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en:communist-values.-or-a-positive-theory-of-socialism-a-propos-peter-astroem-s-critique-of-communisation-and-value-form-theory [2023/01/01 09:01]
henriksson |
en:communist-values.-or-a-positive-theory-of-socialism-a-propos-peter-astroem-s-critique-of-communisation-and-value-form-theory [2023/01/01 09:10] (current)
henriksson |
| Åström’s argument can be traced back to Marx’s presentation of the capitalist process of production in //Capital I//: On the one hand, it is a unity of labour process and value producing process; the former corresponds to concrete labour, and the latter to abstract labour. On the other hand, as value producing process it is, when further examined, a process of valorisation, i.e. a surplus value producing process. Following Åström, the former is to be kept, and the latter is to be abolished. Consequently, the labour process is to function as a value producing process, but no longer as a surplus value producing process. An implication of this argument is that Åström collapses value producing process into labour process, as–conceptually–one and the same process, as two words for one and the same thing. This is, to be noted, how it appears in capitalism, as the fetish character of the capitalist process of production that by way of an objective illusion (Schein) appears to be a human process of labour as such. | Åström’s argument can be traced back to Marx’s presentation of the capitalist process of production in //Capital I//: On the one hand, it is a unity of labour process and value producing process; the former corresponds to concrete labour, and the latter to abstract labour. On the other hand, as value producing process it is, when further examined, a process of valorisation, i.e. a surplus value producing process. Following Åström, the former is to be kept, and the latter is to be abolished. Consequently, the labour process is to function as a value producing process, but no longer as a surplus value producing process. An implication of this argument is that Åström collapses value producing process into labour process, as–conceptually–one and the same process, as two words for one and the same thing. This is, to be noted, how it appears in capitalism, as the fetish character of the capitalist process of production that by way of an objective illusion (Schein) appears to be a human process of labour as such. |
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| However, a capitalist process of production is to be understood as a valorisation process; this is the only way it makes sense. It is the pursuit of profit, grounded in capital as self-valorisation of value, that is the motivating force of capitalism, its overarching end.((Cf. ‘Urtext’ (1859): ‘QUOTE’.)) Considered thus, value producing process, as well as labour process, is merely moments of the capitalist process of production as valorisation process, abstract, in itself, as a such one-sided aspect that does not positively exist as such, outside and external to the capitalist process of production.((Cf. //loc. cit.//, p. xxx. For Marx’s methodological approach concerning abstract moments, and ‘in itself’, see the first edition of //Capital I//, in the beginning of the presentation of the value form, the simple form of relative value: ‘The different specifications which are contained in it are veiled, undeveloped, abstract, and consequently only able to be distinguished and focused upon through the rather intense application of our power of abstraction’ (//loc. cit.//, p. 18. In a footnote on the same page, Marx remarks: ‘They are to a certain extent the cell-form or, as Hegel would have said, //the in-itself of money// (MEGA II.5, p. 28, PH trans).)) | However, a capitalist process of production is to be understood as a valorisation process; this is the only way it makes sense. It is the pursuit of profit, grounded in capital as self-valorisation of value, that is the motivating force of capitalism, its overarching end.((Cf. ‘Urtext’ (1859), MECW 29, p. 496: ‘So, fixed as wealth, as the universal form of wealth , as value that counts as value, money is a constant drive to go beyond its quantitative limits; an endless process. Its own viability consists exclusively in this; it preserves itself as self-important value distinct from use value only when it //continually multiplies itself// by means of the process of exchange itself. The active value is only a surplus-value-positing value.’.)) Considered thus, value producing process, as well as labour process, is merely moments of the capitalist process of production as valorisation process, abstract, in itself, as a such one-sided aspect that does not positively exist as such, outside and external to the capitalist process of production.((Cf. Ibid. For Marx’s methodological approach concerning abstract moments, and ‘in itself’, see the first edition of //Capital I//, in the beginning of the presentation of the value form, the simple form of relative value: ‘The different specifications which are contained in it are veiled, undeveloped, abstract, and consequently only able to be distinguished and focused upon through the rather intense application of our power of abstraction’ (//loc. cit.//, p. 18. In a footnote on the same page, Marx remarks: ‘They are to a certain extent the cell-form or, as Hegel would have said, //the in-itself of money// (MEGA II.5, p. 28, PH trans).)) |
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| To toy around some with the argument of Åström’s: The circuit of capital is Money (M) – Commodity (C) – more Money (M’), viz. M–C–M’. To exchange £100 (M) for £100 (M) is absurd in the context of capital. To interrupt the process of production after its value producing aspect, as it were, and to think, with this, that you have reached a point at which capital, as ‘accumulation’, is abolished, and to maintain ‘simple reproduction’ based on ‘value’, understood as socially necessary labour time, is naïve, if not vulgar. As stressed above, labour process and value producing process do not exist in themselves, empirically, positively, when you abstract from the valorisation aspect. They are, as it were, subsumed under, and incorporated in the valorisation process understood as a capitalist process of production. In Marx’s presentation, they are mere conceptual steps in his theoretical development of the capitalist process of production //as// surplus value producing process. | To toy around some with the argument of Åström’s: The circuit of capital is Money (M) – Commodity (C) – more Money (M’), viz. M–C–M’. To exchange £100 (M) for £100 (M) is absurd in the context of capital. To interrupt the process of production after its value producing aspect, as it were, and to think, with this, that you have reached a point at which capital, as ‘accumulation’, is abolished, and to maintain ‘simple reproduction’ based on ‘value’, understood as socially necessary labour time, is naïve, if not vulgar. As stressed above, labour process and value producing process do not exist in themselves, empirically, positively, when you abstract from the valorisation aspect. They are, as it were, subsumed under, and incorporated in the valorisation process understood as a capitalist process of production. In Marx’s presentation, they are mere conceptual steps in his theoretical development of the capitalist process of production //as// surplus value producing process. |