the oil thing/overproduction

[Waistline2]

Over the past 30 days I have followed the entirety of the debate on Marxline held under the title "Oil and Overproduction."  Off and on I have written several fragments - not published, as this discussion heated up and much of these fragments will probably be left to the criticism of the mice, as Marx would say. Below is a fragment worth noting because it involves Marx conception of value, or rather the value form and the commodity form of the social product. In reply to the finite "magnitude of oil" the author writes the following:


>In other words, "scarcity" means that human productivity applied to
reproducing use values (goods) is NOT infinite.  If it were, then use values would be freely available.  Marx did not assume otherwise -- or else his labor theory of value would be nonsense.  For Marx, that a thing is a use value is a necessary condition for it to be a commodity. Commodities that humans can produce or appropriate from nature in unlimited quantities have a zero value.  As we all know, the labor value of a commodity is the reciprocal of the labor productivity applied to it.

That's all there is to the tautology that the value of "goods" is a
reflection of their "relative scarcity" -- as conventional economists put it.  Marx wouldn't disagree... EXCEPT THAT bourgeois thought focuses on the attributes of things ("scarcity," "abundance," etc.) as a decoy to shift attention away from social relations.  That's an aspect of what Marx called "commodity fetishism."  So, Marx would properly emphasize that we're not talking about goods or resources in general, but goods or resources in a particular social setting where they are produced and exchanged as (capitalistic) commodities.

Of course, humans care about use value regardless of the type of society in which we live.  In all technical aspects of production, consumption, and exchange, the use value of commodities is crucial.  And as such it is a general precondition to grasping the concrete political economy of such commodities.  But, as Marx said, political economy is not technology.

But if any theory of value is right (including Marx's), then we know that oil is a "scarce" resource even without an expert knowledge of oil geology.  Simply, oil has a positive price.  Of course, the price of oil is NOT a direct -- or always reliable -- indicator of the technical availability of oil.  There are many intermediate influences divorcing production conditions from exchange conditions from consumption.  Hence, the price is often turned into a distorting scarcity-measuring device.

But, the price of oil cannot escape forever the pull of the law of value. That's why crisis happen.  Because the law of value asserts itself sooner rather than later.  The mechanism of fluctuating prices is the way the law of value asserts itself, and it is such mechanism that regulates the production and consumption of oil under capitalism. If oil becomes "scarce" with respect to demand, then the price goes up -- sooner or later.  A higher oil price punishes consumption and stimulates capitalist production.  Mark Jones needs to show how oil production makes the law of value irrelevant.<

The last sentence asserting that Mr. Jones takes a position that the finite nature of oil renders the law of value irrelevant will be avoided because I believe this to be a straw man - a bogus argument. What is the law of value?

First of all value - from the standpoint of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, is the amount of socially necessary of human labor embodied in the production of commodities. The amount of socially necessary labor in commodities is conditioned by and changes based on many factors including technological development, cultural standards, specific national and local forms of organization including management technique, location of raw materials and the transportation infrastructure, etc.

The law of value means that commodities become exchangeable - not because they have prices, but because they embody human labor.  At the base of the exchange relationship is the amount of socially necessary labor that goes into their production. Price is not value. Price is a mode of operation in which exchange takes place. Value is not price. Value is the magnitude of human laboring that goes into the production of goods and this magnitude is measurable in time increments.

It is only at a certain point in our history when goods produced by individual become commodities. The individual and their family - for much of human history, directly consumed the goods they produced. By definition these goods had a use-value and were created to be used - consumed.

There is a certain set of actions and interactions that "transform" goods into commodities or give rise to the commodity form. The commodity form means that goods produced by human beings have acquired a mode of passing from the producer to a person who wanted to consume - use the goods, but did not produce them. 

Thus when the author states:

"In all technical aspects of production, consumption, and
exchange, the use value of commodities is crucial.  And as such it is a
general precondition to grasping the concrete political economy of such
commodities.  But, as Marx said, political economy is not technology," 

He misses Marx point.

"In all . . .exchange, the use value of commodities is crucial," is simply not true.

To begin with nothing on earth can enter the world of exchange that nobody wants. "A general precondition to grasping the concrete political economy of . . . commodities," is to unfold what it is that makes things - goods, exchangeable in the first place.  This means what we are talking about is the law of value and not the fundamentality of use or use-value.

In our present day society all goods are produced for their exchange value, even when these goods provide a use fundamental to human existence. The author confuses Marx terribly when he states:

"Commodities that humans can produce or appropriate from nature in unlimited quantities have a zero value.  As we all know, the labor value of a commodity is the reciprocal of the labor productivity applied to it."

"Commodities that humans can produce or appropriate from nature," is a profound misunderstanding. Nature does not produce one single commodity on our planet! No commodities can spontaneously arise in nature or exist in nature as such. Oil is not a commodity, nor is an apple, water, air or any animal. An apple or water can only acquire a commodity form - commodity form means a mode of existence, under certain historically evolved methods of production and exchange.

Marx explains the conditions under which articles of consumption become commodities or acquire the commodity form. This question is most certainly relevant today given the emergence of a technology that qualitatively transforms the amount of socially necessary labor in commodities or that threatens the operation of the law of value. Value - not use-value, or rather exchange value (value) deals with the reason goods become exchangeable in the first place and technology has everything to do with this issue.

In Marx Capital he explains pretty much in detail the transformation of scattered individual producers using limited means of production into powerful levers of modern production. Marx also spends a lot of time discussing machinery or the emergence of machine society, or more accurately the emergence of industrial production. Marx divides his study into three distinct phases of simple co-operation, manufacture and modern industry. Here is the story of the technological advance and why Marx spoke of a future society of "associated producers" using modern means of production.

Ugh. .. . The words "material power of production" in the hands of Marx means technology in the hands of human beings. There is no such thing as political economy without the instruments (technology) of production which people are organized around. When something fundamental to any process in nature changes or how human society is organized changes, then everything dependent upon that, which is fundamental must in turn change.

The author apparently attempted to digest Marx's standpoint outside a collective and the historical literature of the communist movement - and its critics, and cannot unravel the law of value or for that matter the essence of what Marx calls the fetish that attaches itself to commodity production.

In any society where the exchange of things is based on ones labor input into the social products, social relations - human relations, of production appear as material relations between things. When folks went to the supermarket and bought their produce, their relationship with the farmer who produced the fruits appeared to them as a relationship between -governed by, exchanging things.  This exchange relationship between things is real and mask social relations of production.

The worker sells his labor power in exchange of a thing - money, and this thing called money is used to effect exchange for another thing. Marx used the concept of "commodity fetishism" to explain that the exchange of products and the commodity form itself was not a spontaneous law of nature, but human behavior that is driven by developments in the material power of production.

The connection between Marx concept of the law of value and the fetish that attaches itself to commodity production, is why he wrote Capital in the first place - to explain that commodity exchange - the commodity form, is not an immutable law of human behavior or some mysterious power of money, but the results of the revolution in the means of production that allows people to be reorganized on the basis of tool development and consequently an industrial basis. An industrial basis means on the basis of the domination of exchange as opposed to the individual and their family directly providing their own means of subsistence.

The social relation between people in any industrial society is effected - takes place, in a mode of expression that is the relationship between the things that are exchanged - their commodities. Exchange - the material relations between things, is not an illusion, but a real social act. However, this real social act as the dominant feature of society has a historical limitation - a beginning and ending. The material relations between things that are exchanged is a real social act because it is riveted to the human agency embodied in the things exchanged - value. Value is the socially necessary amount of labor that goes into the production of commodities.

The fetish that attaches itself to commodity production does not mean that people suffer from incorrect thinking or incorrect explanation of exchange. What is meant is that social relations between people appear in the market place as a material relationship between things being exchanged.

What unravels the fetish that attaches itself to commodity production, is not correct thinking but the development in the material power of production that undermine the value system.

In a value system money has an objective and inescapable social power that allows the purchase - acquiring, of things. This social power to acquire things (engage in exchange) is no figment of the imagination no matter how the bourgeois economist explains the rights of ownership, privilege and power. What subjugates the individual is not another individual's greater thinking, beauty or strength but the ownership of things. Social relations of production are in fact effected as material relations of and between things.

It is not my intent to enter the fray and become riveted on the question of the finite nature of oil and the law system governing energy conversion. I am riveted on the qualitative changes that have taken place in the material power of production that halts the expansion of the industrial system of exchange and increasingly renders labor superfluous to the production of commodities because this destroys the value system. And compels society to begin - begin, the leap to another mode of distribution of the social product.

Is Mark J. off his rocker? No.

Why?

Because the boundary - limits, of the new emerging infrastructure must be governed by the underlying energy source - and its principles, that drives the revolution in technology. However, this cannot be known today, except on the basis of an increasingly antiquated technology. The bourgeoisie holds back the technological advance and limit it to its imagination.

I do agree with the author putting the word "scarcity" in quotes but that is about all I agree with on the level of Marxist theory.

Melvin P.