Re: Marx and value--a potential critique.

[boddhisatva <kbevans@xxxxxxxxx>]

                Hugh,



        You asked:


" what would be the characteristic of the commodity that determined the
fixed, average level of its market price when all the accidental
oscillations of unusual conditions equal out?"


        It is their usefulness to the pool of wage-earners who are in the
market for them.  We agree that wages are set artificially by the
capitalist.  Why can't we agree that the market price is the relative
exchange value under the predominant rate of wages?  Their price is that
percentage of money that wage earners in the market for those goods deem
suitable, at any given period of availability.



        You go on to ask:



" Why would there be such amazing differences
between the market behaviour of new and second-hand goods?"



        The answer is simply that their usefulness has changed.  There may
be some slight communal agreement to support home industry ("Buy American"
or "Buy British" feeling), but that is relatively insignificant.  Buying
something new is clearly its own reward.  Used things have greater
inherent uncertainty, and uncertainty lowers price.  While monopoly power
exists and raises prices, that is an independent extortion from the one at
the pay window.  Mostly, capitalists limit wages.  Consumers are
demonstrably insensitive to production cost.  Coca-cola proves that.



        As for your argument about use-value, my green grocer has a strict
"you taste it, you bought it" policy.  And if it's frozen, you don't taste
it *until* you buy it and put it in the wok, microwave, or steamer.  Not
only that, but the discriminating buyer of broccoli won't even plunk the
money down to taste any particular broccoli of he doesn't like the look
or the price of it (especially when spinach is cheap).  In fact, even
though a very few California growers have a large portion of the broccoli
market, I find that I can meet my cruciform vegetable needs, scoffing at
them all the while.  (Actually, the single-minded broccoli consumer can get
free broccoli if he waits around the vegetable markets and the big depots
until the over-stocked supplier clears out unsold vegetables to make room.)


        You also wrote:

" 'Intrinsic value' is exactly what (laborers) create in the form of
embodied labour-time imparted to the commodity."


        What about laborers who get paid, by capitalists, for goods that
don't sell, forcing the capitalist to go broke.  It happens without
contradiction within capitalism.  Clearly, those laborers created no
demonstrable value of any kind.  Their work-product is in the bin,
although their wages are in the bank.  Nobody sheds a tear for the
capitalist, in fact the capitalist likely demanded work from them that was
useless.  Your formulation does not account for the Edsel or the Beta-Max
VCR.  You cannot demonstrate intrinsic labor value to me because you will
not find it.  Whether a person works 20 hours or 1 hour on something is
irrelevant to its usefulness to me (which usefulness may be zero).



        The capitalists can argue the "labor market" case against the
unions and the socialists exactly because capitalism creates the illusion
of labor as a commodity.  The socialist can argue that labor is a social
responsibility AND an individual freedom of the economic citizen, who has
the right to set the terms of his reward and his duty through democratic
institution.





        peace







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