[OPE-L:5832] [PAUL C] Re: commodities, money, and value

Gerald Levy (glevy@pratt.edu)
Sat, 13 Dec 1997 07:51:51 -0500 (EST)

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Paul C wrote on Fri, 12 Dec:

> > Prior to, during, or following capitalism?
> All three. If you conflate value with exchange value you have
> a hard job analysing communist elements within capitalist
> social formations such as the National Health Service here.

Do you really think that the National Health Service is a "communist
element" within a capitalist social formation ???

> To say that for labour to be socially-necessary under capitalism it
> must have the value form is also confusing, do you mean the labour
> must have the value form ( be wage labour ) or its product must have
> the value form ( be a commodity ).

It's product must be a commodity.

> What do you mean then by 'under capitalism'?

Where capitalism as a mode of production dominates and regulates
production, distribution, and exchange.

> Does the process of cooking a meal at home in the US of A take place
> 'under capitalism'.

The product, though, does not take the commodity-form.

> But you object to any attempt to improve our understanding of what
> social labour time is now!

No, I don't. What will improve our understanding of social labour time
now?

> > For us, capitalism is reality. It is therefore our first task to
> > understand that reality (so that we can then change that reality). Thus,
> > understanding how there is the movement from M to M' is not an example of
> > "narrow horizons."
> I would say that these are narrow and particularly American horizons.
> Socialism and the allocation of social labour under socialism have been
> live political issues on other continents for most of this century.

Well ... that gets us to the rather contentious issue of whether those
societies were actually socialist -- a topic that I, for one, don't really
want to get into now (you are, of course, free to discuss it with others
if you wish).

In solidarity, Jerry