Re: he market [Socialism Now}

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 19/11/01 15:38 +0800, Greg wrote:


> This has become so common that the real difficulty is seeing the
> market-governor determining the socially necessary labour in these
> exchanges - rather what we are seeing is the result of planning. The
> question posed by a particular rate of exchange dwell more on the plans of
> the major players (takeover as against out-sourcing, diversification as
> against core business, and risk management strategies), then the displine
> of market buying and selling.

While I am sympathetic to Greg's overall approach I wonder if these
formulations do not require a bit more discussion. There is no reason why
reality should conform to the ideas of Marx but it would be interesting if
they do not. I am not sure that the "market-governor" determines the
socially necessary labour time. Rather it helps the price of commodities
equilbrate around their socially necessary labour time.

I am not quite sure about the concept of the discipline of market, except
in so far as all commodities imply exchange and a question of how that
exchange is tested. I wonder if it is the rate of exchange that dwells more
on the plans of the major players or that the major players are able
through unequal competition to determine the prevailing means of production
for the commodity in question.

Greg has already come back in the discussion and clarified that his remarks
relate to the greatly diminshed and still diminishing free markets, rather
than to all markets:-


> Socialisation has lead to the elimination of certain markets and to the
> close control of nearly all the others to the point where the concept of a
> free market is negated.


> The reduction of the role of the market leads inevitable to an expansion
> of administration in order to compensate for its previous role
> (accountants, manargerial controls, etc) and a greater and greater
> emphasis placed on profit realisation (much of the so called service
> industry) which boils down to a lot of energy placed in controlling the
> market in order to render profits.
>
> Both tendencies lead to an explosion of non-productive labour (labour
> which adds nothing to the actual products being sold but becomes essential
> to finally sell them).


I would caution against the danger of confusion in Marx about whether
productive labour is labour that produces surplus value, or labour that
produces a concrete use value. A lot of secondary organisational work can
be done in regulating markets that can yield surplus value. Indeed stock
exchanges are now often launched on the stock exchange themselves.

There is also a fundamental question about the nature of commodities, that
does not affect the general thrust of Greg's argument at all but might I
suggest misdirect the focus of criticism.


> In a sense some of this can be seen in the consumer market where labling
> and "services" almost become the commodity while the actual product seems
> to come a poor second.

My comment on this is to go back to the actual second footnote in Capital
that approvingly quotes Nicholas Barbon saying that the greatest number of
things have their value from supplying the wants of the mind."

Over 130 years after Capital Vol I it is even more the case that most
commodities in prosperous capitalist markets supply the needs of the fancy
rather than the strictly material needs of the stomach.

I hope these points are more than quibbles and help explore the main
direction of your arguments, Greg.

Like you, I would stress the high degree of socialisation of late
capitalism. But whereas the assumptions about socialism used to be  about
having large monopolies under state control, I see the ripeness of late
capitalism as being in the increasingly subtle ways in which the absolute
private ownership of capital is restricted and subsumed. For example Gordon
Brown's Financial Services Authority presiding over large investing
institutions like pension funds and insurance companies, which are already
recycling working people's savings, and institutions like the Bank of
England whivh are now placed under the control of a committee responsible
to civil society.

To use Foucault's metaphor quoted by Hardt and Negri, this is the shift
from a "disciplinary society" to a "society of control" in which monopoly
dominated markets are still real but in which "mechanisms of command become
ever more 'democratic', ever more immanent to the social field, distributed
througout the brains and bodies of the citizens."

The is not incompatible with the struggle for working class power which you
promote *under present* conditions, nor of course with modifying the legal
sense in which the means of production are privately owned and still less
privately controlled.

Regards

Chris Burford

London