you wrote:
>Capital as a social relation remains hegemonic (in its control of
labor),
>even as the identity of indivdual capitalists at the top changes, and
even
>as ownership and control of money capital have been (partially)
separated as
>stock ownership has broadened.
i have no doubt at all that capital remains hegemonic, as you say. that there is a degree of separation between ownership and control of money capital has not, as far as i can tell, done anything more than proceed along with the abstraction of capital as social capital. my question would go to whether or not the decisive contradiction in capitalism is between private and social ownership. which i do not think it is. example: superannuation is compulsory in australia; super funds are one of the biggest investors - does this mean that the hegemony of capital has been traversed because all workers are now meagre stock holders? i would say no.
>Further, let me answer your references to value this way. There are
>actually three uses of the term, not two: exchange value, use value,
and
>value as an analytical concept used by Marx. Exchange value and use
value
>are straightforward concepts, corresponding to price and some form of
>intrinsic usefulness, respectively. The three Marxian value
categories
>(c,v,s), however, are *calculated* amounts designed analytically to
>illuminate the system. C corresponds to depreciation, itself a
calculated
>number in the NIPA (except, there, some form of straight line method
is
>used, with limited use of economic obselence; Marx implies something
closer
>to "one horse shay" depreciation, I think). V is the social
reproduction
>cost of labor, based on living conditions as well as the need for
physical
>subsistence. And s is simply the residual, after c and v have been
paid out
>of the product. So analytical use of these categories is "capitalism
>defined as the law of value" in your terms. I don't see "exchange
and use
>values as double moments of the value form", but rather double masks
for
>public appearance, behind which Marx sought to delve. If you
disagree,
>perhaps you could explain.
if i read your comments correctly, then i agree. I am not entirely sure that translating 'double moments' into 'double masks' alters the comments I made, or at least the ones I was more interested in making re: the naturalisation of use value.
nonetheless, when you say that use value corresponds to 'intrinsic utility', then we would perhaps disagree. my concern was to provoke some thinking about why some marxists see use value as intrinsic rather than a result of the commodity form itself, where there is a tendency to see it as outside capitalism, and outside the law of value.
my understanding of marx's comments on use value is that he saw it as a) only relevant to the buyer; and b) relevant insofar as what is defined as use is socially validated as a need.
I should perhaps elaborate a little on the immediate context of my comments. there have been two occasion recently in which use value was presented as outside value: the first as a definition of the aim of socialism (where socialism consists of freeing use values from their distortion by exchange), and the second as a definition of the specific difference of racism and sexism (where capitalism was defined as exchange and sexism and racism where defined as productive of use values, because, presumably, to do so would make them prior to capital and capitalism).
the first makes use value a promise for a purified future, the second a purified thing of the past. (there are numerous other comments to make on these, but for another post) the term 'use value' was used in two very different ways here; but in both cases, it was the separation of it from exchange which allowed for this to be posed as the foundational or promissory real outside of the artifices of exchange. so, I like your substitution of 'masks' for my 'moments'.
angela