On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Shane Mage <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Value is the relation of production costs to utility" (Engels) Bingo! Okay, here's for the Marxologists: In Anti-Duhring, Engels explicitly wrote that, quantitatively, the proportions at which social labor (or, in stock terms, the productive force of labor) are to be allocated under socialism (no value in that setting) are determined by the comparison (ratios) of "useful effects" of the goods in question. Effectively, this is also done under capitalism, but under the contradictory social forms of value, surplus value, etc. Translate this into the conventional jargon and you have Engels saying that, in "equilibrium" (i.e. at the point where a capitalist society reproduces itself), ratios of "marginal rates of substitution" must equal ratios of "marginal rates of transformation" and hence "relative prices." Of course, the terms do not fully correspond, but tracing the differences is a matter of detail. Marx also said this, but a bit more obscurely (especially for those who continue to treat Hegel as a "dead dog"), in several places, in Grundrisse and Capital. Here, for example, Marx refers to the *determining factors of value*, i.e. the use-value structure I've referred to or Engels' useful-effects proportions, which Marx distinguishes from *value*, the *social form*: "The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their use value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determining factors of value." ... "Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4 Is Marx waving his hands? What is this word game -- the *determining factors of value* are not the source of fetishism, but the *value form itself* is it? Well, here's spelled out in terms an elementary school child can understand: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_07_11.htm What determines value (again, the "determining factors of value")? How are the specific proportions of SLNT in question determined? By the "differing amounts of needs." What?! Needs can be quantified?! Utility can be compared to utility?! How?! Impossible!!! :-) What I guess confuses people is that Marx says, distinguish between use value and value. Value is a social form. There's not an atom of use value in it. Value (with its mystical cloaks and illusions, market prices, rents, profits, etc.) is all *social*. It is a *form*. The *content* of that form, on the other hand, is *material*. The proportions that appear as values, prices, etc. are determined by the proportions in which these goods are useful to us. The usefulness of goods is a *material* thing. The what of these proportions, the "substance" that goes into them is -- ultimately -- our socialized labor, which is the flow of the productive forces of our labor. But, wait, didn't Marx said that value had nothing to do with value? No, no. Marx says that the value *form* does not have to do with value. Nowhere did Marx say that specific values (proportions of SNLT) have nothing to do with use value. On the contrary, he said exactly the opposite. Here for example: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm#S2a "Lastly, suppose that every piece of linen in the market contains no more labour-time than is socially necessary. In spite of this, all these pieces taken as a whole, may have had superfluous labour-time spent upon them. If the market cannot stomach the whole quantity at the normal price of 2 shillings a yard, this proves that too great a portion of the total labour of the community has been expended in the form of weaving. The effect is the same as if each individual weaver had expended more labour-time upon his particular product than is socially necessary. Here we may say, with the German proverb: caught together, hung together. All the linen in the market counts but as one article of commerce, of which each piece is only an aliquot part. And as a matter of fact, the value also of each single yard is but the materialised form of the same definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour." See? "Socially necessary" means in keeping with the proportions at which the good is needed, i.e. the "useful-effects" (Engels) proportions! _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
