#value-form theory

[rosswolfe]

Alan Milchman (1940-2021)

. Was sad to learn that Alan Milchman, better known in ultraleft circles as Mac Intosh of Internationalist Perspective, passed away on Friday (I was told by someone close to him that it was okay to publicly share his name). I don’t know enough details about his life to really write a proper obituary. But I’m told that IP plans to release a statement about his passing, so I will be sure to link to…

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[freiherr-von-ofterdingen]

The money-form of value itself suffers from structural deficiencies or internal contradictions. For to be value for itself, to “actualise the concept of value in autonomous form”, the money-form of value cannot merely mediate between commodities in their exchange. But if, on the other hand, it is withdrawn from circulation and hoarded, it loses its character as value, and it becomes a mere “metal dump”. This contradiction brings about the emergence of a new form of value which no longer plays the subordinate role of merely mediating between commodities (as in the figure C-M-C), but instead makes itself the object of its immersion in circulation — or the end, the purpose, the telos of circulation as represented by the figure M-C-M´. This inversion generates the capital-form of value. In Hegelian terminology, we have now arrived at value in and for itself: value which takes itself as its own end. The capital-form of value, self-valorising value, however, is unable to actualise itself in the sphere of circulation where the exchange of equivalents obtains; it is driven by this internal contradiction to externalise itself in the material world of production, where surplus value can be generated through the exploitation of labour-power. This movement of subsumption of production under the value form posits (abstract) labour as the substance of value.

Endnotes - The Moving Contradiction

[milapultra-blog]

Value-Form Theory

"The problem that much communization theory points out is that, if your revolutionary praxis is simply to emphasize (materially and ideologically) labourers as a class (by building up industry, focusing the entire society toward developing productive forces rather than re-organizing the "insides" of the means of production to be more amenable to those using the means and the product, etc) then you are simply affirming the value-form as such, which IS very much the class relation...

...In short, Value-form theory tries to describe capitalism. It is a negative critique of capitalism. Whenever the article above says "Value-form theory" or "VFT," you can almost always replace it with "capitalism," since value-form theory is NOT claiming that these things are facts of nature, but facts of capitalism which can (and ought to be) abolished--i.e., it is not an overdetermining totality."

[gemeinwesen]

Capital as value in motion is not distinct from matter in motion shifted by labor; labor acts as capital, not just at its behest. Marx says: "Labor is not only the use-value which confronts capital; it is THE USE-VALUE of capital itself." This labor is absorbed by productive capital and acts as "a moment of capital", he claims. All the productive powers of labor appear as those of capital. The category of value is rooted precisely in capital's struggle with labor to accomplish this 'transfer' of its productive powers. Since the workers are 'possessed' by capital and the material labor process is simultaneously a valorisation process, the same thing has two frames of reference. But this is not merely a matter of different ways of talking, or of the coexistence of alternative realities, it is also a matter of determination, of one side informing the other with its own purposes. Capital determines the orgnisation of production: but the character of labor, natural resources and machinery limit it in this endeavor. Although capital is hegemonic in this respect, its subsumption of labor can never be perfected; labor is always 'in and against' capital. Albeit that the production process is really subsumed by capital, the problem for capital is that it needs the agency of labor. Even if the productive power of labor is absorbed into that of capital to all intents, it is necessary to bear in mind that capital still depends upon it.

Chris Arthur, The Contradiction of Capital