Re: on money

From: ajit sinha (sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Mon May 24 2004 - 06:19:45 EDT


--- Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> >Because the product is not produced as an immediate
> object of
> >consumption for the producers, but only as a bearer
> of value, as a
> >claim, so to speak, to a certain quantity of all
> materialised social
> >labour, all products as values are compelled to
> assume a form of
> >existence distinct from their existence as use
> values. And it is
> >this development of the labour embodied in them as
> social labour, it
> >is the development of their value, which determines
> the formation of
> >money, the necessity for commodities to represent
> themselves in
> >respect of one another as money--which means merely
> as independent
> >forms of existence of exchange value--and they can
> only do this by
> >setting apart one commodity from the mass of
> commodities, and all of
> >them measuring their values in the use value of
> this excluded
> >commodity, thereby directly transforming the labour
> embodied in this
> >exclusive commodity into general, social labour.
> >
> >TSV III, p.144-145
____________________
The meaning of this passage is not very clear but if
it is saying, which it apparently is saying,  that the
value of any commodity is determined by first
determining how much of money commodity it exchanges
with and then multiplying that number with the
concrete labor time embodied in the money commodity,
then it is theoretically simply wrong. Unless money
commodity is something like silver littered on a
beach, which can be simply picked up by bare hands,
all money commodities are produced goods requiring all
kinds of constant capital items. Thus to determine how
much of labor time is embodied in a money commodity
one has to be able to first figure out how much of
labor time is embodied in those constant capital
items, and that cannot be done unless you add various
concrete labors. Thus the statement above gets into
vicious circle. Cheers, ajit sinha






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