Dear Riccardo,
Thank you for your reply, which will make clear our different positions.
Riccardo (1)
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I have already said on the list several times that for Marx the value of
money *is* determined with reference to labor content*: more
precisely, that the abstract labour concealed in the commodity exchanged is
represented by the concrete labour producing the money comodity.
Question (1): That the abstract labour concealed in the commodity exchanged
is represented by the concrete labour producing the money
comodity cannot be seen as implying that the value of money *is*
determined with reference to labor content. The one refers to the form of
value that is realised in the commodity exchange, in which the equivalent
form needs not be the money always, while the other concerns
about the magnitude of value. The determination mechanism of the
magnitude of value should be independent of the forms of value.
Otherwise, i.e. if the value of money is determined through the process
of exchange, then why not the value of other ordinary commodities
be determined in the process of exchange? why not with reference to
the amount of abstract matter contained in commodities?
We of course need not stick to Marx's definition of the notion if it is
inconsistent with other notions.
Riccardo (2)
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Marx's was a monetary labour theory of value because, when value
and money are deduced at the beginning of Capital, the abstract
labour become eventually social in the exchange with money.
Question (2): You say that the abstract labour become eventually
social in the exchange with money. But I say the abstract labour
become eventually realised as social in the exchange with money.
You say that what was not social becomes social in the exchange
with money. But I say that what was already social becomes
manifest as social in the exchange with money. What was not social
becomes manifest as socially useless when it fails in the exchange.
But, sometimes, what was not social may be manifested as social
in a cheated exchange with money (in which case, the commodity is
no longer reproducible).
Riccardo (3)
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I hold that when we realise that the commodities in the first chapters
are capitalist commodities, that capitalist production must be
financed, and that initial finance must be given in money-sign.
Question (3): Irrelevant. You mean that, since the commodity
production is to be financed in money, the LTV should not be
explained without money? How about money? Can it be explained without a
LTV? Or do you explain both of them simultaneously? If it
can be explained without a LTV, then the monetary labour theory of
value might be put forward as an alternative (but you did not do so).
If both money and LTV are to be explained simultaneously, then the
money cannot but be incorporated into the larger category of the
commodity.
Riccardo (4)
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But another one, which has strong roots in Marx, is available. The
link between money and value becomes the link between initial
finance as pre-validation of abstract labour and as command over
labour time, on one side, and the valorisation process going on in
capitalist labour processes which must eventually end with the
actualization of value on the market, on the other.
Question (4): When it is said that the abstract labor is realised by
money, I interpret it like this: since we can change a concretelabor
into any form of it by being exchanged with money. I sell a product
of weaving labor for money and then, with the money, buy a pair of
shoes. I thereby changed a weaving labor into the concrete labor
of shoe makers. In that sense, which I think is not in agreement with
Marx's concept of abstract labor, money creates the abstract labor.
If this were to be true, then the determination of the magnitude of
value cannot have any relation to the process of production. It would
rather be linked to the process of exchange, to the forces of supply
and demand.
Yet, by extending this line of thinking, you say the living labor of the
workers can be validated as an abstract labor only by the money
that buys the workers' labor-power. This is not in agreement even
with your own statement that abstract labor is realised by money.
Riccardo (5)
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I take Marx to be an author whose construction was contradictory in
many ways.
Question (5)
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Exactly on what points Marx's conception of commodity money is
contradictory is the one I want to hear from you. Please enumerate them
in full if it is in "many ways".
Riccardo (6)
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So my
originality is to try to link a credit theory of money to labour theory of
value as a theory of the origin of the surplus value in
production, hence a credit theory of exploitation in which the labour
theory of value is quite fundamental - but definitely not the money
commodity.
Question (6): Why do you think your credit theory of exploitation is in
compatible with the notion of commodity money? The credit money is
existent even in the commodity money system.
Riccardo (7)
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I have a paper from the EEA in Boston in which I show that Marx's
insistence on gold as world money is not incoherent with thiw wicksellian
outlook on money. I accept the role that commodity money, or other means,
may have in pegging the standard of value
function of money.
Question (7): How about the role of debt-payment? Would it still be
played by the credit money?
Thanks again for your reply
With sincere regards
Chai-on