[lbo-talk] Marxology (was "Why Marx is Right and Engels is Wrong", and once upon a time an interesting discussion about non-commodity-producing work)

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Sun Jul 18 08:43:14 PDT 2010


Julio Huato wrote:


> there are practical political tasks that do require the
> understanding of commodity exchange as the metabolism of social labor,
> namely building a workable communist society.

The "labour" that's distributed between various activities in capitalism is, in Marx's theorization of it, "alienated" , i.e. it's labour lacking the qualities constitutive of the activity (both instrumental and end in itself) of the "universally developed individuals" who will, again according to Marx, create and live in the realms of necessity and freedom that will constitute "a workable communist society."

In this society, therefore, "labour time ceases and must cease to be its ['wealth's'] measure."

"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 mass has 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. Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high. ‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, forevery individual and the whole society.’ (The Source and Remedy etc. 1821, p. 6.)" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm

Without "the development of individualiites," i.e. "the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them" by "communist society," this society is unworkable.

Ted



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