You write:
> While every commodity, exchange-value has to have a use-value, not every
> use-value has to have an exchange-value i.e. a good or a service doesn't
> have to take the form of a commodity. I think Marx saw socialism as system
> for the production of use-values with the commodity form, exchange-value,
> stripped off. The perceived use-value of "labor value" is that by being
> able to buy labor power for wages, the capitalist can make a profit from the
> sale of commodities produced by labor. Use-value is bound up with human
> perception. Thus, a BIBLE may be perceived as useful to some, where a
> bottle of real ale might be perceived as far more useful to others. The
> balance of need fulfillment in a socialist society would have to be mediated
> by some kind of self-managing democractic system of collective consensus, as
> there would be no State nor any classes to interfere with the political
> equality of all.
It's very well to say that exchange-value can be stripped off use-value if we look at it as a theoretical construct, but what does it mean in practical terms. I just don't know of any reasonable system of managing the distribution of goods and services that does not treat those goods and services as a commodity. What I see Marx saying - fundamentally, if not in so many words - is that human beings must not be commodities. Commoditizing labor is, in large measure commoditizing the human being herself. While I understand, therefore, the desire to get away from the "commodity form" or "value form". I think it's a dead end.
Rather consider what happens if labor and capital are the same thing. By that I mean that those who labor also allocate capital. In that case a worker is not alienated from any part of his work product because he "owns" his labor and the capital used to channel that labor to the marketplace.
Understandably, Marx focused on the marketplace, but I think the revolution takes place at the level of capital. Change the means of production from money capital to information/social accounting and you change the society. Trying to throw out valorization or the idea of a commodity is, in my view, simply not possible outside the realm of academic discussion.
Peace,
boddhisatva