From: "jurriaan bendien" <Jbendien-AT-globalxs.nl>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Surplus value
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 19:40:23 +0100


	Rob Schaap asks "had Marx used the term "perceived utility" what would be
different ? Presumably he would then have subscribed to a subjective
utility theory of value like Leon Walras, denying any necessary
relationship between price formation and production costs.  
	In fact, Marx emphasises in Capital that it is the physical properties of
a useful object that make it a use-value. He also refers to "social use
value" to indicate a use exists in society for a particular good.
Capitalists are by no means indifferent to the social use-value of what
they produce, namely, if they estimate it wrongly, they cannot sell some or
all of their goods, and therefore also cannot realise the surplus-value in
the added-value they contain as profits.  
	Rob refers to the "utter failure of capitalism to develop the forces of
production".  But this is incorrect.  Capitalism historically develops the
forces of production (the creative powers of social labour) more than any
mode of production in the history of the world, even today, and that is
what Marx thought was revolutionary and progressive about it.  
	Capitalist economic growth in 1947-73 in the more developed capitalist
countries was the fastest it has ever been.  In the newly industrialising
economies of Asia economic growth has also been extremely strong since that
time. 
	However it can justifiably be argued that today capitalist social
relations actually fetter the generalised application of new technologies
and that an increased proportion of the surplus product is actually devoted
to luxury consumption and arms spending by the ruling classes and elites.
World development is thus occurring in an increasingly uneven way.  
	That is to say, the "free market" does not really offer much freedom for
the majority of the world to develop their potential, and what Rob is
really referring to is the gap between the potential development that would
be possible with the technologies and skills we now have, and the actual
situation in which that capacity cannot optimally used, and is abused or
even destroyed.  This is called decadence.  
	The comparatively depressed general rate of return in industries does not
cause major investors to want to invest so much in cumulative industrial
development, excess capital hives off into speculative activity, and a
reorientation of production towards luxury consumption and hedonistic
pursuits occurs.  On the other side, more than a billion people have
elementary needs which are not met, because they lack "monetarily effective
demand" even where they are integrated into a market economy.  
	The basic structural problem of our time is that automated production
expels more and more living labour from the production process, causing
additional unemployment.  Marx with his labour theory of value was the
first to predict this (this is one of the advantages of this theory, it has
a lot of predictive power, not just of prices or economic dynamics but also
social development). 
	The solution is evidently a kind of revolution, or a series of successive
revolutions, which are not technological revolutions, but social
revolutions which, by breaking with the logic of markets, allow the
creative forces of labour to be used with greater optimality. To accomplish
this requires not just a good understanding of the social economy as a
whole, but also a profound understanding of popular cultures, since
breaking with the logic of markets, with the priorities of profitability,
requires a change in social behaviour and morality, an appeal to human
subjectivities, to a different valuation of human life and behaviour.  The
progressive content of capitalist development must be preserved, but the
reactionary social form must be cast off.
	In a socialist society there would still be a social surplus product and
an accumulation process (reinvestment of resources to generate expanded
reproduction in particular sectors), but not surplus value.  Economic
growth would be directed by social priorities and ecological concerns,
which isn't really possible under capitalism. 
	Unfortunately people do not much learn from history, and this social
revolution cannot take place in an "orderly, planned manner" as would be
desirable and about which bureaucrats sometimes fantasise.  As Leon Trotsky
once observed, "the masses do not go into a revolution with a prepared
plan, or because they like to make revolutions, they do it because they
revolt against conditions which have become unbearable."  This is why a
political party very aware of what needs to change is necessary, otherwise
the revolution will fail.
  	At lot of bourgeois political discussion and geopolitical discussion in
fact turns precisely around this question: what conditions keep things
"bearable"; how can we maintain "social stability", how can we keep
integrating people in society when market failure causes dislocation of
people and social structures ?  This awareness we see also in OECD reports,
which advise that economic restructuring in a country must be mindful of
"social cohesion."  
----------
> From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
> To: marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Surplus value
> Date: Wednesday, November 19, 1997 4:50 AM
> 
> G'day Thaxists,
> 
> Most of this really belongs on M-Intro - I'm basically still trying to
get
> a grip on LTV before I address a group of helpless teenagers (hopefully
in
> slightly more user-friendly terms).  Rakesh mentions Shaikh, and I've
lent
> a bit on the latter's introductory stuff.  Then a couple of words to Hugh
> and Justin.
> 
> In commodity production, labour's products are not directly connected to
> social needs because production is geared to exchange.  Capitalist,
worker
> and buyer (who is him/herself in one of these categories of course)
operate
> as individuals; it is exchange that operates to articulate this manifest
> alienated individualism into a social division of labour.
> 
> Exchange regulates reproduction - but exchange is itself necessarily
> regulated by social labour time.  You can't get away from the essential
> transcendental truth (an insincere apology to all my pomo friends out
> there) that a society must apply labour time according to its many and
> diverse needs.  Capitalism is one way to do this.  Here, you would need
> money - to equalise different use values (thus abstracting from their
> essential difference) or, to put it in another way, to allow the
expression
> of all use values in one universal tongue.  So 'price' is the expression
of
> a value in generalisable terms - it is not synonomous with that value.
> Price is not therefore necessarily determined in the same way, to the
same
> extent, or by the same variables as use value is.  To the extent that
price
> is held to regulate reproduction (as per Hayek), it does not follow that
> use values are determining anything (although they constitute one
> determinant of price, and can therefore be said to condition
reproduction).
> 
> This latter point brings us to the (already implied) role socially
> necessary labour time has in regulating price.  For this is the fulcrum
of
> the LTV.  To what extent, and in what way, does the capitalist class
derive
> from labourers more value than is commensurate with the price of that
> labour?
> 
> As a commodity, labour sells at a price commensurate with the labour time
> socially necessary to sustain/reproduce labourers.  Marx creates the
> category 'labour power' here - essentially to name the commodity involved
> and conceptually differentiate it from the labour actually performed.  It
> is the *labour power* that must be materially sustained/reproduced - and
it
> is this the capitalist must pay for.  And this is highlighted when we get
> to the 'use value' of labour power.  The capitalist pays what it costs to
> sustain/reproduce labour power.  What she gets for her money is 'a day's
> work' per day.  As the forces of production have developed to the point
> that society can sustain/reproduce itself with the expenditure of less
> labour time than is available to it, the exchange value of labour power
is
> less than its use value.  The former is a function of labour time
necessary
> in the daily sustenance of a human, and the latter is a function of
labour
> time expended by that human in producing commodities.  The labourer works
> longer hours than is necessary to sustain herself, but derives only the
> value she must have to survive.  The difference (S) belongs to the boss.
> Therefore exploitation exists at production, surplus is generated at
> production, and the non-identity (historically specific contradiction) of
> exchange value and use value is manifest at the level of production.
> 
> Hugh sums up nicely:]
> 
> >The commodity (not just under
> >capitalism, but in all modes of production in which it occurs) unites
> >use-value and exchange-value in itself. The value of a commodity is
> >composed of two qualitatively different aspects, one a precondition for
a
> >sale to occur at all in the market (someone must see a use for the
> >commodity that impels them to exchange their money for it) and one a
> >precondition for the specific quantity of money exchanged for the
> >commodity (the buyer must acknowledge the exchangeability of the
commodity
> >at a certain quantity of value embodied in money).
> 
> [But Hugh says:]
> 
> >In this sense, use-value is specific to commodity-producing modes of
> >production >and characteristic of  capitalism which is the
> >commodity-producing mode of >production par excellence.
> 
> [Had Marx used the term 'perceived utility', what would be different?]
> 
> >Rosdolsky (also obviously one of Dave's favourites) is excellent on the
> >contradictions involving use-value under capitalism once the empirical
> >limits of commodity production at aggregate scale are brought into
focus.
> >(In other words, you don't see problems arising from use-value at the
scale
> >of one barrel of oil exchanged for a few dollars, but you start seeing
big
> >problems when you look at aggregate oil production, distribution and
> >consumption under capitalism.
> >
> >This leads us on to the utter failure of capitalism to develop the
forces
> >of production, and the utter failure of the so-called Marxist left to
see
> >this and draw the necessary conclusions. But we can save that for
another
> >time. And I'm thinking of computers and IT here.
> 
> [Well, you've hooked me - what are you getting at here.  I have a feeling
> I'd very much like to know.
> 
> Justin writes:]
> 
> >my paper "What's Wrong With Exploitation?" Nous 1995, which has been
> >archived on >one or another of these Marxism lists.
> 
> [And which is a good read, pithily summarised as:]
> 
> >The very short answer is that capitalist exploitation is indeed
> >exploitation in >general, appropriation of a surplus, and that by itself
> >suffices as a basis for >overthrowing capitalism if there's a
> >nonexploitative alternative; moreover in a >general sense it is
> >appropriation of surplus value, where that is an >acknowledgement that
> >capitalists want the surplus not for itself butr as a >source of
profits,
> >whatever is the source of surplus and whatever is its >measure. As a
> >matter of fact I think it's demonstrable that most of the value of >the
> >surplus is due to labor, but the labor theory of value, on which all the
> >value is embodied  labor by definition and is properly measured in labor
> >time units is for reasons I have argued elsewhere extensively,
indefensible.
> 
> [Dave asks:]
> 
> > (2) If you take away Marx's theory of value, what is left of "marxism"?
> 
> [and Justin replies:]
> 
> >A great deal. Historical materialism. Class analysis. Exploitation
theory.
> >Theory of ideology and the state. A rather rich moral theory
(alienation,
> >real freedom, etc.). That's why I'm still a Marxist.
> 
> [But what's left of historical materialism if LTV is jettisoned?  Justin
> makes a compelling case for a general exploitation thesis as entirely
> consistent with historical materialism.  And so it is.  But is it
> sufficient to *require* historical materialism?  We seem to lose the
> dynamic exchange value/use value contradiction at the level of production
> (posited by the orthodox Marxist LTV - as above, but seemingly not
> essential to a more general exploitation approach) and the concomitant
> forces v. relations contradiction (basic to positing class struggle as
the
> history of capitalism).  This is but a gut feeling at this point, but are
> we on the verge of chucking 'capitalism as motion'?  Are we not
implicitly
> giving up the 'historical' in historical materialism, Justin?
> 
> By the way, when I do understand LTV (should that day ever come), I shall
> declare my hand - I can't yet.  But I would like to know if chucking LTV
> means chucking HM.]
> 
> Whatever a thread starts with (Bourdieu in this case), it seems to end
> squarely at LTV's doorstep, doesn't it?  I've written more than I meant
to.
> 
> Sorry.
> 
> Rob.
> 
> 
> ************************************************************************
> 
> Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.
> 
> Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
> Fax:    02-6201 5119
> 
> ************************************************************************
> 
> 'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
> lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)
> 
> "The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
> into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
> the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
> the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)
> 
> ************************************************************************
> 
> 
> 
> 
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