Additional remark on value, price, unequal exchange and the role of Jesus Christ

[Jurriaan Bendien <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote previously:

"When, however, we investigate accounting systems, it is very clear that in
defining and allocating "costs" and "revenues" consistently as such (i.e.
all transactions are accounted for either as costs or as revenues), we must
already implicitly have a concept of conserved value and new value added, a
concept of value-augmentation, which is arrived at through an examination of
the exchange relations involved, exchange relations in which "what is owned
by you is transferred to ownership by me" or vice versa - exactly the
starting point of Marx's discussion in Das Kapital. That means, that in the
very definition of economic value, reference to "ownership relations" must
be made, because exchange presupposes them."

That should really read "exchange relations in which "what is owned by you
is transferred to ownership by me, so that you or somebody else has less,
and I have more" or vice versa.

The "less" and "more" is essential, because that is what value-augmentation
is dependent upon, it means that less value becomes more value. However,
when it is a question of value-augmentation, value-accretion ("making
money") the supporters of private enterprise suddenly become socialists:
that is, they say that the "value added" was created by everybody and shared
by everybody, because the "factors of production" (land, labour and capital,
the holy trinity as Marx says) all contributed to its production. The reason
is that the competition for shares of surplus-value depends on the unity of
the bourgeois class in enforcing the private property entitlement to
surplus-value as such.

The problem however is that land and capital do not produce anything, people
do. You might say, the land grows the wheat and therefore produces the
wheat, but the wheat has to be planted first. Or you might say, I invest my
capital, so do others, but the overall pattern of investment means that just
by leaving my money in the bank, its value is augmented, because of a change
in monetary relations or price relations, and then capital augments itself
without people doing anything specific to augment it, as an "effect". But
the very ability to have money in the bank already presupposes "people doing
things", and if they do not do it, then you cannot even guarantee that you
can get your money out of the bank. If people do not work the land or
maintain capital assets, it quickly costs an enormous amount, even if
nothing is actually produced. Merely owning an asset thus doesn't augment
its value, indeed it might decline in value, if it is not maintained, people
have to do something to increase its value, even if it was merely eating
food.

This neoclassical conceptualisation therefore neatly abstracts from
ownership relations, and from the terms of exchange in the exchange process.
Hence it mystifies the origin of profit - a new economic value could arise
in any sort of way (it could be a utility preference, a reward for
enterpreneurship or innovation, or any other post fectum psychological or
moral verity), and implies no specific morality whatever, because the social
relations involved have been abstracted from. The idea that profit must be
defined in terms of the institutionalised terms of exchange, and therefore
in terms of ownership relations, to explain "how what is yours become mine,
so that you have less and I have more", is denied.

When it is a question of appropriation, the owners of capital strongly
defend private property, and of course they have to, because otherwise "what
is yours cannot become mine" except through theft and robbery, and a system
of theft and robbery becomes arbitrary, and creates no impulse for
production creating new value - because there is no motive for producing, if
what you produce gets stolen, and if you can steal what somebody else has,
without having to engage in production (opportunity cost = 0).

But when it is a question of consuming what has been appropriated, they can
be very happy "socialists" willing to share the loot. The sphere of
consumption is the socialist sphere, the sphere in which we can recognise
ourselves as social human beings rather than economic or commercial beings.
Entitlements to assets are then essentially not an economic issue, but a
juridical or political issue, and moral questions about it are best left to
philosophers.

Thus, in bourgeois ideology, the process of value augmentation in
production, involving legalised theft, is first of all hidden in the
double-entry bookkeeping technique. Then, economics is split off from
morality, so that ownership entitlements are a presupposed legal and
political matter, which explains that theft is only morally permissible if
the law sanctions it, and if the law sanctions it, it isn't theft. Finally,
economics itself is split between micro-economics and macro-economics, so
that we are always seeing things double, namely at the level of the
enterprise, and at the level of the aggregate result of the operation of all
producers and consumers ("the market") which reacts back on individual
enterprises.

The macro-economic process is again framed in terms of double-entry
bookkeeping. This has the paradoxical result, that whereas "one man's gain
in exchange is another man's loss", and that aggregate profits should
therefore theoretically equal zero, and "assets less liabilities" should
equal zero, in fact that is not the case, and a steady stream of new profits
and new assets is added to the existing stock. But the dichotomisation in
thought between the individual and the social, and all the "dualisms" and
intellectual paradoxes that flow from that, makes it impossible to
understand conceptually where that new economic value originates from.

In a system of equal exchange, a sum of money would exchange for a
commodity, such that the money was equal to the replacement of the commodity
exchanged, by an identical commodity. This is of course not the purpose of
exchange, the purpose is to use the money to acquire a different commodity -
but, if equal exchange applies, then the second commodity is equal in value
to the first (but we can prove that, only by showing that the price of the
second commodity is identical).

In reality, of course, that is the exception, and not the rule, since prices
fluctuate in accordance with supply and demand, and consequently the
value-relations or price-relations between commodities change all the time.
This already implies unequal exchange at any point in time. Market
enthusiasts will however argue that prices will always equilibrate, so that
the value-relationship between goods traded gravitates naturally to a
situation of equal exchange in the defined sense.

The problem however is, how do we know epistemically that this is the case,
if all we have is prices ? How do we know we have a "fair" exchange ?  The
only way we can do that, it to compare commodity prices over time, according
to calculations which adjust for changes in the buying power of money (a
constant monetary value), so that we can calculate the "terms of trade"
between commodities in constant price terms. Even so, the argument is still
unrealistic and circular, not just because equal exchange viewed as
"constant terms of trade" tends to be the exception and not the rule, but
because prices fluctuate in terms of demand and supply, and so the constancy
of the trading value of money can only be established with reference to the
prices of the quantities of goods traded. Hence Marx's "commodity theory of
money" in his theory of purified capitalism.

If demand increases, it is not just the volume of trade which expands, but
also the prices of the traded commodities which increase. If we have no
referent other than prices, then all we can say is that, if the buying power
(or price) of money itself, in which prices are expressed, remains constant,
prices charged must reflect equal exchange, i.e. equal exchange exists if
prices can be attached in accordance with monetarily effective demand, even
if the price-level itself rises or falls (x units of commodity A can
exchange for y units of commodity B for price q at time t, and then x units
of commodity A can exchange for y units of commodity B for price q+1 at time
t+1, but the change in the price-level from q to q+1 does not affect the
terms of trade, since x units of commodity A can still exchange for y units
of commodity B, the quantitative proportion remains the same).

The foundational principle of modern bourgeois economics is really that, if
the exchange rate of money can be stabilised to a constant level, then equal
exchange must occur, since then price fluctuations will equilibrate supply
and demand such that the terms of trade remain constant. This is another way
of saying that if the price-level remains constant, equal exchange must
occur. But paradoxically, we have logically no way of verifying the
constancy of that price-level. All we can say is that x units of commodity A
can exchange for y units of commodity B for price q at time t, and then x
units of commodity A can exchange for y units of commodity B for price q+1
at time t+1. Hence, if it is discovered that the terms of trade between
commodity A and B do change, i.e. that the total structure of
exchange-ratios changes, the only way out is to say that people were just
prepared to pay or sell more or less for A or B because "people wanted or
needed different things", and that explains the price level. In that case,
economics is redundant, and we ought to finish off our economic studies, and
concentrate more on what people want or need, i.e. those "human" (moral,
political, legal and psychological) questions expelled from economic
science.

Love capitalism is essentially emotionalist capitalism, because if we
thought seriously, logically and systematically about capitalism we would
understand it is based on legalised theft. A logic of discovery must
therefore mutate into a logic of justification, and through that loggic of
justification, capitalism must be eternalised. The problem of legalised
theft I referred to, thus mutates into a sensitive, humane, practical
approach to the problem that "people want or need different things", and
some people are just different, and so we need more appreciation of
difference.

In other words, love capitalism is still based on legalised theft, but this
legalised theft is justified by saying that love capitalism can provide
everything you need to survive. The Lord taketh away, but the Lord also
giveth, and what he giveth, is plentiful and abundant. Until we have to pay
the bills (in the case of the US government, over $6 trillion). The
necessity for paying the bills is justified by say that even although
capitalism is loving, and differences must be sensitively/humanely
understood, acknowledged and appreciated, our ability to "give unto others"
is practically limited, because we are human, and therefore imperfect. Wir
haben dass nicht gewusst, we cannot know everything.

Hence, the imperfectibility of human beings is an enduring theme in
postmodernist thought, and that is why also we need Jesus Christ, to remind
us you must always render unto Ceasar's what it Ceasar's. A man must have
balls. He must assert himself and conquer, and those conquests must be
inspired by Jesus Christ, who reminds us that it is part of love to take
things, that it is human to appropriate, to want to possess, to want to
satisfy needs and wants through appropriation, and that we are humanised
through taking that. Real human progress therefore consists in conquest, the
love of life expressed through conquest, Krusades. But this conquest must be
fair. Thou shalt taketh no more than thy needeth, and if thy taketh more
than they needeth, then the Lord shalt punish thee. Knock, and the door
shall be opened. You can take what is not yours, but you have to be nice in
doing so. Being civilised is being nice, so then civlised people should be
in charge of judging nicety. The moral entitlement to ownership of private
property should then be justified by the way in which it is acquired,
whether it was nice or not nice.

The conclusion we can draw about all this, is that the perfect crime is "the
crime which is not a crime". This could be construed in two ways: either the
crime is not recognised in law as criminal, or else the crime is endorsed by
the law, in which case it is not a crime at all. If the latter is the case,
then it can only be viewed as a crime from a different moral perspective, in
which case we are back with the problematic of difference. If that
perspective is valid, then the universalist pretensions of bourgeois law are
invalidated. The question then arises as to what moral behaviour would be,
how we would know that. Well, it would I suppose reduce ultimately to the
practical ability secure the conditions for survival, and so we can evaluate
the practical ability of individuals to survive, while the social
foundations of capitalist society remain unquestioned. The choice is between
capitalism and hanging on your cross.

Jurriaan