Money and value

[littlebabyjesus]

Total self-contradiction going on there.

It is possible to put forward an argument that you yourself are not really convinced by. This seems like that kind of instance.

 

[TruXta]

It is possible to put forward an argument that you yourself are not really convinced by. This seems like that kind of instance.

True, and that argument can be contradictory in terms. He's saying money isn't an abstraction, then he kinda says it is. I dunno what he's trying to say really.

 

[deke t lefel]

Are you really convinced by your own argument there?

money is not a pure abstract idea, it is derived from the physical and remains in the physical realm

tools are physical although require an idea of how to use them, so why can't money be part physical and part idea, why does money have to be one or the other?

 

[love detective]

Agree with what you say about tools/labour - this for example:-

We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will......

...Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway

touches on the same thing

and while it's clear that money is not 100% pure idea/abstract and requires some (minimal) physical underpinning in terms of its production (either printing press or digital press) and distribution/circulation (the technical/physical infrastructure of the monetary & credit systems) - i don't think you can stretch this far enough for it to have much relevance or meaning.

However I think you touch upon the more important aspect for this in your post, in terms of looking at what money is derived from, what causes it, what is it an effect of etc. All these things are things which the 'money first' analysis never does, because the level of its analysis is not at the level required to actually understand both the logical & historical derivation of money (under capitalism) in the first place. So they are left trying to analyse the world by looking at a symptom alone, in isolation, and trying to understand the world by looking at the level at which the symptom appears at. Vulgar political economy is what Marx called such an approach

 

[deke t lefel]

the vast physical infrastructure that supports money production and circulation has been built up over many years and is largely taken for granted

a tool is an instrument commonly used to amplify labour..... in a similar way, money is used as an instrument to leverage capital in order to expropriate additional surplus value from the worker

 

[love detective]

yeah to be fair, and increasingly so, the vast amounts of fixed capital that allows capital itself to be so mobile, nimble and roaming does tend to be ignored when people go on about trendy topics like global capital mobility etc.. (so not just the physical infrastructure that money relies upon/is supported by, but the wider physical & digital infrastructures that allow capital to move, road, rail, airports, shipping and communication networks etc. - there's a huge amount of fixed capital that has to exist to allow value to move around efficiently (and generally the only bodies that can implement, oversee and maintain such structures are the state which flies in the face of the trendy theories about state's being irrelevant etc.)

not sure how any of this moves on the discussion though...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

these 'money first' people don't seem to grasp that our current monetary system is largely an effect, not the cause, of the underlying exploitative social relations of capitalism

you could have all the money in the world, but if you can't go out and buy labour with that money, it's not going to make you a capitalist, no matter how much you have of it. In other words, capital as we know it would not exist. If wage-labour doesn't exist, surplus value doesn't exist, if surplus value doesn't exist, capital doesn't exist. this is the fundamental ability of capital to exist, to grow, to valorise itself.

this 'money first' approach is similar to the idea that you could negate/abolish the catholic church by formally getting rid of the pope but changing nothing else - it mixes up essence & appearance, substance & form

Marx (sorry BB) actually makes the point somewhere in Volume 2, that although money is an obvious requirement for value to circulate and pass its way through the circuits of capital, that the most ideal situation from a point of view of the production of value (i.e. exploitation of labour) is the case where a capitalists's commodity product is sold not for money, but for the productive capital inputs that are required to re-start the production process. As this minimises the amount of time value spends in the sphere circulation (i.e. the money capital and commodity capital forms) and maximises the amount of time value spends in the productive sphere (i.e. in the production of value, through exploitation of labour)

fairly straightforward logic really in that although capital clearly needs to fully traverse the circuit from money to productive capital to commodity capital and then back to money again, value itself is only produced within the production stage, so the ideal situation is for the time that value is spent in the money and commodity form's should be minimised, hence efficiencies in transport/communication/circulation etc.. are key to an efficient traverse of the circuit and to allow value to 'work harder' and spend less time in the forms that does not allow it to directly valorise itself

So taken to logical conclusion an ideal type capitalism (from a maximisation of exploitation perspective) would skip the stages of commodity capital being turned into money and that money then being turned back into productive capital and instead the commodities coming out of the production phase would be converted immediately back into the productive capital inputs of means of production and labour - he wasn't suggesting that this would ever be possible practically but from an ideal perspective this would be the most efficient (if an efficient way of doing it could ever be found).

What kind of value does this take, though? Are you not confusing actual value - a pig - with a representation of a claim on value - you owe me a pig? Value doesn't spend time in the money form. That seems like a serious mistake to me.

It appears to me that you, and perhaps Marx, have been seduced by the symbols money has taken. When money was backed by gold or whatever, the 'real value' of the gold was in fact formally irrelevant. Truth is that nobody actually needed the gold - its value was at a purely symbolic level, so societies could safely afford to lock it away in vaults. Gold was nonetheless prized, so it was the perfect thing to use to create confidence in an abstracted currency - I own/am owed gold, and I can pass that promise on to you in return for something of real value to me (and you). But a currency doesn't actually have to be backed by anything at all, and effectively they aren't now. They are simply backed by the idea that the promises written on the notes would be honoured if you ever were to ask (although the nature of what you'd be given if you were to ask the Bank of England for 'ten pounds please' is somewhat obscure). It's an effective confidence trick, in other words, to allow a currency to exist that people will respect enough to exchange it for real value in the confidence that they will themselves be able to pass the currency on for real value in the future.

I'm not trying to give a 'money first' view, as you have been claiming. But money doesn't - cannot - 'hold' value in the way you seem to say that it does. I really do think that is to misunderstand what money is and the purpose it serves.

 

[love detective]

you just dip in and out of this discussion - refusing to respond to points that have been put to you time after time - and then, after a suitable period of time, pop up again with nonsense like the above

as i've said before, i've no interest in putting any effort into responding to any of your points, as history shows that as soon as I do and logically challenge the crap you come out with and challenge you to defend/answer it, you, you slope off into extended periods of silence and then reappear after enough time & space has been put between now and your previous arguments being demolished - so that kind of debate is not worth the effort on my part, sorry

For the record, though you're seriously mixed up in everything you talk about above - value does not take the form of something like a pig for a start (you're mixing up use-values and value/exchange value), and to say that value doesn't spend time in the money form (or the commodity or productive capital forms) portrays a fundamental understanding of even the most basic of political economy

But don't let any of that let you think that you're so clever that you can write off or critique Marx without even having read (or understood) any of him. And to even seriously suggest that Marx (or indeed me) was seduced by the fetishism around money is totally absurd, this alone shows your total and utter fundamental ignorance of Marx's political economy - complete strawman from you on that from what i can see (ditto your 'point' that value doesn't spend time in the money form during the circuit of capital). Whether that's deliberate so you can try and salvage some point in the eyes of others on this thread, or whether it's due to your ignorance & utter misunderstanding of the topic who knows, i'm inclined towards thinking the later though as from what i've seen I doubt you have enough grasp of the topic matter to even attempt to do the former.

 

[TruXta]

Out of interest, LD, what other theories of value other than Marxian ones are out there? The neoclassical framework does without any value except prices, which are fairly uninteresting in this context, but I'm struggling to think what other fundamentally different ideas are out there.

 

[love detective]

That's the thing there isn't really any of value (pun intended!)

post Marx (or even pre post-marx) - pretty much the whole idea of a labour theory of value had to be ditched as it got far too close to the bone in getting to the roots of what capitalism was about (ironic though that those who also had a variation on a labour theory of value like Adam Smith & David Ricardo are still revered, although purged of their most important & relevant analysis) - that then gave the way to things like the marginal revolution & marginal utility theories (through people like jevons, menger, marshall and bohm-bawerk) - thoroughly individualist & micro level theories that tell us nothing about how society at the total level operates

This movement pretty much heralded the collapse of Political Economy as it was and the descent into narrow economics which was achieved by purging Political Economy of all social, historical, sociological and political content ending up with what we see as mainstream economics today - something much more accommodating to the type of society we live in

As Marx commented on this development: -

In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power. Thenceforth, the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic

I posted this previously on this thread that that's why we need a return to Political Economy - and what political economy is, to me, is best articulated on the back cover of Rubin's History of Economic Thought

Political economy deals with human working activity, not from the standpoint of its technical methods and instruments of labor, but from the standpoint of its social form. It deals with production relations which are established among people in the process of production.

In terms of this definition, political economy is not the study of prices or of scarce resources; it is a study of social relations, a study of culture. Political economy asks why the productive forces of society develop within a particular social form, why the machine process unfolds within the context of business enterprise, why industrialization takes the form of capitalist development. Political economy asks how the working activity of people is regulated in a specific, historical form of economy.

A good (if a bit turgid) book that charts the development of this transition from Political Economy to Economics was written by Dimitris Milonakis & Ben Fine called Political Economy to Economics: Method, the social and the historical in the evolution of economic theory

 

[JimW]

Didn't they come up with marginalism as your bourgeois response to the labour theory of value?

 

[love detective]

isn't that what i said above!

 

[JimW]

I know, I didn't preview, so didn't see yours!

 

[JimW]

You also have the advantage of knowing what it means, which is more than I do.

 

[TruXta]

Sounds like what used to be called political economy has been partly taken over by what is now referred to as economic sociology, the latter of which I quite like.

 

[love detective]

the problem though is that walls are built up & reinforced between things like economics, history, politics, economic history, sociology etc. - each thing separated into its own narrow sphere, whereas to properly understand society you need these barriers smashed and the transcending of the boundries of the social sciences in analysis, treating economics as a social science rather than a hard science, and reintroducing the social, historical and political content back into an integrated approach to try and understand what's going on around us. Academia seems to be doing its upmost to prevent this from happening.

I would say that most of us who have not been through the university system and who are not academics in any sense of the word can see these things happening much more than those who are closer to it (and to a large extent recuperated by, and dependent on, it)

 

[butchersapron]

There's a very useful basic introduction to the idea that marginalism (and all sorts of other developments) were a material response to LToV and the challenges marx presented in general in the first two chapters of A survey of global political economy - Kees van der Pijl which you can read here

 

[TruXta]

the problem though is that walls are built up & reinforced between things like economics, history, politics, economic history, sociology etc. - each thing separated into its own narrow sphere, whereas to properly understand society you need these barriers smashed and the transcending of the boundries of the social sciences in analysis, treating economics as a social science rather than a hard science, and reintroducing the social, historical and political content back into an integrated approach to try and understand what's going on around us. Academia seems to be doing its upmost to prevent this from happening.

I would say that most of us who have not been through the university system and who are not academics in any sense of the word can see these things happening much more than those who are closer to it (and to a large extent recuperated by, and dependent on, it)

Sure, I agree with that, except I wouldn't like to see economics as any kind of master discipline even if it did become thoroughly socialised again (and it has become much less orthodox/neo-classical in the last generation IME).

 

[TruXta]

There's a very useful basic introduction to the idea that marginalism (and all sorts of other developments) were a material response to LToV and the challenges marx presented in general in the first two chapters of A survey of global political economy - Kees van der Pijl which you can read here

Cheers, will have a look.

 

[love detective]

Sure, I agree with that, except I wouldn't like to see economics as any kind of master discipline even if it did become thoroughly socialised again (and it has become much less orthodox/neo-classical in the last generation IME).

yeah i didn't mean to suggest that this was the aim (in fact I don't think i did) - it's the imperialism of economics (in relation to everything else) that is part of the problem

 

[TruXta]

yeah i didn't mean to suggest that this was the aim (in fact I don't think i did) - it's the imperialism of economics (in relation to everything else) that is part of the problem

Sorry, didn't mean to imply you said as much, only that it was a possible implication of what you wrote.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

you just dip in and out of this discussion - refusing to respond to points that have been put to you time after time - and then, after a suitable period of time, pop up again with nonsense like the above

as i've said before, i've no interest in putting any effort into responding to any of your points, as history shows that as soon as I do and logically challenge the crap you come out with and challenge you to defend/answer it, you, you slope off into extended periods of silence and then reappear after enough time & space has been put between now and your previous arguments being demolished - so that kind of debate is not worth the effort on my part, sorry

For the record, though you're seriously mixed up in everything you talk about above - value does not take the form of something like a pig for a start (you're mixing up use-values and value/exchange value), and to say that value doesn't spend time in the money form (or the commodity or productive capital forms) portrays a fundamental understanding of even the most basic of political economy

But don't let any of that let you think that you're so clever that you can write off or critique Marx without even having read (or understood) any of him. And to even seriously suggest that Marx (or indeed me) was seduced by the fetishism around money is totally absurd, this alone shows your total and utter fundamental ignorance of Marx's political economy - complete strawman from you on that from what i can see (ditto your 'point' that value doesn't spend time in the money form during the circuit of capital). Whether that's deliberate so you can try and salvage some point in the eyes of others on this thread, or whether it's due to your ignorance & utter misunderstanding of the topic who knows, i'm inclined towards thinking the later though as from what i've seen I doubt you have enough grasp of the topic matter to even attempt to do the former.

I've held off from responding on this thread for a while precisely because of this kind of response from you. You're an arrogant fuck, you know that, calling anyone who questions you ignorant.

Btw, I'm not critiquing Marx. I'm critiquing you. Big difference.

 

[love detective]

you've held off responding (on this and countless other threads) because you're unable to respond to the points i've put to you and are unable to counter my rebuttals of your previous points/arguments - something you consistently do here - so grow a set of balls and don't hide behind lame shite like above.

And if you being unable to respond to my rebuttal of your shite makes me arrogant then you've got some weird kind of displacement thing going on around your own failings there. I don't call anyone who questions me ignorant, I do call them ignorant if after spending an inordinate amount of time going into the reasons why I disagree with their fuckwitted theories, they continue to ignore all rational, logical and empirical arguments I make against them and refuse to engage with the points raised, and continue to just assert, like some kind of religious faith, that they are right (or like we have seen on this thread, either run away or try to shift the topic onto something else to shield them from having to confront your own ignorance).

You are right, because it comes from you, so it must be right - and you call me arrogant.

and what else can you call someone who is ignorant of the topic they are trying to make out they have some profound insight into, but ignorant?

I know you like to think of yourself as an all round clever-cloggist, but face it, like the rest of us we're ignorant about a lot of things - the difference between you and most in that regard though is you can't actually admit that - but instead of actually taking the time to research and find out about a particular topic (and understand about what has went previous to it in terms of conceptual frameworks and ways of understanding things), you think you can just 'think' your way to being an expert in it - i.e. because if comes from you, it must be right

You have no idea who you are critiquing because you have no idea about the topic - it's been seen on this thread that your positions on this puts you in a weird kind of camp that is some kind of fuckwitted synthesis between Jazz and Friedman. Pretty much everything i've argued here is standard marxian approaches to understanding money & value - yet you maintain that in dismissing them (or failing to even understand them) this is not a critique of marx. There's no end to your ignorance really.

I think you just have a chip on your shoulder because you with all your expensive private schooling and university education still gets trashed into the ground by someone who left school at 16 and had no formal education since.

 

[Random]

I've held off from responding on this thread for a while precisely because of this kind of response from you. You're an arrogant fuck, you know that, calling anyone who questions you ignorant.

In your post that LD responded to, you said that he had made a serious mistake, but while doing so you showed that you had no idea of the concepts that you were trying to use. No wonder he gets a bit short-termpered.

 

[love detective]

yet i'm the arrogant one

 

[TruXta]

yet i'm the arrogant one

Not even a little bit?

 

[Random]

Not even a little bit?

He just Scottish = descended from Norwegians who liked to fight more than they liked to fish.

 

[love detective]

Not even a little bit?

everything's relative

 

[JimW]

There's a very useful basic introduction to the idea that marginalism (and all sorts of other developments) were a material response to LToV and the challenges marx presented in general in the first two chapters of A survey of global political economy - Kees van der Pijl which you can read here

Cheers, just downloaded all of that to add to the pile of stuff I don't know when I'll get round to reading.

 

[deke t lefel]

But a currency doesn't actually have to be backed by anything at all, and effectively they aren't now.

as a minimum, a currency has to be backed by the workforce of the issuer