Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 11:42:27 1200+
Subject: M-G: LOV and state capitalism.




I don't see where all this worry that Marx didnt really talk much 
about the LOV comes from.  In the letter to Kugelmann [11 July 1868]
it seems obvious that he is talking about a general abstraction - 
that in all societies labour-time is the basis of social production. 
But this is consistent with the view that I put that the 
LOV is an historical abstraction specific to capitalism. Because it 
is clear in Capital and elsewhere that Marx considers the LOV to be 
specific to capitalism and to generalised commodity exchange. 

In the letter to Kugelmann, Marx says :" It is self-evident that 
this necessity of distribution of social labour in specific 
proportions is certainly not abolished by the SPECIFIC FORM of social 
production; it can only change its FORM OF MANIFESTATION. 
Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can 
change, under historically differing conditions, is the FORM in which 
those laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional 
distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of society in which 
the interconnection of social labour expresssed itself as the PRIVATE 
EXCHANGE of the individual products of labour, is precisely that 
EXCHANGE VALUE of these products." [68 M&E V33].
Also read the TSV again. There is constant reference to the LOV. And 
the Value in question is the value-form specific to Capitalism,  
exchange-value.

Therefore, even if we could agree that a LOV precedes and follows 
capitalism it would have to be specific to the social relations in 
question.  That issue does not arise in the debate about state 
capitalism, because the supposed presence of the LOV is taken as 
proof that capitalism survives [by Neil], or is revived at various 
points by Paul, Walter and others. So we cannot argue that some 
non-capitalist expression of the LOV is suffient to establish 
capitalism. It has to be the LOV which pre-supposes generalised 
exchange, labour-power as a commodity, hence abstract labour etc.  It 
should go without saying that the LOV therefore assumes capitalist 
social relations.  No Paul, I don't think that class struggle is 
tacked onto economics.

Therefore,  I come back to the same old question. Where is the 
evidence that the LOV operated in the SU in the way it does under 
capitalism?  Where are the capitalist social relations? There is no 
generalised commodity production. Labour power was not a commodity. 
the LOV did not regulate the allocation of social labour. Abstract 
labour did not exist. Marx comments further in his letter to 
Kugelmann "Where science comes in is to show HOW the law of value 
asserts itself. So, if one wanted to `explain' from the outset all 
phenomena that apparently contradict the law, one would have to 
provide the science BEFORE the science. It is precisely Ricardo's 
mistake that in his first chapter, on value, all sorts of categories 
that still have to be arrived at are assumed AS GIVEN, in order to 
prove their harmony with the law of value". [69].


Perhaps this is the same problem that state capitalist theory faces. 
It assumes AS GIVEN categories which have to be proved.  And like 
Ricardo, it assumes them on the basis of appearances not science. On 
the other hand Trotsky's science fits Marx's description later in the 
same letter: "...  THE HISTORY OF THE THEORY [LOV] or course 
demonstrates that the understanding of the value relation has ALWAYS 
BEEN THE SAME, clearer or less clear, hedged  with illusions or 
scientifically more precise. Since the reasoning process itself 
arises from the existing conditions and is itself a NATURAL PROCESS, 
really comprehending thinking can always only be the same, and can 
vary only gradually, in accordance with the maturity of development, 
hence also the maturity of the organh that does the thinking. 
Anything alse is drivel." [69]

Applying Marx's method with the "maturity of his 
development" in the actually existing conditions of the 
SU, Trotsky explained that there was no  "value-relation" that 
resembled  that of capitalism. Surplus-labour was extracted by an 
elite by way of administered prices. So long as bureaucratic planning 
kept the forces of production on a growth path this could continue. 
When it reached its inherent limits, it couldnt continue and if the 
workers didnt rise up and kick out the bureaucrats, they would 
restore the LOV. 

The fact that the SU could not continue is not predicted by state cap 
theory.  Nor is the reintroduction of the LOV after the state 
overturns from 1989 in the former SU and Eastern Europe. It is under 
these conditions of the re-introduction of the LOV that all the 
features that are  necessary for its operation can be seen coming 
into existence.  Therefore the collapse of the bureaucratic planned 
economies was caused not by the LOV but by its absence. Not by state 
capitalism, but its absence.  Under the transition back to capitalism 
it is state capitalism that can now be seen in existence in these 
former degenerated workers states. 

The real question to be answered is: where is the need to revise 
the LOV to force it to fit the former SU coming from? As Marx argued, 
ideas are generated by material reality.  Trotsky gave the answer to 
this question in "In Defence of Marxism". 

Dave.


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