[OPE-L:7371] [OPE-L:901] Re: Re: Re: Re: abstract labour
Ajit Sinha (sinha@cdedse.ernet.in)
15 Apr 99 12:09:18 IST (+0530)
> Ajit,
>
> >And waht was the argument that Marx was making? That there could
> be
> >a general glut in his C(1)-M-C(2) circuit?
>
> OPE participant Claus Germer is very illuminating here:
>
> "in direct exchange value coexists with or is attached to a
> particular use
> value in each commodity, thereby constituting an obstacel to
> exchange,
> since an exchange, (ie., the recirocal realization of the private
> labors
> contained in true commodities) can only occur when it happens at
> the same
> time that the specific use value of ech of the commoditeis
> simltaneously
> meets a consumer need of the producers of the other commodity.
> This
> contradiction is resolved with the birth of money, which is
> projected
> outside the commoidty, situating itself in the sphere of
> circulation, which
> thereby comes into existence. At this point the world of
> commodities
> divides into two: On the one hand, money concentrates the quality
> of value
> that all commodities have but appears to lose the quality of use
> value that
> it possesses like every other commodity. On the other hand,
> commodities
> appear as pure value values, as if stripped of values. Thhus is
> created
> 'the real appearance' that commodities are mere use values and
> money is
> soley a convention. Under these circumstances THE CONTRADICTION
> EXPRESSES
> THE FACT THAT THE PRIVATE LABOR CONTAINED IN A COMMODITY RECEIVES
> SOCIAL
> SANCTION ONLY IF THE LATTER CAN BE CONVERTED INTO MONEY." my
> emphasis.
_____________________
And this you want to put as a proof against or a challange to my
thesis? What does "commodities appear as pure value values, as if
stripped of values" mean? It is a pure example of mumbo jumbo. And
again what does "the real appearance" mean? Leaving these mumbo
jumbo aside, what he is saying is that in a commodity producing
economy your product must have the quality of being exchanged
against money. If it does not get exchanged against money then your
demand will be frustrated. Your labor has not been properly
allocated in the scheme of the social division of labor--A point I
have made so many times. It makes absolutely no argument about a
general glut in a C(1)-M-C(2) circuit. You see, M-C-M is a
meaningless circuit, so there cannot be a general demand for M as
such as long as the condition for M-C-M', M'>M is nonexistenet.
Cheers, ajit sinha
_________
> Here is the possibility of general crisis that Marx's theory of
> money
> developed through the critique of Proudhon and Ricardo opens up.
> It seems
> to me idiosyncratic, Ajit, to call this a Walrasian problematic.
>
> Yours, Rakesh
>
> Claus Germer in "Monetary Economy or Capitalist Economy" in
> *Marx, Keynes,
> and Money*, ed. Paul Mattick Jr, __International Journal of
> Political
> Economy__ Fall 1997, vol 27, no. 3
>