[lbo-talk] value form

[Ted Winslow]

On Sep 25, 2006, at 9:44 PM, Angelus Novus wrote:

> The difficult part is getting people to grasp the
> nature of value.  Especially among Marxists, value
> tends to be reified into an eternal feature of human
> productive activity.

"Real economy – saving – consists of the saving of labour time (minimum 
(and minimization) of production costs); but this saving identical with 
development of the productive force. Hence in no way abstinence from 
consumption, but rather the development of power, of capabilities of 
production, and hence both of the capabilities as well as the means of 
consumption. The capability to consume is a condition of consumption, 
hence its primary means, and this capability is the development of an 
individual potential, a force of production. The saving of labour time 
[is] equal to an increase of free time, i.e. time for the full 
development of the individual, which in turn reacts back upon the 
productive power of labour as itself the greatest productive power. 
 From the standpoint of the direct production process it can be regarded 
as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital being man 
himself. It goes without saying, by the way, that direct labour time 
itself cannot remain in the abstract antithesis to free time in which 
it appears from the perspective of bourgeois economy. Labour cannot 
become play, as Fourier would like, although it remains his great 
contribution to have expressed the suspension not of distribution, but 
of the mode of production itself, in a higher form, as the ultimate 
object.  Time of labour, even if exchange value is eliminated, always 
remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of 
its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, 
partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity 
which—unlike labour—is not determined by a compelling extraneous 
purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfillment of which is 
regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one's 
inclination.” (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part III, p. 257) 
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm>

“As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great 
well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its 
measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use 
value. The surplus labour of the masshas ceased to be the condition for 
the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the 
few,for the development of the general powers of the human head. With 
that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, 
material production process is stripped of the form of penury and 
antithesis. The free development of individualities, and hence not the 
reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but 
rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a 
minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. 
development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means 
created, for all of them.” (Marx, Grundrisse., pp. 705-6) 
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm>

Ted