DJP
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“I would have thought that today, when money is no longer convertible into gold (and so can’t be withdrawn from circulation as bullion), the effect should be to raise the price level or, rather, that the central bank would not have to issue so much new money to fulfil its remit to keep the price level rising (and money depreciating) at 2 percent a year.”
Yes, that would seem to make sense.
I have seen this formula in places before. Out of interest is it from Marx or somewhere else?
“Surely due to less money being needed to do the same job, this would increase the amount of money being circulated?”
No, I don’t think so. All it means is that for example if the velocity of money doubled – one ten pound note can now do the work that one twenty pound note (or two ten pound notes) was doing previously. Eg the single ten pound note can circulate now circulate twice (rather than once) and do twenty pounds worth of transactions.
“A bit like a football team where there used to be 11 players with 5 on the bench, the players on the bench (the cash that was in the wallets, purses, piggy banks, etc.) are now out the pitch.”
I don’t see how this relates to the velocity of money. The speed at which something travels and the amount of it are two separate things.
Maybe if the players suddenly developed the ability to run at twice the speed as previously you would only need 5 players to do the work of 10? Don’t know how the analogy holds up..
Would be interesting to hear thoughts on your first two paragraphs.
My thought on your third one is that the faster the velocity of money, the less of it is needed to do the same volume of transactions within the same period of time – all other things being equal. Faster velocity of circulation just means that the same amount of money is doing more work, not that more money is circulating.
Prakash, you are free to define and use the words “commodity” and “value” any way you like.
But be aware the way you are using them runs counter to how Marx used them, so you can’t claim to be defending his theory. And also, the way you choose to use these terms does not provide any explanatory or predictive advantage, only disadvantages.
So, for now, there is no more to say..
“Whether the concept of gravity is true is one question, whether it’s measurable or how to measure it is completely a different question.”
But “value” is not an eternal law of nature, it’s a form of social relations between people that is mediated through things. Unless people are in that form of relationship, it doesn’t exist.
“Are you aware of an instance of the sale of ‘conscience, honour, etc.,’ by someone?”
This is a reference to things like bribery.
Prakash, I have to confess I was playing a cheap trick on you. This is a passage cut and pasted from page 197 of Capital Volume One.
But things which in and for themselves are not commodities, such as conscience, honour, etc., can be offered for sale by their holders. Hence a thing can, formally speaking, have a price without having a value.
“In other words, it is a full Systems Approach to earthly resource management, production, and distribution, with the goal of absolute efficiency, conservation, and sustainability. Given the mathematically defined attributes, as based on all available information at the time, along with the state of technology at the time, the parameters for social operation within the industrial complex become self-evident, with decisions “arrived at” by way of computation, not human opinion.”
Peter Josephs’s thought seems to have developed since then. I wonder what he makes of statements such as this now? Anyone here know?
Prakash, thanks for the reply. I’m going to end this exchange here as I have used up all the time and energy I have for this right now.
I have been trying to explain to you as well as I can what the various concepts are in Marx’s Capital and how they fit together. You seem to be attaching your own meaning to concepts without first looking at the text in detail, so no wonder we are getting in endless circles.
There is now enough material, along with the other comments from ALB and others for you to undertake a reading yourself.
I suggest you read Chapters One and Two slowly and take notes as you go along, even better if you can find a group of friends to discuss it with. I have been doing such an activity for the past year or so.
Not that the writings in Marx’s Capital are some kind of infallible word of god, but if you read it carefully, and take it on it’s own terms, I do think it is a logically consistent theory which offers a good amount of explanatory and predictive power.
All the best.
I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘get to define’, but yes of course the weight of ideological pressures is not in our favour.
The meaning of words is set by those that are using them to communicate, is an organic process rather than one set by decree.
I think perpetual misinterprrtation is an inescapable feature of human language. No matter what you call it you still have to explain what you mean. At least he seems to be in agreement with the content of the concept though?
Speaking of Stafford Beer, he turns up in this short film I watched recently “Cybernetics and Revolution”
https://endnotes.org.uk/posts/groupe-brume-cybernetics-and-revolution
From watching this film and reading books like ‘Seeing Like a State’, I’m pretty sure that this kind of thing is a non-starter for us. Human political society, and the world, is more complex than can be modelled by any of the cyberneticians mathematics.
I’m no expert on this topic though, so persuade me otherwise.
Yes I agree, labour (but *concrete* labour – abstract labour cannot create anything for the same reason that you cannot milk an abstract cow!) *creates* value, *but is not itself value*
Prakash I used this exact same quote above in comment #230275 if you would care to read the whole comment again we might get somewhere!
So we know what *makes* value, but *is* value? It’s abstract wealth. And in a capitalist economy wealth takes the form of commodities.
So commodities (as bearers/containers of abstract/congealed labour) are the form of value. They are the ‘form’ of value because ‘value’ is not something we can see.
How does real concrete living labour become dead congealed labour? When the commodities meet each other in the market and the different labours that went into making them become equalised and reduced to abstract labour.
Like eggs only become an omlette through the process of being beaten and cooked – labour only becomes ‘value’ through this process of equalisation.
I also have a nice quote for you from Capital Volume One page 127 (Penguin edition):
“The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by that fact it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity form together with its further developments, the money form, the capital form, etc.”
