#value form

[wildboten]

It is the social occupation of the place of the universal by money that makes the abolition of money central to the concept of communism, but that also, today, relegates communism to the status of an idea, thereby putting into place an inevitable cynical supplement to Left politics. It is thus, as Marx argued in 1839, in the idealist terminology of the self-criticism of Hegelianism, that ‘when philosophy … as a practical person, weaves intrigues with the world … [i]t is essential that [it] should … wear character masks’: be it the mask of the dog or of Guy Fawkes – the V for Vendetta that is the V for Vengence, the new mask of anonymity that oppositionally mimics the indifference of exchange-value to the use-values that support it. - Disguised as a dog Cynical Occupy? Peter Osborne

[wildboten]

With respect to the cultural dimension of this[the shedding of the illusion of ‘world-historical’ action] situation, in European societies, it is the culture of punk – rather than the politicized social movements of the 1960s and early 1970s – that forms the background to Occupy and related movements (especially in the UK). Punk was the counter-cultural expression of the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state of the 1970s and early 1980s. Not for nothing did punks wear dog collars. This staged animalistic reduction is classically Cynical. In their rhetorical naturalistic levelling – think also of the role of the homeless, and the debates that their presence occasioned within the Occupy camp at St Paul’s, for example – such performances of life reappropriate the indifference to all ‘higher’ values that is inherent in the commodity structure of the money form. - Disguised as a dog Cynical Occupy? Peter Osborne

[sextingwithsartre]

any metaphysicians out there reading kojin karatani and thinking abt the value-form in capitalism? how about marxist legal theory?

[yngwrthr]

On Pashukanis’ radical historical interpretation, establishment of the need for law results from the requirements of exchange of commodities. The path of development of exchange leads to the development of law. “Legal form” is basically the legal side of economic relations between people who trade commodities as values on the marketplace. These developments in commodity exchange help to create conditions necessary for transition to capitalism. Consequently, “law” is a category such as “value” or “money”, and so disappears against the backdrop of communist society.

In the communistic epoch, allocation of social labor does not take the form of exchange. Its product does not pass along the market in commodity form before being consumed. Social production is consciously pre-determined and collectively administered by the workers themselves in accordance with “from each according to ability…”. Thus, juridical aspects of economic relations dissipate — “wither…” — along with political aspects of the state.

In capitalism, where division of labor is regulated entirely by purchase and sale of commodities with money on the market, speaking namely of the exchange between laborers and employers, law plays a pivotal role. It is part of the super structural defense used to mediate the capitalists attempt to pump unpaid labor from their workers. And, of course, while the capitalist mode of production does promote the “rule of law”, it is only because this covers up the fact that capitalism involves a struggle between classes of people and economic exploitation. To summarize; producing surplus value via exploiting wage labor makes capitalism a possibility, and law is one way to “protect and serve” this process so that capital can continue to be accumulated.

[yngwrthr]

Poking my nose further into Pashukanis’ criticism of bourgeois philosophy of law:

Typically characterizing slavery and serfdom, legal rights are withheld from the laboring classes and enjoyed by the masters and lords, respectively. In the former case, slaves and serfs all lack the rights which proletarians utilize as “citizens”. For instance, whereas in a slave society political and economic rights are retained exclusively by the masters, then in a capitalist society the working class have equal rights to the ruling class. This rules out the possibility of “slavery”. Despite developing the “degree of culture” not to submit to slavery, proletarians: 1. still produce for those who do not produce for them; 2. within the productive arena, are subject to the interests of the ruling class, who are not subject to theirs; 3. Inasmuch as their livelihoods depend on these relations with the capitalists, they tend to be poorer than the latter. Thus the proletariat remains a subordinate class of workers who provide labor for non producing, non working rulers.

Under capitalism, however, labor power is a commodity and passes through the market in value form like all others. Buying and selling of commodities — e.g. the selling of labor power as commodity to the capitalist — the most basic transaction of capitalism — implies an “equality” of individuals who own commodities. The same process that endows the products of labor as “commodities” bearing “value” also endows the subject with “rights”. “The legal subject is thus an abstract owner of commodities raised to the heavens”. Correspondingly, the highest development of the legal form corresponds to the highest development of the commodity form — capitalist economy. On the other hand, in addition to perfectly realizing the abstract equality of legal form, to the extent that the aim of capitalist production is the production of capital, which may be described as a “capitalized” form of surplus value, it also requires unpaid, unnecessary, forced surplus labor.

The working class does not carry out this labor voluntarily. They do not satisfy their own needs through it but the needs of others. Whatever a worker produces belongs to the capitalist. Their labor is not free activity but imposed by the compulsion of lack of ownership and hence control of the means of production. The proletariat is quickly transformed from an abstract legal subject in the realm of commodity exchange into an instrument for performing exploited, alienated, essentially corvee labor in the process of production. This is the real cost of the capitalist thirst for surplus value. And the workers foot the bill.

In the specific conditions of the capitalist mode of production, this coercion of surplus labor during the working day is covered up by some pile of labor contracts, legal institutions, and the form of law — which only means an increase in the control of capitalists over the workers. The extortion of surplus value is disguised as profits on capital. For the working class, then, in a capitalist society, exploitation alone is involved.

[yngwrthr]

Editor’s Introduction to Pashukanis

Editor’s Introduction to Evgeny B. Pashukanus’ The General Theory of Law and Marxism (1924) by Christopher J. Arthur (1978) 1 Evgeny Bronisl

Pashukanis joined Marx’s historical materialism with a value form theory of law to reveal commodity production and exchange as the process which provides the initial stage for the full development of the “legal form”. His outline of the origin and nature of legal form emphasizes that these sort of production relations include the system of “law” as a requirement to maintain the form of economic structure. It is through legal sanctions, enforced by courts, police, etc., that production relations acquire the status of property relations — a legal reflection of the economic base of society. Hence developing commodity exchange and production relations of private property not only requires but generates the need for more adequate legal aspects of the superstructure.

Value form of products (labor) is a precondition for capitalism, and the legal form is a precondition for such a form of labor. Capitalism can only get under way if equality of commodities on the market has become equality of human beings as private, individual, autonomous commodity producers. It is only because this basic equality between the owners of commodities has undergone universal codification in the form of law that the historical development of capitalism, based on the pursuit of private producers chasing after ever growing profits, is possible. Again, because individuals who lack means of production must be able to freely exchange labor power as a commodity, the form of law is not only a precondition for but maintains the capitalist method of production.

In the context of advanced capitalist commodity society, with its use of language of abstract rights — i.e. “universal equality” (capitalism) — the form of law conceals the extraction of surplus labor. Completion of the legal form in capitalism — equality for the worker in exchange with the capitalist — sanctions and conceals official ruling class interests. In this way, the abstract rights of free and equal exchangers masks the concrete reality of exploitation in the productive sphere.

[yngwrthr]

[yngwrthr]