Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 12:54:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>


 
 
Thank you Chris for "counterveiling"!!  This is now a permanent
part of my vocabulary.  It is a more accurate way of explaining
phenomena such as the wage form, the forces which tend to counter
the falling rate of profit, etc.  Veiling is exactly what the
phenomenal forms of capitalist production do, and, as Bhaskar makes
clear later, what the fact form of positivism does also.
 
Most people contributing to the reading have a lively interest in
the appliciation of critical realism to marxism, and I for one
welcome that.  Nonetheless, scientific realism is a big tent and I
hope we are able to gather a rich diversity of voices.  One thing
we can do in our discussions of marxism is to make the connections
to realism and its methods constantly clear.  In other words the
utility of marxism is as a preeminent example of realism in the
social sciences, and we can properly use it as such.
 
In that spirit I wanted to take up the issue of value raised by
Chris and his comments on Han's E's earlier discussion.  My
understanding of value for Marx's social science is that this is a
specific social relation emergent from a quite specific
distribution of the agents of production among the forces of
production.  The structure of distribution of the agents of
production has causal consequences which entitle us to call it
"real" in Bhaskar's sense -- it generates phenomena.  The two
essential characteristics of the underlying social relation are (1)
formal autonomy and (2) the social division of labor.  The agent in
relation to the processes of production is formally autonomous but
actually dependent on aggregate social production because she is
not self-sufficient.  She produces in isolation, but does not
produce for herself.  Instead she produces for others as part of
the social division of labor.  As a causal consequence she must
have resort to private exchange.  This is the social structure
expressed by "value" (the structure we would give expression to in
a real definition) and its most crucial way of acting.  Further, in
any society aggregate social labor must be distributed to need.  In
taking a commodity to market, the commodity producer takes a
specific discrete portion of aggregate social labor -- her
contribution -- and receives in return a portion equivalent to it. 
The discrete portion of aggregate social labor embodied in the two
products, and which equates them, is their value.
 
This value we refer to as congealed abstract social labor; it
exists as such as a consequence of the act of exchange.  That the
distribution of aggregate social labor is expressed as a quantity
of congealed abstract social labor embodied in producing (actually
reproducing) the product is already a reification of the social
relation of value expressed as the distribution of agents of
production among the forces of production, and it is this
reification that we refer to as commodity fetishism.  The only way
social relations can be expressed in exchange is by the properties
of things.  The distribution of aggregate social labor to need can
only be expressed by the relations of things in exchange.  
 
Now money can only exist as a thing (or symbol of a thing).  Still
its powers and liabilities derive from and are generated by the
social relations to which it gives expression.  It is a form of
expression of exchange value, which is the expression of the value
of one thing in terms of the material being of another.  We use the
material properties of one thing to express the social properties
of another.  Because it is necessarily embodied in things, money
does have powers and liabilities specific to that form, e.g. gold
coins passed from hand to hand wear away creating a separation
between their nominal weight and real weight.  This is a liability
of gold as money.  It has the power to be hoarded as treasure.  But
the fundamental inner logic of money must be traced to the social
relation to which it gives expression.  For example, the inner
logic of money for a worker is different from that of a commercial
capitalist.  Sure, everyone would like more (it is a command on the
labor of others), but this means different things to different
people.  The worker figures she'll get it for specific needed
finite things by the living expenditure of muscle, brain, etc.  The 
commercial capitalist seeks it without limit and figures to get it
by introducing more of it into circulation.  In either case the
inner logic must be sought in the underlying generative mechanism,
in either case a social relation, which is real.
 
Thanks also to Chris for insisting on steady onward movement.  As
a jurisprude I'm eager to explore with him the issues of
intentionality he raises as we move through the reading.  
 
Also as a late joiner myself, I hope others will continue to join
and not be inhibited by thinking it is too late.