Re: [ox-en] Re: What is value?
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan meretz.de>
- Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:37:40 +0100
On 2008-11-27 11:55, Paul Cockshott wrote:
Stefan Meretz wrote:
It can be done by adding up the time taken to train different
trades and professions and amortising this over either the working
life, or the period of obsolescence of the skill , whichever is
the shorter.
What about development of productive forces? Using machines,
computers, levels of cooperation? What about tacit knowledge?
Affective labour? And so on...
Why does this enter into the question, could you explain a bit more
what you are thinking?
Because there is not only training, that transforms "simple labour"
into "complex labour", but also the aspects I mentioned above.
Take a worker in a manufactory doing some manual operations. Take the
same worker and put him into an industrialized factory doing the same
operations with a thousand times bigger output. Skill does not play any
role in this example, but development of productive forces (my first
point). Marx then mentioned cooperation acting a gratis power for the
capital owner increasing the poductivity. -- There are endless aspects
you have to take into account, if you really want to calculate it.
Is it value or exchange value that you mean is a social
relationship?
Both.
I would say that exchange value is a quadernary social relation , but
that value is a a potential or scalar field. A scalar field is
arguably a binary relation, but this binary relation is a projection
subspace of the higher order space given by the technology matrix.
Well, I don't know the math scheme you present here, but IMHO is a
social relation not computable, independent of the formula you use. For
a not-commodity society it is also not necessary.
Exchange value certainly is presented by Marx as a relation in the
strict sense of Cobbs relational algebra, but is value also a
relation?
Yes, of course. Value is the expression of the fact, that
production is taken place isolated from each other (aka: privatly)
which brings up the necessity of an exchange and thus of a
comparision of the goods. But goods are not comparable in the sense
of finding an answer to the queston if they are equivalent. The
only aspect, which is comparable in the sense equivalence, is the
abstract labour.
Here I think you are confusing exchange value with value. Value in
the sense of socially necessary labour exists whether you have
exchange or not.
Why, if there is no necessity to exchange?
There was an extensive literature in Russia an
Czechoslovakia etc during the 50s and 60s on how to compute
objectively determined valuations prior to and independent of whether
exchange relations existed. Look at the work of Kantorovich and
others
I don't know the soviet literature, but only some debates in GDR. Afaik
they all failed. The reason is, that it is not possible to refrain from
using societal exchange as a practical bond of all these separated
productions. This could be overseen, because in socialist countries at
that time the state seems to bind the separated producers together by
central planing, but the base of calculation of the plans was either
voluntary (and thus false) or oriented at objective relations given by
world market. This means, that the value relations were somewhat
covered, but in the end they function like the "law of gravity ... when
a house falls about our ears." (Marx).
Abstract labour does not exist and does exist at the same time.
Nobody has ever seen or done »abstract labour«, it is nothing
»real«. At the same time it is »real«, because it is created by the
simple fact, that it is needed to be able to exchange equivalently.
And the process of »abstraction« is real in sense, that it happens
really (the word »real abstraction« is from Alfred Sohn-Rethel), it
guides the actions of the people (which is the base of fetishism).
But this reality is nothing natural, but exists only due to the
fact, that isolated production needs exchange and thus value. Value
is a social relationship. In other social circumstances, namely in
a society, which does not base on isolated production and exchange,
there is no value at all.
I disagree here. I take abstract labour to be labour abstracting from
its concrete characteristics.
Marx spoke clearly about the twofold character of labour: concrete and
abstract labour. Both are analytical terms, they do not exist as such.
You can say, that some labour is boring, because it is "abstracting
from its concrete characteristics", but this everyday speech. What
exists is only -- labour. It is like with a coin: One side does not
exist as such, only as a side of the coin.
Humans are universal labourers in the
same sense as the universal Turing machine. The UTM can do any
calculation, a human has the abstract ability to do any labour task.
In both cases programming/training is required, but just as the the
UTM is the abstract universal computer, we are RUR in Karol Capeks
sense.
Wow, this is a hardcore cognitivist standpoint I have heard about long
time ago (maybe because I am not working at a university). As you may
assume, I disagree here. Being a computer scientist and thus very
familiar with such analogues you give here, I have to say: No, the
analogue between human beings and a UTM fails, because we are not
universal robots (RUR). -- This would be another long debate.
But now it is clear to me, where you are taking the images and analogues
from and where the idea of total computability comes from.
It is the polymorphism of human labour that allows one to think
of it in the abstract, and for this available amount abstract
polymorphic labour: the working population and working day, to act
as the fundamental limit on what society can achieve.
This labour constraint is prior to the particular juridical form
assumed by production. In commodity economy it expresses itself
in the mystical form of prices, but one could have a de-mystified
set of social relations in which this value was dealt with
explicitly.
Ok, I understand your perspective, which is contrary to mine. I would
say, that not prices are the mystical form, but the commodity or the
value itself is the mystical form -- and I see myself in a good
accordance with Marx term of fetishism (see other mails).
De-mystification in my view can only mean to get rid of commodities,
exchange and value to build a free society -- as in free software and
free beer ;-)
Ciao,
Stefan
--
Start here: www.meretz.de
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