From: Alejandro Agafonow (alejandro_agafonow@YAHOO.ES)
Date: Mon Aug 20 2007 - 15:59:40 EDT
Wright: «A product that cannot sell fails to command labour. But this event
does not imply labour is not embodied in its production. A product has
labour-value regardless of whether it meets a social demand or not.»
This statement conveys the same «dichotomy» that we can find in Bendien, that is: a product has value (labour) because a human being produced it, but also because it is of value (usefulness). The subject theory of value surpasses this dichotomy integrating coherently both sides of the phenomenon. But this isn’t the only leak of labour value theory. All you know very well the exceptions that labour value has to do to integrate coherently the valuation of none-reproducible goods (natural resources) and one-shot-labour-goods like a van Gogh or a Reverón (known Venezuelan painter).
That’s why labour value is better understood like a philosophical conception of the equal value of every human being.
Kind regards,
Alejandro Agafonow
----- Mensaje original ----
De: Ian Wright <wrighti@ACM.ORG>
Para: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Enviado: lunes, 20 de agosto, 2007 19:56:25
Asunto: Re: [OPE-L] A startling quotation from Engels
I do think a lot of confusion is generated by the use of the word
"value" in many different contexts. Sometimes I wonder whether the
term should be thrown out and new terminology adopted to avoid
confusion. Also, having immersed myself in Smith and Ricardo recently,
I think that some of our OPE-L discussions of this topic reveal a
regression in understanding compared to Marx and the classical
economists.
The following fragment prompted this:
"If the product of labor is unable to be sold, this means that the
society has not needed it, and consequently the labor spent in its
production is not social labor. And to the extent that value is the
expression of social labor, such a product has no value."
The classical distinction between labour-embodied (total clock hours
required to produce a commodity) and labour-commanded (the price it
fetches in the marketplace divided by the average wage rate) is
important here.
A product that cannot sell fails to command labour. But this event
does not imply labour is not embodied in its production. A product has
labour-value regardless of whether it meets a social demand or not. In
this situation, a fraction of the total social labour has not been
equalized with another part.
Indeed, the mismatches between the labour-embodied in commodities and
the labour-commanded by commodities are part of the mechanism of the
reallocation of social labour through time (the law of value). Call
this the dialectic between value, exchange-value and use-value if you
want.
I believe it is a fundamental mistake to think that price, or the
value form, is constitutive of labour-value. Although casually linked
they are ontologically distinct. Temperature exists without
thermometers.
Also, the trans-social requirement that all societies must allocate
their labour-time is an essential part of historical materialism (c.f.
Marx's letter to Kugelman). To state that "value" only arises with
capitalism throws this essential insight away. It also ignores the
existence of sophisticated divisions of labour, markets and monetized
exchanges long before the social invention of the capitalist firm and
the hegemony of capital.
Apologies for slight grumpiness, but I didn't get enough sleep last night.
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