> Hi Paul,
> Joseph wrote:
>
> In the discussion of commodity fetishism, Marx points to the fetishist nature
> of value. He makes the famous assertion that *value* is "a relation between
> persons expressed as a relation between things". This is the essence of the
> illusion concerning value that is created by marketplace exchange. Value
> appears to be a property of objects, but actually it is a relation between
> persons.
> --------------
> Paul C:
> I think we should deconstruct this a little.
> What appears to be a relation between objects is their monetary value
> which appears as an attribute of the individual commodity. But this
>monetary value is not the same thing as the labour value, since the monetary
>and labour value have different units.
If by monetary value you mean price, and if by labor-value you mean what Marx
calls the value, then they don't necessarily have different units.
Thus at the beginning of Chapter III of vol. I of "Capital", Marx writes:
"The chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for
the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of
the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It
thus serves as a *universal measure of value*. [The emphasis is Marx's] And
only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity *par
excellence*, become money."
Thus, in Marx's view, money is the universal measure of value. And indeed
Marx repeatedly compares value and price with both expressed in monetary
terms.
However, one could calculate value in terms of labor-hours. (There are
important reasons why this isn't usually done. But one could theoretically
imagine that this was done; it's useful to do so for certain purposes; and I
used both financial and labor-hour units for value in my article on the
transformation problem.) But at the same time, one could then calculate
prices in terms of labor-hours.
Indeed, in his comment on this thread, Charles Brown referred to the question
of the labor chit or labor certificate. Most people probably imagine that
this certificate is denominated in labor-hours, and yet it would be used for
purchasing consumer goods. But if workers used labor certificates to buy
consumer goods, and if these certificates were denominated in labor-hours,
then the prices of consumer goods would also have to be denominated in labor-
hours. (Actually, I think it's unlikely that labor certificates will be
denominated in labor-hours, and I have explained why in my article on the
role of the labor-hour in planning. But many people think otherwise.)
At one time, Paul, you seemed to have an inkling that the question of the
units wasn't key. What was key was whether there was an attempt to
subordinate all planning to a single numerical scale. For example, what was
important about prices was not the units, but that they equated everything
along a single numerical scale. You wrote:
"...imputed rents under socialism will be no more effective in husbanding
resources than real rents are under capitalism. We would argue the more
radical point that ecological destruction is the result of any 'economic'
decision mechanism, i.e. any decision mechanism based upon a single objective
function. Any decision procedure based upon prices fails to convey
information about the ecological and environmental consequences of a course
of action, since these are complex and not reducible to an accounting entry.
Any non-qualitative assessment of environmental impact is misleading. The
environmental consequences of an action have to be determined by scientific
investigation and resolved by political struggle." (Cockshott and Cottrell,
"Towards a New Socialism,", Chapter 5, p. 66, 1993)
I think this is an important point. No matter how one twists or corrects
prices, the result will still be that financial incentives and market
measures -- "any decision procedure based on prices"--can't stop
environmental destruction. Indeed, it means that environmental destruction is
the consequence of planning based on prices, and this would apply either to a
capitalist marketplace or to the use of shadow prices in any economy. It
means that whether the units are labor hours or some sort of financial unit,
the result is environmental devastation. So if this insight is applied
consistently, it would mean: so much for cap and trade, cap and auction, the
carbon tax, etc. It's not neo-liberal market measures, but direct planning
that is necessary to protect the environment.
In my opinion, this criticism of the single numerical scale is an important
part of the issue of commodity fetishism. Moreover, it's a part that is
important to bring out at the present historical moment.
However, I disagree with the implication in this passage that "economic"
planning must consist of basing decisions on the use of a single quantitative
scale (whether the scale is labor-hours or not). The passage contrasts
political decision to decision based on this quantitative scale, rather than
noting that there are other forms of economic calculation than basing
everything on a single quantitative scale. These other forms of economic
calculation are key to providing the limits in which "political" decision can
operate.
> In both monetary value and labour
>value you have a scalar measure,
> ie, it is one dimensional. But this
>involves a loss of information since the complexity of interactions in the
>social division of labour is of higher dimension -- is for example a matrix.
>Both therefore suffer from information loss since they are projections of a
> higher dimensional space onto a submanifold.
> But it is not strictly true to say that labour value is a relation between
> persons.
> It is a socio technical relation, it is a one dimensional projection of a
>much more complex structure composed of the social division of labour and
>the current state of the forces of production available to society.
The same thing could be said about prices, or else capitalist society would
collapse in a day. The situation is exactly the same here with respect to
prices and with respect to value.
> The sale of a commodity is a relation between persons
>( at least between juridical persons, not necessary human ones). This sale
>nvolves a price, so the price is a relation between persons, in which the
>aggregate socio-technical relations of production are only fleetingly
>visible.
>
> To the extent, that as Smith argues, human labour is malleable and
> polymorphic
>( the parable of the philosopher and the street porter ) the aggregate socio-
>technical conditions of production can be represented as labour values,
>since in principle labour can be redistributed through the division of
>labour and represents the original social opportunity cost, or 'original
>currency'.
Here you are arguing in favor of that one-dimensional economic scale that
Cottrell and yourself repudiated with regard to ecological considerations.
The representation of "the aggregate socio-technical conditions of
production" as labor values, means ignoring the qualitative differences
between objects, such as between buildings, machinery, and raw materials;
between objects and people; between different people; and so forth. It means,
for example, equating a factory building as equal so many workers. Both have
a labor value; their labor values differ only quantitatively; so 1 factory
building = x available workers. A factory building is also equated in this
way to so much machinery, or to so much stored wheat, or to anything used in
production.
As a matter of fact, in principle one can't even equate one hour of work to
another hour of work without ignoring important qualitative differences.
Actual concrete labor -- and the real "cost" to the laborer of performing it -
- differs according to intensity, skill, the particular laborer doing it, the
location of the workplace, the time of day, and so forth. But from the point
of view of labor hours -- an hour = an hour = an hour. One might try to
correct the measurement of the length of labor by taking account of various
of these factors, but the corrected labor value will still suffer from being
a one-dimensional measure. Thus, the allocation of the labor force to
different productive tasks according to labor values means, in principle,
ignoring circumstances of great importance to the individual laborers.
Similarly, while it's true that using resources one way implies not using
them another way, it's not true that this can be adequately measured
quantitatively as a numerical opportunity cost measured in labor-hours. Not
without introducing all the irrationality of financial calculation -- and not
without devastating the environment (recall the passage by Cottrell and
Cockshott quoted above).
>
> Joseph:
>
> Indeed, as if to avoid any possibility of being misunderstood, Marx
> insisted, and correctly so, that *value* is a "non-natural" property of a
> commodity. He wrote things like:
>
> "The iron, in the expression of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a
> natural property common to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coat in
> the expression of the value of the linen, represents a non-natural property
> of both, something purely social, namely, their value." ("Capital", vol. I,
> Chapter I, Section 3, Subsection 3. "The Equivalent Form of Value", p. 66,
> Kerr edition.)
> Note, he insisted on making this point about "value". He didn't say, well,
> this is true about "price", but "value" is a somewhat better indicator of the
> properties of an object. Instead he put emphasis on the non-natural nature of
> value itself. And I think this is important, and very relevant to the
> problems of today.
>
> Paul:
> Saying it is non natural is still compatible with Jim's point about it being
> a social opportunity cost.
I think you haven't taken enough time to consider what "non-natural" actually
means. You don't seem to realize the radical nature of Marx's point about
the "non-natural" nature of value. This is a point which deserves a lot of
thought, and which is especially important nowadays when it would cut against
the illusions of neo-liberalism.
>
> Joseph:
> Why he focused on value is clear from another angle as well. Value reflects
> the underlying laws of capitalist exchange and price. If, therefore, price
> reflects commodity fetishism, value should reflect it in an even clearer
> fashion, clearer because the discussion of value leaves out various
> accidental complexities inherent in price and thus points out the essential
> features more clearly.
>
> Paul:
> I am not sure that it is meaningful to say that value reflects any thing.
So can we take it that you disagree with Jim's statement that "the value
accounting system does capture the social essence of both commodity
production and capitalism that prices miss"?
> A reflection is a locally continuous mapping between two domains of the
>same dimensionality. It may have vanishing points and duplications: in a
>curved mirror I may see two copies of myself, and some parts of me may be
>compressed into a single point: many to one mapping. It is not clear in what
>sense you can say price reflects commodity fetishism. To stretch a point one
>might argue that prices are a distorted reflection of values, but since
>commodity fetishism is associated with the selling of commodities and is
>therefore part of the commercial process, the fetishism and reflection seems
>to be in the representation of values as prices.
> Since labour values exist prior to sale, are, according to Marx,
> something generated in production, they exist before the good becomes a
>commodity and is sold.
>
-----------------------------------
Joseph Green
[email protected]
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