At least on first reading I find myself in greater agreement with Ted than is usually the case. We probably differ however on how much weight to give the precise phrasing in the unpublished mss. of his youth. Probably Ted like the rest of us has a rather huge pile of words (on paper or electronic form) around his home and office, and probably he would not expect these 'arguments' with himself, his thinking on paper, to be regarded as his final word on any given subject. And it seems to me that we have to allow Marx this same latitude. (This would bs true also of the Grudrisse and (even more) of the mass of early scribblings which constitute Volume 3 of Capital. And though I prefer not to engae in thejuvenile pursuit of "thinking for myself," I think we have little choice but to indulge in that vice while construing and reacting to these early documents.
Specifically, I think the phrase "laws of beauty" is empty of content. And while Ted has frequently referred to these "laws," I don't believe he or anyone else has ever been able to enunciate them let alone establish their validity. I would like to see the 'law' that could hold together, say, the Louis & Ella recordings, Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, Pynchon's Gravaity's RainBow, and that blank painting, the title and painter of which I have forgotten. Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ted Winslow Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 6:22 PM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Explain to a non-economist what Marginal Cost is Julio Huato wrote: > Value is the good life that lost its way in human history. If value > is a variable, then the good life is a variable as well. If the good > life is not a variable, then value cannot be a variable either. > Because value and the good life have the same substance (human > conscious activity), although underneath different forms. Hence their > opposed qualities. What do you mean by "value"? If you mean "value" in the sense of capitalist exchange value, the embodied "labour" involved is "alienated" labour, i.e. it's the antithesis of the activity of a "universally developed individual" in the realms of either necessity or freedom if a communist society. Such labour is constituted by the internal relations that define capitalism. Marx treats it as maintaining sufficient self-identity within these relations to be treated as a "variable" as in the labour theory of "value". If you mean "value" in the sense of the aesthetic value created by the activity of a universally developed individual, that "value", as elaborated by Marx, is not a "variable" capable of quantitative variation. It's an objectification of the "laws of beauty". "In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal's product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm Are you treating labour in capitalism as identical with the activity characteristic of communist society? If so you are ignoring the fact that Marx's historical materialism has individuality develop within the internal relations constitutive of the labour process, a development ending, as claimed in one of the passages I recently quoted, in "the full development of the individual". This has the following implication for the use of labour time as the measure of "wealth". "As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm Ted Ted _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
