Carrol Cox wrote:
> It is utterly confusing to use "ideal" simply
> because what is being
> named is not a physical feature of any physical
> object.
Angelus Novus [new angel?] wrote:
You are doing a disservice to Marx's critique of
fetishized social relationships by mentioning abstract
labour and gravity in the same sentence.
Gravity has a real existence in nature despite its
invisibility. We cannot simply agree to disregard
gravity. It operates upon physical objects regardless
of what we think.
Value is nothing but a fetishized form of social
mediation. Value exists as a result of human agency.
In his introduction to the 2nd German edition volume 1 of CAPITAL,
Marx refers to his theory as saying that there are (artificial)
"natural laws" that apply only to capitalism. So I don't see why we
cannot say that there is a "law of value" that is like a "law of
gravity" specifically for capitalism and other commodity-producing
societies.
... Two fundamental things have to be kept in mind when
approaching Marx: 1. the section on the fetish
character of commodities, and 2. the subtitle of
Marx's work, A *Critique* of Political Economy.
I'm quite tired of the over-use of the second assertion. Yes, that's
the subtitle. But it's clear that Marx was _also_ creating his own
political-economic theory of how capitalism works ("the laws of motion
of modern society"). It's not just a critique of ideology. As Mike
Lebowitz says in his BEYOND CAPITAL, Marx was quite concerned with the
FACTS (Marx's capitals). He wanted to understand the world in order to
change it.
The fetishism of commodities is not just part of the critique of
bourgeois political economy. It is also a basis for the laws of
motion: people act on the basis of their fetishized visions. For
example, businesspeople don't care at all about value or
surplus-value. Instead, they care about revenues, costs, and profits.
They then act on the basis of those concerns.
I wrote (on the "true realm of freedom"):
> It's hard to say using any kind of brevity. One
> shared characteristic would having zero
> surplus-value.
Angelus Novus:
I would say zero value.
right: the "ideal" society would have no commodity production.
But that just might be the
source of the disagreement. Traditional
understandings of Marx have emphasized him as a sort
of prophet of exploitation and surplus-value. I think
the key to Marx is not the concept of surplus-value,
but rather the analysis of Value as such, as a
determinate form assumed by human productive activity
in a commodity-producing society.
No, I was seeking brevity. Ignoring the role of commodity production
in general was only a matter of utility, not principle.
Both value as such and surplus-value are important. And Marx was no
"prophet" of exploitation or surplus-value. Rather, he was a
political-economic theorist of exploitation and surplus-value.
An emancipated society, i.e. communism, would be the
abolition of the state-form and value-form.
This, of course, refers to the abolition (or "withering away") of the
distinction between the state and (commodity-producing) civil society
and the subordination of both to the democratic will of the people.
--
Jim Devine / "Because things are the way they are, things will not
stay the way they are." -- Bertolt Brecht
