From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Mon Feb 21 2005 - 08:40:36 EST
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------- Subject: Marx's Form of Analysis From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@hetnet.nl> Date: Mon, February 21, 2005 7:05 am ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Bullock asks: Please explain this comment of yours: "The existence of value does not presuppose exchange, even if the abstract thinking about value emerges only in the context of more sophisticated trade." I The argument here is, that products of human labor have value, even when they are not being traded, although perhaps we cannot quantify that exactly. It is not just that the people producing them subjectively regard them as having a value, but that they have an objective social value, since one can say with certainty, that they cost a certain amount of labor-effort to make, and that it would cost a certain amount of labour-effort to replace them under current conditions. On that basis already, one could conclude without hesitation that some products have a greater value than others, and this is in fact the initial basis for value comparisons in the more primitive or simple forms of trade. That is to say, even when there is no trade, home oeconomicus still economises and applies valuation principles in allocating time, energy and resources because he knows the objective consequence of alternative courses of action in this regard. Marx remarks that all economy reduces to the economising of (labor-)time, but this economising already presupposes value comparisons of products based on practical experience. Thus, value as concept and reality (in contrast to exchange-value) does not originate from exchange, but simply from the reality of homo oeconomicus as producer and moral subject in society, who is confronted with the problem of allocating his time efficiently. What the development of trade up to very abstract monetary valuations does among other things, is to quantify and objectify the value and cost of an increasing range of products ever more exactly through (price) comparisons, and along with the abstraction of value, there is the abstraction of labour-time. Thus the concept and reality of value is shaped up, with ever more refined distinctions. You can say that through exchange, abstraction is made from the specific labor-efforts by specific people, and that moral considerations are separated from economic considerations, but obviously social labor already exists, even when there is no exchange, and to some extent at least, people can in that situation judge the objective consequences of alternative labor-allocations, and economise accordingly, resulting in an initial "division of labor" - the economics of which may be distorted by power relationships. We can say that in a market economy, people economise largely according to price signals (although up to 40% or 50% of society's total labor-time may happen to be unpaid), but it would be quite wrong to think that they do not seek to economise if there are no price signals. Yet in this economising, they are already attributing value to labor-products, regardlessa of whether they are priced, and they know that objectively the social value of some products is greater than others. The insight which Kozo Uno (and also Ernest Mandel) emphasise is that trade originally develops at the boundaries of economic communities who trade surpluses, first incidentally and then more regularly. At this stage, the economy of labor in the sphere of production is not yet regulated by the pattern of exchange of products, even although social labor is performed. Over a lengthy span of history, production activities become increasingly subordinated to trading relations; not just outputs but also inputs become marketed goods, and are only obtainable as marketed goods. Marx then asks the question "how does it come about, that the activities of labor become dominated by the value of their products?". But when Marx tries to show, with Hegelian coquetry, that the substance of value is abstract labor, when he distinguishes between value and exchange-value, and tries prove that labor is the common factor which makes commodities commensurable, he does so in a way which is not really satisfactory. It invites the accusation that his proof is metaphysical or tautological. Because in truth all that is really required for commodities to be exchanged, is that they can be traded, and that obstacles to their exchangeability are removed. The regulation of labor according to commercial value is a separate story. Hence Kozo Uno's clear separation of the "doctrine of circulation" from the "doctrine of production"; Mandel in his book Marxist Economic Theory prefers to show the same thing, using historical examples of the origins and evolution of trade and exchange relations. II I suggest Marx's political economy is incomplete, insofar as it lacks an analysis of the mode of regulation of consumption and consumer behaviour. The idea here is that consumer behaviour is not simply a matter of subjective utility preferences, an idea already implicit in Marx's concept of use-value as the tangible characteristic of a good which can satisfy a need, and his view of human needs as possessing a definite structure, due to their anthropological nature. The question then is how the value-forms begin to structure the satisfaction of human needs, and how they become an organising principle for it (to some extent this is reflecting in discussions by Michel Aglietta and Ben Fine, and e.g. discussions about "Fordist culture" - the pattern of consumption must be made to conform to the requirements of the mass production of commodities for profit, based on relations of private appropriation). The lack of a political economy of consumption has I think had bad effects in previous attempts to organise a socialist economy - the emphasis was on the worker as producer creating the material foundations of wealth, to a large extent disregarding the worker as consumer; as if the adequate satisfaction of consumer needs was not critical to productive effort. III The theoretical dispute about value referred to above may seem like a byzantine or obscure bit of anthropology, but I think it is really important to understand, from the point of view of the organisation of resource allocation, if market relations are abolished or heavily regulated. It is also important in assessing in what situations market relations are beneficial, and where they are not. Presumably a socialist economy does not seek to allocate resources primarily on the basis of the law of value, because it does not regard value as reducible to exchangeability or price relations, and seeks to allocate resources according to socially established priorities, restricting commercial activity only to those areas where it is deemed beneficial. Nevertheless, it would still operate with a concept of value, since to produce goods carries an objective economic cost, and a cost in labor-time. All that the abstract theory of value tells us here is, that such a concept of economic value exists, regardless of the existing of market valuations, insofar as that objective economic cost in time and energy exists. But a socialist economy might well take into account other cost and benefit criteria, relating to the health of the producers, and the health of the biosphere, reflected in its legal and moral system. IV The centre-piece of neo-liberal theory is that markets provide the best way to assess the costs and benefits of resource allocation. If goods can exchange and have a price, then an optimal allocation will eventually result. But from a socialist point of view, they are only one way, and not necessarily the best way, because it rests on the dubious Smithian supposition that the pursuit of self-interest is always in the interest of all. Markets could be beneficial, but it is not true by definition. From a socialist point of view, the dispute is not about "markets or no markets", but about which property relations best promote human development. Thus, the neo-liberal defense of markets is in truth really meaningless, because the real debate is about property relations and income sources. The real advantage of a socialist economy is that property relations can be experimented with to a far greater extent, since the political state can institute different systems to guide economic behaviour in directions beneficial to all; given that, if we are realistic, the desired morality for citizens will not appear spontaneously through market behaviour or through the propagation of ideas. V The argument here is not that the accounting and economising of private enterprises is necessarily all wrong, it is just that social enterprises ought to take into account criteria which, although they do not involve monetised costs and benefits, refer to human, social or ecological costs and benefits. This is not simply a theoretical nicety either; already there are many discussions in corporate circles about "social responsibility" of enterprises and "environmentally friendly" procedures. Even although ideologues may declare planned economy impossible, the reality is that corporations and governments are forced to engage in a large amount of "planned economy" already. What the problems are, is already pretty clear; but the dispute revolves around what forms and pirnciples of social organisation and association can harmonise human interests, if these are not expressed through the cash nexus, and how bureaucracy can be avoided. You need some kind of workable morality here. Obviously a crude identification of "planned economy" with "Stalinist command economy" is not helpful, but, the reality of corporations is that already parts of it are also a form of "command economy" since internal to the corporation at least, price signals are insufficient as a guide to economising resources - which creates a concern with "corporate culture" to shape up those behaviours though to be beneficial for corporate policy. The attempt to overcome the problems with more and more internal cost-centres in a large organisation, causing more and more complexities of accounting, ultimately fails because they become unworkable and people flout the rules in practice. This then focuses attention again on the forms of association which are required for efficient production, the personal morality and social values involved, etc. Jurriaan
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