rethinking marxist theory of value
Globalisation can be analytically viewed as the era when rent extraction, inevitably relying on PCA, has become the predominant means of extraction of surplus by large capital, which is global. I had suggested that global capital not only extracts rent through acquisition of property rights over land and other natural resources, but it also extracts rent on the basis of acquisition of sole rights to knowledge and markets, and through the imposition of immobility on labour. All these it manages through various international laws and regulations. One could club all these uses of the discriminatory powers derived from the same legal framework that is deemed by the faithful to be non-discriminatory, and so impersonal, under the common theoretical rubric of PCA without violence to the fundamental theoretical propositions of Marx.primitive capital accumulation (pca) denotes the moment at which the legal/property-relation structure tht determines and governs the flow of rent, is established... since the property-relation structure concerned for all possible properties can not be constructed at a single moment (for pragmatic reasons, as well as the reason that 'property' as a category evolves with time)... hence primitive cannot be read as 'temporally initial' but shud be read as 'logically initial', 'logic' being the logic tht governs the extraction of rent... once the logic/property-relation is in place the underlying structure of violence that forms the basis of such logic/property-relation is gradually normalised/rationalised by the ideology which determines and is determined by that structure of violence... accumulation of capital under the dominance of such ideology cannot be differentiated from 'normal' (read non-primitive) capital accumulation... rent extraction must depend logically on pca but does not require the co-existence of pca... however, cracks/fissures in such normalisation is commonplace, and normalising projects are often rejected - partially or entirely... an obvious example is the experience in west bengal... where despite much efforts by the state government the normalisation of the violence carried out to acquire land for tata/salem groups' factories has not been possible... i differ categorically with prof basu regarding calling "all these uses of the discriminatory powers derived from the same legal framework ... under the common theoretical rubric of PCA"... all the instances of surplus/rent extraction as justified by the structure of private property rights must not be understood as an instance of pca... that expands the term so much tht it loses its very meaning - the importance of 'primitive'... pca, in clearer terms, must be understood as the accumulation of capital where the 'logic' that governs and justifies it, is not yet in ideologically dominant position... it however, once performed and re-performed, enforces the ideology concerned in a dominant position and thus transforming it into 'normal' capital accumulation...
prof basu calls for a rejection of exchange-value and a return to use value with the word of caution/clarification that "fundamentally in all spheres one must try to revitalise the community content of use value at the cost of the subjective, individual use values"... but individual, subjective use value was always already polluted/determined by social requirements/dictums... further, "direct heterogeneous social relations" re/produce hierarchies as necessarily as does "homogeneous relations mediated through commodity exchange"... the theoretical problem here however predates prof basu... the project of deconstructing marxian theory of value has been wrongly premised upon the binary of use-value an exchange-value... the very fact that an object hav use-value, implies that it also might hav use-value for somebody else and/or for the same person at another time... the former requires stock decision about exchanging that object wid somebody else - 'property-exchange'... the latter requires flow decision regarding inter-temporal 'use-'exchange' of that object... both implies the always already presence of exchange-value for that object... marx found use-value to not to be of his interest, as he regarded it as a pre-exchange economy relic... much similar to the way saussure dint bothered to further consider 'referent' in his theory of linguistics, as he found it to be a 'pre-linguistic' relic... both 'pre-exchange' and 'pre-linguistic' however are impossibilities... thus making both the categories use-value and referent poor in theoretical content... this so-called binary of use-value and exchange-value was mis-identified... the frozen play lies elsewhere...
marx however was convinced that money is a repository of exchange-value, thus money-price hav a direct/non-arbitrary correspondence with exchange-value... it has been believed that the money price of an object necessarily reflect its exchange-value... even is determined by the latter... which i call upon for re-consideration... a fitting analogy is that of the relation between signifier, signified and referent... while the signifier-signified was seen as forming one entity, its relation with the referent was understood by saussure to be 'arbitrary'... the direct/certain relation between signifier-signified was only deconstructed later by derrida and thus declaring the advent of the post-structuralism... i suggest we see money-price as the signifier of the signified exchange-value... the so-called direct correspondence between them requires deconstruction... and let the arbitrariness of their relation be taken as the preferred entry point into the marxian theory of value...
the signifier 'money-price' is believed to signify the signified 'exchange-value'... directly and with certainty... but the concept of exchange-value is far older, it existed in a market-realm without money... in gift economies... in barter economies... it also need to be emphasised that in a system of fiat money, money itself is not any more defined upon the amount of a particular commodity it represents, but only in terms of itself... reading the rbi gov's declaration on any rupee note will clarify this... thus money no longer 'reprsents' value... it represents itself... rather the category of 'value' has been substituted by the interplay of money-prices... the proliferation of money among many a things has extended the deferral/differal of value... it has gradually taken up the role of determining exchange-value itself... its no more that a commodity is expensive because its production require much 'socially necessary labour', but much 'socially necessary labour' is produced and expended for the production of a commodity because it is of great 'money-price'... this is how the circuit of money and commodity defined by it, goes on to determine 'socially necessary labour'... thus redefining 'social' and 'labour' on its way to further and greater M'... and such redefining is exactly what is denoted as pca above...
thus, we may construct a revised marxian theory of value, where money plays the central role in determining value, as well as social relations... and not simply is something tht represents exchange-value... the latter itself must be understood as produced through the interaction of money-prices... the value of the commodity is only expressable/acceptable when it is communicated in terms of money... it does not matter how much abstract labour it embodies... a taj mahal or great wall of china is regarded as of 'wonder'ful value only because it is supported by money spent in terms of sms-s and e-mails and advertisements... interestingly the great pyramids failed to do so...
note: what i hav written in this post, at best can be described as a conviction... tis no more well-informed or theorised than that... but it seems to offer something, which might be a dead end too... futher studies/understandings/reflections are needed before writing more about this.. also i shud thank dear sir-ji for that wonderful discussion last evening, where i first presented these ideas... we talkd abt many other related things... which will be communicated as they concretise...
posted by r i j u at 9:26 PM
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