me: >> ... The difference is that prices reflect the >> fetishism of commodities (treating capitalism as merely a dance of >> commodities being traded in markets) while values do not involve >> fetishism:
Joseph Green: > No, value reflects the fetishism of commodities just as much as price. Value > and price are identical with respect to commodity fetishism. > > Value measures things which are qualitatively different as simply differing > quantitatively on a numerical scale. This is one feature of commodity > fetishism. I see value as representing a qualitatively different kind of alienation than that of commodity fetishism. It's true that reducing work time to mere minutes and hours (as opposed to seeing it in all of its complexity and mixed with play) is a kind of alienation, one that's central to capitalism (the reduction of concrete labor to abstract labor). But in chapter 1, section 4 of volume I of CAPITAL, Marx considers a society that suffers from alienation less than capitalism or simple commodity production does (or rather, suffers from at least one less kind of alienation since it lacks commodity fetishism). This is >> ... a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means >> of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different >> individuals is consciously applied as the combined labor power of the >> community. ... The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive >> organization of the community, and the degree of historical development >> attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a >> parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each >> individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour >> time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment >> in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion >> between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the >> community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of >> the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of >> the total product destined for individual consumption...<< This planned society of free individuals does not involve the fractured vision of society that characterizes commodity fetishism, though this society clearly has its limits. We might see this as a description of "socialism" instead of "communism," though which terms we use aren't important. > And it's not an accident that Marx's beautiful passage on > commodity fetishism occurs in Chapter 1 of the First Volume of Capital, which > deals with value, not in the Third Volune of Capital that deals with the > deviation between value and prices of production. There is a long passage (chapter 50) at the end of volume III on the "illusions created by competition." I interpret that as the application of the theory of commodity fetishism (which had been applied to commodity production in general at the start of volume I) to capitalism. It's not beautiful, but that's because it's very unfinished. The entire section has some poetic moments, as when "It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things" (ch. 48). Of course, "the enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world" is a fetishized world. Marx was very conscious of price/value deviations (and how systematic they are) from the start, before he started writing the final draft of CAPITAL. I interpret the section on commodity fetishism in volume I as explaining one reason why he _assumed_ price = value in there and in volume II. By assuming that the phenomenal form (price) and the social essence (value) coincide, he hoped to break through the fetishism of commodities, to make the existence and nature of capitalist exploitation clear. The society suffers from alienation (so that concrete labor is reduced to abstract labor), but that doesn't negate the idea of value as the social essence of commodities, one that's obscured by the system of markets and exchange. (In addition, volume I abstracts from the differences among different capitalists and among different workers, so that the differences in the "organic composition" of capital that cause systematic price/value deviations do not exist.) > Value simply explains the underlying laws concerning capitalist categories > such as price: it doesn't provide a correction for it. At one time, it was > common to believe if everything, including labor-power, was bought at its > true value, then there would be no exploitation. One of the main points of > "Capital" is to refute that. Exchange according to value results in > exploitation of labor and devastation of the environment. Right -- payment for labor-power and all other commodities at value (or what's called "equal exchange") is not the same as socialism or total disalienation. Marx assumed that commodities sold at value but nonetheless showed that exploitation existed because it's labor-power (not labor) that's is sold at value and because the owners of labor-power (i.e., workers) can only get access to consumption goods (means of subsistence) by selling labor power to the minority which control the means of production. In a way, this fits with Cornell West's interpretation of Marx's morality in his dissertation (published by MR) in which instead of developing his own standards of morality, Marx emphasizes the contrast between capitalist ideals (equal exchange) and reality. Marx didn't say much about the "devastation of the environment" in CAPITAL, but it's true that if the cost side of production decisions is addressed by only looking at labor costs, that ignores the cost to Nature, so that capitalists will abuse the latter. However, the value accounting system does capture the social essence of both commodity production and capitalism that prices miss. That was my only point. That social essence can be captured by looking at value either (1) the way the association of free individuals that Marx posits does (as part of planning) or (2) in the petty-bourgeois way of "trade should be equal, with value = price." In either case, we're not talking about a totally disalienated standard. > Along [??] theory that gained traction was that socialist planning should use > value, or the labor-content of goods, as its planning unit. But the attempt > to do this would result in duplicating, to one extent or another, the sins of > capitalist exchange. Did the USSR ever use this kind of planning? of course, they never were an association of free individuals. > Nowadays it is common to believe that if one corrects prices to correspond to > the "true value" of things, a true value corrected for carbon content, this > will solve the problem of restricting the emission of greenhouse gases and > contribute strongly to saving the environment. This is simply not true. That's a completely different issue, which we've discussed before and I see no point in discussing now. > And > it is not a Marxist view.... That's not a very good criticism. Whether or not something is a "Marxist view" doesn't automatically say whether it's a valid view, since Marx was wrong sometimes. Further, we can learn from (some) economists after Marx, including non-Marxist ones (such as Keynes). -- Jim Devine / "Living a life of quiet desperation -- but always with style!" _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
