Intrinsic Value?

They're constructed by humans, using material found in nature.

Translation: "I don't have to use Marx's concepts in a way consistent with Marx. They mean what I want them to mean."

Again, a use-value is not something that satisfies a moral code. It is simply an object of utility that satisfies a particular need. Whether or not that need is ultimately beneficial according to your own moral system is irrelevant.

Otherwise, cigarettes, McDonald's cheeseburgers, or Nickelback CDs are also not use-values.

Andy,

The purpose of being here, and not on some "Marxist" site, is to try to develop an original interpretation of communism for the 21st Century, not to recapitulate the worn out tired phraseology of 20th Century Marxism. But this requires a bit more willingness to broach issues in an original fashion that is not dependent on the failed Marxist paradigm.

My argument is based on a reading of Marx that places his argument on socially necessary labor time at the center of my interpretation; and it does this for one reason: what constitutes socially necessary labor is of paramount importance to a class of wage slaves who are compelled to labor for many hours per week more than materially necessary by deliberate fascist state economic policy -- both Keynesian and neoliberal. This may appear incoherent to you, but it only because you still are mired in 20th Century Marxist thinking that pays almost no attention to the wage slave except as a victim of forces over which she has no control.

Marx does not belong to Marxists and there is no reason we have to accept the Marxist reading of his theory. If this reading of Marx had been correct, the Great Depression would have ended in a social revolution -- it did not, because that reading of Marx's theory was wrong.

I don't want to drift off into a meta-discussion about tone, but the above is slightly obnoxious. It's an off-topic diversion meant to deflect substantive discussion.

I don't think anyone except Dave B., or maybe Noa R., considers themselves a "Marxist" in the sense of traditional Marxism. Ingo Elbe has argued convincingly that "Marxism" was in fact an "Engelsism" (and to a lesser extent, a "Kautskyism"), and I think a lot of people here agree with this assessment.

However, rejecting Marxism doesn't mean you just get to do whatever you like with Marx's concepts. If you want to argue that Marx's concepts contain certain ambiguities, that's valid too. But then you have to argue using quotations from Marx that support your claims. Saying "Postone says" doesn't cut it.

P.S. For the records, I think Postone is ok. Not half as innovative or groundbreaking as his cult followers like to claim. The more interesting aspects of Postone's thought can be found in the works of thinkers like Rubin, Backhaus, Reichelt, or historians like Jacques LeGoff or Alfred Crosby. More rigorous contemporary Marxology is done by people like Chris Arthur, Michael Heinrich, or Michael Krätke.

But I get the impression that you, or Principia Dialectica, just want to replace the old "worldview" Marxism with a new "worldview". Whereas I kind of take issue with comprehensive worldviews in general.

Angelus Novus,

Your argument is problematic because it does not provide a basis within Marx's theory for any critique of capital as a mode of production. Use value is not like exchange value; it is always a particular, material manifestation of human economic activity that satisfies a human want. This use value is absolutely unlike exchange value -- in which no aspect of this particularity or materiality enters the discussion. It is precisely the contradiction between these two aspect of the commodity -- that one is particular and material means to satisfy human need, while the other is an abstract and immaterial social relation -- that is the starting point of Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production.

If we now substitute for the particularity and materiality of use value that satisfy human need some other argument akin to marginalist abstract utility, where what fetches a price in the market is useful, Marx's theory loses all of its explanatory power.

@Angelus Novus

No you don't want to go off into a meta-discussion, but, for some strange reason, you keep trying to push me in that direction and away from the topic at hand, which is how object without value can have a price. I don't think your perception of my tone is the subject of the discussion.

So let's see: nuclear submarine, "in the first place," outside us? Yep. Satisfies a human want of some sort or another? Well, maybe I'm being too generous here, but I think the bourgeoisie are human, so I'm going with yeah on this one too, especially as Marx says the "nature of such wants, whether.. from the stomach or from fancy makes no difference." And.. neither are we concerned how the object satisfies those wants, directly or indirectly.

So although Marx's last qualifier, with its means of subsistence/production requirements, can be a point of argument.. I think that a nuclear submarine has a use value.

Saturn missile? No use value? No use value when it contains a nuclear warhead? How about when it contains a communications or astronomical satellite?

In any case, you would be better off arguing that weapons production is "useless" not from the point of socially necessary labor time, which term Marx explicitly and solely and even unquestionably uses as a market relation for apportioning profit, but from the argument that all economy is the economy of time, and the commitment of time to weapons production is a drag on total social productivity. That argument however is unquestionably NOT a Marxist argument, but a moral, normative one. Doesn't mean it's wrong. Just means it is not part of what Marx called the immanent critique of capital.

But sure would like to get the reference to where you unquestionably prove the very questionable assertions you have made in this thread.

I don't see how my insistence upon using the term "use-value" in a manner consistent with Marx's own somehow invalidates Marx's critique of the capitalist mode of production. You'll have to expand upon that.

Right, but you seem to be wanting to dictate in moral terms to other people whether or not their needs are acceptable.

Furthermore, throughout this thread you seem to be mixing up the concept of socially necessary labor-time -- which is the substance of abstract value -- with use-value, which is simply the product of human labor in its material aspect, independent of social form.

I mean, you're opening up a whole can of worms with your totally arbitrary notion of what constitutes use-value. I can think of ten things off the top of my head which would automatically cease to be commodities by application of your moral principles:

1) junk food, processed foods
2) cigarettes
3) alcohol
4) hard drugs
5) pornography
6) weapons
7) Hollywood movies
8) right-wing propaganda books
9) any CD by Nickelback, Justin Bieber, contemporary Country/Western, etc.
10) automobiles

Right now, we've revoked the status of use-value -- and hence of "commodity", since Marx regards utility as a necessary characteristic of a commodity -- from pretty much anything that anyone could object to on moral grounds of being beneficial to human beings.

BTW, since you're a Postone guy, do you realize that you're actually invoking the sort of "use-value = concrete, qualitative, beneficial" vs. "value = abstract, amoral, quantitative" dichotomy that Postone regards as a constitute element in National Socialist ideology?

BTW, this isn't intended as an illustration of Godwin's law; I'm not saying you're a Nazi, just saying that even on your own Postoneite terms, your usage of the term "use-value" is problematic.

These are the building blocks of all life, aren't they?

Indeed, when Noa Rodman and I are holed up in Ron Paul's compound awaiting the collapse of the Fed-run fiat money system, all of those articles will be available in abundant quantities! In addition to precious gold, of course.

If I can't have these after the revolution, I'm not interested in it. (might be open to negotiation on the Bieber CDs...).

@S. Artesian

Okay, so lets take these points one at a time:

The bourgeoisie is indeed a member of the human race, but one for who the production of surplus value is the aim of economic activity. Does the submarine satisfy this aim? No. At best, it is the expenditure of a portion of the total surplus value as revenue, i.e., the unproductive destruction of capital. So it neither satisfies human wants directly nor indirectly. If, in addition to this you want to apply the term "human need" to the need for the capitalist to hire thugs to kill striking workers, then, yes, with such a broad definition of "human need" we can probably slip the nuclear missile sub under the door. But does this really advance your analysis of the capitalist mode of production as production for the sake of production?

I mean, apart from scoring points against me in this discussion, what use can we make of this definition, if everything no matter how perverse its employment is useful? If there is no human measure for human need, then all critical analysis is bunk.

As I stated in a previous reply, there are many dual use technologies. When these are used as in your first Saturn rocket example they are not use values; when they are employed as in your second example, they are.

Socially necessary labor time is not a market relation. Since, in Marx's theory, producers have no inkling of the socially necessary labor times contained in their commodities, these labor times play no role in transactions. They are hidden from us and assert themselves as blind forces in the economy. What motivate producers is how much of some other commodity they can get for their own, not how to recover the socially necessary labor time of their commodity.

My argument is not a moral argument as you state, but an empirical one, backed by data. I can demonstrate it using any agreed upon dataset you would like to employ for that purpose. And it is absolutely part f what Marx called the immanent critique of capital. In fact, Marx makes the argument in the Grudrisse:

Note above that Marx places the question of socially necessary labor time in direct contradiction to labor time expended as a whole and uses it to deduce superfluous labor time. This assertion by Marx requires an empirical measure of labor time that is able to distinguish between labor time that is superfluous and labor time that is socially necessary. It is not, and cannot be, a moral argument, but an empirically verifiable one.

I have already cited my empirical solution in this thread in an earlier response to you.

sorry, had to stop posting to grab a McD'c, top up my jazz mag collection and rent "Mama mia!" for the twelfth time. and the queue in the discount booze shop was a killer....

what were we talking about again?????

ah, yes! the completely fucking arbitrary abuse of Marx's terminology in the service of Jehu's "work". on second thoughts think I'll crack open the viodka instead!

@Angelus Novus

I said satisfies a human need, I did not imply this need was healthy. Neither cigarettes nor nuclear missile submarines are "beneficial". However one is a commodity and the other isn't.

Nuclear missile submarines serve a human need: killing people on behalf of the state (or threatening to do so).

You have a very idealistic notion of human needs.

Jazz mag? As in magazines? You a Jazz fan, Andy? Britain has got some great players.

Evan Parker, John Butcher, AMM, Rhodrie Davies, Tony Bevan, Lol Coxhill, Gail Brand, Mark Sanders, Trevor Watts, etc.

@Angelus Novus

And you have a very marginalist notion of usefulness.

@angelus novus

Since you have a problem with my definition of socially necessary, what does the term superfluous mean, if not superfluous to human needs directly or indirectly? And can you offer an example of it using other than a moral argument?

Marginalists argue for a quantifiable "utility" that diminishes or increases depending upon the number of objects consumed. That's not what Marx's category of use-value refers to. Marx's concept of use-value simply refers to the commodity in its material aspect as an object of utility.

Marx's notion of use-value has nothing to do with whether or not a nuclear submarine or a chocolate bar are more or less useful depending upon how many you consume.

You are mixing up two entirely different things here, namely socially necessary labor-time as a measure of value, and your own confused interpretation of the term use-value. But value and use-value are not the same thing.

The term "superfluous" has absolutely no applicability to Marx's usage of the term "socially necessary" since socially necessary is not understood in terms of "beneficial" or "good for society". Rather, Marx makes clear that socially necessary refers to:

Socially necessary has nothing to with whether we think cloth is a good thing or not. Socially necessary simply refers to the average amount of labor-time required to actually produce it.

Also, the quote from Grundrisse above has to do with the distinction of necessary labor and (unpaid) surplus labor. By means of technological innovation, capital reduces necessary labor time so as to increase surplus labor time, which is the sole source of surplus-value.

This has nothing to do with the content of human needs. (NB surplus labor will always exist, at least as long as people are able to produce more than they immediately need to reproduce themselves. Abolishing surplus labor would mean a return to some primitive barbaric society.)

eerrmmmm...this isn't exactly what I meant. "Jazz mag" is a slang term for porn magazine. either you are winding me up or that one was lost in translation!

Hah! Weird how intertwined the etymology of English word usage across the pond is.

"Jazz" for the music is also derived from archaic African-American vernacular for sexual intercourse.

Absolutely. There are good reasons Marx changed the terminology from the "superfluous labour" of the Grundrisse to the "surplus labour" of Capital. The most obvious is that the idea of "superfluous labour" producing "superfluous value" would be totally confusing. By replacing "superfluous" with the more neutral "surplus" he was eliminating precisely the ambiguous "utilitarian" resonance that J appears to be running away with. Writers from Godwin onwards (if not before) have stated that a good amount of work done under capitalism, serves only the workings of the system itself (e.g. advertising, etc.) and would be entirely redundant in an economy founded on common ownership - that is to say, it is speculatively "superfluous" to posited trans-historical needs. But this idea, while not necessarily wrong, is normative and is in no way connected to the division of the working day into necessary and surplus labour in Marx's value theory. Neither is the "necessary labour" component of the working day to be confused with the "socially necessary labour time" implicated in the output of production. The former reflects the SNLT for the commodity labour power, (variable capital - input to production) as distinct from the SNLT of the output. The difference bewteen the two is kinda a key point in the analysis...

Or species extinction - given the inability of new-borns to provide for themselves for many years, etc.

Complete, utter, total misapprehension of Marx's analysis. And misapprehension of capitalism. The bourgeoisie have every knowledge of what the socially necessary labor time is as such labor time represents itself as a cost and their objective is to reduce that cost.

That they can't do so precisely, or certainly, without the next capitalist producer introducing another product with even less cost does not change the fact that the bourgeoisie know exactly how much time it takes to produce 1 automobile, or 1,000,000 automobiles. and they are provided with information, after the fact to be sure, about what the socially necessary labor time was, in their never ending attempt to gain an extra smidgen of profit by redefining what the socially necessary labor time will be

You might benefit from reading DA Wells Recent Economic Changes written in 1889 regarding the tremendous increases in productivity and reduction in unit production times during the period known as the "long deflation."

Marx never uses socially necessary labor time as anything but a market relation in his critique of capital. It, SNLT, is the axis around which capitalist competition revolves.

But, other than confusing value and use-value, analytical and normative, inputs and outputs, you've got this whole value theory thing sorted.

Sure he does. Unquestionably, indisputably, as no one else has ever been able to.

That is quite a few accusation tossed my way, so let me see if I can deal with them all:

In Marx's theory an object can have a price without having value. The value of an object is a production relation; while the exchange value of an object is a market relation -- hence the term "exchange value" rather than "value". Value and exchange value are not the same category, although Marx does employ the term "value" in place of "exchange value" for purposes of simplification. Moreover he specifies this simplification in Capital.

There is no requirement in Marx's theory that an object have use value in order to have a price. An object can have value only if it has use value, but this is not true for price, since an object can have a price without having any value. Unlike bourgeois theory, in Marx's argument price does not in the least imply the usefulness of a thing. An object must have use value in order to have value, but it does not have to have use value in order to have a price.

Further, an object does not have to have excchange value in order to have a price. Price is the money name of a definite quantity of exchange value, but there is nothing in Marx's argument that states this definite quantity of exchange value cannot be zero. An object can, therefore, have a price even though it contains no value nor is able to command any exchange value. This is because the "money" used in the exchange may not contain any value itself -- it can be a state issue counterfeit created at a computer terminal (as occurred during the recent credit crunch).

So you all can sit and think about this for a moment, because in it is contained the entire secret of fascist state economic policy. I am pretty sure nothing I said in this reply violates any part of Marx's theory.

@ADDL:

This not only applies in the case of a nuclear missile submarine; it applies as well to the GM bailout, Cash for Clunkers, and TARP.

What you just posted has nothing to do with your original assertions-- that a nuclear submarine, or a rocket has no use-value because it does not satisfy a normative need;

and that socially necessary labor time is, indeed, an ahistorical category, not specifically related to capitalist production and the aggrandizement and allocation of part or all of the available surplus value, but somehow the invisible hand, the god in the machine that measure capitalism in comparison to all future societies, and finds its wanting..

We've been through an iteration of this with Dave B. and I don't see the point to repeating the entire experience.

@ocelot

That is the problem posed by superfluous labor time: if it cannot be demonstrated it is simply a moral argument and not useful for purposes of analysis and working class action. What I have done is shown it is not simply a moral argument, but an empirical one that can be demonstrated in the depreciation of state issued fiat currencies against commodity monies over time.

@S. Artesian

Please, the question is simple: Did anything in my argument you just read violate Marx's theory? You needn't have nightmares about your previous debates. Just answer the question, or go on about your business.