‘Surplus Theory’ versus Marxian Theory

[Dave B]

Hilferding on simple commodity production?????? In addition, exchange must also provide the answer to another question : whether production is to be undertaken by the independent artisan or by the capitalist entrepreneur? The answer to this question is to be found in the change in the exchange relationship with the development from simple commodity production to capitalist production………… ………..The aggregate labour time for the total product, once given, must therefore find expression in exchange. In its simplest form, this happens when the quantitative ratios between goods exchanged correspond to the quantitative ratios of the socially necessary labour time expended in their production. Commodities would in that case exchange at their values. In fact, this can happen only when the conditions for commodity production and exchange are equal for all members of society; that is to say, when they are all independent owners of their means of production who use these means to fabricate the product and exchange it on the market. This is the most elementary relationship, and constitutes the starting point for a theoretical analysis. Only on this basis can later modifications be understood;………….. ………….A simple expression of value, e.g., one coat equals twenty metres of linen, already expresses a social relationship, but one which may he quite accidental or isolated. In order to be a genuine expression of a social reality, it must first lose its isolated character. When the production of commodities becomes the universal form of' production, the social circulation of goods, and hence the social interdependence among workers asserts itself in innumerable acts of exchange and value equations. The concerted action of commodities in exchange transforms private, individual and concrete labour time into the general, socially necessary and abstract labour time which is the essence of value. As the value of commodities comes to be measured in multifarious exchanges, so it comes to be measured increasingly in terms of a single commodity, and this needs only to become established as the standard of value in order to become money. The exchange of values is essential to production and reproduction in a commodity producing society. Only in this way is private labour socially recognized, and a relationship between things turned into a relationship between producers…….. https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/ch01.htm Under simple commodity production – or more precisely, pre-capitalist commodity production…………. This transformation of products into commodities makes the producers dependent on the market, and turns the inherent irregularity of production, which already existed in simple commodity production because the private economic households……… https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/ch16.htm Hoarding [….Silas….] can occur even in simple commodity circulation. All that is  required is that in the sequence C – M – C, the second part, M – C, should fail to take place; that the seller of the commodity refrains from buying other commodities and hoards his money instead. But this kind of action seems quite accidental and arbitrary,……………  https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/ch04.htm  In simple commodity production the transfer of goods seems to be the essential thing, the incentive for transferring property; and the latter is only the means for accomplishing the former. The determining motive for production is still the creation of use value, the satisfaction of needs.  [……….deville/…] But in capitalist commodity circulation the circulation of goods also involves the realization of the profit which arose in production, and this profit is the mainspring of economic activity. In capitalist society the transfer of labour power, as a commodity, to capitalists augments their property through the production of surplus value.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/ch08.htm  flip back to chapter one volume one; 15.The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation..  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

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To L Bird The alleged counter argument is simple enough. All the early Marxists from and including Fred and Gabrielle onwards misunderstood, deliberately or otherwise, Karl. They were in that respect all Engelists; I asked them the question as to whether Fred was a liar or a fool and they refused to give me an answer. So what we appear to have is Karl be praised as a genius by a host of people who didn’t understand him. One could ask who Karl would have ever been without this early pre modernist fan base. Then after almost one hundred years in the dark ages of Marxist theory we become enlightened by some ‘German professors’ from the bourgeois intelligentsia in the 1970’s’. YEAR 2001 MINI-CONFERENCE ON VALUE THEORY ANDTHE WORLD ECONOMYCrowne Plaza Hotel, Manhattan(sounds nice) February 23-25th 2001 The first confusion is that whereby a distinction is drawn between the theory of value and the theory of the capitalist mode of production, with a more comprehensive content being assigned to the former. According to this conception, value is not a constitutive category of the concept of a capitalist mode of production but rather points in principle to a (supposed) historical epoch of generalised simple commodityproduction preceding capitalism. http://users.ntua.gr/jmilios/IWGVT01.pdf    http://www.cpmanhattantimessquare.com/ 

[LBird]

Dave B wrote:

To L Bird The alleged counter argument is simple enough. All the early Marxists from and including Fred and Gabrielle onwards misunderstood, deliberately or otherwise, Karl. They were in that respect all Engelists; I asked them the question as to whether Fred was a liar or a fool and they refused to give me an answer. So what we appear to have is Karl be praised as a genius by a host of people who didn’t understand him. One could ask who Karl would have ever been without this early pre modernist fan base. Then after almost one hundred years in the dark ages of Marxist theory we become enlightened by some ‘German professors’ from the bourgeois intelligentsia in the 1970’s’.

Yes, all the early so-called 'Marxists' (including the 'French Marxists' that Marx himself complained about) did not understand Marx's ideas.The reason for this is that Marx's ideas are poorly expressed, unfamiliar to bourgeois science, and only partially worked out. Any worker reading Marx's works soon discovers this for themself: Marx is obscure, appears to contradict 'materialism' and bourgeois physics, and often appears to contradict himself.So, we workers now can see that Fred, Kautsky and the 2nd International were a bunch of bourgeois bluffers, who were never going to agree to workers democratically controlling production, and so had to 're-interpret' Marx's Democratic Communism, which insisted that only workers could liberate themselves, employing democratic methods, and so ditch Marx's 'theory and practice' and return to 19th century bourgeois positivist science, that insisted that elite experts could 'know nature' by employing a 'neutral method' which did not require a vote: ie., 'individual genius practice and theory'. After all, they can't have workers voting against Newton, can they?So, Fred was neither a liar nor a fool, but a follower of bourgeois ideology. Since they have to have 'geniuses', they had to praise Charlie as one.Charlie, of course, wasn't a genius, but a man who seems to have had some insights that are of some use to the revolutionary, class conscious, proletariat.It's not some '1970s German professors' who are the source of this view, but many thoughtful workers, who, since the late 19th century, have continued to ask why workers can't take democratic control of production, according to so-called 'Marxists', but have to defer to an elite of a experts, political and scientific.I know where you and many others in the SPGB are situated in this debate, Dave.Youse are 'Engelsist Materialists', and so won't have workers deciding upon maths and physics, but instead allege that maths and physics 'reflects reality', and so can be done by an elite, without the active intervention of the revolutionary proletariat.This latter is neither pre-modernism (bourgeois materialism) nor post-modernism (academics and professors), Dave, but Democratic Communism, critically informed by some of Marx's ideas.Democratic Communism alone provides a theoretical basis for Workers' Control of the means of production. Only the class conscious working class can decide 'truth' for itself, for its own purposes.Materialism will lead to Leninism, the control of production by an elite, for the elite, non-democratic purposes of that elite, in which workers at best will control 'factory widget production', but not the production of social academic ideas, scientific knowledge and their own 'truth'.

[Dave B]

Here in Chapter Thirty-Two we find Karl returning to his old chapter one tricks again; and dreaming and theorising about something that never existed, or flourished for that matter  Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation Of course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the labourer is the private owner of his own means of labour set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production….. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

[LBird]

Dave B wrote:

Here in Chapter Thirty-Two we find Karl returning to his old chapter one tricks again; and dreaming and theorising about something that never existed, or flourished for that matterKarl Marx. Capital Volume OneChapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist AccumulationOf course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the labourer is the private owner of his own means of labour set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production…..https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

I've made this point myself many times in our debates, Dave.Charlie (and even more so, Fred) provided textual support for both sides of this debate: Marx through seemingly loose usage (Fred through ignorance).That's why the debate cannot be satisfactorily concluded by the method of exegesis of religious texts, but only through contemporary debate between workers about the aims and purposes of the revolutionary proletariat, that is, their own 'theory and practice'.If one wants workers to control the means of production, including the social production of scientific knowledge and truth, by democratic means, than one can find support in Marx (and to a lesser extent, in Engels).If one wants to keep workers' mucky hands out of the glorious, shiny 'Truth' that is the result of bourgeois physics and maths, then one can find support for that, too (a little in Marx, but mostly in Engels).Personally, since Einstein, I think that it's clear that Marx was onto something, with his notions of the revolutionary overturning of the backward bourgeoisie by the 'theory and practice' of the proletariat.That's why bourgeois physics is in such a mess: their physicists are still trying to avoid the political and philosophical implications of 'relativity', and are still searching for an 'individual, existentialist' basis to their work, and are ignoring the social history of science, and the emergence of 'modern science' and its 'methods' with the triumph of the bourgeoisie in the 17th century.

[SocialistPunk]

Hi LBird,With reference to your post #122 above. The way I see it education is key. I'm not talking about reading the complete works of Marx, who as you point out is very vague and far from user friendly.The education I refer to is the stuff we can all relate to, from school onwards. My experience of education once I got to comprehensive level was one of boredom and frustration. In contrast education in a socialist society would be designed to be stimulating and fun. Education can and should be enjoyable. But I'm straying off my point slightly, so I'll get right to it.Wouldn't education within a socialist society be vastly different from today? Pupils would be encouraged to enjoy learning and be allowed to explore and develop at their own pace. As such I see education within socialism as being a lifelong habit for most people, should they desire it. This could mean, in theory, a highly educated global population capable of a great deal of flexibility and creativity. Given such a scenario, I see the likely hood of social academic ideas falling into the hands of an elite, very unlikely.The only way I see an elite controlling the production of social academic ideas within a socialist society, would be from the start. If such a scenario were to take place during the build up to a socialist/communist revolution, it wouldn't be the socialism I envisage. It would be a technocracy.In all my years of exposure to the SPGB/WSM, as a teenage sympathiser, later a member and back to a sympathiser, I've never got the impression a technocracy was on the agenda.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Hi LBird,With reference to your post #122 above. The way I see it education is key. I'm not talking about reading the complete works of Marx, who as you point out is very vague and far from user friendly.The education I refer to is the stuff we can all relate to, from school onwards. My experience of education once I got to comprehensive level was one of boredom and frustration. In contrast education in a socialist society would be designed to be stimulating and fun. Education can and should be enjoyable. But I'm straying off my point slightly, so I'll get right to it.Wouldn't education within a socialist society be vastly different from today? Pupils would be encouraged to enjoy learning and be allowed to explore and develop at their own pace. As such I see education within socialism as being a lifelong habit for most people, should they desire it. This could mean, in theory, a highly educated global population capable of a great deal of flexibility and creativity.

Hiya, SP!You've had enough conversations with me to know that I agree entirely with what you've written above: it reflects my own experience of schools, universities, teachers, academics and Marx, and my hopes for a future socialist society.If you wish to explore these issues further, please start another thread, because I'll be banned for answering you, otherwise.

SP wrote:

Given such a scenario, I see the likely hood of social academic ideas falling into the hands of an elite, very unlikely.The only way I see an elite controlling the production of social academic ideas within a socialist society, would be from the start. If such a scenario were to take place during the build up to a socialist/communist revolution, it wouldn't be the socialism I envisage. It would be a technocracy.

Yes, if from the start there were people pretending to be 'socialists', who in reality did not want workers' power expressed through Workers' Councils, which would democratically control all social production, including scientific knowledge, then there would be an undemocratic, elite expert, 'technocracy', based upon a control by 'scientific' experts in physics, maths, politics and academia, who would see themselves, and not workers, as the 'active side'.

SP wrote:

In all my years of exposure to the SPGB/WSM, as a teenage sympathiser, later a member and back to a sympathiser, I've never got the impression a technocracy was on the agenda.

That belief of yours is very surprising, SP, because, on this site, the 'technocratic agenda' is the only one that is expressed.The other terms for 'technocratic agenda' are, of course, 'Materialism' and 'Leninism'.Perhaps you can point me to the threads (or even single posts) which express agreement with Marx's views about only the working class being able to liberate itself. After all, there must be some basis to your 'impression' since your teenage years.Perhaps there are parts of the SPGB that agree with Democratic Communism, but since my exposure is only to its website here, I've never heard those 'anti-technocratic' views expressed. I've only read of support for Engels' 'materialism' (ie., elite 'practice and theory'), which is a very different ideology to Marx's 'idealism-materialism' (ie., democratic 'theory and practice').

[moderator1]

LBird wrote:

Dave B wrote:

To L Bird The alleged counter argument is simple enough. All the early Marxists from and including Fred and Gabrielle onwards misunderstood, deliberately or otherwise, Karl. They were in that respect all Engelists; I asked them the question as to whether Fred was a liar or a fool and they refused to give me an answer. So what we appear to have is Karl be praised as a genius by a host of people who didn’t understand him. One could ask who Karl would have ever been without this early pre modernist fan base. Then after almost one hundred years in the dark ages of Marxist theory we become enlightened by some ‘German professors’ from the bourgeois intelligentsia in the 1970’s’.

Yes, all the early so-called 'Marxists' (including the 'French Marxists' that Marx himself complained about) did not understand Marx's ideas.The reason for this is that Marx's ideas are poorly expressed, unfamiliar to bourgeois science, and only partially worked out. Any worker reading Marx's works soon discovers this for themself: Marx is obscure, appears to contradict 'materialism' and bourgeois physics, and often appears to contradict himself.So, we workers now can see that Fred, Kautsky and the 2nd International were a bunch of bourgeois bluffers, who were never going to agree to workers democratically controlling production, and so had to 're-interpret' Marx's Democratic Communism, which insisted that only workers could liberate themselves, employing democratic methods, and so ditch Marx's 'theory and practice' and return to 19th century bourgeois positivist science, that insisted that elite experts could 'know nature' by employing a 'neutral method' which did not require a vote: ie., 'individual genius practice and theory'. After all, they can't have workers voting against Newton, can they?So, Fred was neither a liar nor a fool, but a follower of bourgeois ideology. Since they have to have 'geniuses', they had to praise Charlie as one.Charlie, of course, wasn't a genius, but a man who seems to have had some insights that are of some use to the revolutionary, class conscious, proletariat.It's not some '1970s German professors' who are the source of this view, but many thoughtful workers, who, since the late 19th century, have continued to ask why workers can't take democratic control of production, according to so-called 'Marxists', but have to defer to an elite of a experts, political and scientific.I know where you and many others in the SPGB are situated in this debate, Dave.Youse are 'Engelsist Materialists', and so won't have workers deciding upon maths and physics, but instead allege that maths and physics 'reflects reality', and so can be done by an elite, without the active intervention of the revolutionary proletariat.This latter is neither pre-modernism (bourgeois materialism) nor post-modernism (academics and professors), Dave, but Democratic Communism, critically informed by some of Marx's ideas.Democratic Communism alone provides a theoretical basis for Workers' Control of the means of production. Only the class conscious working class can decide 'truth' for itself, for its own purposes.Materialism will lead to Leninism, the control of production by an elite, for the elite, non-democratic purposes of that elite, in which workers at best will control 'factory widget production', but not the production of social academic ideas, scientific knowledge and their own 'truth'.

1st warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[moderator1]

LBird wrote:

Dave B wrote:

Here in Chapter Thirty-Two we find Karl returning to his old chapter one tricks again; and dreaming and theorising about something that never existed, or flourished for that matterKarl Marx. Capital Volume OneChapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist AccumulationOf course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the labourer is the private owner of his own means of labour set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production…..https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

I've made this point myself many times in our debates, Dave.Charlie (and even more so, Fred) provided textual support for both sides of this debate: Marx through seemingly loose usage (Fred through ignorance).That's why the debate cannot be satisfactorily concluded by the method of exegesis of religious texts, but only through contemporary debate between workers about the aims and purposes of the revolutionary proletariat, that is, their own 'theory and practice'.If one wants workers to control the means of production, including the social production of scientific knowledge and truth, by democratic means, than one can find support in Marx (and to a lesser extent, in Engels).If one wants to keep workers' mucky hands out of the glorious, shiny 'Truth' that is the result of bourgeois physics and maths, then one can find support for that, too (a little in Marx, but mostly in Engels).Personally, since Einstein, I think that it's clear that Marx was onto something, with his notions of the revolutionary overturning of the backward bourgeoisie by the 'theory and practice' of the proletariat.That's why bourgeois physics is in such a mess: their physicists are still trying to avoid the political and philosophical implications of 'relativity', and are still searching for an 'individual, existentialist' basis to their work, and are ignoring the social history of science, and the emergence of 'modern science' and its 'methods' with the triumph of the bourgeoisie in the 17th century.

2nd warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[moderator1]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Hi LBird,With reference to your post #122 above. The way I see it education is key. I'm not talking about reading the complete works of Marx, who as you point out is very vague and far from user friendly.The education I refer to is the stuff we can all relate to, from school onwards. My experience of education once I got to comprehensive level was one of boredom and frustration. In contrast education in a socialist society would be designed to be stimulating and fun. Education can and should be enjoyable. But I'm straying off my point slightly, so I'll get right to it.Wouldn't education within a socialist society be vastly different from today? Pupils would be encouraged to enjoy learning and be allowed to explore and develop at their own pace. As such I see education within socialism as being a lifelong habit for most people, should they desire it. This could mean, in theory, a highly educated global population capable of a great deal of flexibility and creativity. Given such a scenario, I see the likely hood of social academic ideas falling into the hands of an elite, very unlikely.The only way I see an elite controlling the production of social academic ideas within a socialist society, would be from the start. If such a scenario were to take place during the build up to a socialist/communist revolution, it wouldn't be the socialism I envisage. It would be a technocracy.In all my years of exposure to the SPGB/WSM, as a teenage sympathiser, later a member and back to a sympathiser, I've never got the impression a technocracy was on the agenda.

1st warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[LBird]

Moderator, how can the issue of Engels' materialism not be relevant to the materialist myth of a 'simple commodity mode of production'?Even Dave B, who disagrees with me, can see the relevance of it to a debate about 'simple commodity production'.In fact, it's the most relevant thing that's been said on this thread for (simply) ages!

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Thus, there is no need for a 'pre-existing' or 'real' 'small commodity mode', because the 'small commodity mode' is an explanatory concept, introduced by Marx to help explain to workers how a more complex capitalism worked.

Oh dear. I agree with LBird or vice versa (don't know which is worse).Hilferding is saying the same thing too in one of the passages Dave B quotes and even underlined:[quote-Hilferding]In fact, this can happen only when the conditions for commodity production and exchange are equal for all members of society; that is to say, when they are all independent owners of their means of production who use these means to fabricate the product and exchange it on the market. This is the most elementary relationship, and constitutes the starting point for a theoretical analysis. Only on this basis can later modifications be understood;…………..[/quote]Reminder: nobody is denying that the concept of "simple commodity production" exists and is useful (nor that "simple commodity producers" have existed; some still do).. The argument was about whether an exchange economy where "all" the producers were "independent owners of their means of production" ever existed historically.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Oh dear. I agree with LBird or vice versa (don't know which is worse).

I'd like to regard it as us both agreeing with Marx, ALB, and us both disagreeing with Engels.For that is what is at stake, here.Either a 'mode of production' (itself a Marxian concept) based upon 'simple commodity production' existed prior to Marx's explanatory construction, or it did not.'Materialists', following Engels, regard 'concepts' as reflections of reality. So, for them, for Marx to merely think and speak of a 'concept', he must have got it from 'reality'. So, for materialists, it did exist.You (thank god) are following Marx's method of 'theory and practice', which assumes critical thought and concept formation prior to any engagement with 'reality'. So, it is an explanatory concept, whose purpose is to explain the capitalist mode of production.

[ALB]

There is no logical reason why a an exchange economy composed entirely of independent producers owning their own instruments of production could not have existed (and so given rise that way  to the concept of such a society). It's just that, as a matter of historical fact, no such society ever did exist.  On the other hand,  capitalism, as an exchange economy with wage-labour, exists as well as the concept of capitalism.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

There is no logical reason why a an exchange economy composed entirely of independent producers owning their own instruments of production could not have existed (and so given rise that way  to the concept of such a society). It's just that, as a matter of historical fact, no such society ever did exist.  On the other hand,  capitalism, as an exchange economy with wage-labour, exists as well as the concept of capitalism.

[my bold]Oh dear, ALB.You seem to have reverted to the bourgeois method of quoting 'facts' and 'existence' as the basis of 'theories'. That is induction.I'm not sure if you can see the problem here, but if you're saying that Marx's theory of the 'capitalist mode of production' simply reflects an 'existing capitalism', you're not following Marx's method.If you are saying that Marx's concept comes from 'existence', then who (and how) is that determined? It seems that the claim that it merely reflects a 'reality' is also the basis for Dave's claims, too.The notion that 'theories' are based upon 'facts' is the bourgeois method, and lends itself to 'experts' telling us that their 'theories' are based upon 'facts', and so can't be argued with.The problem is 'facts' can't be voted upon, and unless we espouse a democratic method, then we can't be in control. The 'facts' are in control (and thus, those specialists who can tell us 'the facts'), and workers remain powerless (and thus, the elite remains powerful).

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

The problem is 'facts' can't be voted upon, 

 lol ha ha ha haThe fact is facts can be voted on!! Ha ha ha lol Hilarious What about your factsIs it a fact that facts can be voted on? Who voted on this fact?he he 

[Author]

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