--- Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A quick note. I think AN did a terrible disservice > to this discussion by > using the term "ideal" here. Abstract labor is _not_ > an ideal in any > sense, any more than gravity is. Neither is visible > nor can be touched. > It is utterly confusing to use "ideal" simply > because what is being > named is not a physical feature of any physical > object.
You are doing a disservice to Marx's critique of fetishized social relationships by mentioning abstract labour and gravity in the same sentence. Gravity has a real existence in nature despite its invisibility. We cannot simply agree to disregard gravity. It operates upon physical objects regardless of what we think. Value is nothing but a fetishized form of social mediation. Value exists as a result of human agency. You have one foot in the camp of traditional Marxism with this substantialist notion of value. That is why the section on the fetish character of commodities in Volume 1 is _key_ to understanding Marx's intent. Two fundamental things have to be kept in mind when approaching Marx: 1. the section on the fetish character of commodities, and 2. the subtitle of Marx's work, A *Critique* of Political Economy. The substantialist understanding of Value you have is typical for the historical worker's movement, which sees Value and abstract labour as eternally valid categories of human existence, rather than immanent categories of a commodity-producing society. In this account, Marx is nothing but a classical political economist with a socialist political perspective. Doug Henwood wrote: > Of course that essence has no existence separate from > the surface phenomena, does it? Exactly. And the surface phenomenon is a peculiar way that human beings have of organizing their productive and social relationships. Jim Devine wrote (on the "true realm of freedom"): > It's hard to say using any kind of brevity. One > shared characteristic would having zero > surplus-value. I would say zero value. But that just might be the source of the disagreement. Traditional understandings of Marx have emphasized him as a sort of prophet of exploitation and surplus-value. I think the key to Marx is not the concept of surplus-value, but rather the analysis of Value as such, as a determinate form assumed by human productive activity in a commodity-producing society. An emancipated society, i.e. communism, would be the abolition of the state-form and value-form. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited
