Re: value vs price

[miyachi <miyachi9@xxxxxxxxxx>]

on 2/7/02 06:30 AM, Charles Brown at CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> value vs price
> by Devine, James
> 05 February 2002 19:46 UTC
>
>
>> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^
> 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)
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
>
> It's not easy to derive a clear and unambiguous "ought" out of an "is."
> Jim Devine
>
> ^^^^^^^^
>
> 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.
>
> ^^^^^
>
> "To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated,
> are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are
> objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in
> absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. "His communication is 'yea, yea; nay,
> nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." [Matthew 5:37. ―
> Ed.] For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the
> same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely
> exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the
> other.
>
> At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is
> that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable
> fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very
> wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.
> And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is
> in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the
> particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond
> which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble
> contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the
> connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets
> the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their
> motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.
>
> For everyday purposes we know and can say, e.g., whether an animal is alive or
> not. But, upon closer inquiry, we find that this is, in many cases, a very
> complex question, as the jurists know very well. They have cudgelled their
> brains in vain to discover a rational limit beyond which the killing of the
> child in its mother's womb is murder. It is just as impossible to determine
> absolutely the moment of death, for physiology proves that death is not an
> instantaneous momentary phenomenon, but a very protracted process.
>
> In like manner, every organic being is every moment the same and not the same,
> every moment it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of
> other matter; every moment some cells of its body die and others build
> themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time the matter of its body is
> completely renewed, and is replaced by other atoms of matter, so that every
> organic being is always itself, and yet something other than itself.
>
> Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis
> positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed and that
> despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in
> like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in
> their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the
> individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole,
> they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that
> universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally
> changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and
> then, and vice versa.
>
> None of these processes and modes of thought enters into the framework of
> metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and
> their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation,
> motion, origin, and ending. Such processes as those mentioned above are,
> therefore, so many corroborations of its own method of procedure. "  etc.
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm
>
> MIYACHI TATSUO
PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT
KOMAKI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL
KOMAKI CITY
AICHI Pre.
JAPAN
miyachi9@xxxxxxxxxx

Value& price debate diffuses. I would summalize this debate, excluding
scientifically doubtflly LOV&LTV debate.
 I simply cite origibal definition of value,value-form,price etc, according
to Marx's "Capital"

1.VALUE;;If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities,
they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.
But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands.
If we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the same
time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a
use-value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other
useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither
can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner,
the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour.
Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of
sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in
them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what
is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour,
human labour in the abstract.
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of
the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous
human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its
expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power
has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in
them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them
all, they are ― Values.
The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is HOMOGENEOUS HUMAN
LABOUR, EXPENDITURE OF ONE UNIFORM LABOUR-POWER. The total labour-power of
society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities
produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human
labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units

2.FORM-OＦ -VALUE;　The reality of the value of commodities differs in this
respect from Dame Quickly, that we don't know "where to have it." The value
of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their
substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and
examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it
remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however we
bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and
that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or
embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it
follows as a matter of course, that VALUE CAN ONLY MANIFEST ITSELF IN THE
SOCIAL RELATION OF COMMODITY TO COMMODITY. IN FACT WE STARTED FROM
EXCHANGE-VALUE, OR THE EXCHANGE RELATION OF COMMODITIES, IN ORDER TO GET AT
THE VALUE THAT LIES HIDDEN BEHIND IT. WE MUST NOW RETURN TO THIS FORM UNDER
WHICH VALUE FIRST APPEARED TO US.

Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a
value-form common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with the
varied bodily forms of their use-values. I mean their money-form. Here,
however, a task is set us, the performance of which has never yet even been
attempted by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this
money-form, of developing the expression of value implied in the
value-relation of commodities, from its simplest, almost imperceptible
outline, to the dazzling money-form. By doing this we shall, at the same
time, solve the riddle presented by money.
THE WHOLE MYSTERY OF THE FORM OF VALUE LIES HIDDEN IN THIS ELEMENTARY FORM.
ITS ANALYSIS, THEREFORE, IS OUR REAL DIFFICULTY
If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations of human
labour, we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to the abstraction,
value; but we ascribe to this value no form apart from their bodily form. It
is otherwise in the value-relation of one commodity to another. Here, the
one stands forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the
other.
By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we equate the labour
embodied in the former to that in the latter. Now, it is true that the
tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete labour of a different sort from
the weaving which makes the linen. But the act of equating it to the
weaving, reduces the tailoring to that which is really equal in the two
kinds of labour, to their common character of human labour. In this
roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also, in so far as
it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and,
consequently, is abstract human labour. It is the expression of equivalence
between different sorts of commodities that alone brings into relief the
specific character of value-creating labour, and this it does by actually
reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds
of commodities to their common quality of human labour in the abstract.
Since the relative form of value of a commodity ― the linen, for example ―
expresses the value of that commodity, as being something wholly different
from its substance and properties, as being, for instance, coat-like, we see
that this expression itself indicates that some social relation lies at the
bottom of it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The very
essence of this form is that the material commodity itself ― the coat ―
just as it is, expresses value, and is endowed with the form of value by
Nature itself. Of course this holds good only so long as the value-relation
exists, in which the coat stands in the position of equivalent to the linen.
[22] Since, however, the properties of a thing are not the result of its
relations to other things, but only manifest themselves in such relations,
the coat seems to be endowed with its equivalent form, its property of being
directly exchangeable, just as much by Nature as it is endowed with the
property of being heavy, or the capacity to keep us warm. HENCE THE
ENIGMATICAL CHARACTER OF THE EQUIVALENT FORM WHICH ESCAPES THE NOTICE OF THE
BOURGEOIS POLITICAL ECONOMISt, until this form, completely developed,
confronts him in the shape of money.
The general value-form, which represents all products of labour as mere
congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure
that it is the social resume of the world of commodities. That form
consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities
the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its
specific social character.

3. FETISHISM OF COMMODITY;
Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so
soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself.
The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their
products all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of
labour-power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the
quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally the mutual
relations of the producers, within which the social character of their
labour affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the
products.

A COMMODITY IS THEREFORE A MYSTERIOUS THING, SIMPLY BECAUSE IN IT THE SOCIAL
CHARACTER OF MEN'S LABOUR APPEARS TO THEM AS AN OBJECTIVE CHARACTER STAMPED
UPON THE PRODUCT OF THAT LABOUR; BECAUSE THE RELATION OF THE PRODUCERS TO
THE SUM TOTAL OF THEIR OWN LABOUR IS PRESENTED TO THEM AS A SOCIAL RELATION,
EXISTING NOT BETWEEN THEMSELVES, BUT BETWEEN THE PRODUCTS OF THEIR LABOUR.
This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social
things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by
the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not
as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form
of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at
all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the
external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical
things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the
things qua commodities, and the value-relation between the products of
labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with
their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom.
There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their
eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore,
to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of
the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear
as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both
with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities
with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches
itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as
commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of
commodities.

THIS FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES HAS ITS ORIGIN, AS THE FOREGOING ANALYSIS HAS
ALREADY SHOWN, IN THE PECULIAR SOCIAL CHARACTER OF THE LABOUR THAT PRODUCES
THEM.

4; MEASURE OF VALUE
The expression of the value of a commodity in gold ― x commodity A = y
money-commodity ― is ITS MONEY-FORM OR PRICE. A single equation, such as 1
ton of iron = 2 ounces of gold, now suffices to express the value of the
iron in a socially valid manner. There is no longer any need for this
equation to figure as a link in the chain of equations that express the
values of all other commodities, because the equivalent commodity, gold, now
has the character of money. The general form of relative value has resumed
its original shape of simple or isolated relative value. On the other hand,
the expanded expression of relative value, the endless series of equations,
has now become the form peculiar to the relative value of the
money-commodity. The series itself, too, is now given, and has social
recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We have only to read the
quotations of a price-list backwards, to find the magnitude of the value of
money expressed in all sorts of commodities. But money itself has no price.
In order to put it on an equal footing with all other commodities in this
respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own equivalent.
THE PRICE OR MONEY-FORM OF COMMODITIES IS, LIKE THEIR FORM OF VALUE
GENERALLY, A FORM QUITE DISTINCT FROM THEIR PALPABLE BODILY FORM; IT IS,
THEREFORE, A PURELY IDEAL OR MENTAL FORM. Although invisible, the value of
iron, linen and corn has actual existence in these very articles: it is
ideally made perceptible by their equality with gold, a relation that, so to
say, exists only in their own heads. Their owner must, therefore, lend them
his tongue, or hang a ticket on them, before their prices can be
communicated to the outside world. [2] Since the expression of the value of
commodities in gold is a merely ideal act, we may use for this purpose
imaginary or ideal money. Every trader knows, that he is far from having
turned his goods into money, when he has expressed THEIR VALUE IN A PRICE OR
IN IMAGINARY MONEY, and that it does not require the least bit of real gold,
to estimate in that metal millions of pounds' worth of goods. When,
therefore, money serves as a measure of value; it is employed only as
imaginary or ideal money.

5,PRICE;The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between
price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from the
latter, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is no defect, but, on the
contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production whose
inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless
irregularities that compensate one another.
The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a
quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between
the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a
qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but
the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value.
 6,Cost-Price and Profit;
 . In their actual movement capitals confront each other in such concrete
shape, for which the form of capital in the immediate process of production,
just as its form in the process of circulation, appear only as special
instances. The various forms of capital, as evolved in this book, thus
approach step by step the form which they assume on the surface of society,
in the action of different capitals upon one another, in competition, and in
the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves.
 The value of every commodity produced in the capitalist way is represented
in the formula: C=c+v+s. If we subtract surplus-values from this value of
the product there remains a bare equivalent or a substitute value in goods,
for the capital-value c+v expended in the elements of production.

For example, if the production of a certain article requires a capital
outlay of £500, of which £20 are for the wear and tear of instruments of
production, £380 for the materials of production, and £100 for
labour-power, and if the rate of surplus-value is 100%, then the value of
the product=400c+100v+100s=£600.

After deducting the surplus-value of £100, there remains a commodity-value
of £500 which only replaces the expended capital of £500. This portion of
the value of the commodity, which replaces the price of the consumed means
of production and labour-power, only replaces what the commodity costs the
capitalist himself. For him it, therefore, represents the cost-price of the
commodity
What the commodity costs the capitalist and its actual production cost are
two quite different magnitudes. That portion of the commodity-value making
up the surplus-value does not cost the capitalist anything simply because it
costs the labourer unpaid labour. Yet, on the basis of capitalist
production, after the labourer enters the production process he himself
constitutes an ingredient of operating productive capital, which belongs to
the capitalist. Therefore, the capitalist is the actual producer of the
commodity. For this reason the cost-price of the commodity necessarily
appears to the capitalist as the actual cost of the commodity. If we take k
to be the cost-price, the formula C=c+v+s turns into the formula C=k+s, that
is, the commodity-value=cost-price+surplus-value
This difference between fixed and circulating capital with reference to the
calculation of the cost-price, therefore, only confirms the seeming
origination of the cost-price from the expended capital-value, or the price
paid by the capitalist himself for the expended elements of production,
including labour. ON THE OTHER HAND, SO FAR AS THE FORMATION OF VALUE IS
CONCERNED, THE VARIABLE PORTION OF CAPITAL INVESTED IN LABOUR-POWER IS HERE
EMPHATICALLY IDENTIFIED UNDER THE HEAD OF CIRCULATING CAPITAL WITH CONSTANT
CAPITAL (THAT PART OF CAPITAL WHICH CONSISTS OF MATERIALS OF PRODUCTION),
AND THIS COMPLETES THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE SELF-EXPANSION PROCESS OF
CAPITAL.[1]

That is all. let us debate again。


>