File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9708, message 3


From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph-AT-indigo.ie>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Use Values
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 11:39:02 -0700


KARL: Hi Russell!

RUSSELL: Now like-wise, Baudrillard argues exchange value can have no
anchor in a reality of use, production or labour. 

KARL:  In your message you seem to be suggesting that Baudrillard
was a semiotician and thereby a politcal economist. Your comments also
seem to suggest that the semiotics of Braudrillard successfully refuted
the political economy of Karl Marx. 

On the basis of your message I cannnot accept the imperialistic thesis
you appear to be advancing:

With regard to the commodity there obtains an inseparable, although
contradictory, unity between use value and exchange value. There is no
possibility that exchange value can be collapsed into the sphere of
semiotics by flattening it into signifier. Exchange value and 
use value in the form of the commodity cannot  necessarily bear the
relationship that, according to you, Braudillard suggests as obtaining
between signifier and signified.

The commodity is an objective fact of capitalism. As objective fact it
is the contradictroy unity of use value and exchange value whereas, by
contrast, there obtains (according to your account of Braudillard'
semiotics) a contingent and external relationship between signifier and
signified. In short the commodity as a unity contains within itself a
NECESSARY and INTERNAL contradiction between use value and exchange
value whereas the signifier/signified binary is EXTERNALLY and
CONTINGENTLY related. At the core of this discussion is the espousal of
qualtitatively different kinds of contradiction.

Thus the differece is ontological.

Singifier/signified and exchange value/use value (commodity) are, then,
two ontologically distinct kinds of reality and therefore cannot be
collapsed into each other. In short political economy together with the
capitalist economic system cannot be imperialistically gobbled up by
semiotics. 


Greetings,
Karl



Baudrillard does not discount social relations. What Baudrillard is
arguing
is that _both_ the social relations _and_ the 'code' exist, but (if I
understand him rightly) that what really matters is the 'reproduction'
of
the code. This code is like the hidden hand of classical political
economy
and it maintains an almost Weberian iron grip on every aspect of our
everyday lives. This code he argues, doesn't have any connection to
such
'realities' as use being usurped by exchange. 
To expand, in his essay 'The End of Production' in _Symbolic Exchange
and
Death_ (Sage 1993 [Gallimard 1976]) he argues that we can see society
on
two levels. On the 'first level scenario' a commodity must have a use
value
to sustain the system of exchange values, but on the second level, a
commodity functions as exchange value to hide the fact that it
circulates
like a sign and reproduces the code. (1993:31) Thus everthing is
simulated,
or as he likes to put it we are in a society of simulacra- ie a world
of
copies to which there is no orginal.
 Why is this so? As with many structuralists meaning and existence
itself
are pre-determined by the operation of the 'system of meaning', or code
of
semiotics, but with the post-structuralist rider that the very code of
signs has broken down.  Baudrillard argues that the relationship
between
the signified and signifier has broken down (it was an illusion all the
time anyway he argues), and with it the relationship between use and
exchange value.

NB On the sign and the symbolic: Baudrillard distinguishes between the
two-
the latter appears to refer to pre-capitalist 'gift societies' where
the
objects exchanged have a symbolic meaning in terms of the social
structure
they form part of. Postone remarks that such societies are
characterised by
a complusion to these social mores, (god help you if you don't return
the
gift and more!), whereas ours is characterised by the social nexus of
the
commodity form.



----------
From: Russell Pearson <r.pearson-AT-clara.net>
To: marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: M-TH: Use Values
Date: 31 July 1997 13:45


> Karl: Hi Russell! I am not sure as to what you are driving at in the
message copied
> below. Are you subscribing to the above opinion of Baudrillard. If so
can
you elaborate a
> littel on how "no real distinction can be made between exchange and
use
values" given
> that "uses are as much symolic as material".

>James: the leap to the proposition 'no real distinction can be made
between exchange and use values' >is a not justified - except to
eternalise
capitalist social relations as a hyperreality of codes -because
>exchange
value is not a symbolic code but a social relation.


OK,  I'm playing devil's advocate here! Whilst nothing gets my goat
more
than gung ho Baudrillardrians, but I do think that the old codger has a
point or two. Baudrillard himself has a very keen and subtle (if wicked
and
heretical) understanding of Marxist philosophy and he uses it with
great
skill to undermine wooden headed workerist politics. With this in mind
I'd
like to consider him a bit more.

Baudrillard argues that we are probably living in a 'hyper-capitalist
mode', but what really differentiates him from the usual materialist
understanding of social relations is his reliance on semiotics. This
linguistic theory argues that 'signs' such as words are made of a
binary
unity of the signifier (the sound or shapes of letters that make up a
word)
and the signified (the idea we form of the 'thing' referred to). The
sign
is the unity of the two. What this theory does is to undermine any
notion
of grounding language in the signifier- the word 'cat' has an arbitrary
relationship to the furry quadriped sitting in my front room. The
feline
could have been known by the signifier 'dog' 'tree' or 'Karl Marx'.
Thus
meaning has no anchor in 'real objects'- the 'referent' the ding in
sich is
bracketted out and can't be accessed via the words we use to designate
it. 
Now like-wise, Baudrillard argues exchange value can have no anchor in
a
reality of use, production or labour. 

Baudrillard does not discount social relations. What Baudrillard is
arguing
is that _both_ the social relations _and_ the 'code' exist, but (if I
understand him rightly) that what really matters is the 'reproduction'
of
the code. This code is like the hidden hand of classical political
economy
and it maintains an almost Weberian iron grip on every aspect of our
everyday lives. This code he argues, doesn't have any connection to
such
'realities' as use being usurped by exchange. 
To expand, in his essay 'The End of Production' in _Symbolic Exchange
and
Death_ (Sage 1993 [Gallimard 1976]) he argues that we can see society
on
two levels. On the 'first level scenario' a commodity must have a use
value
to sustain the system of exchange values, but on the second level, a
commodity functions as exchange value to hide the fact that it
circulates
like a sign and reproduces the code. (1993:31) Thus everthing is
simulated,
or as he likes to put it we are in a society of simulacra- ie a world
of
copies to which there is no orginal.
 Why is this so? As with many structuralists meaning and existence
itself
are pre-determined by the operation of the 'system of meaning', or code
of
semiotics, but with the post-structuralist rider that the very code of
signs has broken down.  Baudrillard argues that the relationship
between
the signified and signifier has broken down (it was an illusion all the
time anyway he argues), and with it the relationship between use and
exchange value.

NB On the sign and the symbolic: Baudrillard distinguishes between the
two-
the latter appears to refer to pre-capitalist 'gift societies' where
the
objects exchanged have a symbolic meaning in terms of the social
structure
they form part of. Postone remarks that such societies are
characterised by
a complusion to these social mores, (god help you if you don't return
the
gift and more!), whereas ours is characterised by the social nexus of
the
commodity form.

Russ


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