'For some of his disciples the "law of value" . seems to assure the breakdown of capitalism ...Marx's critique of political economy became the ideology of the inevitability of socialism.' ('Value Theory and Capital Accumulation', Science and Society, Winter 1959, Vol XXIII, No 1, p 33)
^^^^^ Hello James,
Did Mattick take into account Marx's major conclusions from his analysis of the "law of value" in capitalism in the penultimate chapter of _Capital_ I ? Marx seems to strongly suggest that the operation of the "law of value" in toto does at the least _tend_ to the expropriation of the expropriators and "socialized property"
He even says "But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation."
Sounds like he thinks the law of value operating under capitalism strongly tends to socialism.
Charles
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As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.
The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation