From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Mon Apr 17 2006 - 14:56:11 EDT
Thanks for the quote, Chris. Marx does suggest here that, from the standpoint of the valorisation process, i.e. at a high level of abstraction, "capital is in and for itself indifferent towards the specificity of every sphere of production", but that is just to say that what matters *in a financial regime* is costs, sales revenue and profit, no matter what is produced. And further, more substantively, that the developmental impulse of capital is to remove "all legal and extra-economic obstacles to the versatility we are discussing". Yet Marx acknowledges here also "One cannot make any boots with spindles, cotton, and spinners", i.e. use-value cannot be ignored from an economic or technical point of view in real production. The use-value aspect is however abstracted from "in order to present the laws of political economy in their purity". But again, that does not mean that in reality the use-value aspect can be, or is disregarded. Marx does not say here *capitalists* are so indifferent, only that *capital* as self-valorising value is indifferent. The credibility of the "indifference" argument hinges on the question "indifference to what, and from what point of view". The substance of the indifference idea is, that if goods are produced for exchange, rather than immediate use, then producing them is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, i.e. to obtain income in order to buy other goods, and that is how it is looked upon. But what Marx overlooks is that this indifference may itself become a practical problem, and that a great deal of management effort goes into combatting that indifference - this would be particularly true in a services economy. Jurriaan
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