File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9710, message 93


Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 02:09:26 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re: M-I: Value and Women's Unpaid Work


Two points regarding Siddarth C's ideas on value, first "value" and
"valorization", and second enrichment by way of circulation.

1 Sid writes:

>The confusion between "value" of a commodity and its "valorisation"
>at the exchange place has led scores of people astray - as evident
>recently in this list. The value of a commodity (once produced) is
>independent of whether it is realised in exchange or not. That is why
>Marx often refers to it as "congealed labor", a measure of which is
>the socially necessary labor time required to produce the commodity
>at *its time of production* not during its *realization or sale in the
>market*.
>
>If a commodity's value (labor time) is not realized as exchange value
>(its price) in the market, then its value simply falls out of the
>realm of circulation. Otherwise, we encounter the absurd situation
>that just because a commodity does not sell, it does not have any
>value (or has zero value) - that is, value is an ephemeral quantity
>whose existence depends upon the vagaries of the market.

It helps here to be very crass. As long as the commodity is likely to sell,
it has a *potential* value (exchange value). If it fails to sell, it loses
this potential value, thus becoming devalued. In crises this happens all
the time. This is one of the beauties of capitalism, in which it is
impossible to know in advance whether an investment of fixed and variable
capital will actually prove to produce the extra value hoped for. Gluts and
shortages slosh about all over the place. This is why multinationals are so
desperately interested in centralized planning and dictatorial control of
production and markets. The "absurd situation that just because a commodity
does not sell, it does not have any value (or has zero value)" is not
absurd, because it's what happens in capitalism. To give any other
interpretation to "value" is to fetishize it, mystify it, idealize
producing things as producing value regardless. The circuit
money-commodity-money *must* be consummated or the value is lost.

Of course, the labour wasted on producing goods that prove to have no value
can't be resurrected and used to produce goods for which there is a demand.
It's lost and gone forever. In this sense it affects the potential
productive power of a society, but then we're into politics and how
societies are run in relation to their needs and productive forces. Under
capitalism, there is no production of value that is not realized in the
market.



2  >A capitalist C has completely automated his factory, i.e., he employs
>no workers. He produces a new type of product for which there is a high
>demand (i.e., monopoly conditions). So he is able to sell his commodity
>at a higher price than its cost of production (value embodied only as
>constant capital in this case). Under these conditions, value will flow to
>him from his customers who pay a higher price for his commodity than
>the value it contains. Thus, here value accrues to the capitalist from the
>REALM OF CIRCULATION (i.e., exploitation of his customers).

This misses a step or two. In the first place, *all* value accrues to
capitalists from the market, from circulation. No sale, no value. The sale
is carried out in the sphere of exchange. This is done without exploitation
(Marx discounts cheating etc as evening out in the aggregate) as people pay
what is considered a fair price -- if they pay the equivalent of the labour
fixed in the commodity, they pay its value. In Sid's examples some
commodities command a higher price than the value contained in them. But
this is not the fault of circulation as such, as I just pointed out. It's
the result of the equalization of the rate of profit produced by
competition between capitals. Taking monopoly distortion with a pinch of
salt for the time being, as something that will even itself out given free
movement of capital (in passing, part of the crisis of imperialism is the
increasingly unassailable position of monopolies and consequent distortion
of economic processes, but that's not the problem here), high tech capitals
get a "fair" price covering their costs and the rate of profit allowed to
them by  their colleagues and competitors. There is no apparent
exploitation, it all takes place behind the scenes.

If there is apparent exploitation, it's a sure sign that competitive forces
(and/or political pressures) will drag any "excessive" profits down to a
normal rate of blood-sucking.

The enemy, however, is the *normal* run of capitalist business, not the
glaringly exploitative exceptions. On the glaring exceptions
petty-bourgeois anti-monopolists can do a fine job of indignation and
rabble-rousing -- like my favourite Ferdinand Lundberg, who actually treats
the whole of the commanding heights of the corporate world as glaring
exploitative exceptions, and good for him -- but they don't point to any
answer in the form of socialism, of the removal of capitalist exploitation
in general.

Cheers,

Hugh






>It was shown in this list approximately one year ago that as a particular
>sector of an economy becomes more and more automated, under monopolistic
>conditions (e.g., Microsoft Corp.), value will flow to it increasingly
>from the realm of circulation rather than the point of production, i.e.,
>from less developed (requiring more manual labor) sectors. This will hold
>both within a country and between countries. The reason for Bill Gates'
>billions should now be clear. This is perhaps the concept of "value
>pump" advanced by Hugh Rodwell sometime ago.
>
>In casinos and the stock market, we see transfers of value of this
>kind of immense magnitudes which create millionaires apparently out
>of thin air like a magician conjuring a rabbit from his hat. The genius
>of Marx was that he showed that even under *equilibrium* conditions,
>exploitation (extraction of value) occurs. The understanding of
>equilibrium (so too in other fields of science), which is a rarity
>and an accident as Marx emphasized repeatedly, unveils the kernel of the
>problem. This understanding can be then used to analyze the more complex
>and richer dynamic phenomena.
>
>S. Chatterjee
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>     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---





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