Date: 3 Aug 1994 15:26:25 -0800
From: "Chris Connery" <chris_connery-AT-macmail.ucsc.edu>
Subject:     


Re: Horkheimer's Critical Theory  and Isaak Illich Rubin

THe Horkheimer citation is
Critical Theory, Selected Essays. Introduction by Stanley Aronowitz. Matthew
J. O'Connell et al, trans.New York: Continuum Publishing, 1992
LC cat no. B32790,H8472E5

The following is from Isaak Illich Rubin's _Essays on Marx's Theory of Value_
(trans. Samardzija and Perlman)Black and Red Press 1972 (originally published
in Leningrad, 1928):

Bohm-Bawerk's arguments at first glance seem so convincing that one may
boldly say that not a single later critique was formulated without repeating
them. However, Bohm Bawerk's entire critique stands or falls together with
the assumptions on which it is built: namely that the first five pages of
Capital constitute the only basis on which Marx built his theory of value. 
Nothing is more erronewous than this conception.  ...  The complete
DIALECTICAL ground of Marx's theory of value can only be given on the basis
of his theory of commodity fetishism which analyzes teh general structure of
the commodity economy.  ..

the central insight of the theory of fetishism is not that political economy
discloses production relations among people behind material categories, but
that in a commodity-capitalist economy, these productive relations among
people necessarily acquire a material form and can be realized only in this
form. The ususal short formulation of this theory holds that the value of the
commodity depends on the quantity of labor socially necessary for its
production; or in a general formulation, that labor is hidden behind, or
contained in, value: value = "materialized" labor.  It is more accurate to
express the theory of value inversely:  in the commodity capitalist economy,
production-work relations among people necessarily acquire the form of the
value of things, and can appear only in this material form; social labor can
only be expressed in value.  Here the point of departure for research is not
value but labor, not the transactions of market exchange as such, but the
production structure of the commodity society, the totality of production
relations among people.  The transactions of market exchange are then the
necessary consequences of the internal structure of society; they are one of
the aspects of the social process of production. The labor theory of value is
not based on an analysis of exchange transactions as such in their material
form, but on the analysis of those social production relations expressed in
the transactions (pp. 61-62).

A superficial reading of Capital may lead one to think that by opposing use
value and exchange value, marx designated a property of things themselves
(such is the interpretation of Bohm Bawerk and other critics of Marx). 
Actually, the problem is the difference between the "material" and the
"functional" existence of things, between the product of labor and its social
form, between things and the production relations among people "coalesced"
with things, i.e. production relations which are expressed by things. Thus
what is revealed is an inseparable connection between Marx's theory of value
and its general, methodological bases formulated in his theory of commodity
fetishism.  ..... We are dealing with a HUMAN relation which acquires the
form of being a property of THINGS and which is connected with the process of
distribution of labor in production. In other words, we are dealing with
reified production relations among people.  The reification of labor in value
is the most important conclusion of the theory of fetishism, which explains
the inevitability of "reification" of production relations among people in a
commodity economuy.  The labor theory of value did not discover the material
condensation of labor (as a factor of production) in things which are the
products of labor; this takes place in all economic formations and is the
technical basis of value but not its cause. The labor theory of value
discovered the fetish, the reified expression of social labor in the value of
things.  Labor is "crystallized" or formed in value in the sense that it acqures
the social "form of value." ... (p. 72)

I found Rubin useful.  The central place he gives to commodity fetishism
helped my thinking about the work/zero work question, on the connection
between alienation and value, and on other points.   I learned a lot from the
list discussion  on the ltv, but felt at times that "social relations" should
have been more central to that discussion-- maybe the discussion's engagement
with libertarian thinking precluded more focus on social relations.   I.I.
Rubin is good for that.  

More recently, William Pietz has done good work on fetishism from a
materialist (as opposed to a semiological) angle, in an essay called
"Fetishism and Materialism." in Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds.
_Fetishism as Cultural Discourse_.  This essay reminded me of Rubin.

Introduction: Chris Connery.  I did a PhD in classical Chinese litrature and
now teach literature and cultural studies at UC Santa Cruz (pre-tenure).  My
reading in Marxism is haphazard and insufficient.  This fall I am teaching a
large, newly required lower division undergraduate literature course,
"introduction to theory and interpretation," and the syllabus I designed is
almost all marxian (marx, adorno, benjamin, althusser, barthes, baudrillard,
deleuze/guattari, maria mises, claudia von werlhof, jameson).  The
undergraduates may be resistant, since they may have been led to believe that
the course would be something else, like How To Interpret Literature. It
won't be. I hope that I can ask for help here when I get into a jam (don't
need syllabus suggestions, though; that's done).  



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