From: paul bullock (paulbullock@EBMS-LTD.CO.UK)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2007 - 17:25:26 EDT
Jurriaan, you say > If I produce products for my own consumption, I know jolly well that those > products have a labour-value, No you don't, you know that they are useful > which I can express in terms of my own labour-time You can do this of course, using a clock, but why would you do that? maybe to plan your efforts in future... OK > and which indeed I can compare with the hours of labour which it would take other people I know of to accomplish. No commodity trade is necessary for the latter at all, just a working knowledge of how long, on average, a task takes for people to perform. Why would you do that if you were to consume the items yourself? To give yourself some satisfaction at your own skill? Who are these other people? What sort of society is this? I think this is the real problem here. We are referring to a specif SOCIAL organisation of labour, and value as a social category which gains predominance historically after some time. It is social labour despite being undertaken privately, for private ends. It is, accurately speaking, indirectly social labour, and the process of market exchange is the system that allows its valuation. In earlier societies a narrow range of useful items may have become commodities, and so valued socially and not privately. Under capitalism however commodities are the overwhelming form of use values, and value becomes the regulator of exchange on the mass scale. With socialism and then communism ( if you don't mind my dull orthodoxy) a completely different system of directly social production will ( I believe must) develop, the messy/ anarchic process of the 'unregulated' exchange on the basis of market valuation, will give way to communal decisions about the production and allocation of use values, in which local direct measurement of production time will play a role, but any state will make decisions about the use of time consuming products and services on the basis of genuinely democratic moral/political decisions. A choice will be made about the usefulness of products, and the quantity to be produced, not their exchange value, which will not exist I am aware that you might say that because exchange-value does not arise, does not mean that the use values have no latent/hidden value. But that this value is no longer commonly measureable. In this case 'value' has no function, and the law of value no place. The wide range of concrete human labour will be appreciated for itself, variously, but no longer in the way that allows self interest to direct social life. Paul Bullock > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@TISCALI.NL> To: <OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU> Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2007 10:50 AM Subject: [OPE-L] A startling quotation from Engels > Dear Prof. Germer, > > The core of your argument seems to be that: > > "But before capitalism social labor did not in general adopt the form of > commodities and by way of consequence the form of value either. In this > sense I think it can be said that your interpretation is a-historical, > because you identify all historical forms of social labor to the form it has > in capitalism, which is value." > > You obviously do not read what I say, because I have, like Marx, > distinguished sharply between the "value" of "the product" (a product which > is a use-value) because it is the product of human labour, and the "form" in > which this value is expressed. Marx does not say that products have value > because they are commodities, but instead that products have value because > they are products of labour. It is completely clear and irrefutable. The > value-form and its developing expressions cannot even come into being, if > products of labour have no value to start off with. > > I don't actually know what you mean when you say vaguely "before capitalism > social labor did not in general adopt the form of commodities", this has > nothing to do with Marx. What Marx says is, that labour-power and means of > production generally become tradeable commodities exchangeable for money in > the capitalist mode of production, which they were not on any large scale > before. > > I do not "identify all historical forms of social labor to the form it has > in capitalism, which is value", whatever that means. To repeat, what I say > is, that the fact that products of human labour have value, is something > that has very different consequences and implications, depending on the > given relations of production and exchange, i.e. it can take different forms > in different historical epochs. But it has never been in doubt to workers in > any era of history that their products have value, because it took work to > make them. > > It is only a bourgeois prejudice that value originates in commodity trade, > and naturally dogmatic Marxist orthodoxy follows the bourgeois prejudice > with its occult mumbling about "value". Orthodox Marxism is anti-historical, > in the precise sense that real economic history is rarely studied. If it was > studied, then a lot of the garble it talks about "value" would vanish. Even > so, you do not even engage with the textual evidence for Marx's own view, > which I provided. Well it is there, if you care to look at it. > > If I produce products for my own consumption, I know jolly well that those > products have a labour-value, which I can express in terms of my own > labour-time and which indeed I can compare with the hours of labour which it > would take other people I know of to accomplish. No commodity trade is > necessary for the latter at all, just a working knowledge of how long, on > average, a task takes for people to perform. In fact, under certain > conditions my very survival would depend on that knowledge. > > You write: "I think Marx's concept is that value is the social form of the > products of labor in a society where labor is not distributed according to a > social plan". It sounds very radical, very orthodox, very profound. But in > reality, you again conflate the form of value with the substance of value, > even although Marx takes great pains to distinguish between them across many > pages of his book. In feudalism or many other precapitalist societies, > "labor is also not distributed according to a social plan". Yet you want to > argue that value did not exist in those societies! > > All this seems to be a dispute about subtleties, but in reality the false > theory of value you propose caused the ruination of many workers' lives in > Soviet-type societies. It was thought "value is the social form of the > products of labor in a society where labor is not distributed according to a > social plan" which effectively meant that, since there was now a social > plan, workers became expendable in the execution of the plan. > > Jurriaan >
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