Written in Japanese, the Uno-Sekine approach to Marx's work is little understood in West. John Bell seeks to correct this, explaining how problematic elements of Marxian Political Economy such as the law of value and the law of relative surplus population can be solved by using a more rigorous dialectical analysis.
Bell's clear and accessible synthesis provides economists with the tools to interrogate capitalism in a more powerful way than ever before.
Written in Japanese, the Uno-Sekine approach to Marx's work is little understood in West. John Bell seeks to correct this, explaining how problematic elements of Marxian Political Economy such as the law of value and the law of relative surplus population can be solved by using a more rigorous dialectical analysis.
Bell's clear and accessible synthesis provides economists with the tools to interrogate capitalism in a more powerful way than ever before.
Capitalism and the Dialectic: The Uno-Sekine Approach to Marxian Political Economy
256
Capitalism and the Dialectic: The Uno-Sekine Approach to Marxian Political Economy
256Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Written in Japanese, the Uno-Sekine approach to Marx's work is little understood in West. John Bell seeks to correct this, explaining how problematic elements of Marxian Political Economy such as the law of value and the law of relative surplus population can be solved by using a more rigorous dialectical analysis.
Bell's clear and accessible synthesis provides economists with the tools to interrogate capitalism in a more powerful way than ever before.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780745329338 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 11/07/2009 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Commodity, Value, Money and Capital Forms
The dialectical method requires that the capitalist mode of production, as a self-organized subject/object, should first be externally specified as how it presents itself as an immediate whole (as how it is). Capitalism introduces itself as a circulation economy – an economy in which products must be circulated or traded before being consumed, either directly or productively. Indeed, capitalism initially presents itself as an immense collection of commodities which have been offered for sale in the marketplace. Although the dialectic of capital does not make it immediately explicit, the theory always presupposes a fully developed capitalist society in which all use values are capitalistically produced as commodities in possession of value and which are, therefore, destined to be sold in a society-wide, competitive market by capitalist firms that employ labour power and material inputs purchased as commodities in that same market.
Capitalist society involves the transformation of social relations between humans into 'social' relations between things or objects outside us. This tendency towards the reification or 'impersonalization' of human relations follows from the fact that, in capitalist society, all goods tend to be produced for an impersonal, society-wide market as commodities. Since services are not material goods, and cannot be capitalistically produced as commodities, they cannot be reified or made impersonal. We shall assume, therefore, that in a purely capitalist society personal services are not directly performed by one individual for another; rather, economic agents sell commodities to one another and it is only when these commodities are finally in the hands of consumers that they serve themselves with the assistance of the said commodities. It is by means of this rather drastic theoretical simplification, which we shall remove in the stages theory, that we are able to narrow our focus so as to view only the essential properties of capitalism. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution, which liberal market capitalism made inevitable, did not simultaneously produce a similar revolution in the provision of services. Rather, it tended to undermine the social relations and material foundation which sustained that sector.
A COMMODITY HAS VALUE AND USE VALUE
Prior to any further specification, capital is abstract, commodity-economic, or mercantile (commercial) wealth, possessing value, even if the accumulation of that wealth unavoidably entails producing and/or trading goods or use values. Therefore, value cannot exist by itself, since a commodity, as a good produced for consumption (either direct or productive), must also be a use value which has natural or physical properties, which will satisfy a human need. As value, a commodity constitutes a fraction of the homogeneous mass of society's abstract-general mercantile wealth, whereas, as a use value, it is a particular, isolated, individual, concrete-specific sample from the heterogeneous aggregate of society's material wealth.
If the value aspect of the commodity accounts for its comparability (or identity) with others rather than its physical and heterogeneous use-value properties, it is the heterogeneous quality of the use-value aspect that negates the apparent indeterminacy of the commodity as value, the form in which 'all the commodity's natural properties are extinguished' (Marx 1973, p.141) or held temporarily in abeyance. Taking either aspect of the commodity in isolation from its opposite leaves the nature of the commodity unspecified, just as taking being and nothing as self-subsistent in the Hegelian system rather than as moments of a determinate whole, results in their complete indeterminacy. In a commodity, in contrast to a good, there can never be a use value which is not negatively correlated with its value or social being (Dunne 1977, p.18).
Simple use values play no role in the dialectic. Only the use value of a commodity as the negation of its value is germane here. All goods, whether they are commodities or not, possess a use value, in that they are material objects produced as consumption goods or as producer goods, which are consumed in the course of production. No social (or inter-human) relation need inhere in goods, for goods or simple use values may be privately produced and consumed. Goods do not, merely because they each have a use value, automatically develop into commodities. They become commodities only under a definite set of social relations.
Commodities are the social and historic form that goods adopt when their owners are so related as to produce them as values or as instruments of trade, which are mutually exchanged. Thus, even though all wealth, capitalistic or otherwise, possesses a use value, the study of use values as such falls outside the scope of the dialectic of capital. Our focus is on mercantile (or abstract-general) wealth, which can be pursued endlessly, not on the consumption of material or concrete-specific wealth, which eventually leads to satiation.
The use value of a commodity refers to its use value from the point of view of a would-be purchaser, while that commodity still belongs to the seller. Although the commodity is a value from the point of view of its seller, it is at the same time a potential use value for its would-be purchaser, who would like to consume it. In order to consume that use value, the purchaser must acquire the commodity by paying a price for it. Only when the commodity is purchased by the consumer does it become a non-commodity, as its use value becomes realizable (or consumable). When the commodity is purchased, however, it is also sold. Therefore, by the time its use value becomes realizable, its value too has already been realized. Neither the value nor the use value of the commodity can be realized unless it changes hands or is circulated.
Because of the above considerations, the dialectic of capital, as the economic theory of capitalism, must thus begin with the study of the commodity form instead of mere goods or wealth in general. Capital, the dialectical subject here, can only reveal itself by allowing its value or capitalist–social-relational aspect, its most abstract specification, which is inherent in the commodity form, to prevail over use value, which represents everything other than capital.
The contradiction between value and use value in the dialectic of capital echoes the contradiction between pure, abstract and featureless being and nothing in Hegel's Logic. The triad of 'value, use value and exchange value', which sets the stage for value-form theory in the dialectic of capital, corresponds to the triad of being, nothing and becoming in Hegel's work, which prepares the way for the logic of determinate being (Dasein). In each case, the most universal, abstract and seemingly empty category (being, value) passes over to its negation (nothing, use value) and then to a synthesis (becoming, exchange value) in which being /value prevails.
At this early stage in the development of the dialectic, the term value denotes only an indifference to use values. As value, any representative commodity is indistinguishable from any other. It is the requirement of exchangeability that endows a commodity with its value or its qualitative equality with all other commodities. All commodities relate themselves with one another only quantitatively in prices because they share the property of being socially significant. It is too soon to say, at this very early stage in the development of the dialectical argument, what the objective basis of this social significance is.
Both the logic of capitalism and the logic of Hegel begin with the most abstract, empty, immediate (that is, seemingly unmediated or virtually featureless) category, which represents the subject matter. In each, the first doctrine studies the mode of existence or (operating principles) of the subject/ object without reference to its substantive content, inner determinations, specifications or concreteness. Just as pure being appears in Hegel as the initial concept or starting point, and only much later is shown to have been the first glimpse of the absolute idea, so is the category of value initially introduced as the defining characteristic of the commodity only to be recognized much later as the most abstract or least specified, and, thus, simplest representation or cell form of capitalism. Indeed, a commodity in possession of value implicitly contains or physically embodies all the operating principles of capitalism, but that remains to be revealed. To say that the categories of being and value appear in their least specified form, as the two parallel dialectical expositions begin, is to say that not only have these concepts not yet been internally differentiated, but also that we are not yet aware of their external relations. Thus, it is initially difficult to distinguish between the categories of being and nothing, or value and use value, though we can indicate the primacy of the commodity's 'social' being.
Throughout the doctrine of circulation, the logic of becoming or transition, the method of external synthesis, which is the same logic that also prevails in Hegel's doctrine of being, plays a dominant role. The socially uniform quality of value, which has to reside in the use value of a specific commodity, gradually releases itself from use-value restrictions as the form of the commodity passes over to the form of money and then to the form of capital.
COMMODITIES MUST BE PRICED = VALUE MUST BE EXPRESSED
Consider a particular commodity owner in a trading community. He is in possession of commodities which have no use value for him, but he requires commodities possessed by other members of the trading community. This commodity owner must represent a proto-merchant capitalist and, hence, be viewed as a seller of commodities. The said proto-merchant cannot consume his own commodity, but he can obtain other commodities only if he expresses the value of his commodity through an exchange proposal. He selects a determinate quantity of the use value of another commodity which he requires for his personal or productive consumption in order to express the value of his own commodity. By adopting the use value of another commodity, value frees itself from the correlative use value with which it has had to cohabit in the same commodity.
When a commodity suppresses its own use value in order to express its value in the use value of another commodity it takes the form of exchange value. The negation or suppression of a particular commodity's use value in that of another commodity characterizes this Hegelian-style determinate value expression (Dunne 1977, p.34). A commodity must be exchanged or sold for another in order to assert its social being. It cannot be a commodity unless it has a determinate social relation with another commodity. The expression of the value of a commodity by its price or exchange value is an unavoidable necessity that must occur prior to the actual exchange of commodities.
This value expression does not envision a direct barter, whereby the owner of linen and the owner of a coat actually confront one another to execute an exchange, in which the values of the two commodities are already reflected in the precise quantity of each other's use value. Barter entails the exchange of simple use values between persons who come face to face with each other, and who are capable of directly negotiating the terms of trade. Instances of simple barter, which are necessarily limited in scope, do not develop necessarily into full-fledged, impersonal commodity exchanges over time. In a mature capitalist market, barter seldom occurs and, in the context of the theory of pure capitalism, not at all. Commodities are sold for money in the open market, and money purchases commodities. All commodity exchanges are, by necessity, mediated by money. The significance (or convertibility into money) of any one commodity cannot be definitively evaluated independently of the social significance of all other commodities. The interdependence of all commodities as value signifies the exchange of all commodities for all commodities. Such general commodity exchanges are always mediated by money, and are never a summation of the moneyless barter exchanges of use values.
All commodities are traded as values because, at least in principle, no commodity seller knows where his potential customers are. Thus, we must recognize that the commodity seller we have been speaking of has not as yet found the person to whom his commodity is a potential use value. Moreover, at this early stage of the dialectic, the two commodities, the one offered for sale and the other that is desired, cannot be exchanged because money has not yet been theoretically developed so that it may play its mediating role. We are here concerned only with an exchange proposal in which the commodity for sale physically exists, but the commodity desired is present only in the mind of the 'proposer' of the exchange. That is why he has to express the value of his commodity by pricing it first so as to test or probe the market. There would be no such need if he were already in direct contact with his customer. The expression of a commodity's value by its owner in terms of the use value of another commodity that he wants is unilateral. His sole concern is the extent to which his commodity turns out to be useful or socially valuable and significant to others. Only to that extent does his commodity demonstrate that it has value or that it constitutes a claim on the mercantile wealth of society, measured in terms of that abstract homogeneous quality we have referred to as value.
Suppose that A is the commodity for sale and B the desired commodity. The seller of A may express its value in the use value of commodity B, which he needs or desires, in the following manner: an amount x of A => an amount y of B, where the symbol =>, or value-projection sign, may be read as 'is yours for'. This is called the elementary, accidental or simple-value form. In this exchange proposal, A (the commodity for sale) stands in the position of the relative-value form, and B (the desired commodity) stands in the position of the equivalent-value form. The relationship between the two commodities is asymmetrical. Their positions cannot be reversed, since no actual barter is taking place and since A's exchange proposal does not imply the existence of B's counter-exchange proposal. To propose the exchange of A for B is to negate A's own use value and to adopt the use value of the other commodity, in this case B, as the reflector of its value.
As a seller, the commodity owner is concerned only with the value of his commodity. The concept of exchange value concretely unifies value and use value, the two mutually incompatible properties of a commodity arising in the mind of the seller, by virtue of the fact that the value of the seller's commodity can only be expressed by the use value of another commodity that is not in his possession. From this context, it is obvious that the quantity of the commodity in the equivalent-value form must be definite, while the quantity of the commodity in the relative-value form may vary. In expressing the value of a commodity offered for sale, its owner can take no further initiative in consummating a proposed trade other than to vary the amount offered. An owner of a commodity, such as a coat, which occupies the position of the equivalent-value form, however, can immediately acquire the commodity offered in the trade proposal. The simple-value expression of one commodity (such as linen) has now given another commodity (the coat) immediate purchasing power or the power of a little money within the terms of a particular proposed exchange.
Commodities offered for sale in capitalist society are bound to have price tags, which demand that they be purchased by someone for a definite amount of money. The money price, however, is only a developed form of the expression of the value of a commodity in the use value of another commodity. Value is a property of the genuine commodity produced with indifference to its use value, and thus reflects the degree to which its procurement costs society in real terms. Only later in the dialectic will the unfolding logic be ready to reveal or specify that all capitalistically produced commodities are products of labour. We cannot derive such a conclusion from a mere observation of the exchange of commodities as an empirical fact, or, as Marx erroneously suggested, as a direct deduction from an 'equation' of exchange (Marx 1969, p.45). It is, however, not necessary to know the substance of this qualitative uniformity before demonstrating that it gives rise to prices.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Capitalism and the Dialectic"
by .
Copyright © 2009 John R. Bell.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PrefaceChapter 1: Introduction to the Uno/Sekine Approach
PART I: THE DIALECTICAL THEORY OF PURE CAPITALISM
THE DOCTRINE OF CIRCULATION
Chapter 2: Commodity, Value, Money and Capital Forms
THE DOCTRINE OF PRODUCTION
Chapter 3: Capitalist Production
Chapter 4: The Circulation and Reproduction of Capital
THE DOCTRINE OF DISTRIBUTION
Chapter 5: The Theory of Profit
Chapter 6: Business Cycles
Chapter 7: Rent, Commercial Credit and Loan Capital
Chapter 8: Interest-Bearing Capital Closes the Dialectic
PART II: CAPITALISM AND HISTORY
Chapter 9: The Stages Theory of Capitalist Development
Chapter 10: Conclusion: Capitalists Beyond Capitalism
Bibliography
Index