#universal exchangeability

As I put more of Marx’s value theory together, this is what I come up with — and this may require further discussion: I really like the idea from I.I. Rubin of thinking of value as having three (internally connected) dimensions of “substance”, “magnitude”, and “form”. As of today my interpretation is this:

Marx’s concept of value, in its material specificity, is nothing more than the economic expression of the fact that the social productivity of labor is the basis of economic existence; the law of value is what ultimately governs economic processes in a capitalist economic order, and its general content for such an economic order is that the value of commodities is the specific historical form in which the productivity of labor, which ultimately governs all economic processes, has its determining effect… Now it cannot be said that this conception of the significance of the law of value for the capitalist form of production is incorrect. Yet to me it does seem too generalized, and capable of a closer and more precise formulation; in my view, it in no way exhausts the whole significance that the law of value has for those stages of society’s economic development that are governed by this law… [W]hat is involved is not just a logical process but a historical one… Marx’s law of value applies universally, as much as any economic laws do apply, for the entire period of simple commodity production, i.e. up to the time at which this undergoes a modification by the onset of the capitalist form of production. Up till then, prices gravitate to the values determined by Marx’s law and oscillate around these values, so that the more completely simple commodity production develops, the more do average prices coincide with values… Thus the Marxian law of value has a universal economic validity for an era lasting from the beginning of the exchange that transforms products into commodities down to the fifteenth century of our epoch. But commodity exchange dates from a time before any written history, going back to at least 3500 B.C. in Egypt, and 4000 B.C. or maybe even 6000 B.C. in Babylon; thus the law of value prevailed for a period of some five to seven millennia.

On Marx’s Concept of Value: The Law of Value and Value Form

Marx’s teaching on the “form of value” (i.e., the social form taken by the product of labor) is the result of a particular social form of labor itself and represents Marx’s new and unique contribution to the theory of labor value… Marx drew a precise distinction between the material-technical process of production and its social form, between labor as an aggregation of technical functions (concrete labor) and labor viewed in terms of its social form in commodity-capitalist society (abstract labor or universal labor). The specificity of commodity economy consists of the fact that the material-technical process of production is not organized by society and is undertaken by separate commodity producers. Concrete labor is simultaneously the private labor of separate individuals. The private labor of the individual commodity producer is connected with the labor of all other commodity producers and becomes social labor only insofar as its product is equated with all other commodities in the market. As we have seen, this market equalization of all commodities, expressed through the valuation of them all in terms of one and the same commodity, gold (or money), simultaneously signifies the equalization of all the concrete types of labor expended in different spheres of the economy. This means that the private labor of a separate individual assumes the character of social labor not in the process of production itself but in the act of exchange, which represents an abstraction from the concrete specificities of particular things and particular types of labor. The equalization of all types of labor through market equalization of all the products of labor as values — this is what Marx means by the concept of abstract labor. And since the equalization of labor results from the social form of commodity economy, in which there is no direct social organization and equalization of labor, it follows that abstract labor is a social and historical concept. Abstract labor does not express a physiological equality of the various types of labor, but rather the social equalization of various types of labor that occurs in the specific form of market equalization of the products of labor as values.

Value is the production relation between autonomous commodity producers that has taken the form of a property of the thing and is connected with the distribution of social labor. Or, to regard the same phenomenon from the other perspective, value is the ability of every product of the labor of every commodity producer to exchange for products of the labor of any other commodity producer in a certain proportion that corresponds to the level of productivity and the proportional distribution of social labor. What is involved is a relation between people that has taken the form of a property of things and is associated with the process of distribution of labor in production — or, in other words, a reified production relation between people. The reification of labor in value represents the most important conclusion from the theory of commodity fetishism, which explains the inevitable “reification” of production relations between people in commodity economy. The theory of value does not affirm the material condensation of labor, as a factor of production, in things, as the products of labor — a phenomenon that occurs in all historical formations and represents the technical precondition of value but is not its source — rather, it concerns the fetishized and reified expression of the labor relations of people in the value of things. Labor is “crystallized” or takes form in value in the sense that by taking on the social “form of value” it thereby finds expression or “presents itself”.

To see whether I understand correctly and what you all think:

The consistent distinction that Marx draws between the process of production and its social form, between concrete and abstract labor, allowed him to develop the doctrine of the social “form of value” that is assumed by the products of labor and expresses a definite type of social production relations between people as autonomous commodity producers. Marx’s new and original contribution to the theory of labor value, when compared with Ricardo, is his teaching on the form of value. “It is one of the chief failings of classical political economy that is has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and in particular of their value, in discovering the form of value which in fact turns value into exchange-value”. An understanding of the value form is decisively important, for it is “the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production” and stamps it as “a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character”. Without understanding the value form it is impossible to grasp the given social — namely, capitalist — form of economy and all of its characteristic economic forms: the money form, the form of capital, and so forth. The “value form” means that in commodity society the labor expenditures of people take the form of value, as a property of the products of labor, and quantitative changes in labor expenditure take the form of quantitative changes in the value of things. The production relations between people are “reified”. The teaching on the “form of value” reveals the true social nature of value, which is not a property of the thing but rather a reified expression of the production-labor relations between people.

Returning to value and value form — below is a draft of a list of “propositions/ statements” re value — if you could possibly review/ comment (it is very brief)?