I wrote:
>> *This* treats use value and exchange value as two disjoint categories,
>> *because* -- I insist -- value is the *social* form of that *material*
>> entity we call (noun) use value or useful object. As a result, there
>> is absolutely *no* way to measure value except by measuring use value.
>> And there is absolutely *no* way to measure use value except by
>> measuring value (or its correlate under social conditions other than
>> commodity production). ...
Jim wrote:
> That _totally_ agrees with what I said: that is, there is absolutely
> no way to measure use-values (and add them up) except to measure their
> values. However, what you get is a sum of values and _not_ a sum of
> use-values. It's a sum of money, not a sum of "utility."
And how do you measure their values without measuring their use values?
> That is, I agreed that we can add up values or exchange values. But
> how do you measure use-values so that they can be added up, as
> use-values but not values?
Yes, how? How?
> My elementary school teacher said: five
> pounds of apples plus ten five of oranges equals what? my sassy
> response was of course "15 pounds of fruit."
You, as an elementary school kid, were right. Furthermore, you could
have pushed your teacher in the other direction to show how she
contradicted herself:
"What do you mean orange? The rind, the seeds, the fleshy segments of
that composite you call 'orange'?" And you could have gone deeper:
"Which part of a segment? The skin, the white threads attached to it,
or the clusters of juicy bulbs?" As anybody who's ever used or
consumed oranges knows well, each part of an orange may have a very
different use value. How can you add such disparate things and
meaningfully talk of an "orange"? Oranges are an aggregation of very
different elementary parts, just like fruit salads are. Just because
a fruit salad is produced by a human and the combination of things we
call an orange was produced spontaneously by nature should be no
reason to abandon logic. Because it seems like you use logic in one
direction, but not in the other. I guess going in the other
direction defies your (adult) common sense.
> But what if your economy
> also produces 50 pounds of uranium and 20 hours of hair-cuts? how are
> those added in? Even if we throw out the service sector (which we
> shouldn't do), 15 pounds of fruit plus 50 pounds of uranium is 65
> pounds of what? stuff?
Exactly: What if? Don't societies decide on the use value of these
very disparate things? Doesn't that mean that we make these things
equiparable? And societies have been doing this since way before
commodities and money appeared. So you cannot say that they were
capable of aggregating because of value, in the sense of Marx.
> That is what I meant by saying that use-values
> can't be measured and then added up.
If use values cannot be measured and added up, then how come societies
*did* it? You seem to think that societies *do* it now because of
money. Money exists today. But, Again, historically, this predates
value, commodities, money, and capital -- and it will outlive them.
How *did* they do it?
> There is no such thing as
> "stuff" than means anything. We can't say that 50 pounds of uranium
> has more use-value than 15 pounds of fruit.
Of course there's such a thing as stuff. Lots of it. And yes, we can
say that 50 pounds of uranium has more or less use value than 15
pounds of fruit. Absolutely. We say it all the time. With deeds.
> Later, I learned the economists' trick of adding apples, oranges, etc.
> by attaching prices to them before aggregating (and then correcting
> for inflation). It's only neoclassical economists who see the
> aggregate as a measure of utility or use-value.
Have you ever wondered why economists can do that? And it's not only
neoclassical economists who see the aggregate as a measure of use
value. Again, if you see the obvious fact that oranges are a
composite of qualitatively disparate elements, each with qualitatively
different use values that, to be reduced to their orangeness, must be
measured (i.e. "reduced" to a common quality that is, hence,
quantifiable by comparison), then you'll realize that you yourself do
the economists' trick all the time.
> When Marx talks about these "departments" he is talking about the
> _value_ of output of two sectors that produce two distinct types of
> use-values. He never sees the quantity of output produced by the two
> departments as being measured in the same units.
You are wrong. Department 1 produces not just a portion of the
"social product"; it produces "means of production," a specific use
value. It must produce that quality in quantities that match the
needs of "means of production" by the two departments together.
Department 2 produces consumption stuff. It must produce it in
quantities that match the consumption needs of people in both
departments. These are use-value correspondences. This is a use
value structure. It is not the quantities of aggregate "social
product," but the quantities of either "means of production" or
"consumption goods." But all that mixing and matching of uses values,
if done in the right proportions, only accomplishes the *material*
reproduction of a capitalist society, while capitalist societies are
very specific *social* structures: they have private ownership over
wealth and inequality, and these social structures must be reproduced
as well for a capitalist society to stay alive. So value, surplus
value, and all that must also match. But the way they match is by
this capitalist society blindly allocating its productive wealth... in
the proportions established by this use-value structure (and this is
precisely what some Marxists call "the law of value")!
* * *
To really understand value, I think we first need to unlearn all we
believe we know. It is really not hard if one approaches this issue
afresh, from the perspective of a little kid just trying to get the
hang of things in the world. (And here I'm addressing a possible
young reader bumping into this material with a fresh mind.)
For society to form, we need to socialize or communicate (in the
literal sense) -- i.e. make *common* or *social* what is individual:
my powers and/or needs, your powers and/or needs. We need to combine
our powers to produce, i.e. we need to compare our powers, each
particular one, measure them, etc. But to produce what? What we
need. We must also combine our needs, i.e. we must compare need
against need, each particular one, measure them, etc. That's how
we'll decide and take action, i.e. allocate our powers in ways that
meet our needs, which is how we reproduce our powers. And our needs.
This is the process of social formation. It will take place whether
there's private ownership or not, whether there's capital or not,
whether there's state or not. Right there, there is (or must be) a
correspondence or mapping between powers and needs, and between each
individual pair of powers and needs. If you take Hegel seriously, you
can even show yourself that your needs are your (aspirational) powers,
and your powers are (your previously met) needs, and the fact that you
go and try to match them shows how they transform into each other,
back and forth. So, there's an identity, and not only a difference
(and hence the seed of conflict), between them. But, let me not push
my luck. Stay in the first sentences of the paragraph: How can I
equate powers to needs? They seem to be very different things.
Because, in a certain sense, they are not different. And, again, it's
not me only who does it. It's us. That is how we make a society.
Without equating or mapping powers to needs, and vice versa, there's
no human society possible.
Let powers be x and needs be y; then y=f(x) and x=f^{-1}(y). (Again,
it is not only that, but since, in a way, x \equiv y, then also
x=f(x), fixed point!) What working, cooperating, and consuming do is
*transform* (i.e. change the form of something that must be identical
in content) across individuals (1) particular elements of x into other
elements of x, (2) particular elements of y into particular elements
of y, and (3) particular elements of x into particular elements of y.
As I wrote in a previous note, there's a fundamental *duality* between
our individual actions and the social importance we attribute to them
(our social valuation of these actions, in the general sense of
valuation). This duality must exist for social structures to be
reproduced. This is what underlies this constant "aggregation" that
we call social life or social formation. Value (in the narrower
sense, as commodity value) and its correlate forms (under various
social settings) may make these "aggregation" more or less turbulent,
but they do not abolish it.
FWIW.
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