Re: [Marxism] From here to there? The Road Forward

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/28/03 6:48:23 AM Pacific Standard Time,
clyder@xxxxxxxxxx writes:

What is basically in dispute here is whether value still regulates
exchange value in the USA, and whether value, (as opposed to exchange value)
is still a relevant category for socialist economic calculation.

Reply

1. Value regulates exchange value in the USA. without question.

To say value regulates the exchange of commodities in the USA, is to state
that the law of value means the labor time embodied in different commodities is
the basis of exchangeability as opposed to the specific concrete labor
deployed in the production process. In this sense human labor in the abstract is
value because it is human activity toward a definite end.


It is incorrect for me to state in haste that human labor in the abstract is
a theoretical fiction. Human labor in the abstract acquires its significance
in the evolution of the commodity form as labor time. Enormous problem presents
themselves on the level of value as human labor in the abstract as opposed to
the law of value that is expressed as modern class configuration, politics,
the line of march and exchange.

The law of value is looked at from the standpoint of the development of a new
technological regime. This new technological regime undermine and unravels
the exchange relationship based on labor time, the material power of the
productive forces as a mass of commodities existing in relationship to a mass of
proletarians whose labor power is not needed to engage production.

Value regulates exchange value in the USA. without question. That is the
problem.


2. (Is value) "(as opposed to exchange value ) . . . still a relevant
category for socialist economic calculation."

What is it that is being economically calculated if not the labor time
involved in shaping raw materials into useful products, the transportation and
distribution of things? But this is not the real question because the real 
question
that will face us in America is not a question of labor time but the rational
deployment of labor toward a definite end.  Economic calculation will give
way to rationale deployment of energy, machinery and human labor.

Value as simply human labor in the abstract is not only devoid of its
qualitative attributes that create real qualitatively different products, but 
is also
devoid of any quantitative magnitude because you exclude exchange, i.e., "(as
opposed to exchange value)".

To the degree that economic calculation gives way to rationale deployment of
energy, machinery and human labor there is no need for economic reckoning.
What is to be reckoned with is the practical impact of men and women on nature
and the reproduction of their social life.

Today in America we have the technology, know how, distribution centers
(stores), infrastructure network and transportation network where all products 
can
be distributed - not exchanged, outside the bound of economic calculation of
labor time.

I therefore must answer NO.

Value will not be "a relevant category for socialist economic calculation."
This was not true of the Soviet Union in the past century.

Doesn't much of this question hinge on the degree of destruction of the
productive forces by the bourgeoisie?

Melvin P.




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