Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 00:30:13 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Zarembka <zarembka-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu> Subject: M-I: Albania and state capitalism Dave, You write "Paul asks for my definition of the LOV. Shane comes up with a definition from Marx that I won't quibble with. It states that the LOV is the means by which social labour is allocated under capitalism. It is specific to capitalism, since VALUE is a form specific to capitalism. For the LOV to operate as the mechanism of allocation of social labour, value as abstract labour presupposes labour-power as a commodity which a use-value and exchange value, its use-value being its capacity to satisfy the need of capital to extract surplus-value. "As I understand bureaucratic planning in the SU, the LOV was not the mechanism of allocation of social labour, planning was. Production was of use-values not exchange-values. The fact that planning was inefficient and wasteful [by the standards of a healthy workers plan] and was augmented by "incentives" to labour and management etc does not change this. The prices attached to goods did not gravitate around "value" as abstract labour, since no extraction of value in exchange was possible. Prices in fact were set by the bureaucracy and did not represent "socially necessary labour time" but centrally determined allocative priorities...." Your post goes on and I'll have to have more time to absorb it, but the above strikes me as something OTHER THAN the most important element of the law of value (Marx used this phrase rarely, by the way). It is NOT so much about allocating production among alternative products as about demonstrating that capitalism is a system of extracting surplus value out of workers by paying them the exchange value of their labor power which has no connection to their use value (the number of hours they can work in a day for capital). So, if stat-cap people can argue that labor was "abstract" and labor power was being sold at its exchange value but less than the working day, surplus value arises and capitalism exists. In other words, from my point of view, you are asking the wrong question and thus coming up with the wrong answer. The allocation-of-production approach you seem to favor is rather the concern of economists, bourgeois or petty-bourgeois (hey, I'm not trying to label you!) and really diverts attention from class issues than focuses attention on class issues. I think this is enough of a reaction for the moment. We'll see how it moves forward. Walter's intervention, of course, will be connected. Paul Z. ************************************************************************* Paul Zarembka, supporting the RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY Web site at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka, and using OS/2 Warp. ************************************************************************* --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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