Date: Sat, 27 Aug 1994 23:37:40 +0700
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (donna jones)
Subject: Re:value



Here is Steve's critique of Marxian value:

>The correct application is the insight that "all commodities"
>are the "opposite" to labor; the error is the assertion that the
>essence of "all commodities" is labor. I have earlier cited Bose's
>_Marx on Exploitation and Inequality_ on this: if you attempt to reduce
>all commodities to labor, you are inevitably left with an irreducible
>core of commodity inputs, which cannot be reduced to labor (equally,
>you can go the reverse way, reducing all commodities to 99.999%
>commodity inputs--but never being able to get rid of a fraction that
>must be attributed solely to labor).

Steve, I think that Carchedi's reply to this argument is persuasive; see
pp.92-98 in his Frontiers of Political Economy in which he discusses this
infinite regression critique.  In addition, the question is not about the
"essence of all commodities" (marx argued that nature itself is as
productive of wealth as labor)but the origin of surplus VALUE based on the
law of value. Differentiating as always between usevalue and exchange
value, Marx is not interested in reducing all usevalues to labor; he is
explaining surplus value as labor and labor alone--which raises all sorts
of questions about this value-positing labor. "Value is the product of
labour POWER, or the expenditure of labour power as abstract wealth...value
is a category developed to understand the production of wealth FOR the
capitalist class BY the labourers. Value is a historically specific and
thus a SOCIALLY SPECIFIC concept." (Carchedi, p.102)


In short, for Marx, "value is NOT created by (abstract) labor.  Value IS
labour; it is abstract labour performed under capitalist production
relations and which must express itself as money." (ibid)(The logic of that
monetary expression is discussed profoundly by Patrick Murray).

 This theory of surplus value may or may not be a powerful moral weapon for
working class politics (we can discuss marx and morality later; here I'll
take a weak version: the theory of surplus value, along with the theory of
commodity fetishism, disencumbers the working class from the the hold of
"freedom, equality, property and bentham").  What the theory of surplus
value does explain is the origins, growth and decay of the capitalist
system--its law of motion...including the most important law of tendency of
the profit rate to fall. 

 And this is hinted at in the first few pages of Capital, where Marx
already brings out the inverse movement of usevalue and value: "In general,
the greater the productivity of labor, the less the labour-time required to
produce an article, the less the mass of labour crystallized in that
article, and the less its value....The value of a commodity, therefore,
varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productivity, of the
labour which its realization within the commodity." (p131, Vintage.ed)

d jones



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