File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 280


Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 11:51:13 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Work in Progress


In message <199802170637.AAA09139-AT-endeavor.flash.net>, Joseph Green
<comvox-AT-flash.net> writes
>RE: Work in Progress
>
>     I found Nancy Brumback's "Work in Progress" interesting 
>and related to issues about value that I have been looking 
>into. I believe however that her work goes astray.
>     Brumback begins by distinguishing between material 
>value or use-value and exchange value. But her critique of 
>the labor theory of (exchange) value appears to be, in part, 
>that the Marxist theory of value mistakenly neglects the 
>role of nature, of the unpaid work in raising the next 
>generation, and so forth. In so doing, she ends up 
>identifying exchange value with useful value. As a result, 
>she ends up apparently holding that a better theory of 
>value, which took into account the various factors that 
>Marxism ignores, would provide a basis for a better society 
>in which exploitation is eliminated.

I think Joseph is exactly right on this and in his following theses,
which are a model of marxist explanation.

Too much wordplay on the term 'value' and too little differentiation
between Marx's theoretical reconstruction of the capitalist system, and
his programme for communism has been the bane of all discussion about
value, productive labour etc.
-- 
James Heartfield


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