*Comrade VC (Dominic Twiddie)*
Your misconception of the part selected from our statement is the actually misleading rhetoric. As the YCLSA we never abstracted use-value from commodities and leave them with exchange-value only. On the contrary, what we say is that there are millions of people who go hungry, have no shelter, have no computers such as the VC is using to write his misconceptions, have no access to many other use-values, suffer and even die of both preventable and curable diseases, and have not access to many other use-values. Why would the people have to suffer like that if production under capitalism is meant to meet their material and cultural needs? We take cue from Marx (Capital Volume I), and we therefore also say: · Production under capitalism is not just production of use-values, · It is production of commodities; commodities are destined for exchange in order to obtain exchange value. Without satisfying this, capitalism will make your access to use-values prohibitive, it will leave you for example die of a curable disease as if there are no medicines produced and health professional trained to help you survive. That's what we are saying. · In fact, production under capitalism is also production of surplus-value. Without satisfying this condition a worker will not get employed. Comrade VC, you must just go back to the basic document titled The Manifesto of the Communist Party written by Marx and Engels in 1848. There the VC will learn, as we say, that a worker will only find work for so long only as his/her labour creates capital. Under capitalism access to use-values, as we say, is obtained through exchange-value. There's a money relation here. And as we correctly say, unless that is satisfied access is denied in the extreme or prohibitive in the moderate. The other issues that VC raises are not useful to respond to, at least for now. Homeless people know that homes under capitalism, unless private capital accumulation is met, are not meant for them. Here we are not referring to the RDP houses. Those are an intervention which we shall define if need be. Yes a car has use-value. But can you have one without the capitalists who dominate car production heaping up profit and privately accumulating capital? It's absurd to abstract exchange-value from production relations under capitalism. It is to adopt what Marx called in Capital Volume I 'the fetishism of commodities' which is what the VC is attempting to do by de-educating us. *I remain * * * * * *Matankana Mothapo (M.M), Gauteng YCL Spokesperson.* -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
