[Marxism] FW: Jurrian on unequal exchange

["paul cockshott" <clyder@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jurrian:
 Paul has always denied the existence of
unequal exchange, and denied its role in Marxian theory.  I am arguing this
is neanderthal Marxism.

Paul: I do deny the existence of unequal exchange outside
of the limited area of rents for land and intellectual
property right which is a more compilicated case.
Whether this is 'neanderthal Marxism' is disputable.
You certainly state this often enough, whether you argue
it is a moot point. What I am trying to get from you is a
clear theoretical formulation of how unequal exchange is
supposed to operate and then some concrete examples of it.

In your previous post you raised all sorts of other
phenomena which did not relate to the original question
about unequal commodity exchange.  I tried to explain
why these were not pertinent to your original proposition
I respond to your replies in detail below.

Jurrian finished by saying:

"I cannot be bothered any further with this discussion, because the
neanderthal Marxists simply fail to understand the existence and importance
of structural unequal exchange in the epoch of capitalist imperialism, and
start to make stupid comments about Marx's own theory."

If I fail to understand the existence and importance
of unequal exchange it is because I have yet to see
any coherent theoretical argument for the phenomenon.
The discussion would be more productive if you
were to give

1. A description of the classes of commodities  you think are
   systematically sold below their values.

2. An account of the mechanism which ensures that this is
   the case.
which you think causes



-----------------------------------------------------

Jurrian:

 Paul says, "I think Marx took over too uncritically
from Ricardo,
there is some tendency for high organic composition goods to sell above
value, but not as much as his theory would
predict." But this is just talking about sex, it has nothing to do with the
economic argument.
-------------------------------
I was refering here to Jurrians point 3, that prices of production
mean that some commodities systematically sell for higher
prices than their values would warrant because the
capital which produces them is of high organic composition.

I don't understand Jurrians statement that this is
'just talking about sex', since no mention is made of
sex in any of my postings.

At stake here is one of the major problems that has
bedeviled Marxist economics for 100 years: the transformation
problem. This entire problem rests on the assumption
of equalisation of profit rates and the contradiction
that this generates for the theory of value.

In my opinion a real breakthrough occurred in the
work of Farjoun and Machover (1983), where they argued that
the assumptions of the theory were empirically wrong
and that there was in fact a narrow dispersion of
profit/wage ratios than profit/capital ratios in
capitalist economies, and that as a consequence
this would mean that actual prices would be
closer to labour values than to prices of production.
The produced significant, if indirect empirical
evidence for this.

There is now a considerable body of evidence to
show that they were right. In particular Allin
Cottrell and I have shown that for both the UK
and US economies, the rate of profit is inversely
correlated with the organic composition of capital,
although the profit share (approximately s/v) is
also positively correlated with the organic composition
of capital. This is why I said of Marx
"there is some tendency for high organic composition goods to sell above
value, but not as much as his theory would predict."

This is nothing to do with sex, but an observation
derived from empirical economic research.
------------------------------
Jurrian:

Paul says that the distribution of surplus value between profit of
enterprise and interest cannot involve commodity exchange, and therefore is
irrelevant to the discussion. But that is stupid neanderthal Marxism.
Financial services and claims function as commodities, and indeed financial
claims are tradeable objects. Marx says clearly that surplus value may be
"stored" in money capital, commodity capital or production capital. You
should read again chapter 27 of Cap. Volume 1.

Paul:
All sorts of things take the commodity form in
capitalist society, but that does not make them
commodities embodying abstract social labour.
A futures option on the stock market has a price,
but it has no value in the sense of embodied
labour. Its price is a highly derived and probabalistic
form of claim on future property income. As such
it is no more a value containing commodity than
urban building land which also has a price.

Jurrian initially defined unequal exchange as
invovolving the exchange of commodities involving
smaller ammounts of abstract social labour for
commodities involving larger amounts. The prices
of financial instruments are irrelevant to
what he was trying to demonstrate since they
are not a representation of abstract social labour.

At the time Marx was writing the gold standard
was in operation and surplus value could be
securely stored in gold coin. Gold is a product
of labour from which gives it real value.
Gold is very different from a  financial
instrument which only has imputed value. Marx
writes how at a time of financial crisis the
illusion that bills of exchange represent
value is dispersed and all capitalists clamoured
for the reality of gold.

However we are off the gold standard and
modern money is mere pieces of paper which
derive their currency from the willingness of the
state to accept them in the payment of taxes.
The illusion that one can store value in them
is rapidly dispersed in times of inflation.

When doing economic research on the capital stocks
of a country one only includes products of labour
in that stock, one does not include notes and coins
in circulation nor bank deposits, since these are
not real capital and can be increased ad libitium
by bank lending without the expenditure of labour.
-----------------------------------------------
Jurrian:
Paul argues that Marx does not talk about monopolies, joint-stock companies
and monopoly rents, but Marx does so anyway.
Paul:
You overextend what I said. Marx clearly had a lot
to say both about ground rent and joint stock companies.
I was responding to your
"The next source of unequal exchange occurs through monopolisation,
monopsony, oligarchy, that sort of thing."
I assumed you meant oligopoly not oligarchy. The terminology
here is derived from the bourgeois economic literature
of imperfect competition rather than Marx, which was
what I was indicating from my reference to Robinson.

I accept that ground rent is a significant source of
unequal exchange, and the oil for example sells systematically
above its value. But what I am objecting to is the
invocation of the idea of monopoly in general to explain
unequal exchange, since this is a more general idea
encompassing the degree of concentration of supply in
given markets. I was pointing out that there was a
lack of empirical work to show systematic deviations
of price from value due to this, though I don't
dispute that it might occur.

-----------------------------
Jurrian:

Paul is wrong there as well.
But Paul is correct that "Empirical work would have to be done to test any
propositions that followed from this." If however you deny the reality of
unequal exchange and deny the reality of imperialism, as Paul does, then you
cannot do any good empirical work because you lack an adequate theoretical
basis.

Paul:
I am highly skeptical of the idea of unequal exchange.
I do not deny the reality of imperialism, the occupation
of Iraq and Aghanistan are clearly imperialist adventures
by the English speaking powers. Unequal exchange in the
sense of oil selling above its value is a factor here,
but in the case of oil producing states the flow of value
is from the developed capitalist countries to the
oil producing states. The oil producing states are the
beneficiaries of unequal exchange. Imperialist propagandists
like Kilroy Silk attempt to justify the occupation of
Iraq by saying that the Arabs are exploiting the
industrialised world, that oil is extracted by
non arab labour using western technology and capital.

>From a Marxist point of view one can respond that
the oil producing states are merely enforcing the
normal rights of private property, and that those
who support such rights are in no position to
object to their use by others.

Arguments about unequal exchange place one on the
terrain of bourgeois legitimacy and are, in my opinion,
ultimately conservative, lending themselves as much
to reactionary as progressive use.

------------------------------------------------------

Jurrian:
Paul argues that if the government taxes away tax money from workers, and
gives it to capitalists, that is isn't unequal exchange occurring
independently from the production of new surplus-values. Him rather than me.
Marx didn't theorise taxation in detail, but it is quite easy to do that.

Paul:
Tax is not 'unequal' exchange because it is not exchange
at all. I suspect that you would have to put aside a few years in
the library to theorise taxation in detail.
-----------------------------------------
Jurrian:
Paul says "Point 7 is to imprecisely specified to deal with. It appears to
overlap with point 2." This is just him talking about sex.

Paul:
Please explain your obsession with sex in this context?
---------------------------------------

Jurrian:
Paul argues "If Thai farmers find that the dollar price that they can get
for their rice falls over time in
competition with rice farms in Louisiana, this does not indicate unequal
exchange, but instead
that the labour necessary to produce rice in the USA is much less than in
Thailand."

But this completes misses what the Marxian theory of unequal exchange is
about, so why bother any further ?

Paul:
Well if that example misses the point of what you
are talking about, then why not give an argued example of your
own of where unequal exchange is occuring.

----------------------------------
Paul claims stupidly "the debt crisis has
nothing to do with unequal exchange, but relates to usury which is a quite
different relation from that of commodity exchange." Paul understands
nothing about these things, if he did, he would understand that unequal
exchange and debt are levers for increasing the rate of absolute and
relative surplus value.

Paul: Debt may well be a lever to increase the
rate of surplus value, but the topic under dispute
is not debt but unequal exchange. The payment of
interest is not an exchange relation, and is
clearly exploitative.

 ----------------------
Paul says that in discussing structural unequal exchange of labour-power
(above or below real values as superexploitation or labour aristocracies)
"it is not clear how it relates to commodity exchange in general". But this
is meaningless.


Paul: Sorry if that was not clear. I accept that there are
different wage rates based on racial or gender discrimination, but
that relates to divisions within the working class. What I was
trying to do was bring you back to commodity exchange. Are you saying
that  prices of commodities produced by labour
systematically vary because of the effects
of racial or gender discrimination in the work-force?
----------------------------------
Jurrian:
I said, "However, what Marx is concerned with is that foundation of unequal
exchange in the distribution of products within capitalist society exists
through the exploitation of surplus-labour in production, and his argument
is, that capitalism is predicated on exploitation at a foundational level,
through specific capitalist private property relations." This statement is
one hundred percent correct.  But Paul says, "This is directly contrary to
what Marx argues, which is that exploitation occurs despite equal exchange
rather than because of unequal exchange." This is wrong. Marx seeks to
explain the formation of a surplus product which provides the fund for
accumulation and capitalist consumption assuming equal exchange between
buyers and sellers with juridical equality before the law. But this is
merely the "pure" or "hypothetical" case. It states that whatever the degree
of unequal exchanges, exploitation in production can occur anyhow, and the
equilibrium of capitalism depends on private property relations which permit
this exploitation to carry on.

Paul:
Now you seem to be agreeing with  that capitalist exploitation
does not in any way depend upon unequal exchange.
















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