[lbo-talk] value form

boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com
Tue Sep 26 13:42:23 PDT 2006



> Consider this: fiat money
> is money because "we" say that it's money. It is self-referential - a
> pure social relation. This fact is acknowledged by capitalists to each
> other without being acknowledged to the wider society. They pretend
> they have access to some substance or power that exists outside of
> society - but all they really have is access to is us. Our behavior
> creates the value of the very "commodity" against which our
> work-product is judged.
>
>
> You just talked yourself in a circle. Unless of course what you meant to
> say is that social relations are real relations which will persist even
> after the most utopian of revolutions and therefore that Use Value will
> shatter through exchange value. But then the question is what will be the
> determinant of the hierarchy of use value after the revo? So the problem
> with Marxists like yourself is that you keep talking yourself into a circle
> and then project that inadequacy of thought outwards. Even if you happen to
> right in this case. Comrade:).
> ____________________________________
> Travis W Fast
> Ph.D ABD
> York University
> Political Science
> Toronto, On

I don't know what it means to say that "Use Value will shatter through exchange value". I can't make sense of it. I say a thing is self-referential but that doesn't mean I am talking in circles. Fiat money - based on loans - is valued according to the likelihood that the participants in the system will pay back their loans - at least that's an adequate simplification.

"The hierarchy of use value" makes no sense as a phrase. If you mean, use-value's role in the hierarchy of productive social relations, I think it's co-equal with labor value and will always be. In an interdependent society we offer a worker a basket of goods and services roughly according to the use-value of his work product. This is inevitable. Even under Communism, you have to cope with the fact that different sorts of work - more and less pleasant, more and less needed - have to be done. And you have to cope with the fact that goods and services are always going to have a cost of distribution. The energy involved if Mongolian workers would accept only French Champagne and pastries in return for their work would simply be unreasonable. There will always be questions of relative scarcity. Even under Communism a worker has to consider both his desires and the needs of the community - he has to be useful and that usefulness has to be measured in some way.

A worker need not suffer individually if his work-product does not end up being useful. Implied in collective decision-making is collective responsibility. However, freedom of action and inevitable disagreements mean that workers will sometimes act in a way that is not in the interest of the community - not useful - and the larger community can and must take that into account when making distribution decisions. It's only reasonable.

My point is that the difference between valorizing in gold (a real commodity, if fetishized) and valorizing in fiat money (a self-referential, social "commodity") is enormous. Rather than trying to think of ways to throw use-value out the window, why not explore how valorization can be done in social terms?

boddhisatva



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