Steve Keen asked me to forward this. Voici. Gil
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 08:21:33 +1000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: marx on money
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Gil's argument that money capital may lead to the creation of
new value is well taken--I get similar results in my models of
Minsky's FIH, so long as the interest rate is not too high, since
debt finance can allow capitals to invest more than they could with'
internal finance only.
On the use-value is quantitative/isn't quantitative bit, _please_
don't interpret my "yes it can be" as saying that I believe in
quantifiable utility. My position on this is not noeclassical
bt dialectical. In general, use-value is qualitative (and if you
can quantify aspects of it, e.g., this car does 30m.p.g), that
quantification is irrelevant to pol-econ)), objective (i.e.,
what h matters is the economy, not how good the economy makes
the driver feel), and irrelevant to p.e. However, in the
case f of labor-power, Marx argued that its use-value is still
objective (it can do work), but wquantitative: the amount of
work it can do. The qualitative aspects of its use-value (i.e.,
the type of work done) Marx argued were irrelevant: what matered
to the capitalist purchaser was the quantitative aspect, that
the use-value of labor-power exceedesd its exchange-value.
This view on the quantification of use-value is entirely
different to the neoclassical crap that Marx derided regularly.
But his attacks on the neo-c concept of utility did not
mean that i use-value was irrelevant to his economics--which is
its fate if you treat it as always predomonantly qualitative
and therefore ittelevant to economics. The one time Marx was
directly confronted with this interpretation of his work--by
Wagner--he made a mockery of it. Quoting Marx there:
"only an obscurantist, who has not understood a word of Capital,
can conclude: Because Marx, in a note to the first edition of
Capital, overthrows all the German professorial twaddle on
`use-value' in general, therefore, use-value does not play
any role in his work. (McLennan, D., 1971.Karl Marx: Early Texts,
p. 198-99 (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)).
The key role it plays? Same work:
"On the other hand, the obscurantist has overlooked that my
analysis of the commodity does not stop at the dual mode in which
the commodity is presented, [but] presses forward [so] that in
the dual nature of the commodity there is presented the twofold
*character* of *labour*, whose product it is:
*useful* labour, i.e., the concrete modes of labour, which
create use values, and abstract *labour, labour as the
expenditure of labour-power*,... that *surplus value*
itself is derived from a `specific' *use-value of
labour-power* which belongs to it exclusively etc etc., that
hence with me use value plays an important role completely
different than [it did]] in previous [political] economy, but
that, *nota bene*, it only comes into the picture where such
consideration [of value, use value, etc.] springs from the
analysis of given economic forms, not from helter-skelter
quibbling over the concepts or words `use-value' and
`value'." ( p. 200.)
>From my point of view, the y key phrase is the one after
the epillets: "that *surplus value* itself is derived from
a 'specific' *use-value of labor-power* which belongs to it
exclusively etc. etc."
That this use-value is quantitative is, to my eyes, obviuos
in the key paragraph in Capital (which I;m sure all have
read many times, but here goes again):
Quoting Capital V1 p. 188, with some emphasis added:
"The past labour that is embodied in the labour
power, and the living labour that it can call into action; the
daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work,
are two totally different things. *The former determines the
exchange value of the labour power, the latter is its
use-value.* The fact that half a [working] day's labour is
necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in
any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the
value of labour power, and the value which that labour power
creates in the labour process, are two entirely different
magnitudes; and this difference of the two values was what the
capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labour
power... *What really influenced him was the specific
use-value which this commodity possesses of being a source not
only of value, but of more value than it has itself.* This is
the special service that the capitalist expects from labour
power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance with the
'eternal laws' of the exchange of commodities. *The seller of
labour power, like the seller of any other commodity, realises
its exchange value, and parts with its use-value.*"
As to the centrality of use-value in that analysis, there
is a preceding phrase that perhaps other eyes have not
seen (i.e, taken much note of):
"We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion
that the change originates in the use-value, as such, of the
commodity, i.e. its consumption." (Vol I p. 164.)
So use value is/ins't quantitative, dialectically speaking.
When it isn't, it's irrelevant to p.e.; when it is, it's
crucial.
Cheers,
Steve Keen
