Facets of Value

[S.Artesian]

By way of introduction:

This thread spins off, kind of, from a discussion Chris Koch and I were engaging in one of Rosa L's numerous assaults on Marx use of, demonstration of, relation to dialectics-- and dialectics as elaborated by Hegel albeit in mystical form.

I don't mind anti-dialecticians one bit. I mind Rosa immensely for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has engaged with her.

I like Chris because he actually is willing to deal with what Marx writes in his economic works, even to the point of dealing with things beyond or prior to volume 1, not to mention the afterward to the second edition of volume 1.

At which point I have to add this. I think it is a regular hoot, a knee-slapper that our lady of the anti-dialectic makes such a big deal of the afterward to volume 1, and claims that volume 1 is the only volume that Marx ever prepared and "certified" himself. I think it's a hoot because nobody is reading the volume that Marx prepared, we're reading the English translation of that volume that wasn't prepared until after Marx's death-- and in most cases we're reading the volume as it was prepared by Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling and good old Frederick Engels. The translation itself is based on the 4th German Edition.... so so much for Marx's own "certification" of the material.

There are other translations. My personal favorite of chapter 1 "The Commodity" happens to be Albert Dragstedt's from his book Value: Studies by Karl Marx, published in 1976 and based on the first German edition of Capital.

The Marxist Internet Archive has it available here: (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm)

I highly recommend people read this translation.

Meanwhile, I have long contended that Marx demonstrates his relation to Hegel, and his extraction of the rational kernel of Hegel's dialectic in those first three chapters of Capital.

Chris and I thought it would be of some value, at least to us, to thrash through this part of Marx's work from our different, and opposing, perspectives. Hopefully it will be of value, use-value to others.

I would also like to point out in his introduction to the first edition of Capital, Marx explicitly states that this work is a continuation of his previous work, published in 1859--A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. He attributes the 8 year lag between the two works to various illnesses. Marx does not say "This work breaks with that previous work in methodology of presentation." Marx does not say "The delay was due to the fact that I had to re-think my entire method of inquiry, of critique, because I concluded that my previous work was compromised by elements of Hegelian mystification that I have, in this new work, completely extirpated. " On the contrary, Marx establishes the continuity of this volume with his previous work and makes no mention of any change in methodology, inquiry, analysis, critique, or relation to dialectics .

But anyway-- to the issue at hand-- value:
________________________________





1. In his preface to the first edition of Capital, Volume 1, Marx writes that this work is the continuation of his work in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published 1859. Marx states:


The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connexion and completeness. The presentation of the subject matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume.


Of course, it is these three chapters on commodities, exchange, and money that constitute not the core, but the entry, the vector to the core of Marx's critique which is that capital is a historical relation of production, of property to labor; that value is the expropriation of the powers of labor.
Marx advises the reader that the exploration of value will present the greatest challenge, and then Marx proceeds to give the reader the key to meeting that challenge. He identifies the commodity as the commodity form of the product of labor. The value form of the commodity is labor in commodity form.


Marx assumes that the reader will be willing to struggle through the discussion of the value forms in order to learn something new. In this, Marx was displaying uncharacteristic optimism.


"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ―an immense accumulation of commodities,..."

The above, the opening sentence of chapter 1, might just be an understatement. It, the wealth of the capitalist mode of production is more than an immense accumulation of commodities. It is a universe of commodities. It is the commodity as the universe. Both product and its means of production are at one and the same time expressions of each other, each other's relation to labor, and the expression of each other's relations to all commodities. Both, all can be exchanged for the other, for an other, for all others. Exchange mediates the expression, the materialization, the realization, the accumulation, and the pocketing of value. Exchange then becomes the purpose of production.
Capital begins where value commands the labor of others. The commodity begins where its production is of no use, satisfies no direct need of the producer, but rather is produced for exchange. Capital begins where labor itself is not for the use of the laborer, satisfies no direct need of the producer, has no value for the laborer save its value in exchange for the means of its own sustenance or an equivalent thereof. Capital expands its reproduction, accumulates, as value commanding the labor of others.
Capitalist production, capitalist organization, ownership of the means of production is measured by its products, is the measure of the products. Production is, of, by, for value.

Social living labor, and the labor objectified, materialized in the private ownership, in the property of the means of production are each reproduced in the existence of the other. The value form of the means of production is the existence of labor as a commodity. This mutual reproduction is based on the historical separation, the opposition of the means of production which are simply the conditions of labor to labor itself. Without that separation, that opposition, there is no organization of labor in commodity form. Value is itself the composed identity of this opposition, where the opposites are mediated.


The commodity in its specific form, as a shirt, a gallon of milk, a locomotive, is useless to the producer. It exists as a sink, a mule, a vehicle for carrying value to market. The capitalist purchaes the use-value of labor, its ability to produce commodities, paying a wage which is calculated and distributed by the time of production. With this purchase, the capitalist obtains the power of labor to reproduce its social organization, its wage, its equivalent of subsistence [and even improvement] in less time than working time required by the capitalist. It is this power of labor to sustain more than its own existence, "more" than just its individual existence and "more" than just the immediate needs of both its individual and collective existence, in less than the total time of its existence, that is purchased by the capitalist. It is this power of labor when purchased that becomes the property of the capitalist, that becomes the basis of accumulation, that is converted into greater masses of the commodities that now command it to labor for the creation of greater masses of commodities that command it. It is this power that is inverted into value.


II. Marx continues his exploration of the commodity with an analysis of "The two poles of the expression of value: Relative form and Equivalent form." Here Marx states, "The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty."
Using the well-worn example of the line and the coat, Marx begins his critique through the representation of the relation of equivalence, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat. The linen, for Marx, expresses its value in the coat. The linen has value relative to the coat. The coat represents value in the equivalent form.


Marx continues:


The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes – i.e., poles of the same expression. They are allotted respectively to the two different commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of the use value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be expressed only relatively – i.e., in some other commodity. The relative form of the value of the linen presupposes, therefore, the presence of some other commodity – here the coat – under the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume the relative form. That second commodity is not the one whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as the material in which the value of the first commodity is expressed.


Here is where we get some head scratching-- expressions of the value form that are inseparable, mutually dependent, and mutually exclusive? How can any things be mutually dependent, inseparable, and at the same time mutually exclusive? No things can exist simultaneously that are inseparable and mutually exclusive. But Marx is not discussion the physical quantities of being. He is exploring the expressions, the manifestations, the commerce of and in social relations. In that commerce value has forms, moments of expression in commodities that, while dependent upon the existence of the commodity itself as a value, excludes the expression of that other moment in that particular commodity.



Is it really, can it really be, that simple? Yes, and as Marx explicitly remarks, the very simplicity is the source of such difficulty.



If we look back at a previous iteration of these value expressions in Marx's notebooks, we find what is in my opinion, a much cleaner expression, and resolution, of this apparent antagonism:
Let us consider exchange between linen-producer A and coat-producer B. Before they come to terms,
A says: 20 yards of linen are worth 2 coats (20 yards of linen = 2 coats),
But B responds: 1 coat is worth 22 yards of linen (1 coat = 22 yards of linen).
Finally, after they have haggled for a long time they agree:
A says: 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat,
and B says: 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen.
Here both, linen and coat, are at the same time in relative value-form and in equivalent form. But, nota bene, for two different persons and in two different expressions of value, which simply occur (ins Leben treten) at the same time. For A his linen is in relative value-form – because for him the initiative proceeds from his commodity – and the commodity of the other person, the coat, is in equivalent form. Conversely from the standpoint of B. Thus one and the same commodity never possess, even in this case, the two forms at the same time in the same expression of value.
(c) Relative value and equivalent are only forms of values.
Relative value and equivalent are both only forms of commodity-value. Now whether a commodity is in one form or in the polar opposite depends exclusively on its position in the expression of value. This comes out strikingly in the simple value-form which we are here considering to begin with. As regards the content, the two expressions:
1. 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat,
2. 1 coat = 20 yards of linen or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen
are not at all different. As regards the form, they are not only different but opposed. In expression 1 the value of the linen is expressed relatively. Hence it is in the relative value-form whilst at the same time the value of the coat is expressed as equivalent. Hence it is in the equivalent form. Now if I turn the expression 1 round I obtain expression 2. The commodities change positions and right away the coat is in the relative value-form, the linen in equivalent form. Because they have changed their respective positions in the same expression of value, they have changed value-form (die Wertform gewechselt).



The forms are the moments of expression of the different facets composing the value relation. Marx makes it clear that regarding the content of the value relation itself, the expressions are not at all different. Regarding the forms, they exist only opposite to each other. A single commodity can never exist in the two forms at the same time. The forms are moments.

So.... so if it's that simple, can it really be that important? Again, the answer is "yes." In exploring the forms of expression of value, Marx is essentially rotating the commodity through the value relationship. Through this rotation, Marx establishes that the value in exchange of the commodity is not produced in the markets. Value is not a result of the relation of the commodity to all other commodities. Value is not the product of all commodities in relation to each other. Value is not the product of any or all commodities relative to the single commodity that exists as equivalent to all commodities but is itself no commodity, money.

The forms of the expression of value are important in the process of exchange in that these forms are moments in the calculus of the realization of the value aggrandized in production.

Further, because all commodities can be expressed in both relative and equivalent forms, all labors are equivalent, all labors are relative. All labors, no matter the advanced or rudimentary level of technique, can be expressed in any other labor. All labors can be expressed in relative and equivalent forms. All labors are equivalent, because they can be expressed, compared, quantified by and in a single measure, a single dimension, a single proportion. Labor is the source of value because labor itself has been transformed, clarified, reduced to a common social substrate, time. Time really is of the essence.

Marx puts it this way in The Poverty of Philosophy: 'Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most time's carcass.' And he puts it this way in the Grundrisse: 'Economy of time - to this all economy ultimately reduces itself.' He wasn't kidding.

III. Because value has the relative and equivalent forms of expression, because all commodities are values, and because no commodity can simultaneously express its relative and equivalent forms, some representation of value which mediates these forms is required for exchange to proceed. The mediations of value require the services of an inter-mediation. The inter-mediation must embody the disembodiedvalue from the commodity.

What is embedded in the commodity, value, exists in latency, as potential. The commodity's actual existence as both useful article and a value, given the social relations of production that give it life, the social relations that give the commodity the power over the human being, the social relations that give the commodity its existence as private property, is threatened by these exact relations, by its existence as private and not social production.

The commodity may not be useful, and the value goes unrealized. The commodity may be useful, but the market may discount its value based on the average time required for the reproduction of all such commodities. The value aggrandized in production is comes to the market on a wing and a prayer, as wing and a prayer, and money is the answer to all the prayers. It is the ascension of the commodity, its transubstantiation.

Without the inter-mediation, commerce cannot proceed. Accumulation cannot occur. Reproduction ceases. The individual commodities remain individual commodities, oscillating in value forms, but not realizing the value relationship. Barter can continue. Trade can grow. Capital, however, as the expanding universe of commodity production, as the accumulation of value as value is impossible.

And this is where Marx is taking us in this first chapter of volume, to the role of money as the mediator of the value forms; to money as the disembodied embodiment of all the substance of all commodities; toward the conflict between accumulation of value and the growth of the means of production.

[ChrisK]

1. In his preface to the first edition of Capital, Volume 1, Marx writes that this work is the continuation of his work in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published 1859. Marx states:


The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connexion and completeness. The presentation of the subject matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume.


Of course, it is these three chapters on commodities, exchange, and money that constitute not the core, but the entry, the vector to the core of Marx's critique which is that capital is a historical relation of production, of property to labor; that value is the expropriation of the powers of labor.
Marx advises the reader that the exploration of value will present the greatest challenge, and then Marx proceeds to give the reader the key to meeting that challenge. He identifies the commodity as the commodity form of the product of labor. The value form of the commodity is labor in commodity form.

Marx assumes that the reader will be willing to struggle through the discussion of the value forms in order to learn something new. In this, Marx was displaying uncharacteristic optimism.

If anything, this supports the claim that Marx was turning back to the Scottish Materialists in terms of his methods of analyzing capital. His statments in the first preface offer an Aristotlean (whose methods the Scottish Materialists refined) method of looking at economics. In that paragraph he speaks of beginnings; the finding of which is the key to Aristotle's theory of scientific enquiry as he advanced in the Physics. He then goes on to discuss that we have a general idea of the universal of economics, but not the particulars (more aspects of Aristotle). His is the study of the first principles of economics.

Additionally, he is making an identity statement that the commodity-form and the value-form of the commodity are the particulars of capitalist economies. This is where he begins to find the first principles of the economy because in understanding the particulars he can then begin to explain in a profound way the universal of the economy.


"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ―an immense accumulation of commodities,..."

The above, the opening sentence of chapter 1, might just be an understatement. It, the wealth of the capitalist mode of production is more than an immense accumulation of commodities. It is a universe of commodities. It is the commodity as the universe. Both product and its means of production are at one and the same time expressions of each other, each other's relation to labor, and the expression of each other's relations to all commodities. Both, all can be exchanged for the other, for an other, for all others. Exchange mediates the expression, the materialization, the realization, the accumulation, and the pocketing of value. Exchange then becomes the purpose of production.
Capital begins where value commands the labor of others. The commodity begins where its production is of no use, satisfies no direct need of the producer, but rather is produced for exchange. Capital begins where labor itself is not for the use of the laborer, satisfies no direct need of the producer, has no value for the laborer save its value in exchange for the means of its own sustenance or an equivalent thereof. Capital expands its reproduction, accumulates, as value commanding the labor of others.
Capitalist production, capitalist organization, ownership of the means of production is measured by its products, is the measure of the products. Production is, of, by, for value.

It should be noted that we are dealing with the first edition of chapter 1.

This is actually another proof of his Aristotlean view; he is arguing that the economy is, essentially, composed of commodities. He is following the Aristotlean notion that in order to make claims of the universal, we must inductively observe many particulars and then we can make deductive arguments about truths of the universal.

In this instance he is observing what is true of many different commodity forms. He makes claims about exchange-value and use-value in all of these things based on what is observable. From here he will go on to explain what is therefore true of capitalist economics.

You are making the mistake of taking him as making an identity claim that the commodity is representative of the whole of capitalist economics. Rather, it is that the commodity is a particular of the economy.

Further, relationship between a commodity and the means of production is not one of reflection. The relationship is one of how the means of production are used by labor to give a commodity its quality. Thus, its exchange value is determined by the qualities it is given by labor as well as by the quanity of labor.

I agree with the rest of what you claim about the purpose of production.


Social living labor, and the labor objectified, materialized in the private ownership, in the property of the means of production are each reproduced in the existence of the other. The value form of the means of production is the existence of labor as a commodity. This mutual reproduction is based on the historical separation, the opposition of the means of production which are simply the conditions of labor to labor itself. Without that separation, that opposition, there is no organization of labor in commodity form. Value is itself the composed identity of this opposition, where the opposites are mediated.

I fail to see how these are opposites? If anything these are basic oppositions without being opposites. It appears that you are imposing opposites onto a system of mutual repoduction.


The commodity in its specific form, as a shirt, a gallon of milk, a locomotive, is useless to the producer. It exists as a sink, a mule, a vehicle for carrying value to market. The capitalist purchaes the use-value of labor, its ability to produce commodities, paying a wage which is calculated and distributed by the time of production. With this purchase, the capitalist obtains the power of labor to reproduce its social organization, its wage, its equivalent of subsistence [and even improvement] in less time than working time required by the capitalist. It is this power of labor to sustain more than its own existence, "more" than just its individual existence and "more" than just the immediate needs of both its individual and collective existence, in less than the total time of its existence, that is purchased by the capitalist. It is this power of labor when purchased that becomes the property of the capitalist, that becomes the basis of accumulation, that is converted into greater masses of the commodities that now command it to labor for the creation of greater masses of commodities that command it. It is this power that is inverted into value.

I agree with all of this except your use of the term inverted.


II. Marx continues his exploration of the commodity with an analysis of "The two poles of the expression of value: Relative form and Equivalent form." Here Marx states, "The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty."
Using the well-worn example of the line and the coat, Marx begins his critique through the representation of the relation of equivalence, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat. The linen, for Marx, expresses its value in the coat. The linen has value relative to the coat. The coat represents value in the equivalent form.


Marx continues:


The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes – i.e., poles of the same expression. They are allotted respectively to the two different commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of the use value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be expressed only relatively – i.e., in some other commodity. The relative form of the value of the linen presupposes, therefore, the presence of some other commodity – here the coat – under the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume the relative form. That second commodity is not the one whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as the material in which the value of the first commodity is expressed.


Here is where we get some head scratching-- expressions of the value form that are inseparable, mutually dependent, and mutually exclusive? How can any things be mutually dependent, inseparable, and at the same time mutually exclusive? No things can exist simultaneously that are inseparable and mutually exclusive. But Marx is not discussion the physical quantities of being. He is exploring the expressions, the manifestations, the commerce of and in social relations. In that commerce value has forms, moments of expression in commodities that, while dependent upon the existence of the commodity itself as a value, excludes the expression of that other moment in that particular commodity.

Is it really, can it really be, that simple? Yes, and as Marx explicitly remarks, the very simplicity is the source of such difficulty.

I think we should also mention that Marx is making a statement about value compared to use-value. He is claiming that while all things have use-value, the magnitude of value can only be expressed when compared to something different.

Another issue as to why this statement would be so hard to understand is his use of "mutually exclusive" when none of these things mutually exclude one another. It would seem clearer to me if the term "different" were used. That is what relative and equivelant forms are; different.


If we look back at a previous iteration of these value expressions in Marx's notebooks, we find what is in my opinion, a much cleaner expression, and resolution, of this apparent antagonism:
Let us consider exchange between linen-producer A and coat-producer B. Before they come to terms,
A says: 20 yards of linen are worth 2 coats (20 yards of linen = 2 coats),
But B responds: 1 coat is worth 22 yards of linen (1 coat = 22 yards of linen).
Finally, after they have haggled for a long time they agree:
A says: 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat,
and B says: 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen.
Here both, linen and coat, are at the same time in relative value-form and in equivalent form. But, nota bene, for two different persons and in two different expressions of value, which simply occur (ins Leben treten) at the same time. For A his linen is in relative value-form – because for him the initiative proceeds from his commodity – and the commodity of the other person, the coat, is in equivalent form. Conversely from the standpoint of B. Thus one and the same commodity never possess, even in this case, the two forms at the same time in the same expression of value.
(c) Relative value and equivalent are only forms of values.
Relative value and equivalent are both only forms of commodity-value. Now whether a commodity is in one form or in the polar opposite depends exclusively on its position in the expression of value. This comes out strikingly in the simple value-form which we are here considering to begin with. As regards the content, the two expressions:
1. 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat,
2. 1 coat = 20 yards of linen or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen
are not at all different. As regards the form, they are not only different but opposed. In expression 1 the value of the linen is expressed relatively. Hence it is in the relative value-form whilst at the same time the value of the coat is expressed as equivalent. Hence it is in the equivalent form. Now if I turn the expression 1 round I obtain expression 2. The commodities change positions and right away the coat is in the relative value-form, the linen in equivalent form. Because they have changed their respective positions in the same expression of value, they have changed value-form (die Wertform gewechselt).



The forms are the moments of expression of the different facets composing the value relation. Marx makes it clear that regarding the content of the value relation itself, the expressions are not at all different. Regarding the forms, they exist only opposite to each other. A single commodity can never exist in the two forms at the same time. The forms are moments.

I think it would be a mistake to view these two things as contradictory due to how both mutually dependent and mutually exclusive are used in this sort of statement. Mutually dependent means that they rely on each other to make a coherent value statement. Mutually exclusive deals with the type of value statement being made. Thus, this is not a contradictory element held by both simaltaneously, to make such an argument would require shifting the sense in which Marx uses mutually dependent.


So.... so if it's that simple, can it really be that important? Again, the answer is "yes." In exploring the forms of expression of value, Marx is essentially rotating the commodity through the value relationship. Through this rotation, Marx establishes that the value in exchange of the commodity is not produced in the markets. Value is not a result of the relation of the commodity to all other commodities. Value is not the product of all commodities in relation to each other. Value is not the product of any or all commodities relative to the single commodity that exists as equivalent to all commodities but is itself no commodity, money.

The forms of the expression of value are important in the process of exchange in that these forms are moments in the calculus of the realization of the value aggrandized in production.

Further, because all commodities can be expressed in both relative and equivalent forms, all labors are equivalent, all labors are relative. All labors, no matter the advanced or rudimentary level of technique, can be expressed in any other labor. All labors can be expressed in relative and equivalent forms. All labors are equivalent, because they can be expressed, compared, quantified by and in a single measure, a single dimension, a single proportion. Labor is the source of value because labor itself has been transformed, clarified, reduced to a common social substrate, time. Time really is of the essence.

Marx puts it this way in The Poverty of Philosophy: 'Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most time's carcass.' And he puts it this way in the Grundrisse: 'Economy of time - to this all economy ultimately reduces itself.' He wasn't kidding.

Nothing to disagree with here.


III. Because value has the relative and equivalent forms of expression, because all commodities are values, and because no commodity can simultaneously express its relative and equivalent forms, some representation of value which mediates these forms is required for exchange to proceed. The mediations of value require the services of an inter-mediation. The inter-mediation must embody the disembodiedvalue from the commodity.

What is embedded in the commodity, value, exists in latency, as potential. The commodity's actual existence as both useful article and a value, given the social relations of production that give it life, the social relations that give the commodity the power over the human being, the social relations that give the commodity its existence as private property, is threatened by these exact relations, by its existence as private and not social production.

The commodity may not be useful, and the value goes unrealized. The commodity may be useful, but the market may discount its value based on the average time required for the reproduction of all such commodities. The value aggrandized in production is comes to the market on a wing and a prayer, as wing and a prayer, and money is the answer to all the prayers. It is the ascension of the commodity, its transubstantiation.

Without the inter-mediation, commerce cannot proceed. Accumulation cannot occur. Reproduction ceases. The individual commodities remain individual commodities, oscillating in value forms, but not realizing the value relationship. Barter can continue. Trade can grow. Capital, however, as the expanding universe of commodity production, as the accumulation of value as value is impossible.

And this is where Marx is taking us in this first chapter of volume, to the role of money as the mediator of the value forms; to money as the disembodied embodiment of all the substance of all commodities; toward the conflict between accumulation of value and the growth of the means of production.

I really like the way you put this.

I would also like to point out that the use of value as a potential in something is a very Aristotlean view.

[S.Artesian]

If anything, this supports the claim that Marx was turning back to the Scottish Materialists in terms of his methods of analyzing capital. His statments in the first preface offer an Aristotlean (whose methods the Scottish Materialists refined) method of looking at economics. In that paragraph he speaks of beginnings; the finding of which is the key to Aristotle's theory of scientific enquiry as he advanced in the Physics. He then goes on to discuss that we have a general idea of the universal of economics, but not the particulars (more aspects of Aristotle). His is the study of the first principles of economics.


Additionally, he is making an identity statement that the commodity-form and the value-form of the commodity are the particulars of capitalist economies. This is where he begins to find the first principles of the economy because in understanding the particulars he can then begin to explain in a profound way the universal of the economy.



It should be noted that we are dealing with the first edition of chapter

Minor point ... the English translation used here is from the English translation of 1887 which is itself based on the fourth German edition.


This is actually another proof of his Aristotlean view; he is arguing that the economy is, essentially, composed of commodities. He is following the Aristotlean notion that in order to make claims of the universal, we must inductively observe many particulars and then we can make deductive arguments about truths of the universal.

Disagree, slightly, somewhat. He is not arguing that the economy is composed of commodities but rather that the commodity as the issue, the "offspring," of production must contain in itself the social relation at the root of the economy.

If the commodity exists as a value, then production itself, the components of that production must exist as value. If the realization, manifestation, of that value in exchange is the purpose of capitalist production, is accumulation, then the basis for accumulation has to exist [latently] in the exchange that determines production; between the components of production; between labor organized as wage-labor, and the means of production organized as private property. expanded reproduction




You are making the mistake of taking him as making an identity claim that the commodity is representative of the whole of capitalist economics. Rather, it is that the commodity is a particular of the economy.But again, the issue isn't the commodity, it is the value relation that makes the commodity, literally. It is the relation embedded in the commodity in its "inverted" [Marx's word] form as value. And that, that value relation is the whole of the economy.

There is no other animating force to capital; everything that capital is is derived from the value relation, the exchange between wage-labor and capital. It is the relation of classes.


Further, relationship between a commodity and the means of production is not one of reflection. The relationship is one of how the means of production are used by labor to give a commodity its quality. Thus, its exchange value is determined by the qualities it is given by labor as well as by the quanity of labor.When you say quality, do you mean its individual, particular characteristics or do you mean as a commodity, as a value?

If the former, its value is not determined by the qualities labor bestows upon it, but by the mode of production where labor time is aggrandized into private property. Exchange value will be realized, more or less, depending on the relation of the commodity to the socially necessary time required for its reproduction.

If the commodity is useless, has no use value, the exchange value is zero, despite whatever labor time is embodied within it. If however, the commodity is supremely useful but the development of production has eroded the surplus value that can be realized in the commodity, then either the markets will distribute, apportion the total socially available surplus value, the profit, to sustain reproduction of the commodity by transferring realizable value from other commodities-- or despite the apportioning process, production of the commodity will shrink, recede, and its usefulness will not be socially accessible.

If you mean the latter-- the commodity's capability to command the labor of others... then we agree.




I fail to see how these are opposites? If anything these are basic oppositions without being opposites. It appears that you are imposing opposites onto a system of mutual repoduction.Well, not exactly imposing, but indeed composing opposites into a system of mutual reproduction is precisely the point Marx, IMO is making here. It is certainly the point he makes throughout his economic manuscripts.

The opposition here is literally an opposition, an antagonism, based historically on the dispossession of the direct producers from the instruments of production, including that primary instrument of production-- land.

Marx expands greatly upon this in his manuscripts as the source for the estrangement of the products of labor, for estranged labor itself, for the products of labor arrayed against labor itself in that the accumulation of products, and the amplification of production becomes a force opposed to the laborers themselves, and opposed to the potential of labor for the laborers.


Anyway, when I get some time, I'll try and move further into the first 3 chapters--but as Hooper said to Quint in [I]Jaws: "Don't wait for me." Post what you think about those chapters anytime.

[ChrisK]

Anyway, when I get some time, I'll try and move further into the first 3 chapters--but as Hooper said to Quint in Jaws: "Don't wait for me." Post what you think about those chapters anytime.

Alright, right now I'm at school so I won't be able to do any detailed responses for a bit. And I'm going to reread the chapters first, as I feel that would be best. I think it would also be worthwhile to go into the original chapter 1.

[S.Artesian]

Another issue as to why this statement would be so hard to understand is his use of "mutually exclusive" when none of these things mutually exclude one another. It would seem clearer to me if the term "different" were used. That is what relative and equivelant forms are; different.

Agree. Kind of. Somewhat. Slightly. Let's clear up some vocabulary issues, if we can, as exploring value sure beats the hell out of arguing about the afterword to the 2nd edition.

Marx is certainly not using the phrase "mutually exclude" in the "formal" sense. For that matter, let's agree that Marx is not using "contradiction" in the "formal" sense, i.e. as regarding propositions where of two statements one and only one can be true.

Marx is using the phrase "mutually exclude" to describe which moment in the exchange process, in the realization of value, is manifested. The manifestation of one aspect at any one time bars, suppresses the manifestation of the other aspect or form at that same moment. Both aspects remain, and remain interdependent in order for the totality of all exchanges to proceed.

With contradiction, again, Marx is not analyzing propositions where one and only one can be true. Marx truly is using the term as Hegel used it-- assigning to contradiction a self-generated, and self-reproducing, conflict or antagonism. The substance, the system, the mode of production, the organization labor which is the subject of Marx's critique exists in, exists as that self-reproducing conflict, antagonism.

Clearly the separation of the direct producers from the instruments of production is such a self-reproducing antagonism, creating "free" dispossessed labor which must be exchanged for a wage.

In addition to reproducing itself only through expansion of the self-generated antagonism, the very means by which such antagonism is perpetuated-- the expansion of the means of production as private property, undermines the reproduction of the relations of production-- the accumulation of capital undermines the accumulation of capital. More than undermine accumulation, the accumulated capital creates the material basis for the abolishment, the negation of the very antagonism that is the source of accumulation.

Critical to both Marx's use of "mutually exclusive" and "contradiction" is the notion of time, of the development of the antagonistic, conflicted aspects, facets, relations. What is critical is the notion of becoming which Marx takes over from Hegel [IMO-- I prefer not to get into a debate about this, but rather see if we can find Marx demonstrating "becoming" in his analysis of the value forms and relations] and which Marx grounds in real history... the history of class and struggle, of the relations of property and labor.

[S.Artesian]

Alright, right now I'm at school so I won't be able to do any detailed responses for a bit. And I'm going to reread the chapters first, as I feel that would be best. I think it would also be worthwhile to go into the original chapter 1.

Do you mean the translation by Albert Dragstedt? That's a cool idea.

In the meantime, I'm going to push on to exchange and money and see what I can come up.

[Dean]

I've found the Ben Fowkes translation to be very accessible and concise. He is serious enough about his translation that he notes an inconsistency within the text:

57. Note by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the Russian edition: Apparently a slip of the pen. When writing faverse the author evidently meant direct.



In addition to reproducing itself only through expansion of the self-generated antagonism, the very means by which such antagonism is perpetuated-- the expansion of the means of production as private property, undermines the reproduction of the relations of production-- the accumulation of capital undermines the accumulation of capital. More than undermine accumulation, the accumulated capital creates the material basis for the abolishment, the negation of the very antagonism that is the source of accumulation.
What particular function of capital are you referring to? Do you mean that the extraction of financial value from the working class reaches such an extreme that the working class ceases to be able to provide meaningful demand for products (i.e., a market for the capitalists)?

[S.Artesian]

What particular function of capital are you referring to? Do you mean that the extraction of financial value from the working class reaches such an extreme that the working class ceases to be able to provide meaningful demand for products (i.e., a market for the capitalists)?


No, I'm referring to the expansion of the means of production, the change in the organic composition of capital, the amplification of the productivity of labor.

The produces the tendency for the rate of profit to decline-- but more than this the fact that the fixed portion of C grows so dramatically slows the rate of turnover for the entire capital used in production.

The total fixed capital is required to participate in the production process-- you can't use just half a computer without having purchased the whole computer [although you can lease processing power and time, like you can lease locomotives-- an attempt to reduce the fixed costs of production]; however the very definition of fixed capital means it only gives up minor portions of its value in each iteration of the production process. In fact the value of the fixed capital is rarely recovered through the "normal process," which normal process is "wearing out"--giving up all its use value in the production process.

More likely, the fixed portion becomes outmoded, obsolete, less capable of meeting the new average socially necessary times of reproduction. It becomes devalued way ahead of a depreciation schedule.

In addition this fixed capital cycle of "total participation in the labor process, but only marginal participation in the valorisation process" produces overproduction as the capitalists attempt to realize the value of the new fixed assets in as short a period as possible, and garner a larger portion of the socially available surplus value before the technology becomes widespread. When it does proliferate through the economy, the result is that the variance between the capitalists' cost of production and the price of production is reduced as so little human labor, and thus so little surplus labor, is embedded in any commodity. The margin for profit, the arbitrage between cost and price shrinks which drives overproduction into even greater overproduction.

In vol 3, Marx writes "overproduction is always the overproduction of capital." Overproduction is not based in the inability of the proletariat to provide effective demand.


Thanks for the info on the Fowkes translation.

[ChrisK]

Disagree, slightly, somewhat. He is not arguing that the economy is composed of commodities but rather that the commodity as the issue, the "offspring," of production must contain in itself the social relation at the root of the economy.

If the commodity exists as a value, then production itself, the components of that production must exist as value. If the realization, manifestation, of that value in exchange is the purpose of capitalist production, is accumulation, then the basis for accumulation has to exist [latently] in the exchange that determines production; between the components of production; between labor organized as wage-labor, and the means of production organized as private property. expanded reproduction

Certainly this is true. What is missing, however is the unit of accumulation. Lets look at how Marx puts it again.



The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#1) its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.

His claim is that the unit by which we measure the economy is the commondity. It is the smallest particular of the universal that is known as the economy.

Lets also look at how he puts it in the First edition



The wealth of societies in which a capitalistic mode of production prevails, appears as a ‘gigantic collection of commodities’ and the singular commodity appears as the elementary form of wealth. Our investigation begins accordingly with the analysis of the commodity.

Thus, he is claiming that the smallest possible unit, that the elementary form of wealth, is the commodity.

His claim is an Aristotlean one, that the universal (Economy), is composed of a particular (Wealth) and this wealth is a universal (Wealth) that is also composed of particulars (commodities). Thus, the commodity is the smallest piece of the economy. It is also produced by the economy and is the focus of the economy. Further, the accumulation of commodities is the purpose of capitalist production. He is highlight the primary cause of motion in capitalist production, which is the ultimate point of the Aristotlean and Scottish methods.


But again, the issue isn't the commodity, it is the value relation that makes the commodity, literally. It is the relation embedded in the commodity in its "inverted" [Marx's word] form as value. And that, that value relation is the whole of the economy.

There is no other animating force to capital; everything that capital is is derived from the value relation, the exchange between wage-labor and capital. It is the relation of classes.

Ah, you are correct. I have made the mistake here!


When you say quality, do you mean its individual, particular characteristics [i.e as a stove, a pizza, a microprocessor] or do you mean as a commodity, as a value?

If the former, its value is not determined by the qualities labor bestows upon it, but by the mode of production where labor time is aggrandized into private property. Exchange value will be realized, more or less, depending on the relation of the commodity to the socially necessary time required for its reproduction.

If the commodity is useless, has no use value, the exchange value is zero, despite whatever labor time is embodied within it. If however, the commodity is supremely useful but the development of production has eroded the surplus value that can be realized in the commodity, then either the markets will distribute, apportion the total socially available surplus value, the profit, to sustain reproduction of the commodity by transferring realizable value from other commodities-- or despite the apportioning process, production of the commodity will shrink, recede, and its usefulness will not be socially accessible.

If you mean the latter-- the commodity's capability to command the labor of others... then we agree.

The latter. So we are in agreement on this issue.


Well, not exactly imposing, but indeed composing opposites into a system of mutual reproduction is precisely the point Marx, IMO is making here. It is certainly the point he makes throughout his economic manuscripts.

The opposition here is literally an opposition, an antagonism, based historically on the dispossession of the direct producers from the instruments of production, including that primary instrument of production-- land.

Marx expands greatly upon this in his manuscripts as the source for the estrangement of the products of labor, for estranged labor itself, for the products of labor arrayed against labor itself in that the accumulation of products, and the amplification of production becomes a force opposed to the laborers themselves, and opposed to the potential of labor for the laborers.

While I still don't actually see how these are true opposites, perhaps I should look into his other manuscirpts. Which one's did you have in mind?

[ChrisK]

Agree. Kind of. Somewhat. Slightly. Let's clear up some vocabulary issues, if we can, as exploring value sure beats the hell out of arguing about the afterword to the 2nd edition.

Marx is certainly not using the phrase "mutually exclude" in the "formal" sense. For that matter, let's agree that Marx is not using "contradiction" in the "formal" sense, i.e. as regarding propositions where of two statements one and only one can be true.

I can very much agree to reading it as such. We leave out the formal sense and agree that Marx is using the terms in a different way.

In my writing I will be pointing out vocabulary things (such as where I point out how he uses mutally dependent and mutually exclusive together), but this has more to do we me clearing up in writing what I am reading. Think of it as stream of consciousness (and a guide for others who didn't read everything that we wrote).

Although I disagree with your interpretation of how Hegel used the term, I don't feel that this is the appropriate place to discuss this, and feel it is sufficent to say that I agree with your definitions.


Critical to both Marx's use of "mutually exclusive" and "contradiction" is the notion of time, of the development of the antagonistic, conflicted aspects, facets, relations. What is critical is the notion of becoming which Marx takes over from Hegel [IMO-- I prefer not to get into a debate about this, but rather see if we can find Marx demonstrating "becoming" in his analysis of the value forms and relations] and which Marx grounds in real history... the history of class and struggle, of the relations of property and labor.

I do not see Becoming in any aspect of Marx's work. But if you would recommend some background reading for me, I would love to discuss whether we can see this concept in Captial.

[S.Artesian]

I think the notion of becoming is "shot through" Marx's work, particularly in his economic manuscripts, where he discusses the reconversion of surplus value into capital, and the proposed Chapter 6 to Vol 1 "Results of the Direct Production Process"-- all in volume 34 of the Collected Works.

By now it's pretty evident that I think that the economic manuscripts in volumes 33 and 34 [and volume 28] are some of Marx's best writing.

Also I think important sections of vol 3 contain this notion of "becoming" when discussing the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.

IMO, "Becoming" is the axis around which Marx rotates capital when he says in vol 3 that the barrier to capitalist production is capital.

Anyway, I've been slack..well not really slack, working on Marx's theory of ground-rent in his critique of Ricardo [love the critique, but think his theory misses some critical elements]. Hopefully, this weekend I can get back to the first 3 chapters.

But definitely-- Marx is using contradiction in a different, specific manner. And he is using opposites in a different manner. These aren't opposites like top is opposite to bottom, or like the anode is the opposite of the cathode. We are talking about historical antagonism; where labor, the laborers confront the conditions for its own existence as belonging to property, to the owner of property; and the product of the labor creates a force arrayed against the realization of the labor process-- enhancing not the well-being, the social existence, of all, but that force of private property.

[S.Artesian]

In the exchange of commodities Marx examines the different rotations, appearances, of the commodity in its relative and equivalent forms of the expression of value. For exchange to expand, to dominate, to determine production, an equivalent for all commodities must be established. Just as human labor in general, in abstract, in its distilled, estranged existence as labor time is projected into the commodity as value, value is projected out of the commodity into the abstract, general, featureless, existence of money. Estrangement is now complete. Accumulation begins.
From here, Marx takes us to his essay on the fetishism of commodities in which Marx explores how and why it is the form of labor, the organization of production in capitalism that expresses human relations as the relations between things, and endows those relations between things with power over the relations of human beings. Direct production for direct need has disappeared. Production and need are associated only indirectly, mediated by the market, by exchanged. Value appears as an independent force, even a rational one, commanding equivalence, ensuring equity with a wave of its invisible hand.


As concise as Marx’s essay is, the essay itself is condensed in one sentence in the second footnote Marx provides: “When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons—‘La Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone,’—he ought to have added: a relation between persons expressed as a relation between things.”



Having established the relative and equivalent forms of value from the exchange of commodities; the money form from the relative and equivalent forms of value in the process, the circuits of exchange; fetishism, form supreme, from the value expressed as money over human beings, Marx now returns to examine exchange— not simply to reiterate the different forms, or moments of the commodity as value, but rather as expressing historical moments, measures and manifestations of commerce. The transformation of exchange from barter or simple trade into commerce is the “record” of the transformation of a useful surplus article into a commodity.



The commodity as a specific product, a useful article, and organized as value, then manifests the conditions of its production, i.e. labor as a specifically useful article that is organized as value.

[S.Artesian]

We talked a bit about the translation from the original German edition of vol 1-- and I wrote this for another thread-- but it deals with what I think are significantly more clear expressions by Marx in his analysis of value:

The English translation of vol1 that most of have, that Rosa probably relies upon, is not based on the the first edition of Capital, but on the 4th German edition.

If we look at a translation from that first German edition [the Marxist Internet Archive has one of Chapter 1, The Commodity, by Albert Dragstedt], Marx's language, analysis, and demonstration of the relative, equivalent, and value forms of the economy are clear examples of Marx's extraction of the rational kernel from Hegel's dialectic.

Marx in this first chapter is explaining the most critical facet of his investigation into capital [which is why it is the first chapter] and his materialist dialectic- the interpenetration of form and substance, of identity and opposition are clear.

He writes:



The expression of the value of linen in the coat impresses a new form upon the coat itself. After all, what is the meaning of the value-form of linen? Evidently that the coat is exchangeable for it. Whatever else may happen to it, in its mundane reality it possesses in its natural form [coat] now the form of immediate exchangeability with another commodity, the form of an exchangeable use-value. or Equivalent. The specification of the Equivalent contains not only the fact that a commodity is value at all, but the fact that it in its corporeal shape [I]counts as value for another commodity and consequently is immediately at hand as exchange-value for the other commodity..

Marx continues:

But commodities are objects. They have to be what they are in an object-like way or else reveal it in their own object-like relationships. In the production of linen, a particular quantum of human labour exists in having been expended. The linen's value is the merely objective reflection of the labour so expended, but it is not reflected in the body of the linen. It reveals itself by its [I]value relationship it to the coat. By the linen's equating the coat to itself as value-- while at the same time distinguishing itself from the coast as object of use-- what happens is that the coat becomes the form of appearance of line-value as opposed to linen-body: its value-form as distinguished from its natural form.

"..what happens is that the coat becomes the form of appearance of linen-value as opposed to linen-body"

The emphasis is in the original, as supplied by Marx.

Where does this get Marx? Where it always gets us-- back to the specific social organization of labor:


The use value coat only becomes the form of appearance of linen-value because linen relates itself to the material of the coat as to an immediate materialization of abstract human labour, and thus to labour which is of the same kind as that which is objectified within the linen itself. The object, coat, counts for it as a sensually palpable objectification of human labour of the same kind, and consequently as value in its natural form. Since it is, as value, of the same essence as the coat,the natural form coat thereby becomes the form of appearance of its own value. But the labour represented in the use-value, coat, is not simply human labour, but is rather a particular useful labour: tailoring.Simple human labour [expenditure of human labour-power] is capable of receiving each and every determination, it is true, but is undetermined just in and for itself. It can only realize and objectify itself as soon as human labor-power is expended in a determined form, as determined and specified labour; because it is only determined and specified labour which can be confronted by some natural entity-- an external material in which labour objectifies itself. It is only the 'concept' in Hegel's sense that manages to objectify itself without external material.
Here we have Marx's material extraction of the rational kernel from Hegel's dialectic. Human labor is capable of receiving every determination, and remaining human labor. But the labor can only realize itself as labour power embedded in the specific commodity. the labor can only realize itself as labour power, as an abstract quality-less expression when expressed in specific, determined material.

So the determination is two-fold-- as the concrete specific object of production, in all articles of production as value. It is the social determination, transforming labor into raw undifferentiated labor power, that contains the antagonism, the conflict, in Marx's word, the "contradiction" where labor power becomes opposite to and the negation of the power of labor.

[Zanthorus]

Certainly this is true. What is missing, however is the unit of accumulation. Lets look at how Marx puts it again.



His claim is that the unit by which we measure the economy is the commondity. It is the smallest particular of the universal that is known as the economy.

Lets also look at how he puts it in the First edition



Thus, he is claiming that the smallest possible unit, that the elementary form of wealth, is the commodity.

His claim is an Aristotlean one, that the universal (Economy), is composed of a particular (Wealth) and this wealth is a universal (Wealth) that is also composed of particulars (commodities). Thus, the commodity is the smallest piece of the economy. It is also produced by the economy and is the focus of the economy. Further, the accumulation of commodities is the purpose of capitalist production. He is highlight the primary cause of motion in capitalist production, which is the ultimate point of the Aristotlean and Scottish methods.

I don't think this is correct. Marx uses 'wealth' generally throughout his work to refer to use-values, the wealth of society is the mass of social use-values within that society. The point of the passage is that in capitalist society use-values, the material wealth of society, take on the form of commodities. They become the material repositories for exchange-value. The analysis begins by abstracting away from everything about capitalism besides this simple fact, and then analyses what is implied in this simple commodity form. He shows it's immanent development into money and then capital.

[ChrisK]

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. Its finals week so I will post something substantial here in a few days or so.

[S.Artesian]

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. Its finals week so I will post something substantial here in a few days or so.

Good luck with the exams.