Re: [Marxism] Sales?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yeah, and the price of that commodity labor, if not its value, natural mean or not, is also determined by the working class through labor action. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Sales?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == That's what I'm talking about. Are you the only person who responded to this topic? I wasn't even talking to you, but actually was directing my generalized comments via another individual, whom I've been acquainted with for decades and who has the maturity to interpret my comments about the tone socialists should adopt in the manner it was intended: not as a personal attack on anyone. Then again, as former party cadres and trade unionists we were both socialized against copping a petty bourgois attitude towards people. Look, when workers organize in unions and go on strike for higher wages, aren't they raising the price and value of labor or trying to? and Friedmanite it certainly isn't. quite the opposite. I'm not based in reality about wages? Dude, I work for a living. That's how you talk down to workers? Exactly the hauteur I was referring to. Yeah, my 40 plus years in the movement going back to high school makes me figure I have the right to questions holy dogmas particularly as they relate to how we organize our political work. I regret that you seem to have little respect for that. No, I didn't learn everything from Lenin in high school, but I did and do appreciate his down to earth approach. Quite frankly, I think you should focus more on explicating your ideas more clearly and less on being patronizing to people, twice your age or not. When I said sophmoric, I mentioned no one by name, but I do recall being talked down to like a child by you previously in an offensive way. Yeah, so let's move on with the issues. Glibly telling me-or anyone-I'm vulgar or bourgois etc doesn't do that, doesn't explain anything, being an in-group ad hominem attack that quite frankly is unbecoming of one who apparently is, or aspires to be, an academic professional. Yeah, so let's move on, my intention was to address the issue, not to initiate or revive some personal flame war. A lot is going in society economics wise with the biggest crisis we've had in decades. To me, those with economic expertise should be demystifying and explaining that in an understandable way as part of their contribution to the movement. Mike Perelman seems to be doing that, and if you are, great. We had a guy in the SWP named Dick Roberts who was our house economist and who was able to interpret his ideas on Marxian political economy in topical articles for the party newspaper very well for many years. On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Leonardo Kosloff holmof...@hotmail.com wrote: Now before you get carried away by my scoffing, I’m only trying to keep things clear, do you have anything to say about what I said, are you going to engage the argument or just, very ecumenically, complain about priesthood and leave it at that? Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/tomcod3%40gmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Sales?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == So...someone might be selling it for only the *accumulated* labor power for it's use-value as opposed to the balanced exchange-value? OK, so what? Marx throughout Capital 1 talks about the capitalist selling a commodity for what he can get or lower than his competitor, thus lowering the value of labor power in the commodity. He's talking marco-economics using micro-economic place holders. He's not talking *how* a commodity is sold...it stops at the distributor, so to speak, that is the capitalist selling the commodity t0o...some entity unnamed...be it the end user of C or a wholesaler of Cs.[He does make a a difference between Department 1 capitalsthe sellers of constant capital commodities: factories, machinery, etc and Department 2 capitals, the user of that constant capital that makes commodities...bought by the workers of both Dept 1 and 2.] If the sale doesn't go through, it means the exchange value is too high and the capitalist is forced to either lay-off or lower the wages of his variable capital or sell off some of his constant capital or *lower his price* of C, thus reducing the amount of M (surplus value). Marx didn't disagree with supply and demand (Adam Smith) but *explains* it in terms of the labor theory of value, the theme of which runs through out Capital. And it's to explain the *capitalism* not the whys and hows of individual capitals OR sellers. David Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Sales?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Tom Cod wrote: “So, I mean, isn't a sale needed to realize that surplus value. A sophomoric young high priest on a marxist listserv scoffed in my face when I asserted there is overwhelming evidence that supply and demand and subjective factors in the minds of buyers affect prices and market behavior. leaving aside Marketing 101, why is that wrong?” Haha, indeed, that was me: greetings comrade Cod. Well, firstly, let me say that my pontification had no ill-intention, more of a writing in the rush problem, in a language not my own. Anyway, I appreciate you bring it up again, I was planning to write something about this but work is holding me down as usual, so my response will have to be brief, but I’ll provide some helpful links below. As for supply and demand, Marx was clear about this in Capital, it explains nothing “Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category “price of labour” without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i.e., the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them, this “necessary price” (Physiocrats) or “natural price” of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production-of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs. Occupied with the difference between the market-price of labour and its so-called value, with the relation of this value to the rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities produced by means of labour, c., they never discovered that the course of the analysis had led not only from the market-prices of labour to its presumed value, but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself into the value of labour-power. Classical economy never arrived at a consciousness of the results of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories “value of labour,” “natural price of labour,” c.,. as final and as adequate expressions for the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradiction, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships appearances only.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htm This, like I said that last time (if I remember correctly) does not negate the problem of realization of surplus value by any means, against what you had said and seem to be implying now, viz. Marx was oblivious to it. See the Grundrisse for example, though I know it’s something of a Talmudic crime to cite this work around here. Same thing goes for the staunch Leninists who dismiss Marx because he assumed competitive capitalism. It is plain clear that Marx was more than aware of the form the market takes with monopolies, in his critique of Proudhon, in volume 1 of capital, not to mention his analysis of ground rent, theories of surplus value, etc.. The point is: Marx was no political economist building models of capitalism; ergo, he assumed nothing, other than the real determinations presented to him. Contrary to the theoreticians who start
Re: [Marxism] Sales?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I forgot to attach this quote after Marx was crucially aware of the inversions this leads too. in my last post, All this is “drivel.” De prime abord,[20] I do not proceed from “concepts,” hence neither from the “concept of value,” and am therefore in no way concerned to “divide” it. What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the “commodity.” This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears. Here I find that on the one hand in its natural form it is a thing for use, alias a use-value; on the other hand, a bearer of exchange-value, and from this point of view it is itself an “exchange-value.” Further analysis of the latter shows me that exchange-value is merely a “form of appearance,” an independent way of presenting thevalue contained in the commodity, and then I start on the analysis of the latter. I therefore state explicitly, p. 36, 2nd ed.[21]: “When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use-value and an exchange-value, we were, precisely speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use-value or object of utility, and a ‘value’. It manifests itself as this twofold thing which it is, as soon as its value assumes an independent form of appearance distinct from its natural form—the form of exchange-value,” etc. Thus I do not divide value into use-value and exchange-value as opposites into which the abstraction “value” splits up, but the concrete social form of the product of labour, the “commodity,” is on the one hand, use-value and on the other, “value,” not exchange value, since the mere form of appearance is not its own content. Second: only a vir obscurus who has not understood a word of Capital can conclude: Because Marx in a note in the first edition of Capital rejects all the German professorial twaddle about “use-value” in general, and refers readers who want to know something about real use-values to “manuals dealing with merchandise”—for this reason use-value plays no part in his work. Naturally it does not play the part of its opposite, of “value,” which has nothing in common with it, except that “value” occurs in the term “use-value.” He might just as well have said that “exchange-value” is discarded by me because it is only the form of appearance of value, and not “value” itself, since for me the “value” of a commodity is neither its use-value nor its exchange value. When one comes to analyse the “commodity”—the simplest concrete element of economics—one must exclude all relations which have nothing to do with the particular object of the analysis. Therefore I have said in a few lines what there is to say about the commodity in so far as it is a use-value, but on the other hand I have emphasised the characteristic form in which use-value—the product of labour—appears here, that is: “A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever [directly] satisfies his needs with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values but not commodities. In order to produce commodities, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values” (p. 15).[22] //This the root of Rodbertus' “social use-value.”// Consequently use-value—as the use-value of a “commodity” itself possesses a specific historical character. In primitive communities in which, e.g., means of livelihood are produced communally and distributed amongst the members of the community, the common product directly satisfies the vital needs of each community member, of each producer; the social character of the product, of the use-value, here lies in its (common) communal character. //Mr. Rodbertus on the other hand transforms the “social use-value” of the commodity into “social use-value” pure and simple, and is hence talking nonsense.// http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
