Chris you have caught me out on my sloopy mode of expression and my ill-developed concepts, so I willingly concede to the qualifications and criticisms below.
On a couple of points I would like to add something though: Chris: "My comment on this is to go back to the actual second footnote in Capital that approvingly quotes Nicholas Barbon saying that the greatest number of things have their value from supplying the wants of the mind." Chris: "Over 130 years after Capital Vol I it is even more the case that most commodities in prosperous capitalist markets supply the needs of the fancy rather than the strictly material needs of the stomach." First you are correct my use of "services" covers this area of commodity production and I stand corrected. However, what I had in mind was the service industry which supplies no commodity as such but exists purely in order to realise profits by ensuring that exchange takes place. Having worked for some time in the advertising industry (not a recomended carreer) I was constantly confronted by the greyness that can blur distinctions between productive and unproductive labour and how much labour exists outside the production of actual commodities. In a sense I sold my services and these became objects, but the objects themselves were the product of exchange (being no use to anyone but the company that commissioned them). The objects were not a commodity (in this case the final adverstiment), my labour was certainly commodified but as a service which rendered use-value but not exchange value. Seen in its best light (which was not often the case) these adverts, made the public aware of some real commodities and at this level can be seen as productive in that it faciliated exchange (i am well aware of very good products which do not sell simply because no-one is aware of their existence) much the same way as a merchant does and thus adds some small amount of labour to the commodity's existence. The other aspect was pure profit realisation, in that the biggest clients got the best adds (quite aside from the information value), used most often and adding directly to the number of commodities sold. However, I class most of this as non-productive, because of the duplicity often employed (cheap and shoddy being sold as shiek and nice), it distorted the actual labour content of the goods vis a vis similar products. This is a silly example, but writ large there is a great section of labour devoted to non-productive profit realisation - given the relations of production this non-productive labour is essential (I am not advocating sweeping changes in this), but it does not bode well for the economic health of a society and works against the power to produce by undermining real labour productivity. It is a trend which is growing, well out-pacing in my mind actual increases in productivity. Which brings me to the contradiction which lays below it. Real increases in productivity, have because of the relations of production - not been passed on into an expanded social consumption. Costs of production have fallen dramatically, but these have been largely and increasingly absorbed by huge armies of non-productive profit realising labour. The "new" consumption markets do offer some help (expanded third world developments), but there is a contradiction here of enforcing cheap labour practices and thus narrowing the "new" market to small class segments - the slow flow-on effect becoming a trickle insofar as labour is kept cheap in these countries. In otherwords rather than seeing a decrease in working hours and conmersuate increase in the standard of living, we see both declining in the capitalist heartlands and a broadly similar trend in the "new" markets. This has been purchased by an increase in the profit rate, brought about partly by a decrease in productivity (labour being favoured over organic capital), but this also has come into conflict with the productive powers, diminishing the actual profits as more and more is sunk into non-productive profit realising labour). It has produced an excess of capital which I believe becomes diverted into consolidating market position (the buying up and despoiling of competitors) but not the investment in dead labour (machines) that the increased powers of production actually require in order to express themselves (part dependant on labour pricing itself upwards). I apologise for the convoluted response, as the whole thing lot looks to me like a plate of spagetti. I suppose the point I want to make is that the economic defeat of the working class has had an effect on capitalist development which places it on the path of conflicting with the powers of production (historic crisis). Worker's struggles for better conditions becomes more and more a genernal interest of society - things left to go the way they going do not promise any real future as we move towards tribute extraction as a major relation of production (echoes of Marx on the Asiatic mode of production). My clumsy introduction of the importance of non-productive labour is that it is an indicator of things going off-the-rails based on the observation that cut-backs in productive labour (cost saving and "higher" productivity) seem to go hand in hand with expansions of non-productive labour (managerial, accountancy, capital services and of course marketing in all its varied forms - whether in-house or out-sourced). Not that I have made the subject matter any clearer by this post I fear. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 07:16:37 +0000 Subject: [PEN-L:19731] Re: he market [Socialism Now} At 19/11/01 15:38 +0800, Greg wrote: >This has become so common that the real difficulty is seeing the >market-governor determining the socially necessary labour in these >exchanges - rather what we are seeing is the result of planning. The >question posed by a particular rate of exchange dwell more on the plans of >the major players (takeover as against out-sourcing, diversification as >against core business, and risk management strategies), then the displine >of market buying and selling. While I am sympathetic to Greg's overall approach I wonder if these formulations do not require a bit more discussion. There is no reason why reality should conform to the ideas of Marx but it would be interesting if they do not. I am not sure that the "market-governor" determines the socially necessary labour time. Rather it helps the price of commodities equilbrate around their socially necessary labour time. I am not quite sure about the concept of the discipline of market, except in so far as all commodities imply exchange and a question of how that exchange is tested. I wonder if it is the rate of exchange that dwells more on the plans of the major players or that the major players are able through unequal competition to determine the prevailing means of production for the commodity in question. Greg has already come back in the discussion and clarified that his remarks relate to the greatly diminshed and still diminishing free markets, rather than to all markets:- >Socialisation has lead to the elimination of certain markets and to the >close control of nearly all the others to the point where the concept of a >free market is negated. >The reduction of the role of the market leads inevitable to an expansion >of administration in order to compensate for its previous role >(accountants, manargerial controls, etc) and a greater and greater >emphasis placed on profit realisation (much of the so called service >industry) which boils down to a lot of energy placed in controlling the >market in order to render profits. > >Both tendencies lead to an explosion of non-productive labour (labour >which adds nothing to the actual products being sold but becomes essential >to finally sell them). I would caution against the danger of confusion in Marx about whether productive labour is labour that produces surplus value, or labour that produces a concrete use value. A lot of secondary organisational work can be done in regulating markets that can yield surplus value. Indeed stock exchanges are now often launched on the stock exchange themselves. There is also a fundamental question about the nature of commodities, that does not affect the general thrust of Greg's argument at all but might I suggest misdirect the focus of criticism. >In a sense some of this can be seen in the consumer market where labling >and "services" almost become the commodity while the actual product seems >to come a poor second. My comment on this is to go back to the actual second footnote in Capital that approvingly quotes Nicholas Barbon saying that the greatest number of things have their value from supplying the wants of the mind." Over 130 years after Capital Vol I it is even more the case that most commodities in prosperous capitalist markets supply the needs of the fancy rather than the strictly material needs of the stomach. I hope these points are more than quibbles and help explore the main direction of your arguments, Greg. Like you, I would stress the high degree of socialisation of late capitalism. But whereas the assumptions about socialism used to be about having large monopolies under state control, I see the ripeness of late capitalism as being in the increasingly subtle ways in which the absolute private ownership of capital is restricted and subsumed. For example Gordon Brown's Financial Services Authority presiding over large investing institutions like pension funds and insurance companies, which are already recycling working people's savings, and institutions like the Bank of England whivh are now placed under the control of a committee responsible to civil society. To use Foucault's metaphor quoted by Hardt and Negri, this is the shift from a "disciplinary society" to a "society of control" in which monopoly dominated markets are still real but in which "mechanisms of command become ever more 'democratic', ever more immanent to the social field, distributed througout the brains and bodies of the citizens." The is not incompatible with the struggle for working class power which you promote *under present* conditions, nor of course with modifying the legal sense in which the means of production are privately owned and still less privately controlled. Regards Chris Burford London
