Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 02:08:35 -0600
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: Metaphysics of Value


Rakesh:

>In his very important exchange with bodd, I mean Siddharth, Rahul wrote:
>
>> When an underlying conception like value can be used *unambiguously* to
>>>repeatedly give the correct results with nary a deviation, then I will be
>>happy >to admit economics to the status of a science and value to the status
>>of energy >or force, which have already passed many such tests, as a
>>theoretical concept. >Won't happen in my lifetime.
>
>I think that we have to separate the question of how the value of a
>commodity is determined from the inquiry into why the products of human
>labor take the *form of value* in the first place.


Theoretically, this is true, but it's also begging the question. Only when
we have achieved some predictive success can we assert the hypothesis as
something to be investigated itself. If the hypothesis that the products of
human labor take the form of value leads to predictions that are borne out,
then we can start talking about why. Otherwise, we can still talk about it,
but we might as well be talking about angels dancing on the head of a pin;
we'll be dissecting a proposition which has not been shown to have
explanatory value.

>So before we are concerned with results, we have to look into the question
>of form.

This may be the case. Experience in other scientific fields of inquiry
suggests that a very useful cross-fertilization between experimental
results and hypotheses occurs, but only if hypotheses are abandoned as they
fail to meet experimental tests. Still, it's conceivable though not likely
that things are buried so deep below the surface that a considerable
theoretical development is necessary before we can talk about results.


>What is Marx getting at when he writes:
>
>It is one of the chief failings of classical political economy that it has
>never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and in particular
>of their value, in discovering the form of value which in fact turns value
>exchange value.  Even its best representatives, Adam Smith and Ricardo,
>treat the form of value as something of indifference, something external to
>the nature of the commodity itself.  The explanation for this is not simply
>that their attention is entirely absorbed by the magnitude of value. It
>lies deeper. The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract,
>but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by
>that fact it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind
>of social production of a historical and transitory character.  If then we
>make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of socia
>production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value form, and
>consequently of the commodity form together with its further developments,
>the money form, the capital form, etc...." Capital, vol 1, p. 174, n. 34
>(Vintage)

This is rather unclearly written, but it seems to me he simply means CPE
has failed to discover the mechanism by which value is realized as price.
The second half simply makes the point that the value-form is a useful
concept (of course, he states it instead in Platonic language, because
that's what he believes in) only in a society characterized by the
bourgeois mode of production. This is  unobjectionable, although the highly
reified distinction between capitalist and non- or pre-capitalist societies
is misleading and historically inaccurate, to some extent. Andre Gunder
Frank wrote a provocative though somewhat tedious article on this.

Rahul




     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---