Isnt capitalism generalised commodity production which includes labour-power i.e. wage-labour?
Prior to capitalism commodity production was secondary to use- value production, and typically not by means of wage labour. Therefore the socially necessary labour time was not set by abstract labour realised as commodities entering into the value of labour-power but by concrete labour.
As for post-capitalism, labour power will cease to be a commodity as soon as its value is no longer set by the market and set by the plan. The plan may use market mechanism's as tools but under the dictorship of the proletariat, like state capitalism in Lenin's usage. Therefore there will probably considerable commodity exchange but like pre-cap society, not the production of Labour- power as a commodity.
Dave
On 25 Mar 00, at 16:44, Hugh Rodwell wrote:
> Rob's point requires a distinction between actual and potential, I think.
>
> The factory in use, like all commodities that have succeeded in being
> purchased, is not immediately for sale, that is, it is not for sale in
> actuality, even if it is potentially.
>
> There are two other aspects that need looking at as well, perhaps.
>
> One is the possibility that the factory was built in-house so to say,
> without being bought on the open market. This is like a cobbler making or
> assembling his own tools -- he can calculate the extra return he will make
> (or not, as the case may be) on the basis of the usual market price of
> whatever it is he has made for himself. In this case the home-fabricated
> tool (means of production) is a factory. It's a way of cutting corners in
> the system but it doesn't shake the system as such. A good way for huge
> conglomerates to siphon extra surplus value over to themselves and get that
> important edge on their competitors, always provided they can build the
> factory cheaper than it is being sold in the market.
>
> The other aspect is the question of other societies (other modes of
> production).
>
> Rob writes that "surplus produce, for instance, was bought and sold
> thousands of years ago", but by writing this he's actually begging the most
> important question -- which is how the *exchange* (which is what he should
> have written) is mediated. Now thousands of years ago, such exchanges of
> fortuitous surplus were the kind of thing that was pushing societies
> towards commodity production. As soon as the surplus was sufficiently
> non-fortuitous, the things were no longer produced for use (and therefore
> exchanged only if too much piles up by chance), but produced directly for
> exchange and thus for sale -- ie they'd already become commodities, however
> primitive the mechanism of exchange might yet have been.
>
> If we skip to the future, we can see that for a long time to come "price
> labels" will be attached to things to reflect the amount of labour put into
> them in the system of social production, but as socialism advances these
> labels will less and less reflect the blind operations of the Law of Value
> (ie as commodities) and more and more reflect the planned and plannable
> input of known quantities of useful social labour. So the social content is
> the absolutely essential thing in all this. As in fact Rob clearly
> recognizes in acknowledging the self-presentation of damn near everything
> in the capitalist mode of production as a commodity, making it easy to
> discuss the ramifications of the whole business with him. Whereas it is
> next to impossible with George Pennyfarthing because he hasn't even
> accepted the most minimal consequences of Marx's fundamental principles of
> economic analysis, ie the social character of human labour in the
> production and reproduction of human society and its reflection as value
> in the commodities that embody this labour in the capitalist mode of
> production.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Hugh
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Was cleaning out my backlog when it suddenly occurred to me that George
> >might have a point (although I don't know how important a point it need be).
> > Is a 'commodity' something that distinguishes itself from its hypothetical
> >being under another economic system purely on the criterion that it was
> >produced with the sole raison d'etre of being sold (after all, surplus
> >produce, for instance, was bought and sold thousands of years ago - and
> >publicly built infrastructure also comes to mind as an example)? If not,
> >why not?
> >
> >If so, how would a factory (quite probably assembled out of things
> >themselves made to be sold), which may be sold at any time, but is not
> >necessarily produced with that objective in mind, be different from anything
> >else that was made with sale not uppermost in the processes that built it?
> >It is built from commodities, by way of labour power, in order to produce
> >commodities, and it can be sold at any time. For Jim, that makes it a
> >commodity. Certainly, it *presents itself* as a commodity, as capitalist
> >relations are such that all things have a price and are so measured. So the
> >sentence George dislikes rings true to me. That central alienating relation
> >certainly pertains. But does it matter that it may not have been produced
> >to be sold? And if so, why?
> >
> >Sorry to be so dense, but I've suddenly come over a bit vague.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Rob.
>
>
>
>
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