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Re: [OPE-L] Capital in General

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At 3:32 PM +0100 10/15/05, Andrew Brown wrote: 
Hi Rakesh,



No doubt I haven't expressed myself clearly enough, for I seem not
to have made clear the distinction between system-wide and
individual perspectives. This is the key distinction - if it is not
made clear and so overlooked then indeed we have just 'old
territory'.



You wrote:



"you mean potential or anticipated value destroyed? Or actual value
destroyed?"



First take a system-wide perspective. From this perspective, we are
considering 'the commodity' as representative of the typical form of
the product of labour across capitalism. We are effectively
considering millions or billions of commodities, not just one. From
this point of view then value essence ('contained in' the relative
form of value) is not yet 'actual' because it is necessary for a
large proportion of commodities continually to be actually exchanged
for money across the system in order for money to retain its social
validity and therefore for the value of diverse commodities to
continue to be socially recognised and hence for value to exist at
all. Capitalist society would quickly collapse if exchange through
prices did not regularly occur on a large scale.



But now take an individual perspective. To be precise, the
perspective of any one individual commodity produced in a capitalist
society. Any one individual commodity may or may not be exchanged
for money but this has no (or a negligible) effect on the existence
of capitalism and hence of the existence of value as such. Assuming,
therefore, the continued existence of the system, then the value
'in' any one individual commodity (assuming it is produced by SNL,
i.e. it is not a fictitious commodity of any kind) is actual, this
commodity is an actual form of value. What must be realised
(actualised) at the individual level is the existence of the *power*
that the commodity potentially possesses and confers to the owner,
in virtue of being a value, viz. purchasing power. Purchasing power
is actually possessed by the commodity owner only through sale
(transformation into money).



Andrew, it seems to me that you are saying that at this individual
level the commodity is more than potential value though not yet quite
actual value. Perhaps in this state it is virtual value? So existence
then has three states--potential, virtual and actual??
I am sorry that I am not following. And perhaps you don't want to be
burdened with this idea of virtuality.





Turning to your further remarks. Clearly, I take a different line to
TSS. Your account of Roberts is interesting.


Oh please don't hang most of what I wrote on Roberts. I just took a
single idea and then pursued what I thought are its implications.



 I think the system-wide perspective / individual perspective
distinction is adequate to address this account.


Not quite sure how it dissolves dualism of value and price accounts.




I did in fact use this distinction in a previous exchange with you
regarding slavery.



Don't see how individual/system distinction speaks to question of
whether wage labor is sometimes disguised as slavery.

Yours, Rakesh


You seemed unimpressed by it then - I fear you will remain so! 


Not at all unimpressed. Where I don't agree with VFT is I think
simple: I do think value only comes to exist in and through exchange;
however, I think value has some kind of existence before that and I
think it's meaningful to speak of labor being abstract before that,
to speak of total social labor time and its homogeneous parts. In
fact I think that talk is meaningful even before generalized
commodity society. The discovery of that aspect of social labor as an
aliquot of abstract social labor time in fact allows objective
investigation of precapitalist formations. I had always thought
abstract labor must be conceived in a historically specific way in
order for capitalist itself to be so conceived. I am now not
convinced of that position.

Yours, Rakesh




Many thanks



Andy

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