[PEN-L:33114] Re: Value again

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/12/02 2:49:33 AM Pacific Standard Time, jones118@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:


Capitalism
in the period of US hegemony, which is the period of Extremist
Imperialism, has entered a twilight period of moribund decay and
self-destruction. This Law, the Law of Social Thermodynamics, is one of the
proofs.

Mark J.



Marx in the first volume of Capital, pages 91-92 in the Chicago edition (Charles H. Kerr, Co., 1906):

""Those ancient social organisms of production are, as
compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and
transparent. But they are founded either on the
immature development of man individually, who has not
yet severed the umbilical cord that united him with
his fellow man in a primitive tribal community, or
upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise
and exist only when the development of the productive
power of labor has not risen beyond a low state, and
when, therefore, the social relations within the
sphere of material life, between man and man, and
between man and nature, are correspondingly narrow.
This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of
Nature, and in the other elements of popular
religions. The religious reflex of the real world can,
in any case, only then finally vanish when the
practical relations of everyday life offer to man none
but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations
with regard to his fellow men and to nature. The
life-process of material production does not strip off
its mystical veil until it is treated as production by
freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by
them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however,
demands for society a certain material groundwork or
set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process
of development."

Comment: The Other Side of Value

Generally speaking, it is useless to attempt applying a general theoretical proposition embracing the evolution of society as a practical program - doctrine, of action. Yet, it is the theoretical that informs our view concerning the historical direction of societal change. Historical direction as the bottom-line course of development - trajectory, means the inner compelling logic that drives a process. 

The science of metallurgy, which is necessary to build tanks, modern aircraft, bombs and aircraft carriers, cannot be applied directly to military conflict as the art of war. The art of war means the evolution of a body of knowledge - doctrine, which describes the environmental field in which a particular war is fought out. This was summed up years ago as "know they self and know the enemy and you will never lose a battle."  Know thyself and the environment and do good. 

Such is the case concerning the question of the law of value. Value is the amount of socially necessary labor contained within the production of commodities.  The law of value states that equivalents amounts of human labor are the basis of exchange. The law of value does not state that everything in the market must at all times exchange for equivalent amounts of labor in the form of price, or why read the paper for sales? How does one know for a fact that equivalents are being exchanged, when this exchange is conducted on the basis of attaching a "price form" to the socially necessary labor contained in the products being exchanged? 

The fact of value - the amount of socially necessary labor contained within the production of articles of consumption, is one thing and its reflection in the mind of the individual as mass consciousness, is another thing. Consciousness or rather social consciousness of value - the worth of things, is not very different from the religious reflex Marx speaks of in the above quote. Here is the reason our economist has argued for the past one hundred years over what is called the "transformation problem" - that is the complexity of value assuming a price form as the material act of exchange and how this gibes with the exchange of equivalents. 

The problem is simple and complex. Equivalents operate as the basis of exchange on the one hand and this is a simple proposition. The problem is that mankind has yet to invent the "socially necessary labor scanner" that can scan a product and immediately produce a clear read out of the labor content of all products. This so-called transformation problem becomes more complex because as one "capitalist concern" modernizes it's production using better technology, the labor content of the product is reduced, but this capitalist, still sells the product at the price it fetched in the market yesterday using more labor. 

The pursuit of profit is called honorable and when the mass consciousness looks at prices in the supermarket and say, "all of this crap cost to much," they are told be happy that you do not live in the Congo, or rather Argentina. What the mass social consciousness is saying (screaming) is this:  based on the sell of my personal individual labor power and what I get in the form of wages - price, this crap cost to damn much. 

Marx keeps his feet on solid ground at all times and everything in Marx is riveted to the state of development of the material power of the productive forces:  

"demands for (of) society a certain material groundwork or
set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process
of development." 

What are these conditions of existence that will in time dispel the reflective, spontaneous thinking (religious) reflex in the mind of people. Marx is speaking of the mode of production in material life and this is also the real story of value and the mass consciousness of value.   

The long and painful spontaneous development of the material power of the productive forces means the robot or advanced robotics, computerization and digitalized production process is occurring alongside of millions of low paid people being drawn into the worldwide infrastructure of production. 

This is the law of value in the flesh and here is what Mark article unfolds - in a general theoretical sense, about the Soviet Union and the question of energy that drives the infrastructure. The most beautiful perfect socialist plan cannot alter, negate or overcome a physical law of operation. No correct plan or incorrect plan can alter, negate or overcome the law of value either. How these laws are reflected in the mind of the working class or the individual is another matter. 

No world socialist government, no matter how environmental minded, decent and correct can alter the principle that the base of commodity exchange is the law of value; and a machine cannot produce more energy than it consumes. The law of value is specific and for it to lose its force in society requires

"a certain material groundwork or
set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process
of development." 

The law of value operated in the Soviet Union. How this law operated is the arena of debate. Some say the policy of a particular leader was fundamental to the "painful (historical) process of development," and others say they were faced with certain immutable laws of social development. 

Why did the Soviet system fail in its competition with world capitalism? There are countless sides to this question. The bottom line answer is contained in the question: it could not out compete the gigantic productive capacity of US led imperialism or in other words the Soviets went out of business. This is to say the law of value did the Soviet economy (their stage of industrialization and its corresponding odes of distribution) in and its political form was ideologically defeated and overthrown. 

Soviet military technology was sufficient to halt the aggressive designs of imperialism. The technological state of the Soviet industrial infrastructure was always inferior to the industrial infrastructure of America and lagged one to one-one/half generations behind Americas. Forget the fact that WWII left some 27 million people dead in the Soviet Union, her factory system wrecked, mines flooded and railway system torn up and perhaps 30 million people seriously injured - handicapped. This of course somewhat explains the labor camps, militarized social structures, intense ideological campaigns to combat anything called counterrevolution (counterrevolution meant anything against the super human effort to industrialized and this included being late for work) and also spying on everyone including the people doing the spying.

There is of course the immense pressure of imperialism on its borders (the chatter of value at the border combines with its internal screaming) and the expansion of the industrial system that made political revolution in the imperial centers impossible. The forms of the revolutionary organizations - whether Stalinist or not, is more than less immaterial. Political revolution in America has been impossible due to the expansion of the industrial system and its increasing standard of living and there is nothing complex about this. 

Political revolution is not social revolution - both are not identical. Social revolution can only occur as the result of a revolution in the mode of production, which unravels the old system of production and compels - compels, society to leap forward.  Political revolution can break out for ay number of reasons as in the anti-colonial revolts or as in the Russian industrial revolution seized by Marxist. What appeared as madness and wholesale bloodletting in the Soviet Union operated within a definable material framework of development. The role of the individual is important but not fundamental in history logic, which spans centuries. 

In the competition between the two imperial blocks the industrial system led by America was more productive - that it, more technologically advanced. The Soviets attempted to say, fed East Germany and uplift the Soviet imperial block using a set of technologies a generation behind that used by the American imperial block. People must eat and grasp that the leaders are safeguarding their daily material interest or you cannot maintain their support for long. These daily interests are measured in the mass consciousness based on all the things available and this includes not just pensions, education and health plans, but vegetables, movies, wedding rings, toilet paper, blue jeans and all kind of choices of products already on the market.

The availability of goods is in the last instance determined by the development of the mode of production and this is not the simplistic question of socialism versus capitalism but the state of development of the industrial system of production and its corresponding mode of distribution. Policy - thinking and doctrine, impacts development or evolution of technologies but in the last instance do not determine the industrial advance. Marx calls the technological advance in the above quote: 

"the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development." 

Here is the question presented different: Why are Japanese made cars - Toyota, superior to American made car of equal value and price? One can of course speak of cultural factors fused to the process of production and superior forms of organization internal to the production process, but this superior organization rest upon a definable technology and its evolution. Soviet products were inferior on the world market, not because of the particular policy of this or that leader but for cultural reasons that become materialized in the process of production based on its state of development. 

Japan leaped forward after the war on the basis of the injection into its economy of not just massive fusion's of capital, but also and more fundamentally, the most modern technology. 

The Soviet system of industrial production worked. It worked less in comparison to the technological advance of the world industrial system and the gigantic leap that unfolded as the mechanization of agriculture - 1940-1980, and then, the leap to electro-computerized industrial process. Soviet industrial production hit the wall of the law of value in the absolute sense and in the relative sense. 

The less it could compete, the more it fell behind and the more it fell behind the less it could compete. It became cheaper to buy Argentina wheat on the world market, than to produce it domestically. Not because of policy difference but because of the technological state of production exported by US imperialism and implemented in Argentina. The Cold War was not simply two imperial authorities confronting one another militarily but a concerted effort by America to prevent technological transfer. 

Why was the US more technologically advanced? Everyone knows the answer to this question. 

Today America and the world industrial system has "hit the wall of value" not simply in the relative sense of the consuming capacity of the market versus the productive capacity of the infrastructure, but also due to the implementation of advanced robotics. The basis of the value system is being undermined because robots and computers produce without the ability to exchange, much less engage in exchange based on the labor content of commodities. 

The value form is under attack because its labor content is being radically transformed by a new technology. It is not just a question of money as a certificate for exchange or the embodiment of capital - that is the means by which one can acquire means of production and expropriate social products. 

For the Soviet system to leap forward - in theory, what would have been required was not simply correct policy - reflective cognitive functioning, as such (speaking in terms of fundamentality) but a massive technological transfer that undermines the law of value, and a transition (revolution) in the world industrial infrastructure - social revolution.  

The conclusion is inescapable: American led world capital and the Soviet sector of the world economy was united into a singularity called the mode of production, and this mode of production was the industrial production of commodities. Soviet socialism was not a different mode of production and could not be. Policy does not and cannot create development as such, but can only facilitate that, which is developing. 

What appear and was understood as an antagonism within the world market was in fact not the antagonism that emerges - described by Marx, "as a certain stage in the development of the material power of production."

The society called an association of collective producers is only possible at a "certain stage in the development of the material power of production." This stage is identified not on the basis of ideology or political orientation, but by a development in the mode of production where the commodity form faces transition - dissolution as a governing societal force, and society begins the leap to a new mode of production. 

What is the commodity form? The commodity form means that products are exchanged on the basis of the labor content contained within them - its value. What is value? Value is the amount of socially necessary labor contained within products. The specifics of how this labor content - socially necessary labor, is purchased in the form of labor power is important but not the defining measure of the commodity form. Once upon a time merchants purchased articles from individual producers and placed them on the market for sale, which was a form of commodity exchange. In America a class of slaves once produced an important commodity exchanged in the world market called cotton. How the social product is expropriated - its mode of existence, is not the fundamentality defining the mode of production in material life. 

This is to say, I agree 100% that - as you state the crisis of the industrial system: 

"are only forms-of-appearance of the deeper and long run secular crisis of accumulation which Marx analyzed in a twofold way, as (a) the law of the tendency of the profit-rate to fall and (b) the general law of population (which Marx called 'the most important law' governing the social logic of capitalism)."

The law of the tendency of the profit-rate to fall and its mode of existence - called by Marx the organic composition of capital, is how and the reason for my particular presentation of the law of value based in the technological development of the material power of production. The words "industrial system" is used instead of "capitalism" because one tends to get stuck on the mode of appropriation of the social product and miss the underlying law of value, which governs all forms of commodity production, not just capitalist commodity production. 

This is to say the mode of appropriation of the social product in the Soviet Union's industrial infrastructure prevented instruments of production from passing into the hands of individuals, who in turn could appropriate products and place them on the market for private exchange. This is the bottom line meaning of socialism in the USSR. 

In the agricultural sector individuals could not own the land and major implements of production, but could enter private exchange of their products for money, which in turn was used to acquire consumer products. I recognized why the black market existed in the Soviet Union. Here is the screaming of value, repeatedly suppressed to no avail. 

The Soviet Union was Soviet socialism as it evolved during the transition from agriculture to industry - an impossible contradiction from the standpoint of the law of value and the society of associated producers Marx speaks of - especially its higher phase. Then again, capitalist slavery in America was an impossible contradiction that could not and did not stand. 

I concur with the statement that Soviet socialism was not "state capitalism" and any other such childishness. The reason such proponents of this theory cannot understand Soviet economy is because they discard the frame that holds the picture.  

Real life is not composed of laboratory purity or book abstraction. This is also why America's industrial development and the evolution of the national-colonial question was never really understood on the basis of Marx analysis of slavery. 

It is not possible, much less desirable to try and ideologically win over people to a form of production inferior to what they have experienced. What stops and will stop the American workers from sitting at home drinking his beer and watching television is the social revolution in the mode of production that compels society to leap forward and change or face destruction - self interest as a class. 

Stalin's words are securely lodged in the memory of my eardrum: 

"the American workers can tell us how far we have advanced." 

He of course meant the American workers as they lived the story of value and develops an understanding of Marx presentation of the law of value and under what conditions the commodity form face extinction. 


Comradely,


Melvin P.