Re: Re: Engels, Marx, Value and Communism
Engels misunderstood Marx's value theory, especially Marx's explanation of money-form of commodity as physically accountable entity, but Marx explains social, homogenous labor firstly as imaginary or ideal product. Below is borrowed from Capital I do not disagee that there existed a difference in conception of value, its various forms, between Marx and Engels. Engels repeatedly acknowledge Marx as the greater man in the theoretical arena. Their ideas intersected on the historical trajectory of value as a force mediating human affairs and its final destination in the life of society. Karl Marx was of course - Marx. What Engels intuitively understood based on his independent study Marx unfolded for the world. It is of course Marx name that signifies a specific body of theory as opposed to Engel-ism. It was Marx that reshaped dialectics. Melvin
Re: Re: Engels, Marx, Value and Communism
It is not that Engels misunderstood Marx. Marx unfolded a new law system. Engels agreed to the best of his ability. To continue. MIYACHI TATSUO PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT KOMAKI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL KOMAKI CITY AICHI Pre. JAPAN [EMAIL PROTECTED] Below is from Capital The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers -- a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity -- which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis Brenner's reductionism is clear. He only analyze market, finance, or credit. This tendency can ascend to Stalin's formula that economic process is natural and to proceed without people's will. Certainly capitalist system is reversed world in which Sachen (commodity, money and capital=== In any English translation of Capital there is no distinction between Sachen and Ding, but the two are different category, Sachen means occupying property, and Ding is mere physical matter, and identifying Sachen with Ding, we can not distinguish Versacherling and Verdinging, which is important to understand Marx's critique of fetishism) rule people, and people unconsciously and collectively produce Sachen which produce self-destructive power for people. And finally Marx described In capital -- profit, or still better capital -- interest, land -- rent, abour -- wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations into things, the direct coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things. It is the great merit of classical economy to have destroyed this false appearance and illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the various social elements of wealth, this personification of things and conversion of production relations into entities, this religion of everyday life. It did so by reducing interest to a portion of profit, and rent to the surplus above average profit, so that both of them converge in surplus-value; and by representing the process of circulation as a mere metamorphosis of forms, and finally reducing value and surplus-value of commodities to labour in the direct production process We works with will, although its result is self-alienated. It is clear. But Stalin neglect this fundamental fact. Crisis theory was produced from experience of Marx, and Lenin. Marx firstly expected economic panic as condition of revolution, but in Capital, As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the Instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number
Re: Re: Re: Engels, Marx, Value and Communism
on 2/5/02 00:42 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is not that Engels misunderstood Marx. Marx unfolded a new law system. Engels agreed to the best of his ability. To continue. MIYACHI TATSUO PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT KOMAKI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL KOMAKI CITY AICHI Pre. JAPAN [EMAIL PROTECTED] Below is from "Capital" "The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers -- a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity -- which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis" Brenner's reductionism is clear. He only analyze market, finance, or credit. This tendency can ascend to Stalin's formula that economic process is natural and to proceed without people's will. Certainly capitalist system is reversed world in which Sachen (commodity, money and capital=== In any English translation of " Capital" there is no distinction between Sachen and Ding, but the two are different category, Sachen means occupying property, and Ding is mere physical matter, and identifying Sachen with Ding, we can not distinguish Versacherling and Verdinging, which is important to understand Marx's critique of fetishism) rule people, and people unconsciously and collectively produce Sachen which produce self-destructive power for people. And finally Marx described "In capital -- profit, or still better capital -- interest, land -- rent, abour -- wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations into things, the direct coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things. It is the great merit of classical economy to have destroyed this false appearance and illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the various social elements of wealth, this personification of things and conversion of production relations into entities, this religion of everyday life. It did so by reducing interest to a portion of profit, and rent to the surplus above average profit, so that both of them converge in surplus-value; and by representing the process of circulation as a mere metamorphosis of forms, and finally reducing value and surplus-value of commodities to labour in the direct production process" We works with will, although its result is self-alienated. It is clear. But Stalin neglect this fundamental fact. "Crisis theory" was produced from experience of Marx, and Lenin. Marx firstly expected economic panic as condition of revolution, but in Capital, "As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the Instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of
Re: Engels, Marx, Value and Communism
on 2/2/02 08:34 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I happen to be one who believes that there exists a difference in articulation - not substance, between Frederick Engels and Karl Marx approach to value and embrace the reshaping of the theory of value in the hands of Marx. Nevertheless, both were revolutionaries approaching the emancipation of labor from its status as a commodity and why society moves in antagonism; polarizes and one system of production inevitably gives way to another and the role of the individual in this social process. In his Introduction to A Contribution to A Critique of Political Economy, Marx gives account to the events that led to his and Engels collaboration. It was Engels conception of the historic trajectory of value as a mediator in social relations - described in The Conditions of The Working Class in England, that Marx worked out or rather, had come to the same conclusion on the basis of theoretical postulates. This is stated in a footnote to Anti-Duhring, which Marx wrote a Chapter for (From The Critical History) and corresponded with Engels during the two years it took to write the book. In criticizing Mr. Durhing Engels states: Unfortunately Marx put a short footnote to the passage in Capital cited above: The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the laborer gets for a given labor-time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labor-time is materialized. Marx, who seems here to have had a presentiment of the coming of his Dühring, therefore safeguards himself against an application of his statements quoted above even to the wages which are paid in existing society for compound labor. If Herr Dühring, not content with doing this all the same, presents these statements as the principles on which Marx would like to see the distribution of the necessaries of life regulated in society organized socialistically, he is guilty of a shameless imposture, the like of which is only to be found in the gangster press. But let us look a little more closely at the doctrine of equivalence. All labor-time, the porter's and the architect's, is perfectly equivalent. So labor-time, and therefore labor itself has a value. But labor is the creator of all values. It alone gives the products found in nature value in the economic sense. Value itself is nothing else than the expression of the socially necessary human labor materialized in an object. Labor can therefore have no value. One might as well speak of the value of value, or try to determine the weight, not of a heavy body, but of heaviness itself, as speak of the value of time, and try to determine it. Herr Dühring dismisses people like Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier by calling them social alchemists. By his logic chopping over the value of labor-time, that is, of labor, he shows that he ranks far beneath the genuine alchemists. Now let the reader fathom Herr Dühring's brazenness in imputing to Marx the assertion that the labor-time of one person is in itself more valuable than that of another, that labor-time, and therefore time, has a value-to Marx, who first demonstrated that labor can have no value, and why it cannot! The realization that labor has no value and can have none is of great importance for socialism, which wants to emancipate human power-power from its status of a commodity. With this realization all attempts -- inherited by Herr Dühring from primitive workers' socialism -- to regulate the future distribution of the necessaries of life as a kind of higher wages fall to the ground. . . . If the equivalence of labor time means that each laborer produces equal values in equal periods of time, without there being any need to take an average, then this is obviously wrong. If we take two workers, even in the same branch of industry, the value they produce in one hour of labor-time will always vary with the intensity of their time and their skill-and not even an economic commune, at any rate not on our planet, can remedy this evil-which, however, is only an evil for people like Dühring. What, then, remains of the complete equality of value of any and every labor? Nothing but the purely braggart phrase, which has no other economic foundation than Herr Dühring's incapacity to distinguish between the determination of value by labor and determination of value by wages-nothing but the ukase, the basic law of the new economic commune: equal wages for equal time-time! Indeed, the old French communist workers and Weitling had much better reasons for the equality of wages, which they advocated. All current production is fundamentally social production in the world in which we live, as opposed to the still existing forms of scattered production one-hundred and fifty years ago. Value is the socially necessary amount of human labor in the production of commodities. From this standpoint - as opposed
