Re: [OPE] debates on whether value existed in pre-capitalist society

I'd like to intervene and use the opportunity to address also the question
of Hegel's method of abstraction and Marx's supposed use of it from this
summer. I'll do that in another post. Here I address related issues raised
in the exchange between Dave Z and Jerry.

I have a problem with Dave Z's formulation that the abstraction of labor can
occur outside the relations of production for market exchange. The problem
here is that there is latent a fallacy of equivocation: we use a word in two
different senses. When you ask if the abstraction of labor can occur
outside the relations of exchange, the answer is yes, but the use of
abstraction here is conceptual; it doesn't pick out anything historically or
socially specific. Jerry is right about that. You refer simply to the
generality of using labor to appropriate nature to need. But as Marx says,
there is no production in general and there is no labor in general either.
But then if we use the term 'abstract labor' we do refer to a historically
and socially specific configuration of social relations. We refer to a
quite concrete social structure of labor.

I disagree with Jerry about what that configuration is and I'm sure Marx
does too. The social relation of capital is presupposed in the first
chapter of Capital in the sense that the law of value operates there as if
the value or commodity form is the general form of the product of labor --
the tendencies of the law of value are not developed historically but as
they exist in their full flowering. But what the clarity of that
perspective allows is insight into what the structural configuration of
social life is that generates market exchange. Once we realize what the
causal structure we target is we can see also that it occurred historically
even where the capital relation was absent and where value was not the
general form of the product of labor. That is, understanding value is
facilitated by presupposing capital analytically, but the social structure
that generates relations of value does not depend historically or factually
on the emergence of capital. On the other hand capital does depend
historically on the factual existence of the social structure of value.

howard

----- Original Message -----
From: "GERALD LEVY" <gerald_a_levy@msn.com>
To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: [OPE] debates on whether value existed in pre-capitalist
society

>
>> Now if you agree (by replying 'yes' to my question) that abstraction of
>> labour can occur outside the relations of production for market
>> exchange,
>
>
> Hi Dave Z:
>
> I don't agree: the creation of abstract labor is tied inextricably to
> the purchase and sale of labor power as a commodity and hence the control
> by capital over the labor process.
>
> In solidarity, Jerry
> _______________________________________________
> ope mailing list
> ope@lists.csuchico.edu
> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope

_______________________________________________
ope mailing list
ope@lists.csuchico.edu
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
Received on Fri Sep 3 00:20:51 2010