Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[davidb]

Youse might like to skim my article on planning/market
called 'Marxism Deformed: the default into market socialism' which 
is on my webpage www.geocities.com/davebedggood. tho its now 
a few years old. I just mention it.
Dave

On 28 Mar 00, at 18:00, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Rob huffs and puffs a bit:
> 
> >C'mon Hugh!
> >
> >I argue that a socialist economy might need the market mechanism (for I can
> >see nothing else that would do the particular job of producing and
> >distributing use values) and you tell me there's going to be abundance, that
> >"there is  *no* scarcity", that "Market socialism is no socialism. If
> >you have the power to coerce the market to behave in a socially responsible
> >way, then you have the power to dump the bourgeoisie and its relations of
> >production, and you don't need half-measures," and that "Market socialism is
> >a cowardly utopian cop-out."
> 
> 
> You were the one saying that there's plenty to go round as of right now,
> the only problem is the political one of getting it distributed right. I
> just agreed. I didn't argue there was "abundance", I argued (as you did)
> that there was "no scarcity" -- that's not the same.
> 
> And the question of the power needed to introduce any form of "market
> socialism" that would make any sense is the most important issue, and one
> on which we seem to agree, whatever the caveats on your part. The cop-out
> for me is to speak of "market socialism" without a change of class
> ownership in other words without a revolution in political and property
> relations.
> 
> 
> >And now you seem to be saying you always agreed with me on substance,
> 
> According to your clarifications, it seemed that way.
> 
> >but
> >that the mere reliance upon the market mechanism for the little matter of
> >allocating use values does not constitute 'market socialism'!
> 
> I think we probably disagree on what constitutes *reliance*, but this
> hasn't come out too clearly in the exchange. The allocation of use values
> under proto-socialism would be primarily by plan, especially where labour
> input is concerned, whereas the adjustment of the plan would be carried out
> with the help of feedback mechanisms such as market response and the other
> organizational responses I detailed. The plan would take consumer needs etc
> as ascertained by various conscious and unconscious mechanisms of
> monitoring these, including the market, into consideration in the first
> place. But the main priorities would be set by political decisions.
> 
> >That's a
> >pretty dry old argument about semantics, I reckon, and I'm too busy a boy.
> 
> I still don't think you've defined the relationship of what you call market
> socialism sufficiently clearly in relation to the state needed for it to
> operate or the kind of regime under which it would provide optimal
> development. And those factors are central political issues, not mere
> semantics.
> 
> >I've criticised everything from the April Theses to the NEP on this very
> >list.  Ask Chas'n'Dave!  They went to no small effort in trying to put me
> >back on the straight'n'narrer on this stuff.  Good on 'em, too.  But it
> >didn't take.
> 
> So?
> 
> >>"A role to play in regulating some aspects etc" sounds fine, but does it
> >>constitute Market Socialism?? What about all the Bruno Bauers and
> >>Austro-Marxists etc with their virulent hatred of Bolshevism -- how would
> >>their kind of Market Socialism ever bring about the necessary transfer of
> >>ownership to the organized working class?
> >
> >It's not theirs I was suggesting.
> 
> That's clear enough!
> 
> 
> And after all the huffing and puffing comes the good bit:
> 
> >Not that I'm a Bolshevik.  But I do hold
> >we'd need something of the magnitude of a revolution to attain market
> >socialism, yeah.
> 
> So if you like the idea of market socialism, you like the idea of the
> revolution needed to bring it into being, and the only question left is how
> to promote such a revolution.
> 
> >That's my lot, I'm afraid.  I've a lecture to write and a bed to crawl into
> >- in that order, alas.
> 
> Sweet dreams!
> 
> Hugh
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[Hugh Rodwell]

Rob obligingly answers my questions:

>G'day again Thaxists,
>
>Quoth Hugh:
>
>>a) that Trotsky is in fact arguing for market socialism as an *alternative*
>>to the dictatorship of the proletariat with centralized planning and
>>centralized control of finance and foreign trade;
>
>No, he's arguing for market socialism as crucial part of 'the dictatorship
>of the proletariat'

We agree on this.

>(which latter can mean whatever one likes).

Nope. How do you understand it Rob? I've been busting a gut recently giving
definitions of transfer of ownership and its political consequences, now
its your turn.

>I say
>'crucial' because Trotsky clearly recognised that something in the economic
>system was needed to signal 'needs and their relative intensity'.  However
>one tries to apply the law of value stuff to a socialist system (a law Marx
>had formulated to explain the dynamics of *capitalism*), one must remember
>the 'use value' category when running an economy of any description, and the
>onus on anti-market-socialism Marxists is to explain how this might be done
>such that the interaction of supply and demand might be obviated.

Just who are you referring to by "anti-market-socialism Marxists"? This
could important in clearing this up.

>>b) that Bolshevism-Leninism had on its programme the immediate liquidation
>>of the market from day one of the October Revolution;
>
>Lenin called this sorta thinking an infantile disorder, did he not?

OK, we agree on this. Bolshevik-Leninists neither were nor are
anti-market-socialism Marxists, at least in this sense (Trotsky's
perspective on the market in point a). So where's the polemical point?

>Incidentally, I happen to reckon that it is also infantile to claim that an
>age of abundance will follow our short transitional reliance on market
>signals, and that this will take care of niggly little questions about the
>optimal/adequate production and allocation of use values.  Either that, or
>I'm missing something pretty important about the ways Marxists use Marx's
>theorising of capitalism to fashion their post-revolutionary society.

I don't get this. Who's claiming this, what degree of reliance are you
referring to, and which Marxists do you mean in the last bit?

>
>>c) that market socialism is more than just another way of saying that
>>market mechanisms will have an important but not decisive role to play in
>>the operations of proto-socialist society.
>
>Well, they'd certainly be important.  I tend to believe we'd have a pretty
>sick economy pretty quickly (ie one that would not respond well to people's
>needs) if we abandoned market mechanism altogether.  So to that extent, I
>reckon 'decisive' is an appropriate word.

"Decisive" as meaning the most important?

>As I believe democracy must
>always prevail over profit (such that we not produce shit we're better off
>without; such that we not spend our lives doing 'necessary' labour; and such
>that everybody gets to participate - and gets at least what we'd deem to be
>'enough'), I could not hold with the market as decisive in the sense it be
>allowed to work against these overriding principles.

So who's going to enforce these overriding principles, and how??

>>This will make it clear to me, to yourself and to everybody else if we're
>>just playing with words or in fact talking about an *alternative* regime or
>>even an *alternative* state to what was available in the early Soviet
>Union.
>
>Reckon we might be talking pretty serious alternative, meself ...

Please elaborate. Which available forces then (Mensheviks, SRs, Cadets,
western Social-Democrats, etc) would have done a better job? Or if none of
them will do, what changes should the Bolsheviks have made to their
programme and their practice?


>>If we're talking alternatives then we can get down to discussing what the
>>Bolsheviks should have done instead, ie criticize their programme and their
>>methods of implementing it.
>
>There are a few things we can learn - I've never argued otherwise.  But the
>stream is ever in train, and we never step in the same water twice.

Cop-out.

>>>From the huffing and puffing going on it sounds as if there's more at stake
>>than the realistic acknowledgement made by Trotsky here and by the Left
>>Opposition in general including Preobrazhensky in the New Economics that
>>the market will have a role to play in regulating some aspects of supply
>>and demand under proto-socialism. Is there??
>
>I don't reckon there's very much huffing and puffing going on, Hugh!  And my
>suspicion 'that the market will have a role to play in regulating some
>aspects of supply and demand under proto-socialism' is hardly new to
>Thaxalotls, is it?

"A role to play in regulating some aspects etc" sounds fine, but does it
constitute Market Socialism?? What about all the Bruno Bauers and
Austro-Marxists etc with their virulent hatred of Bolshevism -- how would
their kind of Market Socialism ever bring about the necessary transfer of
ownership to

Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[Doug Henwood]

Hugh Rodwell wrote:

>This is clearly the stumbling block. Joanna sees a kind of transitional
>phase between bourgeois ownership of the means of production and
>proletarian ownership. As if the bourgeoisie would let go of them without
>some other force immediately taking over the reins of ownership. Some
>equally powerful social force that is, that is in a concrete position to do
>such a thing. The petty-bourgeoisie has no chance. No, it's got to be
>either the proletariat through its political representatives or nobody.
>Again, read Trotsky on the actual development of the revolution in Russia
>in 1917.

Let me try to be constructive. Sweden or the U.S. or Australia in the 
year 2000 are very little like Russia in 1917. So I don't see why or 
how Trotsky can be very enlightening to us today. But let me leave 
that old objection aside for now and ask pointedly: what do you mean, 
in some degree of detail, by the proletariat asserting ownership over 
the MoP? Through a small, and now nonexistent vanguard party? The MoP 
are owned largely by institutional investors and run by professional 
managers: what happens to them, not to mention their armies and 
police? Will there be summary executions of portfolio managers and 
boards of directors? Will the rude mechanicals occupy the boardrooms? 
How does this proletariat, or representatives of this proletariat 
(chosen and accountable by unspecified means, of course), insert 
itself into the existing structures of ownership and control? A firm 
like Ford or IBM has a vast and complex network of plants, offices, 
and suppliers around the world - how would the proles go about 
socializing them? Really, Hugh, I'm all ears. Aside from catechistic 
invocations, how will this happen?

Doug


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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[Joanna Sheldon]

>
>Is there a gleam of light at the back of Rob's mind here? Is he at last
>groping towards the key that can unlock the gate keeping him in that dark
>tunnel? All he's got to do is see how the mass leadership of the workers
>could be transformed from the revolutionary Marxism of October to the
>counter-revolutionary raison d'etat of 1927 and he's home dry.
>
>>
>>>Well, I've tried to clarify a bit what I think the position is on this.
>>
>>And much appreciated it was, too.
>>
>>>Market socialism is a cowardly utopian cop-out. Anything to avoid the
>>>life-and-death confrontation with the bourgeoisie that creating the
>>>preconditions for real socialism will involve.
>>
>>Market Socialism ain't gonna come about without fundamental and traumatic
>>social change, Hugh.  And it might just be a promising candidate for just
>>the precondition of which you speak.
>
>See above. Fundamental social change that stops short at market socialism
>is a dry-as-dust academic illusion worthy of a Kautsky.
>
>
>>Nice to be convivially disagreeing with you (and just about evberybody else
>>here) again!
>>
>>All the best,
>
>The better we understand our present and the past it emerges from, the
>better we'll understand the future we're heading into.


Brr-UM pum pum.  Where would we be without such sober reminders from
our betters.  And is it brave, not to speak of smart, to sneer from one's
armchair soapbox at those comrades who advocate coming to terms with (and
therefore maintaining a hope of influencing) one of the potential
transitional stages (itself revolutionary relative to the status quo) along
the way to proletarian ownership of the means of production?

If not market socialism I wonder what a no-half-measures dude would
consider to be a morally acceptable increment in the struggle to realise a
genuinely democratic society.

Joanna


www.overlookhouse.com
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[Lew]

In article , Hugh Rodwell  writes

>Not mine, Marx's!
>
>Why? Well, I wrote:
>
>>>Yes. With the rider that productivity will need to be higher than that
>>>attained by capitalism (at least with respect to the economy as a whole) in
>>>order for the setting of prices by planned labour input to supersede the
>>>pressures of the Law of Value working through the market. This was the big
>>>economic reality that made it so difficult to control prices and planning
>>>in the early Soviet Union and led to the excesses of kulakism etc.

Marx did write that productivity will need to be higher post-capitalism
(to meet human need) and of course there will be a role for planning.
But there is no suggestion that he thought "the setting of prices" to
supersede the law of value was practicable or desirable.

>Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme makes this very clear with biting
>polemics against utopians who think there will be no intermediate,
>transitional stage between capitalism and full-blown communism. 

As Hugh knows quite well, Marx said the transitional stage is a lower
form of *communism*.

>>Either that, or come clean and start talking market socialism a la Nove and
>>Schweikart.
>
>
>Market socialism is a cowardly utopian cop-out. Anything to avoid the
>life-and-death confrontation with the bourgeoisie that creating the
>preconditions for real socialism will involve.

Hugh may want his life and death confrontation with the bourgeoisie but
the resulting *society* would look suspiciously like "market socialism",
even if only transitionally.
-- 
Lew


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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Hugh'n'Dave,

Quoth Hugh:

>Yes. With the rider that productivity will need to be higher than that
>attained by capitalism (at least with respect to the economy as a whole) in
>order for the setting of prices by planned labour input to supersede the
>pressures of the Law of Value working through the market. This was the big
>economic reality that made it so difficult to control prices and planning
>in the early Soviet Union and led to the excesses of kulakism etc.

Productivity is about the amount of generic product (made generic only by
way of the commodity form) produced as a function of a given consumption of
factors of production, innit?  If we start giving this kind of ground to
bourgeois economics, we risk making no meaningful social progress at all.
I mean, labour  here is framed as just one such factor (as labour power),
and socialism is all about recognising us as the SUBJECT of production, NOT
the object with which production is done.  WE produce for US.  To produce
to meet plans which presuppose our status as 'factor' is to remain slave to
the tyranny of 'abstract labour' and go the route of Stalinist state
capitalism (yeah, I know you reject the term, but that ain't the point I'm
making here).  How do we avoid this under your proviso, Hugh?

Also, if we stopped making fridge magnets, penis-soap-on-a-rope,
stretch-limousines, insipid-teenage-bouncing-trilling-cuties-bands, nuclear
warheads, breast implants, collagen injections,
cell-phones-with-little-TVs, neckties, cigarettes (shudder), tulip.cons,
and rhino-horn-aphrodesiacs, and put just half of that social investment
into the physical redistribution of extant meat mountains, milk lakes and
medicine piles, we'd go a long way to obviating the scarcity issue (so much
of which is surely invented by an economics profession that doesn't have a
theory or a raison d'etre without the notion).

I submit that (a) there's less scarcity than is currently claimed; (b)
there is NO scarcity in information; (c) whilst people are going without
food, roof, medicine and education, there's stuff we must democratically
decide not to produce during our official work time at all.

The implication of that (If it's all kosha) is that we can't be far from
that point where the forces of production do transcend the relations that
carried them to this point.  If we're technically capable of giving
everyone a human (free securely to pursue self-fulfillment) existence now,
we're theoretically ready for socialism.  And if we start talking about
productivity at this stage, we'd better be very clear we mean something by
it that has bugger-all in common with what CEOs and cabinet ministers mean
by it.

Either that, or come clean and start talking market socialism a la Nove and
Schweikart.

Sorry if I miss your drift, Hugh.

Cheers,
Rob.




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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[Hugh Rodwell]

Dave B writes:

>Further to Hugh's.
>Isnt capitalism generalised commodity production which includes
>labour-power i.e. wage-labour?

Very much so.

>Prior to capitalism commodity production was secondary to use- value
>>production, and typically not by means of wage labour.  Therefore the
>socially >necessary labour time was not set by  abstract labour realised
>as commodities >entering into the value of  labour-power but by concrete
>labour.

No. But the sphere of commodity production took the form of enclaves, in
which there were a lot of small producers who owned their own means of
production, and a good many who owned slave-labour into the bargain. But
the value of a commodity of any kind is *never* set by concrete labour, by
the *quality* of the labour, but by the abstract necessary labour required
as input. It's just that the determination of this input is terribly
distorted in other modes of production by comparison with capitalism and
its "free" wage-labour.


>As for post-capitalism, labour power will cease to be a commodity  as soon
>as >its value is no longer set by the market and set by the  plan. The
>plan may use >market mechanism's as tools but under  the dictorship of the
>proletariat, like >state capitalism in Lenin's  usage. Therefore there
>will probably considerable >commodity  exchange but like pre-cap society,
>not the production of Labour- >power as a commodity.

Yes. With the rider that productivity will need to be higher than that
attained by capitalism (at least with respect to the economy as a whole) in
order for the setting of prices by planned labour input to supersede the
pressures of the Law of Value working through the market. This was the big
economic reality that made it so difficult to control prices and planning
in the early Soviet Union and led to the excesses of kulakism etc.

Cheers,

Hugh





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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)

[davidb]

Further to Hugh's.
Isnt capitalism generalised commodity production which includes  labour-power i.e. wage-labour?

Prior to capitalism commodity production was secondary to use- value production, and typically not by means of wage labour.  Therefore the socially necessary labour time was not set by  abstract labour realised as commodities entering into the value of  labour-power but by concrete labour. 

As for post-capitalism, labour power will cease to be a commodity  as soon as its value is no longer set by the market and set by the  plan. The plan may use market mechanism's as tools but under  the dictorship of the proletariat, like state capitalism in Lenin's  usage. Therefore there will probably considerable commodity  exchange but like pre-cap society, not the production of Labour- power as a commodity.
Dave

On 25 Mar 00, at 16:44, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Rob's point requires a distinction between actual and potential, I think.
> 
> The factory in use, like all commodities that have succeeded in being
> purchased, is not immediately for sale, that is, it is not for sale in
> actuality, even if it is potentially.
> 
> There are two other aspects that need looking at as well, perhaps.
> 
> One is the possibility that the factory was built in-house so to say,
> without being bought on the open market. This is like a cobbler making or
> assembling his own tools -- he can calculate the extra return he will make
> (or not, as the case may be) on the basis of the usual market price of
> whatever it is he has made for himself. In this case the home-fabricated
> tool (means of production) is a factory. It's a way of cutting corners in
> the system but it doesn't shake the system as such. A good way for huge
> conglomerates to siphon extra surplus value over to themselves and get that
> important edge on their competitors, always provided they can build the
> factory cheaper than it is being sold in the market.
> 
> The other aspect is the question of other societies (other modes of
> production).
> 
> Rob writes that "surplus produce, for instance, was bought and sold
> thousands of years ago", but by writing this he's actually begging the most
> important question -- which is how the *exchange* (which is what he should
> have written) is mediated. Now thousands of years ago, such exchanges of
> fortuitous surplus were the kind of thing that was pushing societies
> towards commodity production. As soon as the surplus was sufficiently
> non-fortuitous, the things were no longer produced for use (and therefore
> exchanged only if too much piles up by chance), but produced directly for
> exchange and thus for sale -- ie they'd already become commodities, however
> primitive the mechanism of exchange might yet have been.
> 
> If we skip to the future, we can see that for a long time to come "price
> labels" will be attached to things to reflect the amount of labour put into
> them in the system of social production, but as socialism advances these
> labels will less and less reflect the blind operations of the Law of Value
> (ie as commodities) and more and more reflect the planned and plannable
> input of known quantities of useful social labour. So the social content is
> the absolutely essential thing in all this. As in fact Rob clearly
> recognizes in acknowledging the self-presentation of damn near everything
> in the capitalist mode of production as a commodity, making it easy to
> discuss the ramifications of the whole business with him. Whereas it is
> next to impossible with George Pennyfarthing because he hasn't even
> accepted the most minimal consequences of Marx's fundamental principles of
> economic analysis, ie the social character of human labour in the
> production and reproduction of human society  and its reflection as value
> in the commodities that embody this labour in the capitalist mode of
> production.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Hugh
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >Was cleaning out my backlog when it suddenly occurred to me that George
> >might have a point (although I don't know how important a point it need be).
> > Is a 'commodity' something that distinguishes itself from its hypothetical
> >being under another economic system purely on the criterion that it was
> >produced with the sole raison d'etre of being sold (after all, surplus
> >produce, for instance, was bought and sold thousands of years ago - and
> >publicly built infrastructure also comes to mind as an example)?  If not,
> >why not?
> >
> >If so, how would a factory (quite probably assembled out of things
> >themselves made to be sold), which may be sold at any time, but is not
> >necessarily produced with that objective in mind, be different from anything
> >else that was made with sale not uppermost in the processes that built it?
> >It is built from commodities, by way of labour power, in order to produce
> >commodities, and it can be sold at any time.  For Jim, that makes it a
> >commodity.  Certainly, it  *presents itself* as a comm

Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Charles Brown]

>>> "George Pennefather" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/11/00 05:51AM >>>
Jim is making a mistake. A factory when used as a factory is a use value that is not a
commodity. It is only a commodity when it is sold. Factories can exist for years and
years -indeed for their entire life span-- as use values --as forms of fixed capital.

The dirty hanky in my pocket is a use value --snot rag. But if I am prepared to sell 
it to
you and you buy it from me because you have a use, say, for my snot rag then it eh 
presto
a commodity.

***

CB: Sort of an intermittent phenomenon, now you see it , now you don't.

Is it a commodity only in the instant when it is changing hands or is there some 
special time frame in which it is a commodity ?


CB



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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Charles Brown]

Well, I didn't mean that he was a fascist, just "to the right " of Marx. But also, it 
was a joke.

CB

>>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/13/00 09:50PM >>>
G'day Chas,

>CB: I could go with you are right and Marx is left.

I don't agree with George at all, but I do reckon a leftie is not obliged
to agree with Marx, nor with others' interpretations of Marx.  And I don't
reckon there's anything particularly right-wing about refuting the
predominance of the commodity form - it just ain't Marxist, that's all.

Cheers,
Rob.




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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Chas,

>CB: I could go with you are right and Marx is left.

I don't agree with George at all, but I do reckon a leftie is not obliged
to agree with Marx, nor with others' interpretations of Marx.  And I don't
reckon there's anything particularly right-wing about refuting the
predominance of the commodity form - it just ain't Marxist, that's all.

Cheers,
Rob.




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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Charles Brown]

>>> "George Pennefather" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/13/00 02:16P
There is no point in twisting and turning to avoid facing the simple fact that I am 
right
and Marx wrong.

***

CB: I could go with you are right and Marx is left.






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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Jim heartfield]

In message <005d01bf8d20$a4928980$53fe869f@oemcomputer>, George
Pennefather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

>George: I never said that the fact that something is not being sold at the 
>moment does not
>stop it from being a commodity. What I said was much more modest: Marx is wrong 
>when he
>claims that the wealth of capitalist society appears in the form of an immense
>accumulation of commodities. Much of the wealth appears in the form of non-
>commodities. If
>anything it appears in the form of an immense accumulation of use values.

I'm sorry but I'm still confused about your point. 

Since the specific form of wealth in capitalist societies, if Marx is
right, is an accumulation of commodities, then these commodities are
both use value and exchange value, that being the properties of a
commodity. And that is precisely what wealth is in capitalist society,
both use-value, and, since no capitalist property is inalienable (unlike
say feudal land-holdings) then at the same time, exchange value, or
value.

The truth of this is evident in the way that assets are valued for
taxation purposes, or on the market as share prices. I still do not see
what it is that is not a commodity, certainly factories, and fixed
capital generally is a commodity, how else could it have value? How else
could machinery, as Marx says, pass on its value, piece meal to the
commodity, if it itself was not a commodity?

George says fixed capital is not a commodity, but ALL CAPITAL is a
commodity, that's what capital markets are for. You say that 'in its
function as a factory' it is not a commodity. But that is like saying
'in its function as a use value it is not an exchange value' - but that
would be true of every single use-value. Functional analysis here is
hostile to Marx's method.

So when George says

> I 
>am right
>and Marx wrong.


I take that to mean that he and Marx are talking at cross purposes
-- 
Jim heartfield


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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[George Pennefather]

George misses the point of Marx's comment. All wealth takes the form of
commodities. The fact that something is not being sold at that moment
does not stop it from being a commodity. (More to the point, George only
recognises consumer goods and not capital goods as commodities).

George: I never said that the fact that something is not being sold at the moment does 
not
stop it from being a commodity. What I said was much more modest: Marx is wrong when he
claims that the wealth of capitalist society appears in the form of an immense
accumulation of commodities. Much of the wealth appears in the form of 
non-commodities. If
anything it appears in the form of an immense accumulation of use values.

Jim: A factory that remained unsold throughout its lifetime would be a rare
exception.

George: That is not my point. My point is that factories, under capitalism, are forms 
of
fixed capital. As fixed capital they are not commodities. I never suggested that a 
factory
cannot at some point assume the commodity form. However in its function as a factory 
it is
a form of fixed capital and not a commodity.

There is no point in twisting and turning to avoid facing the simple fact that I am 
right
and Marx wrong.

Warm regards
George Pennefather

Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/

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Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Jim heartfield]

>A factory when used as a factory is a use value that is 
>not a
>commodity. It is only a commodity when it is sold.

George misses the point of Marx's comment. All wealth takes the form of
commodities. The fact that something is not being sold at that moment
does not stop it from being a commodity. (More to the point, George only
recognises consumer goods and not capital goods as commodities). 

A factory that remained unsold throughout its lifetime would be a rare
exception. Forgetting that the original site would be bought from one
vendor, and the building from another, once constructed and in operation
the factory, as the property of a business would be traded every day on
the stock exchange (or more precisely, parts - shares - of it would be).

It is also false to think that the commodities that rest unsold on the
shelf of the supermarket at the end of a busy day are not therefore
commodities (they only cease to be when they perish). A commodity that
is not being sold at any one moment is not thereby any other kind of
property than a commodity.

Marx's point is very precise, and I am surprised that George want to
quibble with it. Under capitalism all forms of wealth are commodities.


In message <002d01bf8b47$b93d3b80$8afe869f@oemcomputer>, George
Pennefather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Jim is making a mistake. A factory when used as a factory is a use value that is 
>not a
>commodity. It is only a commodity when it is sold. Factories can exist for years 
>and
>years -indeed for their entire life span-- as use values --as forms of fixed 
>capital.
>
>The dirty hanky in my pocket is a use value --snot rag. But if I am prepared to 
>sell it to
>you and you buy it from me because you have a use, say, for my snot rag then it 
>eh presto
>a commodity.
>
>Warm regards
>George Pennefather
>
>Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
>http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/
>
>Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community by
>simply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address:
>mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>George is making a mistake. A factory is a commodity that can be bought
>or sold, just as it can be used in the hands of its owner. Factories are
>bought and sold all the time.
>--
>Jim heartfield
>
>
> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
>
>
>
>
> --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

-- 
Jim heartfield


 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[George Pennefather]

Jim is making a mistake. A factory when used as a factory is a use value that is not a
commodity. It is only a commodity when it is sold. Factories can exist for years and
years -indeed for their entire life span-- as use values --as forms of fixed capital.

The dirty hanky in my pocket is a use value --snot rag. But if I am prepared to sell 
it to
you and you buy it from me because you have a use, say, for my snot rag then it eh 
presto
a commodity.

Warm regards
George Pennefather

Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/

Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community by
simply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]



George is making a mistake. A factory is a commodity that can be bought
or sold, just as it can be used in the hands of its owner. Factories are
bought and sold all the time.
--
Jim heartfield


 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---




 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---

Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong

[Jim heartfield]

In message <008a01bf8ac3$db08b520$dffe869f@oemcomputer>, George
Pennefather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Much of the wealth of capitalist 
>society is
>in the form of factories. Factories are forms of capital but not commodities. 
>The
>factories are a form of fixed capital. Fixed capital is not a commodity form. 


George is making a mistake. A factory is a commodity that can be bought
or sold, just as it can be used in the hands of its owner. Factories are
bought and sold all the time.
-- 
Jim heartfield


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