From: Andrew Brown (A.Brown@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Thu Oct 06 2005 - 08:12:18 EDT
Thanks Jerry, A very useful response for me. Alas, I really must try and avoid getting into a discussion, so I must apologise for unfair brevity. You write: "The starting point for Marx and us should not be value but should be the commodity. Use-value, Exchange-Value, and Value (and abstract labour and SNLT and Money) are all unpacked from an examination of the commodity." I reply: Agreed. You continue: "All of these are social forms necessarily associated with the commodity. For that reason, I think it is misleading to say that value "abstracts from use-value". It does not! If there is an abstraction here it is that value abstracts from a _specific_ use-value (similarly value abstracts from specific, concrete labour)." I reply: The sense in which use-value *is* abstracted from is as what I call a 'determinate' abstraction (adapting terminology I take from the philosophy discipline). As a 'determinable' you are right that use value is *not* abstracted from. It is a vital part of the commodity and one must start with the commodity not with value as you rightly stress. The determinate / determinable distinction also covers your absolutely correct point that without use-value there is no value. Further down you write: "Furthermore, it is misleading to conceive of use-value as the "natural materiality" and "corporeality" of the commodity. Rather, use-value _itself_ is social. _Whatever_ the material form of the commodity, the stamp of approval that says a product is useful is _socially_ made and not given merely by reference to its physical/material characteristics (although, that can determine in some instances whether an individual product is truly a commodity: e.g. if grain is stored and then deteriorates to the point that it no longer has use-value, then it is no longer a commodity and also has neither value or exchange-value)." I reply: You are correct of course that use-value is social. The (materialist) argument does not deny this, indeed stresses it, but simply points out that social uses are constrained by the material properties of the use value. Both materiality and social mediation are entailed in the notion of a use-value. You write: "What I object to, then, even more than your conception of value as expressing "congealed labour" is how within that formulation use-value itself vanishes as a major explanatory category and thus has an eerie, ghostly presence in your conception. Use-value, just like value, is 'out there': both are realities, they are both made realities through the reality of the commodity." Use value does not vanish at all, it remains very important both because of the use value side of production and because value must be expressed in use-value. The determinate / determinable distinction is the key here. In fact all the rest of your post is answered by reference to this distinction. The Notes on Wagner are very consonant with my view so far as I can tell. Many thanks, Andy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Oct 07 2005 - 00:00:01 EDT