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Re: [OPE-L] Albritton on Marx's value theory and subjectivity

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On 12 Apr 2006, at 20:06, Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

Chris Arthur wrote:

the correct way to state the position is that the pure logic of CAPITAL
is indifferent to use value. But in order to actually sell things it
needs the capitalist who does know about use value to interpret the
demand for valorisation in a realisable way .

reply:

That correct way be true in the sphere of Marxist dogma, but I'm
interested
in what Marx & Engels thought, and what that implies.

Your points are well taken. However the Unoists have some textual
support on what Marx thought. see for example Results ( MECW 34 pp
419-21) where Marx speaks of the capitalists indiiference to use value.
Chris



An object or entity is not spontaneously a use-value, an object of use
or
utility, and more particularly a social use-value. It becomes an
object with
a generally accepted use-value in society, in the course of the
development
of human practices. It is characteristic of capitalist market expansion
however, that it transforms and develops objects into use-values
according
to a specific pattern, namely, it seeks to expand the domain of
use-values
which possess exchange-value, and shrink the domain of use-values
which do
not possess exchange-value. This is the "specifically capitalist mode
of
appropriation" guided by the search for surplus-value and
self-enrichment.

In this sense, the capitalistically developed use-values are
historically
and anthropologically specific, and use-value is increasingly looked
upon
through the prism of exchange-value. Therefore, even in the "pure
logic of
capital", whatever that means, capital is never "indifferent to
use-value";
business precisely seeks out, and develops to the utmost, those
use-values
which can possess a trading value - which has major implications for
the
specific way that the movements of capital develop the productive
forces,
the division of labour and the built environment (as ecologists no
doubt
would point out; consider for example the trade in clean and polluted
air,
in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol).

This whole issue was ignored by Marxist luminaries such as Kozo Uno
and Paul
Sweezy, because they believed (like most Marxists do) that political
economy
and its critique just concerned circulation, production and
distribution,
and not final consumption (of course, Marx did not discuss the sphere
of
consumption in detail, although he does include consumption with the
aegis
of political economy, in his introduction to the Grundrisse, both
productive
and final consumption). At most, there is some critique of
"consumerism"
tacked on the end (it is of course very easy to criticise consumerism
if you
can consume to your hearts content; but I doubt that the working
classes are
emancipated by being made to feel guilty about their consumption).

But even if this first argument is not accepted, because it conflicts
with
Marxist dogma and orthodoxy, it is still true that Marx's theory of the
reproduction of total social capital refers throughout to the necessary
transactions between at least three basic sectors of production, which
are
differentiated according to the *use-values* they produce and consume.
And
thus again, capital as a whole is not indifferent to use-value, despite
Marxist orthodoxy and dogma.

If this second argument is also rejected, again because it conflicts
with
the Marxist dogma about "capital in general", there's still the fact
that
Marx explicitly says in his first chapter on commodities (section 1)
that
"lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of utility"
("Endlich kann kein Ding Wert haben, ohne Gebrauchsgegenstand zu sein"
-
literally, "ultimately, no thing can have value, without being an
object of
use). Thus, even in the realm of the purest of pure value relations,
this
utility or usefulness is according to Marx still logically
*presupposed*,
even if the Marxist dogma says it isn't.

On those three grounds, I think the stale formalism of the Marxist
dogma and
orthodoxy ought to be replaced with a fresh, truly *dialectical*
interpretation of the forms of value, which acknowledges the
interaction of
use-value and exchange-value thoughout the whole economic process from
production to final consumption.

It's difficult for me to establish exactly who invented the false
Marxist
doctrines about capital's general "indifference to use-value", but it
seems
to be mainly a wrong inference from the fact that, as Marx describes,
capitalist production subordinates the production of use-values to the
valorisation of capital. This subordination is then summarily
*equated* with
indifference to use-value - "all that capitalists care about is
profit", the
lazy leftist caricaturists claim, AND THEREFORE they do not care about
anything else. But this inference - apart from being illogical - is
neither
correct theoretically, nor in practical reality. No wonder then, that
most
people are indifferent to this "Marxist critique" and treat Marx -
misrepresented in this way - with scorn as a shallow satirist.

Chris also wrote:

Marx is a little ambiguous on the result of this. Sometimes he assails
advertising for creating artificial needs; but sometimes the creation
of new
needs is said to be 'capital's civilising mission' (I lost the
reference).

reply:

I would indeed be interested to know the textual source of this idea.
To my
knowledge Marx says no such thing specifically, although he does refer
occasionally to "civilising effects"  (for example, that proles are
able to
buy and read newspapers etc.). The ambiguity is I think actually in a
different area than Chris suggests. Marx wants to say both that
use-value is
a practical attribute of an object in virtue of its intrinsic
(physical or
tangible) characteristics, but also that use-value refers to a
socially-mediated human valuation, involving a relation between the
(potentially) appropriating subject (i.e. the user) and the object.
Thus, he
suggests both that use-value inheres in the object  by virtue of the
properties it has, but also that it exists as use-value only within a
social
relation among subjects who appropriate this use-value. If however a
use-value is a *social* use-value, we are referring not simply to a
material
or technical category, but to a social category. Again, I think we
solve
this ambiguity not by the formalistic-dogmatic Marxist approach, but
by a
genuinely *dialectical* treatment of the concept of use-value, which
expands
value analysis into the area of consumption. Albritton, being
influenced by
Uno, has no notion of this.

In real life, I think that it actually might be more true to say that
workers are subjectively *relatively* indifferent to the goods and
services
they mass-produce in assembly-line fashion, and that capitalists,
armed with
TQM and other management techniques, aim to reduce this indifference,
so
that good quality products are produced, that will be sold. That is to
say,
the "indifference problem" is in reality often more a management
problem of
how to combat the effects of worker alienation and discipline work
effort,
so that products are "made with care" ("all that the worker cares
about is
his pay"). For more information about "quality control" of use-values,
see
e.g. http://www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage (this is not a
reference
to the International Socialists, but to the International Standards
Organisation).

Of course, this problem of worker indifference is itself not unique to
capitalism; e.g. in the Soviet Union there were often also frequent
complaints about shoddy goods made by poorly motivated workers, and
stories
can also be found of slaves in slave societies who were punished or
killed
for an attitude of indifference to their work. In this sense, too,
Albritton
can be criticised, because he fails to define the historical
specificity of
indifference in capitalism, and presents it in a one-sided, i.e.
*undialectical* way, as a problem of the nasty capitalists.

I haven't written all this up in a paper, but then I am not a paid
academic;
I trust however that my points are sufficiently clear.

Jurriaan


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