RE: [OPE] Reply to the thinker

Jurriaan:

 
You are entitled to your perspectives, but I think you mischaracterize VFT on a
# of points.

 
> according to "value-form theorists",
> 1) economic value arises out of the exchange process, and would not exist
> otherwise (this actually conforms closely to official national accounting theory)

 
The idea that value is actualized/realized in exchange does not, as you know,
have its intellectual origin in contemporary vf theorists. You seem to be asserting
that they vacate a role for production in the creation of value, but this is not the
case.

 
> 7) use-value is an historically invariant category, a transhistorical category

 
Don't you recall Michael W arguing something different?

 
> 8) anti-capitalist struggle means struggle against the value-form, a struggle against
> the commodification (commercialization, the commercial measure) of everything

 
This is not a claim that they make explicitly, as far as I can remember.

 
> 9) the contradiction between wage earners and capitalists is nothing other than a
> conflict between different commodity owners.
 

This is a claim that they don't make. It is, rather, a _class_ conflict.
You also might recall that at least one VF theorist (Michael W) has claimed
that labor power is _not_ a commodity.

 
> Value-form theory originally arose, because the "Marxists" thought that, even although
> they were defeated by the followers of Bohm Bawerk, Bortciewicz, Sraffa, Hayek etc.
> in quantitative theory,

 
I don't know where you got that from, but I think it is wrong from the standpoint of
intellectual history.

 
> In other words, Marx's theory was still serviceable as a sort of middleclass leftwing protest
> against rampant commercialization and commercial dehumanization.

 
That's the sort of mischaracterization - which can _not_ be supported with evidence -
that undermines discussion.

 
> The anti-valueform theorists argue among other things that:
> (1) all these 9 claims are substantially false.
> Anti-valueform theorists base themselves on Marx's own idea that products have value, because
> they were created by social labor, and that this value exists and can vary in magnitude, quite
> regardless of all the innumerable ways in which value can be expressed relatively in exchange
> processes.
> (2) the value-form theorists are over-impressed by the economic critics of Marx, causing them to
> abandon Marx's theory unnecessarily.

 
Which of these "critics of Marx" have VF theorists been "over-impressed" with? You have not
shown this to be the case through a tracing of the history of the literature.

 
> Among other things that is, because they usually read Marx through the prism of other theories
> which are really alien to Marx's own theory.

 
Which theories? Hegelian ones?

 
> Their retreat into the safety of a satisfying "qualitative philosophical categorisation of value" is the
> result of a lack of basic mathematical and statistical insight into the empiria, and basic insight
> into economic history.

 
I think this confuses the form of presentation with the form of analysis. It's pretty clear, for
instance, from the "Bibliography" of _Value-Form and the State_ that the authors reviewed the available
literature, including relevant statistics and economic history.

 
> (3) the middeclass leftist protest by SUV-driving, designer-kitchen cafe-latte "value-form theorists"
> against commodification, creates a false picture serving a partisan interest.

 
There you go again. For someone who likes to talk about statistical and historical evidence,
where is the evidence for the above?

 
Dave Z: is that the way it is in Sweden? Do the VF theorists drive around in SUVs, have
designer kitchens, and drink cafe-latte? And even if some of them did, so what? To me
that sounds like liberal guilt-tripping - who cares whether they like cafe-late, cafe con
leche, capuchino, or instant coffee? (I'd be willing to bet that their lifestyles and
consumer preferences are quite varied.)

 
> It says that there is nothing progressive about commerce and trade,
 
 
They don't make that claim, as far as I can recall.

 
> and that we workers should feel guilty about our consumption,

 
Not only don't they make that suggestion, but it is ironic that you made this claim right
after making a claim which could be read as wanting them to feel guilty for their
alleged consumption.
 

> completely at odds with Marx's own idea that capitalism contains both progress and regress -

 
They don't, as far as I can recall, challenge that perspective.

 
> value-form theory just feeds into the austerity offensive by the rich against the poor.

 
There you go _again_! (Dave Z: you don't accept this claim, do you?)

 
(> 4) the determination of value by labour, which appears in bourgeois ideology as the determination
> of labour by value, is according to the anti-valueform theorists not simply a "interesting
> phenomenological idea in choosing how to relate to others" but a powerful, inexorable social force,
> since it involves a social bond without which human beings are in fact "dead as a doornail".

 
Who wrote "interesting phenomenological idea in choosing how to relate to others"?
I bet it wasn't a VF theorist.

 
"All you are saying is give Marx a chance", you wrote lyrically. But, Jurriaan, Marx has
already had his chance. Living theory is for the living. If all we can say to workers is
'read _Capital_ / give Marx a chance!", then we might as well turn out the lights
for the party would truly be over for socialist intellectuals.
 
In solidarity, Jerry
 
 
 
 
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Received on Fri Mar 13 10:26:59 2009