File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-04-30.000, message 715


Date: Sat, 29 Apr 95 08:31:01 BST
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: Law of Value - a definition


While I welcome the efforts of Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell to 
defend the continuing relevance of the labour theory of value, I think on 
reflection it may not be helpful if I just accept their definition.

>>>>>>

"The law of value states that value, understood as the labour time 
socially necessary to produce a commodity, is conserved in the exchange 
of commodities".

<<<<<<

I wanted to check Engels article actually entitled the Law of Value, 
which must be having its hundredth birthday just about now as it was one 
of the last things he wrote, but it is on another computer.

My recollection is that there is not a mathematical formula there, but an 
extremely interesting historical explanation.

I therefore will stir it up a bit by proposing that

***********************************************************************

(Exchange) value is an emergent property of a human society that trades 
commodities and could be called "tradability". 

It exists in the minds of 
all participants to the transaction and includes their estimate of the 
probable estimates of the tradability of the commodity in question and 
the unit of exchange, *in the minds of all other people having access to 
use of that trading system*. 

************************************************************************

In the individual exchange therefore the price of a commodity oscillates 
sometimes wildly, around the socially necessary labour content of the 
commodity. 

For the society as a whole the estimate of what is tradable (regarded as 
useful - for the stomach or the imagination) and how the total labour 
force divides its labour between different economic activities, and the 
time socially necessary to create a commodity, are shaped and refashioned 
anew each day. At a social level this all oscillates (again sometimes 
wildly) around the ultimate attractor, the emerged property, of the total 
social labour time available for commodity production.

***************

I think this concept of value as an emergent property may seem a little 
amorphous because the boundaries fluctuate, as those of most living 
systems do. The mathematics require non-linear equations, and fuzzy logic 
but I suggest it gives a fuller fit with what we see.

As it happens, completely by chance, and not to prove the point by 
reference to holy writ, [would Marxists ever wish to argue that way even 
as we approach the great man's birthday?] I stumbled on a passage from 
Capital which I had annotated twenty years ago with the comment 
"effect of law of value of commodities on society".

I submit that the wording is highly compatible with chaos theory and the 
concept within complexity theory, of emerging properties of self-organising 
systems.

>From Capital vol 1, Chapter XIV Section 4, Division of Labour in 
Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society, 7th paragraph, 
page 355 Lawrence and Wishart, London 1970 edition >

>>>

... in the society outside the workshop, chance and caprice have full 
play in distributing the producers and their means of production among 
the various branches of industry. The different spheres of production, it 
is true, constantly tend to an equilibrium: for, on the one hand, while 
each produceer of a commodity is bound to produce a use-value, to satisfy 
a particular social want, and while the extent of these wants differs 
quantitatively, still there exists an inner relation which settles their 
proportions into a regular system, and that system one of spontaneous 
growth; and, on the other hand, the law of the value of commodities 
ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time society can 
expend on each particular class of commodities. But this constant 
tendency to equilibrium, of the various spheres of production, is 
exercised, only in the shape of a reaction against the constant upsetting 
of this equilibrium. ...

The division of labour within the society brings into contact independent 
commodity producers, who acknowledge no other authority but that of 
competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their mutual 
interests; just as in the animal kingdom, the bellum omnium contra omnes 
more or less preserves the conditions of existence of every species."


So, Marx used the language of dialectics to expose the inner workings of 
what goes on before our eyes. In modern scientific discourse, the passage 
above shows how positive and negative feedback between the individual 
components creates a self-organising fluctuating system that permits our 
continued reproduction as a commodity producing species. 

What appears to be chance, caprice or chaos, on the individual level are 
also, as chaos theory suggests, often the workings of a much larger 
pattern, albeit one not constrained within mechanically reliable tramlines.


And what is Marx talking about when he says "there exists an inner 
relation which settles their proportions into a regular system", if it is 
not the same thing as complexity theory would call an emerging property of 
a self-organising system".

Marx still lives.

Chris Burford, London.




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