heidegger). Then: reconstruction on your side? May be: I guess here Marx >is in one of his high points. The reference to mathematics has only an illustrative function. We can say: (A) the world IS mathematical or (B) the world is mathematically TRACTABLE. I take the first view as being consistent with Hegel (in the sense that he does not distinguish ontology and epistemology) and the second view as epistemological (laws are ‘normic’). I introduce the distinction because we are comparing value form theories: Chris, view (A) and Geert, view (B). It becomes important when considering Geert’s view of measure, and Chris’s objection to it. For example, Chris cannot possibly agree with the following from Reuten (1988, p. 51): ‘…value as a form is the necessary dimension of labour and of the useful objects produced by it in the bourgeois mode of production. It is a social dimension and social universal, not an a priori (in Kant’s sense) natural-physical dimension and universal (space and continuity), though value is a category as abstract as space and continuity. (In actual social intercourse its social meaning is further constituted. In as much as the space of an object is further constituted by the measure of length (for which eg meters and yards are standards), the value of an object is further constituted by money (for which eg a dollar or a pound stirling are standards). Both length and money are constituted in social intercourse and as such they are social facts.’ For Chris, value is not a dimension and length is not constituted in social intercourse as a social fact – length is a fact before any such constitution. I agree with Geert, of course. My interest in Nietzsche and Heidegger is more of an ‘existentialist’ variety, and probably doesn’t have any bearing here (although even a philosophical illiterate can find some similarities between Chris A’s negative dialectic and Heidegger’s negative dialectic of nothingness). 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 >'potentially useful' in which sense? skince we both agree that the commodity is dual, and from it a doubling of all entities and >processes, and that value form is what gives all of these the specific social function, this 'labour' is useful in the sense of >producing use values and in the sense of granting profits to the firm(s). We both agree that the commodity is a duality of use-value and value; we disagree that labour power is a commodity. For me labour power is NOT a commodity, it does not have a value and it has only ‘potentially’ a use-value – labour. What is special about labour power is that the capitalists do not produce it and do not own it, hence they have quite some difficulty extracting ‘use-value’ from it: takes separation of workers from means of producing a livelihood, state regulations and organisation of the working day under capitalist control. Until workers clock-in, the use-value of labour power is potential only. only on labor markets when labor power itself takes on a value form, wages. >that's strictly speaking wrong. ther's no 'verification' here. Here we simply have that firms succeed in having finance on the >expectation: (i) that they will be able to get the labour 'activity' they expect in adequate quantity and quality; (ii) that the output >will be sold. Wrong in what sense? I did not say ‘verification’, I said that labour power (although a non-commodity) nevertheless takes on a value form: i.e. is exchanged for money. I completely agree with you that all we have is finance on based on expectations (i) and (ii). 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. >That's definitely 'reconstruction': probably, it should be understood from the "In addition to abstraction from the useful >characteristics etc.", which, to my memory, is what Marx does. This, I guess, is against both Chris and me. Unless there is >some 'trick' here. What do you mean by 'actually' expended? Of course, we should talk of the socially necessary labour time. >We may however try to find at least an agreement on the 'interpretation' issue: has this anything to do with MARX's LTV? >There 'labour' - to be more precise, as we should always do - LIVING labour is the use value of labour POWER, a 'fluid' >activity whose 'immanent' measure is TIME, so that its 'congealation' in objectified DEAD labour is value, whose substance >(content) is abstract labour, and whose necessary form of manifestation is in money terms. This activity is spent in >PRODUCTION. If one abstracts from labour time, one abstracts from labour. Or am I wrong? If one abstracts from labour time, one abstracts from a particular quantity of hours. I hold that the abstraction from concrete labour does exactly this. No necessary connection between the two magnitudes (quantities of labour time expended in production and commodity prices). Socially necessary abstract labour time (mL) is a monetary magnitude. >Rubin: "The SPECIFIC character of Marx's labor theory of value lies in the fact that Marx does not base his theory on the >properties of value, i.e. on the acts of equalization and evaluation of things, but on the properties of LABOR in the >commodity economy, i.e. on the analysis of the working structure and production relations of labor" (81), so that, as >Rubin says, "we confirm the general connection between 'value' and 'labor'" BUT "here our STARTING POINT is not value >but labor" (ivi). So, when we're talking of 'forms' we are talking of the form taken BY LABOUR, in a specific social function. My starting point is definitely not labour, but I do agree that when we are talking about forms we have in mind a particular social form taken by labour (mL). >We probably agree on this. Where we disagree is that Rubin is the first to remind thaat "when we consider value in terms of >content and form, we relate value with the concept which precedes it, abstract labour (and in the last analysis with the >material process of production), the content. On the other hand, ONCE we have determined that value does not represent >labor in general, but labor which has the 'form of exchangeability' of a product, then we must pass DIRECTLY to exchange >value". If you do ONLY the second move, you risk to lose labour. So, tthe challenge is to show how the 'material process of >production' is form-determined. Agree with you on WHAT the ‘challenge’ is. Disagree with you on HOW to meet it. >I agree with Chris that in this form determination the time dimension, in important sense, is still there. As I'll show you later, >the issue here is that in this sequence >abstract labour => value => exchange value >you mixed up on the content/form issue, and do NOT see that the content is not concrete but, as Rubin says, ABSTRACT >labour. I don’t understand this criticism. For me content is abstract labour (I’ve said that again and again: the content of value is abstract labour expressed in money). >so, may we agree to disagree, giving however fro granted that SOME people as Rubin, me, and I guess from prior mails and >writings Chris do NOT accept your formulation above? It is a major point of disagreement. Well, we know this at the start, right? For me the subordination of labour under the aspect of time is necessary to *capital’s* production of value: this is so because *labour* is the source of value. It is then a truism that the more labour that capitalists can extract from the labour power they purchased, the better for them, the greater the potential profits. The MEASURE of success, however, has nothing to do with the extraction of labour in production: a 16 hour day will be wasted just the same as an 8 hour day if the product doesn’t sell. In this sense, ‘real abstraction’ in the market is also abstraction from time spent on producing a commodity, and the only measure of socially necessary ABSTRACT labour (i.e. the only measure of the content of value) is money. 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. >on this, of course, ALL agree. but this [last sentence] contradicts the prior sentence, to me. unless, again, there is a trick here, >the 'poven ability'. how can labour to be 'proved' a priori, ex-ante, to be 'value in the form of money'? this seem to me very >neoclassical. of course, abstract labour is immediately private, not immediately social. What do you mean contradicts? It should be clear, abstract labour IS immediately social only in exchange (abstract labour is a value form of social labour). The abstraction that constitutes abstract labour is therefore also an abstraction from the magnitudes of time (concrete ‘ideally abstract’ labour) expended in production. Obviously, it follows that ‘socially necessary’ abstract labour time has only one measure: money. It may be that what I say contradicts Marx or contradicts you, but I don’t see how I am contradicting myself by saying this. >to me, as I've said many times, the KERNEL of KM stays in two things that your formulations either cancels or downplay: (i) >the UNCERTAINTY in the extraction of living labour from labour power; (ii) the UNCERTAINTY of the 'coming into >being' of value as ideal money into actual money. Here you've cancelled the second. In denying the relevance of time in value >creation WITHOUT already presupposing what others would call the realization of commodities you are denying the first. but >more on this later. I can’t follow this objection at all. In my formulation: (i) the UNCERTAINTY of extraction of labour from labour power is EMPHASISED beyond the traditional approach where labour power is a commodity. It is precisely because labour power is NOT a commodity and is NOT owned by capital (like land and means of production) that capital CANNOT constitute itself as a subject (self-valorising value), except in so far as it succeeds in extracting labour (time) from workers through the whole of the working day. Consider: the price of labour power is not systematically related to its (non-existent) price of production, the supply price of labour-power contains no surplus value. In this respect labour power is FUNDAMENTALLY different from technical means of production. It is different from nature and from means of production, it is AUTONOMOUS, as Mike W put it in his CJE, 1998 (p. 192): ‘the compulsion of formal subordination, the struggles over the labour process derived from the inability of employers simply to ‘switch on’ their workers, and the consequent need for ‘real subordination’ (human resource management), together with the characteristics above, add up to a very major difference between labour power and (other commodities), including those constituting other means of production’. Fundamentally, the decision to employ labour is mediated by the purchase of labour power and this depends on the price of labour power and the expected price for the commodities it will produce. In this way, ideal precommensuration (in money terms) relates value to labour. (ii) How have I cancelled the UNCERTAINTY of the coming into being of ‘ideal money’ as ‘actual money’? I depict the process exactly in these terms in my conception of the concrete labour/ abstract labour duality. >abstract DEAD labour (as the objectification of abstract LIVING labour) is the CONTENT of value. buut it is FORM->DETERMINED. it's not labour 'in general'. >of course, there's a problem here. what is abstract labour: LIVING or its DEAD objectification? here I follow Rubin. the first >is potential, latent abstract labour. >may I remind that, to my memory, I was the one who introduced in the debate this line of reasoning (after Rubin, of course!)? >may be I'm wrong about this. But in RRPE 89 what I did was: criticising both Gleicher (substantialist) and Eldred (formalist) >as polar, wrong opposites; then, looking at Napoleoni 75, but criticising him for not having this 'latent'/'actual' distinction >about abstract labour? going back to Rubin to introduce it (an hint was already in my C&C 85). I do not have labour in general, on the contrary the double character of labour is posited right from the start (in dissociation). Abstract labour is social labour, but a very special kind of social labour. i.e. abstract labour is the way that social labour manifests under the value form. Social labour in non-capitalist societies does not take the value form of abstract labour. Similarly concrete labour is private labour, expended in a production process UNDER THE VALUE FORM. In non-capitalist societies there is no private concrete labour; all labour is social (because production and consumption are not separated and labour is not organised in private independent production units). I begin from dissociation: hence the doubling of labour into concrete and abstract aspects. >Btw: if you don't have time in you approach, the L in some equation like Y = mL, what is? I do have time in my approach (a necessary subsumption of productive activity under the aspect of time); what I do not have is a quantitative theory relating quantities of time to prices. I do not have a theory of price determination based on a labour embodied theory of value. So, the first thing about an equation in the form of the above is to recognise that it is not intended to establish a relationship between dependent and independent variables, but to say something fundamental about capitalist society. What is fundamental is that (m) and (L) are inextricably connected and that their ‘unity’ makes capitalism what it is. In capitalism, value and price are mutually constituted by exchange because this is the only process whereby the private, concrete labour of individuals is constituted as social, abstract labour. Hence there is no sense in which abstract labour is independent of its monetary expression. Abstract labour is (mL): labour time, measured in money, where the money productivity of labour (m) is the dominant operator. >From my perspective, then, your question must be rephrased. By itself (L) as measured in time is not homogeneous; it can be made so only by assuming away a real problem (as Marx did). Moreover, a measure in labour time is not constant since labour productivity changes over time. There is no adequate measure of socially necessary labour time other than money, and it makes no sense to ask what (L) is in isolation from (m). This is Geert’s equation, but here of course you have MY interpretation of it (he may object). So, in production processes: The commodities produced 'ideally' represent an amount of money, ideal money, and the activity of labor 'ideally' takes on the form of abstract labor. And only in exchange is abstract labour actual (mL): >may we agree to disagree? agree on interpretation: this is Marx's idea aboout the LTV, that it had a labour time dimension >attached to it, and likely Rubin's. that I probably have this time dimension less than in the 'true' Marx. and that you cancel it >altoghether. Right? Yes we may agree to disagree here, 90% - the 10% disagreement is that I don’t ‘cancel it altogether’ 8-). >"On the question of the relation between content and form, Marx took the standpoint of Hegel, and not of Kant. Kant treated >form as something external in relation to the content, and as something which adheres to the content from the outside. From >the standpoint of Hegel's philosophy, the content is not in itself something to which form adheres. Rather, through its >development, the CONTENT itself gives birth to the form which was already LATENT in the CONTENT." >well, that's what I'm trying to do. may be I do not succeed. You seem to me desperately to deny this Rubin's point, which >was for me a Marx's point, the content itself giving birth to the form. Rubin again: "From this point of view, the form of value >necessarily grows out of the substance of value". For me content does not give birth to the form. Form determines the character of the content. Nothing desperate about that. >May we agree to disagree? That is that for you this of Rubin is a wrong position? May be not as an interpretation of Marx >but as a way out of Marx's contracdctions? Agreed! >I do not understand but I agree on this rewriting of you: the form of value shapes the 'matter' of the labour process in the sense that it affects the material structure of production, so that the content of value, whose source is abstract labour 'in becoming' within production, is extracted according to the valorisation imperatives, and hence in this sense the value form is the 'prime determinant' of production (to borrow from. >btw, I don't understand what do you mean by Without the actualization of the valorization requirement, transformations of the 'ideal' into the 'actual' do not happen, the dissociated system of production collapses. >it seems to me true by definition. unless you're not saying that without pumping out living labour frrom workers, there is one >stumbling block against the realization of one of elements of the expectations regulating the bargaining between banks and >firms. that is: firms expected a given outcome in the production process proper, it didn't came out in this way, workers were >too recalcitrant. But of course the transformation of the ideal into the actual may fail on the commodity market too, for >completely different reasons. but if so, we two are IDENTICAL here. Yes, here we two are IDENTICAL, which is why your criticism of me for eliminating UNCERTAINTY is nonsense! BUT: Although form dominates content it is nevertheless true that the creation of useful products is a NECESSARY moment in the capitalist valorization process: >granted form cannot exist without content. >this is an ERROR if this part is meant to imply that the 'creation of useful product' has to do with 'content' here. the content >of value has NOTHING to do with useful products, or useful and concrete labour. but if that part of the sentence does not >refer to content, what's the meaning of all this? >you see: there is the value/use value dialectics. for me form and content has to do with VALUE, not with use value. The value form determines the doubling of concepts. So yes, form and content has to do only with the value system. 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 terminology is completely confused for me. e.g., what's the sense of "only labour has use value". which labour are we >talking about? dead, living, labour power? let's say living labour. then, LL IS the use value of labour power. so, the >terminology should be clarified before going on. it's not Marx. it's not interpretation. it's reconstruction. But then it must be >explained to the reader (or tell me the paper where you've done this in a didactical way). The terms – dead and living – are yours/Marx’s. I didn’t use them. I take it that *labour* is expended in production; because this labour is form determined it has a double character – in production it is ‘immediately’ concrete private and at the same time ‘ideally’ abstract (it is immediately social/abstract in exchange). >you're right that there is no necessary association between the necessary labour accruing to workers and the time of living >labour, in the socially necessary magnitude, they MAY spend. though it is capitalistically necessary that the latter is higher >than the fomer. what's problematic, however, is not the extraction of SURPLUS labour, but of the WHOLE of labour. PERFECT! >you're right also that what ACTUALLY happens has many historical determinants, and here clmass struggle at the point of >production and the State intervention are very relevant. YES! 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. >exactly. that why I introduced Graziani in the English debate on Marx, both in survey and eventually in translation. >what do you mean "although he does not use it for this purpose"? He uses it EXACTLY to justify why the objectification of >labour as an activity is the only content of value, and why capitalist wealth (surplus value, NOT surplus money for Graziani) is >only due to exploitation. may me you mean, Graziani didn't intended this to be used within some value form persspective. >then you're right. I tried to do this within Rubin (+ Napoleoni). you try to do this within R&W. EXACTLY. 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?). >no objection. indeed, in a sense, I think I've already done this. your is (will be?) probably a different way of attempting the >same thing. Yes, no unnecessary originality on my side here 8-)) 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?). >this is consistent with the above, and that's why I disagree. OK For me the 'determining' element [I don't like causal] is value form >for me too: the value form determination of production, which means the way capital try to overcome the recalcitrance of >workers is the central element (literally: in the sense that is at the centre at the circuit, and that the whole works if this works; >but the whole determines this 'core' of course). and the only quantitative theory possible IS a monetary one. >YES. money as the only actual representation of the content of value (which may well be never known, or actually measured: >again, look at Hacking). This is because I do not need, as Marx does, to make a long (classical) preliminary inquiry into what enables commodities to exchange; >indeed, I agree that from a different perspective (which often I adopt) this may be dispensed with therefore, I do not need commodity money. >I fought against commodity money AT LEAST since 89 (in English!). so I AGREE. and you may count me within your >references 8-) 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. >WONDERFUL. then all this long journey of disagreement for agreeing? my appproach sustain exactly this conclusion. >(personally that this position here follows NECESSARILY from your argument). AMAZING HOW MUCH WE AGREE ISN’T IT? 8-)) 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). >WONDERFUL. that's EXACTLY what I think. Yes WONDERFUL! Thanks for the intervention Cheers Nicky
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