Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 15:25:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Kevin Cabral <kcabral-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Value: theoretical vs.practice concern


On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, Juan Inigo wrote:

> Second part of my reply to Rakesh Bhandari comments.

> This production of productive workers by capital accumulation is not a
> production of the abstract materiality of their labor-power that leaves the
> production of their will floating in some abstract "relative autonomy" of
> the political, ideological, superstructure. The individual will of the
> productive workers that ideologically see themselves as "free" individuals
> is a concrete form of the extraction of surplus-value as any material
> condition that determines their labor-power is. So where does the
> revolutionary will of the proletariat come from? It has no place where to
> come from other than the proletariat's general social relationship, i.e.,
> capital accumulation itself. It is capital accumulation (under its concrete
> form of production of relative surplus-value by the collective worker) that
> carries in itself the necessity of annihilating itself into the general
> conscious regulation of social life. And therefore, it is this specific
> historical determination of capital accumulation that takes concrete form
> by producing, yet as an alienated potency, the proletariat able to discover
> through science that its revolutionary will is the necessary concrete form
> through which that historical determination necessarily realizes itself,
> and personifies it as a conscious revolutionary action.

Juan, 
	Only recently did I find the time to read through your comments at
length on M-TH, and afterwards was left wondering what exactly you quarrel
with Justin was over the importance of the LTV. Obviously the two of your
have differences regarding the usefulness of commodity production; with
Justin doubting, on scientific grounds, the possibility of rationally
planned economics, and yourself obviously being a stanch supporter of planning
and opponent of market socialists like Justin Schwartz, and his friend
David Schweikart. But I do not see why you felt the need to disagree with
Justin's statement that: 

"It seems crystal clear to me that he (Marx) thought of it (LTV) as a
framework for a model and not as true in any simple sense; rather, he
concieved it as useful and illuminating and I concede that value talk is
useful as a way to discuss exploitation."

	My own reading of Justin's statement, taken with prior knowledge
of his own writings, is that he is arguing that the LTV should not be
taken as any general model that can predict things like economic
stagnation, impending crises, or even the exchange value that a product
will be sold at on market. Talk of measuring the validity of the LTV on
this ground is worthless, and is contrary to Marx's intent expressed in
the LTV. Thus for Justin, and Marx the LTV is, in the words of Juan Inigo:

"Not about interpreting value, money, capital, surplus-value, prices of
productions, etc. in whatever way. (a LTV, a "new solution," a "fifth wheel
etc.) It is about facing capital in reality, as it directly concerns our
revolutionary conscious action."

Furthermore: 

"From the point of view of present-day conscious revolutionary action, it
is not about abstractly "understanding" exploitation or abstractly
"understanding" the movements in pices. Abstractly "understanding"
exploitation takes us nowhere concerning the concrete forms of this
action...exploitation always takes concrete form through the prices of
production. Instead, "understanding" turns this real abstract form that
shapes itself in prices of production, the expropriation of surplus value,
capitalist exploitation, into a pure abstraction." 

In other words, value talk is useless and detracts from our own ultimate
responsibility to work towards the annihilation of the real abstract form
of capitalist production, and exploitation. When Juan says that
"exploitation always takes concrete form through the prices of production"
he means that the nature and quantity of exploitation always presents
itself concretely in the difference between the compensation of labor for
its work and the total exchange value gained from the exchange of the
products it creates. Capitalist exploitation EXISTS because the
self-valorization of capital exists. The nature of capital is
self-valorization by means of forced surplus value transfer, and forced
surplus transfer (Schwartz, "What's Wrong with Exploitation") is unjust.
This forced surplus transfer is, by definition, exploitation in this
capitalist era: and the exposure of the existance of forced surplus
transfer is the broad concern and function of the labor theory of value.

For Marx:  
 
"Capital has one sold driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to
create surplus value, to make its constant part, the means of production,
absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labor. Capital is dead
labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives
the more, the more labor it sucks." (Capital: Penguin p. 342)
							
So I ask Juan how if I have misinterpreted him, and Justin whether Juan
(or myself) has misinterpreted your stance on the importance of the labor
theory of value as it relates to proving the existance of exploitation, and
alienation; and thus eventually forming the basis for the creation of the
real movement to destroy the existance of the two characteristics of
capitalist production and bring to fruition a much more just society. (Juan
would add, unlike JS, commodity production and fetishism to that to make a
trifecta)		
 
Kevin 
Cols, Oh




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