Re: Re(2): A sign forms a structural centre which determines the whole

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Jan 14 2001 - 17:12:41 PST


> "Value" is definitively in the domain of social construct, it represents
> the adoption of specific social relations and ethical precepts.

This social-constructionist perspective is quite the opposite of the manner
in which I understand "value" to exist, esp. as seen through Ilyenkov's
interpretation of Marx. The establishment of capitalist relations of
production, ie the subordination of substantive economics to the market,
which you seem to refer to social relations/ethical precepts, were not
understood at the time of their adoption as value relations at all. So long
as labor (creator of value) was not itself a
commodity, the accumulation of value could not occur, before that various
forms of wealth were accumulated that could not be fed back into the economy
to create more value. The formation of a market for labor had little to do
with the adoption of "specific relations and ethical precepts" (pace Max
Weber) and everything to do with the demise of the feudal system -- whether
through internal dynamics (a la Dobb) or through the penetration of
mercantile forces (a la Sweezy) but most likely through a synergy of both.
Enclosure of the commons, poor laws, all preceded by the movement of
merchants capital into the sphere of production coupled with
the transition from Grundsherrschafft to Guttserschafft rent relations in
western Europe, all this enabled the
formation of the "working classes" who had nothing but their labor and no
"web of inheritance" (E.P. Thompson) as within the feudal order to ensure
access to the means of production.

>It is interesting to read Adam Smith's "Principles of
> Moral Philosophy" which he wrote _before_ "Wealth of Nations", and see how
> the concept of value is emerging out of an exclusively ethical conception.

Adam Smith did not create the idea of value, which existed as an objectively
prevailing relationship in his social world, and which he did not even
understand correctly.

"With all later bourgeois economists, as with Adam Smith, lack of
theoretical understanding needed to distinguish the different forms of
economic relations remains the ruile in their coarse grabbing at and
interest in the empirically available material. Hence also their inablity
to form a correct conception of money, in which what is in question is only
various changes in the fomr of exchange-value, while the magnitude of value
remains unchanged." (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, V.1, 92, Progress
Publishers).

At the time Smith wrote that, the capitalist system was already mature in
England, with the transition to industrial division of labor--which
irrevocably subordinated labor to capital--already on the horizon. Here
again, Ilyenkov's discussionn of the early forms of the labor theory of
value (which could not account for profits on the basis of that since they
had not seen the effect of the labor-commodity itself) is directly to the
point. The theoretical concept of value emerged after value, as a practical
reality, an ideal, a concrete universal, had already taken root, just as
languages followed regular patterns long before anyone came up with the
concept of a grammar. Smith's attempts to account for value in terms of his
scottish moral philosophy are reminiscent of Priestley's attempt to account
for oxygen in terms of the phlogistons derived from Aristotelian alchemy..

_____________________________________________________
> "Value mediates the social division of labor. One could say that the
> global division of labor is the highest order activity system. One that
> subsumes all the others. Money is the artefact that enables this but it
> also does something else: it represents a "store of value". As such it is
> based on the historical cultural form: private property. From this
> perspective, one can rephrase your question: can the exchange functions of
> money exist independently of the store of value functions?"
> -----
>
> Well, I firmly believe that the answer to *this* question is "No", unless
> there is a global catastrphe which throws us backwards. Just as surely
once
> objective enquiry is alloweed, knowledge is accumulated, once a medium of
> exchange is allowed, value will be accumulated. That's my view.

Money, as a medium of exchange, has repeatedly emerged without being a store
of value. There have been numerous proposals for "money" that cannot bear
interest and some that incorporate a demurrage to ensure that the the
"credit" aspect of money, the demand that money represents, cannot be taken
out of circulation and interrupt the distribution of goods and services that
maintains a certain level of production (von Hayek?). Value is not
accumulated in money, the medium of exchange, rather value is symbolized in
money and hence money is the medium through which the accumulation of value
takes place. Value is accumulated in capital which is not reducible to
money although it presupposes it.
But the accumulation of value per se is not equivalent with the
development of social productive forces although it has been the historical
conditions within which this development has occurred during the past 250
years.

"The value antecedent to production and the value which results from it .. .
. constitutes the all-embracing and decisive factor int the whole process of
capitalist production. It is not only an independent expression of value as
in money, but a dynamic value, value which manifests itself in a process in
which use-values pass through the most varied forms. Thus in capital the
independent existence of value is raised to a higher power than in money."
(ToSV, V3, 131)

Paul H. Dillon



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