[OPE-L:2284] Re: Re: value-form theories

["clyder" <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 > 1) Within the commodity-form, use-value, value, and the value-form are
> necessarily linked. To assert that abstract labour is "independent" of
> price is to *sever the connection between value and the value-form* since
> the value-form must necessarily come to be expressed as money under
> capitalism.

Yes. But of course I think that the concept of abstract labour is necessary
for analysing other modes of production, particularly socialist industrial
economies.

> If it was the case that abstract labour was independent of
> price, then it would also be the case that value doesn't have to appear
> through the value-form.
>

Agreed, the value - i.e., the labour time required to produce things
could appear directly as in Marx's scheme for the use of Labour tokens
outlined in Critique of the Gotha Program.




> 2) Exchange is the only process whereby the private, concrete labour of
> individuals becomes validated (socially constituted) as social, abstract
> labour. There is thus, in this sense, no "independence" of abstract
> labour and price.


This is again ahistorical in that it eternalises capitalist conditions
of production. The appearance of abstract labour as money is a historically
limited phenomenon according to the communist viewpoint.