From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Apr 15 2006 - 16:43:38 EDT
Chris wrote: Your points are well taken. Reply: Well thank you. My scriptural ability is not nearly as good though as senior scholars such as yourself and Michael Lebowitz, but my hunch is that I am correct on this one. Chris wrote: However the Unoists have some textual support on what Marx thought. see for example Results ( MECW 34 pp 419-21) where Marx speaks of the capitalists indiiference to use value. Reply: The quote I can find in Marx's draft is: "If the reproduction process is hindered, or if its progress, in so far as it is already conditioned by the natural increase of the population, is prevented by the disproportionate employment of the kind of productive labour which is expressed in unreproductive articles, with the result that too few necessary means of subsistence, or too few means of production, etc., are reproduced, luxury must be condemned from the standpoint of capitalist production. Apart from that, luxury is an absolute necessity for a mode of production which produces wealth for the non-producers, hence must give wealth the necessary forms in which it can be appropriated by the wealthy simply for their enjoyment. [For the worker himself, this productive labour, like all other labour, is merely a means to the reproduction of his necessary means of subsistence; for the capitalist, to whom the nature of the use value and the character of the concrete labour employed are in themselves matters of complete indifference, it is merely a moyen de battre monnaie, de produire la survalue. [means of coining money, of producing surplus value] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm The idea here is, that the capitalist has primarily a commercial interest, and is interested in the use-value produced primarily as a means for making more money. So far so good - but presumably the capitalist invests in the production of not just any old use-value, but a particular use-value, precisely because that particular use-value happens to make money. The fact, that this use-value happens to be e.g. a hundred tonnes of cabbages or alternatively a hundred thousand computers might contingently be something he is *personally* indifferent to (it is, in that case, purely a means to an end), but he is certainly unlikely to be indifferent to that use-value, from an economic or commercial point of view. I would think the degree of personal indifference would probably depend greatly on the proximity or distance of the capitalist from the actual production process, and also on the type of production process it is. There might be a big difference here between e.g. the "active" or "functioning" capitalist, and the so-called "coupon-clipper" or financier/rentier. Marx's suggestion really seems to be along the lines that, ideally, the more money the capitalist makes, the more he thinks that he does what he does, for the good of humanity or the creation of wealth for all, the "hard proof" being that - after all - people buy the products of his business, and thus, that he satisfies their needs. The idea here is, that self-interest and the public interest mesh seamlessly with each other, in the way that Adam Smith or Greenspan envisaged. Even so, note that Marx himself also writes "For the worker himself, this productive labour, like all other labour, is merely a means to the reproduction of his necessary means of subsistence", i.e. the particular production is ALSO a matter of relative personal indifference to the worker, insofar as it is also just a means to an end for the worker. In Uno's pure theory, use-value is largely abstracted from, except however for the use-value of labour-power and the three sectors of production (means of production, means of consumption and luxury items). This is an abstract extrapolation of commercial logic in terms of making money for the sake of more money. Yet, even in the purest capitalism, this process cannot occur without needs (of monetarily effective consumer- and producer-demand) being met - the assumption being, in the pure model, that supply and demand will equate, yet also that disproportions leading to crises will necessarily develop even regardless of what particular use-values are produced. Yet, Uno's theory lacks any "doctrine of consumption". As soon as we move beyond heady abstractions to economic realities, the picture becomes much more complex, and it is clear that both capitalists and workers do have interests and moralities pertaining to the use-values produced. So much is clear even in the recent garbage collectors' strike in Greece, and this - incidentally - highlights a facet of the services economy, which world-wide employs more people than manufacturing does. Christopher Freeman among others has shown, that much more can and ought to be said about use-values than Marx does, i.e. in reality, e.g. commercial logic and the innovation/invention process are intertwined, so that the commodification process may be retarded or accelerated both by technical/practical, social and commercial factors. Real capitalism involves something like a "technostructure" (a complex of interdependent technologies) as well as a consumption structure (a complex of social relations defining the (private) mode of consumption - Manuel Castells once alluded to this with the conflict between "private versus collective consumption"). But beyond this, precisely because of "market discipline" (i.e. you have to sell stuff, or go out of business), capitalism portends both real human progress (to the extent that it raises living standards etc.) as well as real oppression of people (insofar as e.g. satisfying needs depends on absent buying power). Therefore the analysis and critique of the development of use-values under capitalism ought to be relativised and nuanced, taking that into account, especially if the argument is mooted that a socialist mode of production would meet human needs better. For this purpose, I think a caricature such as that "capitalists are only interested in one thing" is unhelpful, since what "market discipline" implies, is precisely that they cannot be interested in "just one thing", i.e. making profit is contingent on meeting demand within a given political/legal/economic context. You may be able to prove that, in particular cases, non-market allocative principles would meet human needs better, but the argument that business people have no concern about this at all, is evidently false. The main problem I have with Uno's approach - which does contain valuable new insights also - is that he thought that he could distill a complete theory of a purely capitalist society from Marx's writings, even although Marx's analysis itself was incomplete. For starters, a "doctrine of consumption" at least would be required to round off the analysis, revealing the dialectics of exchange-value and use-value in the sphere of consumption (both productive and final consumption; time does not permit me to pursue this further now). Michael Lebowitz mentions in this context the conflicts surrounding the meeting of workers' needs, but that is only one facet of a larger story involving fixed assets, intermediate goods and final goods. Yet another aspect concerns the service economy, which nowadays employs many more people than manufacturing. In the strict sense, Marx defines a service as "a useful effect of a use-value", where the use-value is living labour of a specialised kind. Clearly, the provision of a service by its very nature demands very close attention to its useful effect, and also creates new forms of worker-alienation also, insofar as they are required to be not indifferent to something they are otherwise indifferent to anyway. That is, the "character masks" attributed to capitalists might equally well apply to service workers. Because of all of these concerns, I've never really been a great fan of "value-form theory" because - notwithstanding valuable insights - I think it does no real justice to the realities of capitalism. The real dialectic is not simply a dialectic of the forms of exchange-value, but of use-value and exchange-value. And, as I've said before, I think the real issue is not whether capitalists are "indifferent" (I doubt that they are), but what specific interest or stake they have in use-values; workers could be just as "indifferent". Indifference would be more appropriately regarded as a general aspect of human alienation, with as its corrollary the attempt to overcome this indifference. Alienation is never total or complete, not just because some facets of human beings are practically inalienable, but also because they revolt against or resist alienation all the time - and therefore the real culture of human subjectivities in capitalism always contains both these aspects: both humanisation and dehumanisation. So, really - contrary to Albritton, Reuten etc. - it's precisely when we bring in use-value into the analysis, that we can talk more meaningfully about subjectivities. Use-value implies not just a particular attitude towards things (including nature) in terms of their use-value (instrumental approach), but also an attitude towards people in terms of their use-value, or to put it bluntly, "using people as a means to an ulterior end". However, I promised myself I would study Hegel more closely before pronouncing on these kinds of topics, so will leave it at that. All I can say here is that I think this concern with "subjectivity" is really a sideways attempt to tackle the problem of moral praxis in capitalist society, a society which institutionally separates the economic/commercial and legal spheres, and cannot reconcile class interests with universal moral norms. Jurriaan
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