The discussion/debate between Jim Devine and myself has reached a stage were I
don't think it is going anywhere. My main problem or rather frustration with
Jim's approach is that he seems to *collect* various interpretations of Marx's
*Capital* or theory in general on his living room self without regorously
thinking about whether they fit into a cohesive theory or not. My intention in
this debate was to bring out some of the contrdictions that seem to be always
present in his version of Marx's theory. When I point out that his "societal
factory" takes away the whole idea of social division of labour. He says, so
what, *Capital* 1 story is built on the idea of "social factory". When I ask
what do you mean by social context. He says, social division of labour. On the
one hand he wants to keep "societal factory" as the organizing principle for
the story in volume one, but on the other hand he wants to maintain that the
idea of commodity fetishism runs through every chapter in *Capital*--the very
basis of which cannot be present in a societal factory. He thinks Marx is a
surplus approach economist as well as scarcity approach economist. But the
fact of the matter is that the surplus approach economics starts from one point
and the scarcity approach economics starts from another point, and
unfortunately you cannot start from two points simultaneously. So one day Jim
will have to make up his mind. Now to particulars, but this time I will be
brief because I know you are getting tired and so am I.
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Now it's possible that the translation I used was wrong or that Marx
was confused. So here's another example of the social determination
of value: the value of a single item depends not on the labor-time
that was actually "embodied" in it by the worker who produced it
("individual value"), but by the social average of all the workers
who produced that kind of commodity. There's also "moral
depreciation," of course, where the value of a durable product
depends on how much labor it takes to produce it _today_ rather than
in the past. Jim
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Am I supposed to take this as a critique of "embodied" labour concept. Even God
cannot determine "embodied" labour by looking at an "individual" labourer or
one factory or one industry. Every man, woman, and child knows
that various commodities take part in the production of every commodity, and
so you have to take at least all of the *basic* sector (which in Marx's case
would include wage good sector) to determine the "embodied" labour of any
commodity. This is another case of poor understanding of what he thinks he is
criticising. "Embodied labour" concept is of course a social concept, as
capitalist mode of production, class struggle, surplus production, etc. are
social concept. Where did Jim get the idea that I was talking about something
outside of society? Ajit
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>>Whenever supply and demand (and they are not demand and supply
schedules) do not match, market prices diverge from value.<<
You mean "deviate from prices of production (POPs)," don't you,
unless you're talking only about SCP? Jim
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Of course you know it well that first two volumes *assume* that relative values
and prices of production coincide. Ajit
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I don't "arrive" at this L. It's something that _happens_. An
observer can get an _estimate_ of how much labor is spent in
producing X by examining the data. Jim
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When your students ask you how do you arrive at a GNP or GDP figure, do you
tell them that you don't arrive at GNP, "its something that happens"? And then
they must go home highly satisfied. Why don't you admit that the contradictory
ideas and theories you are holding renders you incapable of giving a
conviencing answer to a simple question: how labour-values are determined? Ajit
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Despite the extremely defensive tone of this remark, it's possible
to see a major difference between Ajit and myself, one which is so
complicated that I'm afraid that we'll have to simply agree to
disagree.
As I understand his view, Ajit sees the "scarcity problematic" (with
an emphasis on choice, as with Smith and the neoclassicals) in the
early part of vol. I of CAPITAL, followed by Marx's emphasis on the
"surplus problematic" in the rest of that book. (This latter
problematic also involves Ricardo and Sraffa.) That seems reasonable
to me.
Where we differ is when (if I understand him correctly) he _rejects_
the scarcity problematic totally, in a way that links Marx to not
only Sraffa but Althusser. Jim
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Pretty interesting eh? And how did you get the idea that I was "defensive"?
>From now on I will try to be as offensive as you would like. Ajit
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>>No one has ever said that *embodied labour* has to do with the
physical property of the commodity.<<
Well, that's news to me. Before, Ajit seemed to be saying that
"value" existed independent of markets and the like. If "embodied
labor" isn't some physical characteristic of commodities, what is
it? Jim
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Another example of bad interpretation. And I'm not even going to answer this
one. But I would say one thing, if you think that a time-honored idea is simply
an ideotic one, then there is a good chance that you have not understood that
idea at all, and it would be a good idea to study it a little while before
jumping on to critise it. Ajit
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I wrote that the value of commodities is determined by their their
social context, so Ajit asks >>what is the "social context"?<<
On the most general level, the social context is a social division
of labor co-ordinated by markets (commodity production). Jim
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So where does your societal factory fit in? Ajit
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Ajit comments on my notion of the "social factory." >>Sounds like a
really bad idea to me. Marx severely criticised Smith for not making
the theoretical distinction between a technical division of labour
(i.e. the division of labour within a factory) and a social division
of labour in his pin factory example. If the whole society is
treated as a giant factory, then of course there is no social
division of labour and the whole rationale for commodity exchange
disappears, and so your beloved 'commodity fetishism' disappears
along with it--as well as your *Capital and Class* critique of the
"neo-Ricardian" interpretation.<<
I do not reject Marx's distinction between the societal and
technical divisions of labor; it's very important. What Ajit is
discovering is the fact that the "societal factory" analogy is just
that, an analogy, though it's one that I believe helps us understand
what Marx is trying to do. _Whenever_ one uses an analogy (including
an economic model), one has to not only look at how the subject
being described or analyzed is like the analog but also how the
subject is not like the analog. A good analogy is one where the
second is less important.
In this case, the "subject being described" is not the real world
(as for economic models) but rather Marx's abstraction in vol. I of
CAPITAL. That story is _like_ a "societal factory" in that abstract
capital fights abstract labor. Marx abstracted from the differences
amongst capitalists and workers, and from all but the most abstract
form of competition within the two main classes.
On the other hand, the story in vol. I of CAPITAL is also _unlike_ a
"societal factory" in that there is a very abstract kind of
competition going on. It's a kind of competition that best fits SCP
rather than capitalism. This fits the fact that Marx writes _as if_
prices equal values, as under SCP. Under capitalism, of course,
prices don't oscillate values but POPs.
(This relates to one of Marx's points that's a bit off the topic,
but is still interesting. Marx sees a conflict between the mode of
circulation of simple commodity and the capitalist mode of
production and accumulation: "At first the rights of property seemed
to us to be based on a man's own labor. At least, some such
assumption was necessary since only commodity-owners with equal
rights confronted each other, and the sole means by which a man
could become possessed of the commodities of others, was by
alienating his own commodities; and these could be replaced by labor
alone. Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part
of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its
product, and to be the impossibility, on the part of the laborer, of
appropriating his own product" [KI, Int'l Publ. ed., pp. 583-4].) Jim
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I leave this for you all to figure it out. Ajit
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Back to Ajit's comment. I don't understand why Ajit seems so hostile
to those who think that Marx's ideas can be understood by reference
to the concept of "commodity fetishism." Marx starts vol. I with it
and ends vol. III with it (all of part VII, except the last
chapter). The "illusions created by competition" is nothing but a
restatement of "commodity fetishism" for the case of capitalism. Jim
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As a matter of fact I'm not at all hostile to the idea of "commodity
fetishism". When I presented the basic problematic of the transformation
problem I said that Marx's whole purpose is to prove that the basic
aggregative division of the economy into C, V, and S, is independent (I'm
bracting overdetermination out for clearity purposes) of market forces. Market
forces only hide this relation between c, v, and s but don't change it. This is
one aspect of commodity fetishism that Marx is attempting to unveil there.
Sraffa's standard commodity is also designed to do the same thing. Marx's idea
of "commodity fetishism" is less Hegelian and more Faeurbachian (sp?). It is
similar to Faeurbach's critique of religion, where religion is interpreted as a
product of Man's brain which sort of takes on its own independent life and
begin to dominate or rule Man. Similarly, in capitalism the market forces,
which represent the forces of competition appear to take on an independent life
and begin to dominate the production process. The critique of commodity
fetishism aims at revealing the underlying basis, which are the structure of
capitalist relations, that gives rise to this *appearance* of the dominance of
the market. In my opinion, lot of your interpretation of Marx suffers from
"commodity fetishism".
I must say it has been fun.
Cheers, ajit sinha
