Listmembers will recall that one of the issues of dispute regarding this
thread (and its predecessors called "four-cornered triangle" and "value
vs. potential value") concerns the so-called "conservation of value"
principle which holds that the magnitude of value is determined in
production and can not be increased *or decreased* in circulation. How do
those who believe in that principle reconcile it with the following
passage?:
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"The very form of existence of commodities, their existence as
use-values, sets certain limits to the circulation of the
commodity capital C'-M'. If they do not enter into productive
or individual consumption within a certain amount of time,
according to their particular characteristics, in other words
if they are not sold within a definite time, then THEY GET
SPOILED, AND LOSE, TOGETHER WITH THEIR USE-VALUE, THE PROPERTY
OF BEING BEARERS OF EXCHANGE-VALUE. BOTH THE CAPITAL VALUE
CONTAINED IN THEM AND THE SURPLUS-VALUE ADDED TO IT ARE LOST.
Use-values remain the bearers of perennial and self-valorizing
capital value only in so far as they are constantly renewed, are
replaced by new use-values of the same or another kind. Their
sale in their finished commodity form, i.e. their entry,
mediated through sale, into productive or individual
consumption, is however the constantly repeated condition for
their reproduction. They must change their old use form
within a certain time, and continue their existence in a new one.
It is only through this constant renewal of its body that the
exchange-value maintains itself. The use-values of different
commodities may decay at different speeds; thus a greater or
lesser interval may elapse between their production and their
consumption, and they may thus persist for a shorter or longer
time in the circulation process C-M as commodity capital,
endure a shorter or longer time as commodities. The limitation
of the circulation time imposed by the spoiling of the commodity
body itself is the absolute limit of this part of the
circulation time, or of the time in which the commodity
capital can circulate as commodity capital. The more
perishable a commodity, the more directly after its production
it must be consumed, and therefore sold, the smaller the
distance it can move from its place of production, the narrower
therefore is the sphere of spatial circulation, and the more
local the character of its market. Hence the more perishable a
commodity, the greater are the absolute barriers to its
circulation time that its physical properties impose, and the
less appropriate it is as an object of capitalist production.
Capitalism can only deal in commodities of this kind in
populous places, or to the extent that distances are reduced by
the development of means of transport." (Volume 2, Penguin ed,
pp. 205-206, emphasis [shouting] added).
*********
Note in the above that value and surplus-value are "lost" rather than
merely redistributed.
In solidarity, Jerry