Re: Economics of Communist Society

[LPA <blissett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12-O5 Laura wrote:

>I have no idea were it goes, but the assumptions below are a strange
>interpretation of Marx.

Indeed so, and I must admit I'm not sure about it. Nevertheless it was the
only foray into political economy to emerge from the Situationist
International. Also in a debate which entails taking account of
non-European sources of resistance, no doubt this will cause some
'strangeness' if it is not to be simply another variety or orientalism
which preserves a neo-classical orientation to provide an all seeing eye to
act as a theoretical prism through which all optics are refracted.



>>
>>"Marx frequently said that the content of value was work and added that the
>>true form is the form of the content. He said: "We now know the substance
>>of value, it is labour." Thus, according to Marx, substance and content are
>>identical. But he also said that use value is the substance of (exchange)
>>value and nevertheless explained that "Labour is therefore not the only
>>source of material wealth, i.e. of the use values it produces. [As William
>>Petty says] labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its
>>mother."
>
>>For use value to become exchange value, it is therefore (????)
>>necessary
>>to eliminate a magnitude, its terrestrial character, or, if you like, to
>>repudiate the mother, the true source of its birth. thus the passage from
>>use value to exchange value can therefore only be acheived by the
>>devalorisation of an aspect of use value, its material reality."

Laura said
>Marx says:
>For use value to become exchange value it is necessary......a social
>relation, ie expropriation (a relation between men) in the form of private
>appropriation (a relation which seems to concerne men and things).

Marx says right of the beginning of Capital:
"The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value. But this usefulness does
not dangle in midair. It is conditioned by the physical properties of the
commodity, and has no existence apart from the latter. It is therefore the
physical body of the commodity itself, for instance iron, corn a diamond,
which is the use-value or useful thing." (4th paragraph of Capital 1
Chapter 1)

This is the point which Jorn is criticising. Clearly the physical body does
havean existence apart from its usefulness, in that usefulness can only
exist if there is some subjectivity to whom an object is of use. In fact
here we can see the preservation of a Christian (and maybe even Judaic, I
don't know) notion that the world was made to be of use to mankind.


>Land becomes commodity through expropriation (enclosures)
>every produce of labour becomes commodity through expropriation
>
>Maybe it is true that capitalists 'repudiate the mother", but this has
>nothing to do with the concept of exchange value

Yes, this expropriation is a relationship which involves the dispossessed
internalising the same consensual reality as the expropriators for these
social relations can exist. Then these social relations proceed as if the
consensual reality is in fact a real reality. However, it never can be as
it is an abstraction, an intersubjective mental phenomenon. And the 'as if'
involves "the devalorisation of an aspect of use value, its material
reality."

This is not so much to do with the concept of exchange value as the fact
that exchange value is a concept. The denial of the mother is linked with
the rejection of materialism: matter deriving from matrix, womb and
patriarchy projected itself by asserting the superiority of spirit, mind or
what have you

>>Thus political economy banishes these 'externalities'.
>>
>>"We can accept that the use object represents the substance or primary
>>matter of commodities, but the use object is more than the substance of the
>>commodity, it is in itself a form of value
>
>(utility or inner nature?)

Perhaps I did an unfairness to Jorn in only using portions of his text, in
particular his discussion of substance. I hope to have the whole text on a
web site in about a week. As a commodity Jorn claims a use-object is
devalorised in being reduced to its usefulness.

>>devalorised in its conditions as a commodity (?)
>
>as if it was not a thing but a human beeing?
>
>>but whose value is restored when the exchange process is
>>over.
>
>If a commodity wouldn't be a "use value for others" (valore d'uso per
>altri) (Marx, Capital, somewere) before beeing sold, it wouldn't be sold.
>
>>Once a use object has been bought by a customer, it becomes a use
>>object once again. This is a necessary for every commodity except money."
>
>All this discourse assumes that commodity *has* two "values"
>Marx says that commodity is the unity of a double (duplice) determination,
>ie use value and exchange value.
>The determinations (both of them in their reciprocal contradiction) are
>needed to define the concept of commodity (each of them alone is not
>enough)

No, it is concerned to trace the transformation of value beyond the limits
set by Marx i.e. the circuit developed below.


>>"But this whole process even of the creation of use objects is artificial,
>>invented by man; and the substance of the use object is found in nature.
>>But nature is no longer substance in itself. It is only substance for the
>>man-made use object . Nature is not simply a means. It is the first
>>condition of production. Nature shows itself as natural forms or qualities.
>>Natural objects must be consumed, destroying their natural form, to produce
>>use objects, and once consumed and exhausted by mankind they only return to
>>nature, becoming new natural values, albeit at an inferior level. There is
>>a consumption of nature prior to all production, and a loss of energy at
>>each passage from one form to another. This a primary and universal
>>devalorisation."
>>
>>"Marx declared that the exchange of commodities implied the change of forms
>>like this:
>>Commodity - Money - Commodity
>>   C      -   M   -     C
>
>If C is a commodity (in a proper meaning)
>and M is capital (in a proper meaning)
>the assumption is wrong.
>It is not the exchange of commodities which implies the change of forms, it
>is the capitalist social relations which imply the change of form
>
>If M is not capital but a medium of exchange (moneta non denaro: in italian
>we have two differents words)
>then C and C are use values exchanged as such not as commodities.
>
>Maybe the logic which follows can lead somewere, but the assumptions are
>not correct. See what it implies.

This comes from Vol 1 Chapter 3, section 2 where Marx deals with the
metamorphosis of capital and uses this formula. Surely the simple exchange
of C for C as use-values is barter. The circulation of commodities was well
developed before served as the starting point of capital.


ttfn Leutha Blissett

http://www.unpopular.demon.co.uk
http://www.dsnet.it/qwerg/blissett/bliss0.htm
http://www.skatta.demon.co.uk
http://www.geocities.com/~johngray




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