Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2001 21:01:25 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: AUT: How does the escape from the law of value work?


I'm sure someone from Midnight Notes will respond to this, but in the
interim let me just note that Midnight Notes does NOT, repeat NOT, ascribe
to the position stated below. The statement below refers to arguments set
out by Toni Negri about the supersession of the law of value. George
Caffentzis in particular has written at length critiquing this position,
as have I. Aufheben got it wrong. And I think George even wrote a response
pointing out just how wrong they got it.

The passage from the Grundrisse, the "fragment on machines" is interesting
and points to the same fundamental contradiction that Marx discusses later
in Volumes I and III of Capital: how capital responds to workers struggles
by finding ways to replace them by more controlable machines and this, as
a tendency, undermines its ability to impose work. There are, however,
other tendencies, such as the development of new industries,
intensification, etc. through which it creates new ways of imposing work.

Toni argues, among other things, that with the subordination of virtually
all of life to capitalist work (via immaterial labor etc.) it becomes
impossible to measure value. His argument, it seems to me, leads straight
back to the kind of theory of capitalist hegemony loved by orthodox
marxists and critical theory. Toni says subordination everywhere means
struggle everywhere so its not the same. But the struggle in this schema
appears purely theoretical as the argument about the impossibility of
measuring value implies the impossibility of measuring struggle as well.
If you can't differentiate between working and not working (key to a labor
theory of value) then how can you really identify struggle, much less the
creation of newness, what he used to call self-valorization?
At any rate none of this is Midnight Notes.
H.

On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, Michael Handelman wrote:

> "The theoretical basis for Midnight Notes' argument
> that the law of value has been superseded is the now
> famous passage from the Grundrisse that has become
> known as the fragments on machines. In these passages
> Marx vividly describes how capital in its drive to
> increase the social productivity of labour through the
> mechanisation and eventual automation of production
> makes production increasingly disproportionate to the
> labour employed. But since capital is nothing but the
> expansion of alienated labour, this tendency drives
> capital beyond its own foundation. Hence crisis and
> apocalypse. As Marx notes:
>
> As soon as labor in the direct form has ceased to be
> the great well-spring of wealth, labor time ceases and
> must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value
> [must cease to be a measure] of use value. ...Capital
> itself is the moving contradiction , [in] that it
> presses to reduce labor time to a minimum, while it
> posits labor time, on the other side, as sole measure
> and source of wealth...On the one side, then, it calls
> to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of
> social combination and of social intercourse, in order
> to make the creation of wealth independent
> (relatively) of the labor time employed in it. On the
> other side, it wants to use labor time as the
> measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby
> created, and to confine them within the limits
> required to maintain the already created value as
> value.
>
> The notion that there is a tendency for the law of
> value to be superseded is central to Midnight Notes'
> analysis of oil pricing. It allows them to argue that,
> since value is no longer a necessary measure/regulator
> of capital work has become merely a form of social
> discipline. Hence the refusal of work is no longer a
> utopian demand. Also, to the extent that labour is
> separated from capital and no longer mediated by value
> we have only two antagonistic classes each with its
> own distinct strategy. Therefore the collective
> capitalist seeks to preserve its power through the
> imposition of work and the collective worker seeks to
> resist and refuse this work."
>
> http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/Aufheben/auf3midoil2.htm
>
> I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the escaping
> of the law of value. If the escape of the law of value
> has happened, where the hell does profit come from? (I
> was half asleep when I read the Grundrisse, this might
> explain, why I'm having trouble understanding it). If
> the escape of the law of value is happening, wouldn't
> this fundementally destroying an important ideology
> which sustains capitalism (the Protestant work ethic).
>
> Does this "escape from the law of value", signal that
> capitalism's contradictions are reaching a critical
> point?
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger
> http://im.yahoo.com
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>

............................................................................
Snail-mail:
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA

Phone Numbers:
(hm)  (512) 442-5036
(off) (512) 475-8535
Fax:(512) 471-3510

E-mail:
hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu
PGP Public Key: http://certserver.pgp.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=hmcleave

Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index2.html

Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html

Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
............................................................................



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---