From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Thu Jun 03 2004 - 07:13:22 EDT
Hi Howard. > It is the contribution of Bhaskar, and his reading of Marx, to make clear > that some such understanding could be applied to social relations, ie that > social relations can be thought of as causally potent, but non-empirical. > In other words, I can see the material poles that make up a social > relation, > say Joe (a husband) and Meg (a wife) and I can see it's effects, but the > "relation" is something that is non-empirical. Marx said that society is > just an ensemble of social relations. That means, I take it, that much > more > than class is involved. Marriage qualifies. Ultimately social relations > are effective, if they are, as a result of the actions of individuals. > But > when we refer to "separate" producers establishing the relation of value, > really we refer to any constellation of entity that acts autonomously in > bringing a product to market -- a corporation, a petty producer, a slave > owner, a collective farm, etc. Yes, there is a social relation between Joe and Meg. It does not constitute social relations _of production_, though. One should not divorce (no pun intended) the concept of value from the _specific_ social relations of production associated with capitalism. These specific social relations of production are associated with a specific _class_ relation in which value and surplus value can arise. Simply because in Ancient Greece products were produced for exchange, were exchanged, and had a utility does not mean that they had (in Marx's sense of the term) value. Undoubtedly, those products had value in some _other_ sense of the term, but value in the Marxian tradition refers most fundamentally to a specific social/class relationship. In solidarity, Jerry
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