RE: value vs price

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Charles wrote:
> > On exploitation, my take is that he noticed that in FACT,
> > throughout history, exploited and oppressed classes struggle
> > against their exploitation and oppression.  Opposition to
> > exploitation is a human natural ethical project ; the "is" of
> > history and the "ought" of what is to be done are united in
> > the class struggle of exploited classes.

I responded:
> Accepting the FACT of exploitation doesn't autonomatically
> mean that one
> should side with the exploited. Many -- including many members of the
> working class -- have concluded that backing the (currently)
> winning side is
> the best strategy.

Charles ripostes:
> CB: Marx and Engels' theory of historical materialism by
> which history is understood as a history of class struggles
> between oppressor and oppressing classes ( nutshelled in _The
> Manifesto_, but underpinning even _Capital_ and their whole
> approach) cognizes that every member of every oppressed class
> is not class conscious all or even most of the time.
>
> Note that revolutions are rare occurrences in the total time
> of history in Marx and Engels schemes. In most of the actual
> time of history society is not in revolution, and most
> oppressed workers don't have the consciousness of their class
> , class consciousness. So, it is normal for there to be many
> or most of the oppressed class going along to get along,
> failing in rebellion, fighting each other more than the
> ruling class, no ? This paradox is implicit in Engels and
> Marx's approach. If the most of the oppressed classes of
> history were not confused on the issue of class most of the
> time , ruling classes couldn't rule, because the latter are
> always tiny elites oppressing mass majorities.
>
> Revolutions are like plate tectonic shifts in geology. They
> occur rarely , but their potential and tension are constant
> even through the normal times of  small earthquakes ( That's
> dialectics)

yes, but your geology is wrong: tectonic shifts happen all the time, while
it's earthquakes that are rare (or at least big ones).

> So, of course, there are specific moments when groups ,even
> generations of workers are on the wrong side in the class
> battles ( Engels wrote of bourgeosification , or something
> like that, of some British workers).
>
>  Marxism's founders' writing doesn't make all "what is to be
> done" decisions easy. Marxists don't claim that. Only those
> who want  to misrepresent Marxism as simplistic claim that
> sort of "yea, yea, or nay, nay" for Marxism.

I don't disagree with what you say above. Instead, my point was as follows:
> It's not easy to derive a clear and unambiguous "ought" out
> of an "is."

to which Charles responds:
> CB: It is true that Marxism is a combination of clarity and
> ambiguity of concepts that are not clearly defined, i.e.
> rigid  binaries.  Part of this is because everything is in
> motion, even "ethics". This is difficult for all of us
> because we all have some sense that ethics ,of all things, is
> a system of eternal , unchanging principles.
>
>  I say all of us because we all have some influence of
> metaphysical ethics on us through religion or something; Note
> that Engels cleverly ( double entendre) in _Anti-Duhring_
> uses a quote from Jesus as the main metaphysical ethicist
> (for the masses in England and Europe then) who thinks in
> binaries: "yea, yea or nay, nay" ( see below). This is a
> poetic uniting of an analysis of  the "is " and of the
> "ought" by Engels.

I think the main thing is that for Marx & Engels, ethics/morality was a
subject to be studied (and a force which affects people's actions)  but not
something that they worked on developing. As I said in another message,
neither was an ethicist (deriving principles of ethics, etc.), despite their
obvious prior ethical committments.
JD