Nonsense. Serious nonsense. There was _no_ competition among "commodity produceres" in medieval or ancient Eeurope or anyplace in Asia. The productivity of pot makers in a given location had no effect whatever on the "value" of pots anyplace; that was because value didn't exist. Even grain, which was produ ed for marketing in cities, was not a commodity because no competition to reduce costs existed among the producers of grain to lower labor costs.
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CB: Where do you get that competition among commodity producers is part of Marx's definition of commodity production ?
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I'll reassert the point. Aall non-capitalist production is of use values, not exchange values.
^^^^ CB: All the references to "trade", "merchants" in the ancient world are references to use-values produced for exchange , not for the use of their producers.
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No increase in labor productivity on the domain of Baron A could have any effect whatrever on the (non-existent) "value" of grain produced by the serfs of Baron B. That is because only use 'values' were being produced, and a peck of grain produced in3 hours had no less caloric use than a peck of grain produced in one hour. ^^^^^ CB; But you don't exchange grain for grain. You would exchange a peck of grain for a peck of grain of course. Commodity exchange is in a division of labor, where in different use-values are produced by different "divisions". A peck of grain would be exchanged for something else; if it were going to be exchanged.
But of course, medieval manors were self-sufficient economic units with internal divisions of labor without much commodity production within them. Commodity exchange in the European Middle Ages was on the "periphery" of the society. It was a minor percentage of the overall production. The feudal mode of production is not a predomiantly commodity producing mode, but there is commodity production and exchange on its boundaries with other societies, in its interstices.
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Hence the labor of the serfs on the estates of Baron A had no internal relations with the labor of the serfs on the estates of Baron B. Similarly, in China, the rice purchased and transported to a city by Merchant A had no value because he was not competing with Merchant B. Perhaps the rice purchased by Merchant B had been produced with less labor than that purchased by Merchant A -- it made no difference to anyone. There simply was no market in the sense of a market tht equalizes all labor. The relations were external, not internal. There can be no useful dialectical analysis of European feudalism or of imperial China.
Carrol
^^^^^ CB: Again you are comparing apples with apples. Commodity exchange is to exchange apples for oranges. It is an exchange of qualitatively _different_ use-values. How then to decide what is common in these differences ? What is the same in these differences, these qualitatively differences. How are apples and oranges commensurable ? That's the riddle Marx solves with the law of value ?