timdrake

I think it’s really strange to read the main transitional aspect of TGI as Marx “working through his Hegelianism”/this being the main separation between it and Capital, when Marx never had any Hegelianism to work through, and only describes himself as a “disciple of Hegel” (/calls Hegel “my master”) in maturity; wrt alienation, Marx already basically lays out his mature conception of alienation in TGI as a feeling that drives the proletariat to revolution and as a necessary historical phase to create the productive forces necessary for communism (all this as opposed to alienation being a humanist value postulate, as in The Holy Family), and the further detail/development of the concept of alienation (in how it historically arises and manifests itself) in Capital has nothing to do with Marx having further thrown off his Hegelianism, it’s just a direct product of his further economic research where he stops being reliant on Smith (for TGI) and constructs his own political economy.

In the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels say that the Russian commune could “pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership” only if the Russian Revolution (which he saw as inevitable, though it was not inevitable that it would "take[] place in time" (first draft of letter to Zasulich), and in the Letter to Otecestvenniye Zapisky he says that if Russia continues on its path, it will have lost this chance to skip the phase of capitalist development) is supported by wider revolution in the West. Otherwise, the Russian commune “must [] first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West.”

There’s zero approval by Marx here for the notion of skipping the phase of private production/property in one country without a wider revolution.

Marx told Zasulich at the time that education was one of the most crucial factors in the possibility of bypassing the agonizing stage of capitalism.

No he didn’t.

You repeatedly say I never made an argument or gave examples despite me doing both, you just reassert things in opposition to these arguments and examples which you deny the existence of and then in the same breath say that ~“simply saying things is not in fact a counter.” You are the one that doesn’t know the difference between making an argument and just saying things.

You insist that naturally occurring things need to be “processed” before they can be sold despite anyone with a functioning brain knowing that’s not universal. Do we even live on the same planet? At a certain point all I can do is say it’s obvious.

Marx’s chief argument isn’t that use-values exchanging means they must have an underlying value alone, it’s that the prices in an economy are not random, and so must be the result of their common elements, as can be exchanged for the universal commodity, money.

The problem is that I’ve read his argument and know for a fact that it goes exactly how I described it, that Marx does not establish prior in the argument that prices in an economy are not random, with the common element notion following from this; in fact, this is a conclusion he gets to simultaneously with the conclusion that exchange-values are a reflection of this third thing, these are actually the same conclusion. You can’t read what I’ve said, you can’t read what Marx said, what else can I do? This is the start of the argument:

Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms. Let us consider the matter a little more closely.

A given commodity, e.g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. – in short, for other commodities in the most different proportions. Instead of one exchange value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold &c., each represents the exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c., must, as exchange values, be replaceable by each other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first: the valid exchange values of a given commodity express something equal; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it.

Again, no capitalist is going to calculate SNALT, they are going to notice the cost of production and sell above that, meeting the market roughly where similar commodities are sold. Supply and demand therefore regulate price to value

You don’t need to reiterate that it isn’t intentional twice in response to my message where I acknowledge Marx says it isn’t intentional. And you are just assume value = SNALT again.

Yes, generally.

So not necessarily. I don’t know why you’re standing your ground on this absurd position that natural resources necessarily need to be extracted, refined and produced, or even transported to be exchanged.

Yes, again.

Right except that just isn’t true. It’s not necessary, all you need is an agreement. In terms of generalizing this exchange, that’s a different question. But I already explained why that doesn't matter.

All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop.

Simply claiming that something is true is not in fact enough to make it true.

Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong.

I was under the impression that you acknowledged that “there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor” [-me] but that “this does not make his argument invalid, though” [-you]. It doesn’t make sense for you to say this otherwise. So why would I have to list those qualities? I guess you changed your mind upon seeing the quote, but you should’ve just admitted this. The thing is, even if there weren’t these qualities, you would still be wrong because conceptually this would still make the argument invalid.

Regardless of specific use values, commodities all have the quality of existing in time, being comprised of matter for Marx, have the quality of being use-values in being exchange-values (that is, their use for the seller is always to be exchanged, regardless of their specific use for the buyer), I think this is enough.

Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies.

I already responded to this:

Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.

research and development

Not necessary.

Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.

Right, because I’m not countering an argument; a presupposition isn’t an argument.

You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth.

Right no I got that, it’s just that it makes no sense to reference that here, as I explained. There’s no way this isn’t a mistake, and there’s no way the confusion is on me. “You can call it a mistake if you want” is a funny response though.

Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.

You evidently do not understand what I’m asking.

Again, not a mix-up.

Again, there’s no other explanation. Which is why you just transition to a different point in the next sentence.

Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.

He can address it all he wants, it contradicts his argument I went over in the first place, that exchange of use values necessitates the presence of value. Forget everything else, this is the argument.

Natural resources take extraction to refine and produce

No? Not necessarily.

And the concept of owning land requires a body to uphold that, the state, and the value of land itself is tied to how productive it can make you.

Again, not necessarily.

This does not make his argument invalid, though. What’s common is that the makeup of commodities can be reduced entirely to the labor and raw materials that went into them.

It does make his argument invalid. Per Marx: “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.” This is how you get to the LTV in the argument. Yet it’s just trivially wrong.

Wrt labor/raw materials, you can sell ideas. Commodities aren’t even necessarily material things. Now you could say that ideas require humans, and humans require human labor to be created and raised and nature to nourish them etc etc yet it’s an unjustifiable presupposition that ideas can then be reduced to a mechanical combination of these aspects.

No, you never disproved anything.

I never said I disproved anything in the part you’re quoting. I was just preempting the argument I mentioned as a response to the examples I gave.

Because you’re confusing the fact that prices reflect value with the idea that people independently think of that before purchasing.

No I’m not. I don’t know how you got that from what you quoted.

You’re mixing up Exchange-Value with Use-Value.

No. Value itself is neither exchange-value (which is just a relation between two values) nor use-value (the particularities of which dissolve when considering value), when Marx refers to value he is referring only to the labor-time socially necessary to produce a thing. If you were speaking about specific use values then this is just nonsense in context because you were talking about “the value in a commodity” as what price orbits around, and then you have the category error I went over. You corrected yourself here by saying value can be reduced to just labor instead of being “reduced to labor and natural resources.” Just admit you made a mistake and don’t act like the mix-up is on me.

Competition forces prices towards a floor

Sure, and why should this floor be reflective of the amt. of labor required to produce that commodity? Well you can justify this abstractly but in terms of actually making it work, it doesn’t.

You should actually read Capital, because Marx quite literally states this.

This has to do with the prev. “mix-up,” you were talking about [[[prices]]] again; commodities as values are only representative of certain expenditures of abstract labor, that is the universal. Use-values are [[[particularities]]] and the entire point of the book is that insofar as they are considered in relation to each other and to the universal which is money (price!), their particular use does not matter (indeed, the particular form of labor employed and any other considerations do not matter), only that they are expenditures of the total abstract social productive capacity of a society.

I’m not anybody’s alt, not that it would matter if I was. I’d imagine if I had a longer history you would pick something else out to use, but this got me to look at your history and I found this post called “Dialectical Materalism: How to Think Like a Marxist” that I’m going to reply to so thx.

This is not clear at all. Elaborate, please.

All you need for commodity exchange is for people to accept something is yours and be willing to exchange something they own which you desire in return for it. That thing being a product of labor is not necessary. You can own land based on agreement without taking any trouble to cultivate or defend it, and exchange it for other things based on agreement. You can exchange naturally occurring things without rendering them ~crystallizations of social labor.

Marx’s argument is invalid in another way because there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor.

Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.

Arguments like the “mud pie” don’t apply, because mud pies are neither useful nor difficult to make.

The argument only doesn’t apply for the first reason. There’s no necessity even for Marx that commodities be arbitrarily “difficult” to produce.

Incorrect, the exchange-value that price fluctuates around is representative of the value in a commodity.

How is this a response to what I said?

Another way to look at it is that the value of a commodity is the sum of its inputs, which can be reduced to labor and natural resources.

This is both incorrect (for Marx, value is entirely determined by socially necessary labor time) and doesn’t mean anything (this is like multiplying 3 apples by 7 pears, what does it mean that the value of a commodity can be reduced to labor and natural resources?; with value being determined by labor time you can reduce things to a certain quantity, but then you just add on a qualitatively different thing and you return to the original problem of needing a third equivalent, or a value to unite the components of value).

Marx is correct, though this is no mystery.

You forgot to explain how this actually occurs. You just say that capitalism does it.

What’s universal to goods bought and sold is that they require natural resources and human labor to create them.

You should tell Marx this since he expressly says that he thinks the only universal is labor. You both happen to be wrong, though.

What would an intelligent person, by your estimation, take fault with in Marx[‘s Capital]?

Capital rests on the argument ~that the fact qualitatively different (in terms of use values) commodities are exchanged for each other in different quantities requires a quality they share in common which only differs in quantity from one commodity to the next, and Marx posits that the only quality this could be is being products of labor. Yet this is very clearly not something that all commodities have in common, and that a thing’s status as a commodity and its ability to be exchanged for other commodities has nothing to do with its being a product of labor. The only way Marx’s argument can be accepted is if you start with the presupposition that commodities are valued by the labor required to produce them.

How this happens that commodities are exchanged at their “value” is a complete mystery by the way, since Marx says it has nothing to do with the conscious considerations of either the buyer or the seller.