In the real world, things exist before the idea of them exists. For example, oxygen exists, and its only after extensive, scientific research that the idea of oxygen comes into existence, and it is given a name. Before that, the effects of oxygen, for example, on combustion, are noted, but explained not by oxygen, but by phlogiston. Similarly, value exists long before the idea of value exists. Value is labour, and, because Man must engage in labour, value, thereby, exists, even though Man does not give it this name. In fact, as Marx says, the first etymological uses of the word ”value” or “worth” relate not to value or labour, but to use value/utility.
It is the development of value, from being the individual value of the product, to the social/market value of the commodity, and the expression of this market value, relative to other commodities, as exchange-value, and to money, as price, which leads to the idea of value, exchange-value, and price. But, Proudhon works in the opposite direction. He proceeds from the idea of value and other economic categories.
“The production relations of every society form a whole. M. Proudhon considers economic relations as so many social phases, engendering one another, resulting one from the other like the antithesis from the thesis, and realizing in their logical sequence the impersonal reason of humanity.” (p 102)
But, this presents a problem, for Proudhon's method, and, indeed, for all those who consider that value is something that springs into existence, fully formed, with commodity production and exchange, or worse, only with capitalism. The real development of value, in the material world, described above, enables this real development to be reflected in the realm of ideas, but how can you have the development of the idea of price, without, first, the idea of exchange-value; how can you have the idea of exchange-value without first the idea of social/market value; and how can you have the idea of social value without first having the idea of individual value? Marx sets this out, at length, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20.
“... when he comes to examine a single one of these phases, M. Proudhon cannot explain it without having recourse to all the other relations of society; which relations, however, he has not yet made his dialectic movement engender. When, after that, M. Proudhon, by means of pure reason, proceeds to give birth to these other phases, he treats them as if they were new-born babes. He forgets that they are of the same age as the first.” (p 102-3)
And, this is the problem for all those who argue that value only comes into existence with commodity production/capitalism, and argue that The Law of Value exists only under capitalism, conflating value with exchange-value. Its like arguing that oxygen only comes into existence after scientists isolated it and named it. This method is typical of bourgeois ideology, and deals with phenomenon as simply a series of discrete things, or events, like a series of still photographs, rather than a moving film. It operates on the basis of formal logic, rather than dialectics.
“Thus, to arrive at the constitution of value, which for him is the basis of all economic evolutions, he could not do without division of labour, competition, etc. Yet in the series, in the understanding of M. Proudhon, in the logical sequence, these relations did not yet exist.
In constructing the edifice of an ideological system by means of the categories of political economy, the limbs of the social system are dislocated. The different limbs of society are converted into so many separate societies, following one upon the other. How, indeed, could the single logical formula of movement, of sequence, of time, explain the structure of society, in which all relations coexist simultaneously and support one another?” (p 103)
No comments:
Post a Comment