From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Thu Sep 09 2004 - 08:06:06 EDT
---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Reply on simple commodity production From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@hetnet.nl> Date: Thu, September 9, 2004 7:03 am -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Jerry, You argue that commodity production did NOT exist prior to the advent of class societies, and you define simple commodity production as production of a product which is produced in order to be sold for money. If you adopt that definition, then obviously my argument must be wrong, since, in that case, simple commodity production presupposes monetary exchange. You also argue that I have conflated 'product' with 'commodity', and that if my interpretation is accepted "then virtually all pre-capitalist production becomes commodity production", and "virtually all barter becomes commodity exchange, virtually all products become commodities, and the 'commodity' then appears as natural and eternal rather than a reality that was brought about by a historical process and thru class struggle". I don't really think that accusation is valid at all. First of all, simple commodity production is not "production of a product which is produced in order to be sold for money" as you claim, because that definition applies to most kinds of commodity production in a cash economy. What is specific to simple commodity production is, that it is production and exchange of a product by the producer himself or by a household, without hiring wage-labor, for example by craftsmen, hunters & gatherers, or artisans. Because, as I have said, there are various possible gradations of integration of simple commodity production into a market, simple commodity production could also combine with with subsistence production of use-values. For example, in "Saqqaq: An Inuit Hunting Community in the Modern World", the Danish anthropologist Jens Dahl describes the hunting mode of production of eskimo's in Western Greenland. This mode of production is based on the centrality of the household unit, individual control of the hunting process, collective networks of exchange, and open access to hunting grounds. Family members pool their assets and labor. Production is partly aimed for the market, but what motivates producers is not primarily profit, but rather social responsibilities, local commitments, and kinship relations. Dahl observes, "it is not the cash motivation, but the significance of meat and the role of the hunter as provider that explain why people go sealing" (p. 215). Simple commodity production is occurring here along with subsistence production of use-values. Commodities have a value as labor-products, a social use-value and an exchange-value. On this all are agreed. But, Marx notes, that exchange-value need not necessarily be expressed in a universal equivalent, i.e. money. If that was the case, exchange-value and money would be identical. But Marx says expressly that they are not identical, and he wants to explain the origins of money such that, as trading processes develop, one or more commodities begin to function as general equivalents. That is, money did not just drop out of the air one fine day, any more than the law of value dropped out of the air one fine day, but rather money was a practical solution arrived at in the evolution of trading processes. Let us take a close look at this. Marx writes in chapter 1 of Das Kapital that "every product of labor is, in all states of society, a use-value; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society's development that such a product BECOMES A COMMODITY, viz., at the epoch when the labor spent on the production of a useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective qualities of that article, i.e. as its value. It therefore follows that the elementary value-form is also THE PRIMITIVE FORM UNDER WHICH A PRODUCT OF LABOR APPEARS HISTORICALLY AS A COMMODITY, and that the gradual transformation of such products into commodities, proceeds pari passu with the development of the value-form." (Progress ed., p. 67, my emphasis). What now is this elementary value-form ? "The value of commodity A is qualitative expressed by the fact that commodity B is directly exchangeable with it. Its value is quantitatively expressed by the fact, that a definite quantity of B is exchangeable with a definite quantity of A." (ibid., p. 66). Marx adds explicitly: "In other words, the value of a commodity obtains independent and definite expression by taking the form of exchange-value" (ibid.). What we see here, is that for Marx, unlike Jerry and the mercantilists, THE DEFINITION OF A COMMODITY DOES NOT PRESUPPOSE MONEY, and therefore that simple commodity production does not presuppose money either. In its elementary form, the exchange-value of commodity A is simply expressed in a definite quantity of commodity B. Incidentally, contra the "value-form theorists", Marx also adds expressly that "Our analysis has shown, that the form of expression of the value of a commodity originates in the nature of value, and not that value and its magnitude originate in their mode of expression as exchange-value" (ibid.). That is, commodities have value, because they are products of human labor, and NOT because of their exchangeability. This is a sharp distinction between the substance and the forms of value. As a corollary, simple commodity production does not require anything more than the most elementary forms of the division of labor and specialisation in production. In "The economic life of primitive people", Herskovits describes how in the Amazon basin, different tribes had their own speciality: the Menimels excelled in pottery; the Karahones produced poisons for hunting; the Boro's could make superior tapestries, belts and blowpipes; the Nitoto's crafted hangmats. They would trade these products as secondary activities, as an ancillary activity to hunting, fishing and gathering. With the development of agriculture and permanent surpluses, regular markets developed and consequently exchange processes became more sophisticated. As you can now understand, I have not "conflated 'product' with 'commodity'" at all, this accusation is FALSE. I am merely following Marx on this topic, rather than Jerry. Nor is it true, that if you adopt Marx's view that "virtually all pre-capitalist production becomes commodity production". This does not follow at all, because in pre-capitalist societies commodity production with socially established exchange-values, regardless of whether money is used or not, COMBINES with subsistence production of use-values in various admixtures. Through aeons of time, subsistence production is gradually displaced by commodity production, and that is precisely how markets are historically formed and how market-integration occurs. So you see, I do NOT aim at all to prove that the 'commodity' is "natural and eternal" but rather I aim to show the very opposite, namely the historical evolution of the commodity form, from the elementary form to the expanded form, and from the general form to the money-form. For my part, I think it is shocking, that somebody who professes to be a Marxist economist cannot even grasp this most basic distinction defined by Karl Marx. I previously referred to "Marxist doctrinairism" which I reject, and this is precisely why: while talking rhetoric about "the commodity", many Marxists haven't a clue of what Marx actually argues. Finally, you accuse me of not seeing commodity production as "a reality that was brought about by a historical process and thru class struggle". But, just because I did not make a ritual religious-Marxist reference to "class struggle" in my previous post to prove how radical I am, that does not mean that I have omitted it. Rather, I referred explicitly to the fact that the transformation of products into commodities does not occur automatically, but has definite social and political prerequisites, and that markets do not just provide free choices, but also force producers to buy and sell, in fact, that a market regime may be forced on the producers. In the case of primitive accumulation, as I mentioned, market expansion occurs through dispossession through which producers have no other choice than to sell their labour-power. The whole point however is that the social and political conflicts which occur in the process of market expansion, settled through negotiation or by force, do not necessarily have to involve "class struggles" but can involve all sorts of social and political struggles. Marxists typically conflate class struggles with class conflicts. A genuine class struggle however implies that there is a class which, self-aware, is struggling consciously for its own interests, but even if this is not the case, class conflicts still occur, because those conflicts are objectively and structurally rooted in modes of production which create and reproduce those conflicts according to a systematic pattern, of which the fulcrum is the conflict over the production and appropriation surplus-labor. But only a simpleton would believe that this latter conflict is the only conflict there is, or that the exploitation of surplus-labor is the only form of exploitation there is. Jurriaan
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