Re: Re: Charlie Andrews' book

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote:
> Carbon is the common substance or factor in diamonds, pure coal, and Bucky
> balls. It is manifested in them. But we can't say that diamonds, pure
> coal, and Bucky balls are equal to Carbon. We can't use "Carbon" as
> short-hand for them. Rather, they are different forms of Carbon.

saith Charles:
> CB: In this analogy,  "Carbon" would be shorthand for their
> "excahnge-Carbon" , not for diamonds, pure coal and Bucky balls. Those
> would be differentiated by their "use-values", their concrete qualities.

I think that this is an abuse of the word "short-hand." Gregg will get angry...

> It is not true that as you say next Value with a capital V is partly
> determined by exchange.

yes it is. If concrete labor does not turn out to be socially necessary, it
doesn't produce value. For example, Marx writes that: "If the market cannot
stomach the whole quantity [produced] at the normal price of 2 shillings a
yard, this proves that too great a portion of the total social labour-time
has been expended in the form of weaving. The effect is the same as if each
individual weaver had expended more labour-time on his particularly product
than was socially necessary." (Vintage/Penguin, p. 202.) Value must not
only be produced but realized, as with labor expended to produce items with
no use-value (because the makers thought that they might have use-value
before they started producing).

> Price is partly determined by exchange, supply and demand. One of Marx's
> main points is that labor is the only source of all exchange-value. (
> Nature can be a source of use-value, but not exchange-value.). No value is
> added to by the exchange to exchange-value or Value of a commodity.

No value is added by exchange, but value can be destroyed. See above.

> Disagree. See above.
>
> CB: Disagree. No Value is realized.

so, let's agree to disagree.

> If a lazy or incompetent worker is competing with an abler worker, the
> former's concrete labor-time counts as less socially-necessary abstract
> labor-time than the latter's.

> CB: Agree.  ( Though "lazy worker" is not in the spirit that Marx writes)

To deny the existence of "lazy workers," however, is to deny reality. I
know a few.

Writes Charles:
> You say value is something different than exhange-value .

Value and exchange-value are the same and also different. It's a matter of
the unity of opposites. Value refers to the shared characteristics of the
exchange-values of newly-produced commodities (i.e., socially-necessary
abstract labor time). But they differ, because the exchange-values (prices)
of commodities usually don't equal their values.

> _Capital_ deals, in the main,  with "exchange-value". There is very little
> on use-value in it. So, rather than saying "exchange-value" everytimej, it
> is shortened to "value", with the clarification having been made at the
> beginning that there is also use-value in commodities.

Let's agree to disagree.

I wrote:
> No. In volume I, the value of gold is determined by the amount of
> socially-necessary abstract labor time needed to produce it.

> CB: I agree. That's my point. If gold's value is determined like any other
> commodity, why wouldn't an antique's value be determined like another
> commodity. Marx doesn't say antiques' values are not determined like any
> other commodity, does he ?   Take an old gold amulet, which is old like an
> antique. Its value is determined by the amount of socially-necessary
> abstract labor time to mine it and make it. Why not the same for the
> antique ( for Marx ).?

No, Marx makes it very clear that gifts of nature such as "virgin" land
don't have value -- but can have a price (Vintage/Penguin, p. 131).
Antiques seen from the perspective of today are similar. You might think of
the amount of labor-time needed to reproduce the antique as defining its
value. But part of the antique's price is the ageing process itself, a gift
of nature, which makes it impossible to truly reproduce the antique
exactly. Put another way, the age of the antique means that its scarcity
(as opposed to the cost of its production) plays a major role in
determining its price.

Nowadays, gold is similar. Most of the supply-side of the gold market
depends on the existing stock of gold, not on the cost of producing gold.
In the end, however, if the price of gold stays high relative to its cost
of production, it will drive capitalists to produce more gold. But even
this is limited by the scarcity of good gold-bearing land.

> CB: I take it as fundamental to Marx's theory that exploitation occurs
> when labor-power is paid full value for.  Labor-power is capable of
> producing more value than its own value ( exhange-value).

insert the word "even" before "when labor-power is paid full value" (for
its reproduction). Marx knew that labor-power was sometimes purchased below
its value, but that kind of  "super-exploitation" didn't require much
analysis.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine