Comment on .ml has got to be the only place on earth where I'd get downvoted for a comment like this

• Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  All you need for commodity exchange is for people to accept something is yours and be willing to exchange something they own which you desire in return for it. That thing being a product of labor is not necessary. You can own land based on agreement without taking any trouble to cultivate or defend it, and exchange it for other things based on agreement. You can exchange naturally occurring things without rendering them ~crystallizations of social labor.

  Yes? Marx talks about natural resources. Land is covered more in volume 3, but nevertheless this is fully accounted for. Natural resources take extraction to refine and produce, and the concept of owning land requires a body to uphold that, the state, and the value of land itself is tied to how productive it can make you. All value comes from labor and natural resources, this is straight from Capital.

  Marx’s argument is invalid in another way because there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor.

  This does not make his argument invalid, though. What’s common is that the makeup of commodities can be reduced entirely to the labor and raw materials that went into them.

  Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.

  No, you never disproved anything.

  The argument only doesn’t apply for the first reason. There’s no necessity even for Marx that commodities be arbitrarily “difficult” to produce.

  There is, though. A commodity’s value isn’t dependent on how much labor went into that individual commodity, but that commodity as a social product, ie on average. If someone spends 10 hours on a mud pie that takes 2 seconds to create on average, it’ll be just as close to worthless as the rest.

  How is this a response to what I said?

  Because you’re confusing the fact that prices reflect value with the idea that people independently think of that before purchasing.

  This is both incorrect (for Marx, value is entirely determined by socially necessary labor time) and doesn’t mean anything (this is like multiplying 3 apples by 7 pears, what does it mean that the value of a commodity can be reduced to labor and natural resources?; with value being determined by labor time you can reduce things to a certain quantity, but then you just add on a qualitatively different thing and you return to the original problem of needing a third equivalent, or a value to unite the components of value).

  You’re mixing up Exchange-Value with Use-Value. All use-value comes from labor and natural resources, but natural resources themselves can be reduced to the labor required to gather them and refine them, etc. All socially necessary labor time means is that it takes society on average a certain amount of labor to create something, and natural resources can be themselves reduced to labor. 3 apples and 7 pears both may take the same amount of labor on average to create them, and thus their prices naturally gravitate near the same value.

  You forgot to explain how this actually occurs. You just say that capitalism does it.

  Through the market. Buying and selling of goods, competition, all of this from the perspective of the capitalist confronts them as input costs and profits. Competition forces prices towards a floor, lack of competition brings in new competitors which then brings the price back to being roughly as profitable as the rest. Capital essentially functions as a control system.

  You should tell Marx this since he expressly says that he thinks the only universal is labor. You both happen to be wrong, though.

  You should actually read Capital, because Marx quite literally states this.

  Use-values like coats, linen, etc., in short, the physical bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements, the material provided by nature, and labour. If we subtract the total amount of useful labour of different kinds which is contained in the coat, the linen, etc., a material substratum is always left. This substratum is furnished by nature without human intervention. When man engages in production, he can only proceed as nature does herself, i.e. he can only change the form of the materials.[17] Furthermore, even in this work of modification he is constantly helped by natural forces. Labour is therefore not the only source of material wealth, i.e. of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.[18]

  Marx isn’t wrong, and neither am I, it seems you genuinely haven’t opened Capital because this is in the first few pages.

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  • timdrake@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Natural resources take extraction to refine and produce

    No? Not necessarily.

    And the concept of owning land requires a body to uphold that, the state, and the value of land itself is tied to how productive it can make you.

    Again, not necessarily.

    This does not make his argument invalid, though. What’s common is that the makeup of commodities can be reduced entirely to the labor and raw materials that went into them.

    It does make his argument invalid. Per Marx: “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.” This is how you get to the LTV in the argument. Yet it’s just trivially wrong.

    Wrt labor/raw materials, you can sell ideas. Commodities aren’t even necessarily material things. Now you could say that ideas require humans, and humans require human labor to be created and raised and nature to nourish them etc etc yet it’s an unjustifiable presupposition that ideas can then be reduced to a mechanical combination of these aspects.

    No, you never disproved anything.

    I never said I disproved anything in the part you’re quoting. I was just preempting the argument I mentioned as a response to the examples I gave.

    Because you’re confusing the fact that prices reflect value with the idea that people independently think of that before purchasing.

    No I’m not. I don’t know how you got that from what you quoted.

    You’re mixing up Exchange-Value with Use-Value.

    No. Value itself is neither exchange-value (which is just a relation between two values) nor use-value (the particularities of which dissolve when considering value), when Marx refers to value he is referring only to the labor-time socially necessary to produce a thing. If you were speaking about specific use values then this is just nonsense in context because you were talking about “the value in a commodity” as what price orbits around, and then you have the category error I went over. You corrected yourself here by saying value can be reduced to just labor instead of being “reduced to labor and natural resources.” Just admit you made a mistake and don’t act like the mix-up is on me.

    Competition forces prices towards a floor

    Sure, and why should this floor be reflective of the amt. of labor required to produce that commodity? Well you can justify this abstractly but in terms of actually making it work, it doesn’t.

    You should actually read Capital, because Marx quite literally states this.

    This has to do with the prev. “mix-up,” you were talking about [[[prices]]] again; commodities as values are only representative of certain expenditures of abstract labor, that is the universal. Use-values are [[[particularities]]] and the entire point of the book is that insofar as they are considered in relation to each other and to the universal which is money (price!), their particular use does not matter (indeed, the particular form of labor employed and any other considerations do not matter), only that they are expenditures of the total abstract social productive capacity of a society.

    I’m not anybody’s alt, not that it would matter if I was. I’d imagine if I had a longer history you would pick something else out to use, but this got me to look at your history and I found this post called “Dialectical Materalism: How to Think Like a Marxist” that I’m going to reply to so thx.

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    • Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      No? Not necessarily.

      Yes, generally. There’s also transport.

      Again, not necessarily.

      Yes, again.

      It does make his argument invalid. Per Marx: “If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.” This is how you get to the LTV in the argument. Yet it’s just trivially wrong.

      Wrt labor/raw materials, you can sell ideas. Commodities aren’t even necessarily material things. Now you could say that ideas require humans, and humans require human labor to be created and raised and nature to nourish them etc etc yet it’s an unjustifiable presupposition that ideas can then be reduced to a mechanical combination of these aspects.

      Again, you’re trivially wrong. All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop. Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong. As for “ideas” being sold, mental labor for research and development, etc. is in fact labor, and labor goes into training the skilled labor used for research and development. Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies. Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.

      No. Value itself is neither exchange-value (which is just a relation between two values) nor use-value (the particularities of which dissolve when considering value), when Marx refers to value he is referring only to the labor-time socially necessary to produce a thing. If you were speaking about specific use values then this is just nonsense in context because you were talking about “the value in a commodity” as what price orbits around, and then you have the category error I went over. You corrected yourself here by saying value can be reduced to just labor instead of being “reduced to labor and natural resources.” Just admit you made a mistake and don’t act like the mix-up is on me.

      You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth. Given that you haven’t yet made an actual critique of the Law of Value, this seems more like deflection than anything else.

      Sure, and why should this floor be reflective of the amt. of labor required to produce that commodity? Well you can justify this abstractly but in terms of actually making it work, it doesn’t.

      Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.

      This has to do with the prev. “mix-up,” you were talking about [[[prices]]] again; commodities as values are only representative of certain expenditures of abstract labor, that is the universal. Use-values are [[[particularities]]] and the entire point of the book is that insofar as they are considered in relation to each other and to the universal which is money (price!), their particular use does not matter (indeed, the particular form of labor employed and any other considerations do not matter), only that they are expenditures of the total abstract social productive capacity of a society.

      Again, not a mix-up. Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.

      I’m not anybody’s alt, not that it would matter if I was. I’d imagine if I had a longer history you would pick something else out to use, but this got me to look at your history and I found this post called “Dialectical Materalism: How to Think Like a Marxist” that I’m going to reply to so thx.

      Correct, your argument would not matter if you’re an alt or not, it’s just highly strange that this would be your first comment, days into a thread, many comments deep into it.

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      • timdrake@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Yes, generally.

        So not necessarily. I don’t know why you’re standing your ground on this absurd position that natural resources necessarily need to be extracted, refined and produced, or even transported to be exchanged.

        Yes, again.

        Right except that just isn’t true. It’s not necessary, all you need is an agreement. In terms of generalizing this exchange, that’s a different question. But I already explained why that doesn’t matter.

        All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop.

        Simply claiming that something is true is not in fact enough to make it true.

        Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong.

        I was under the impression that you acknowledged that “there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor” [-me] but that “this does not make his argument invalid, though” [-you]. It doesn’t make sense for you to say this otherwise. So why would I have to list those qualities? I guess you changed your mind upon seeing the quote, but you should’ve just admitted this. The thing is, even if there weren’t these qualities, you would still be wrong because conceptually this would still make the argument invalid.

        Regardless of specific use values, commodities all have the quality of existing in time, being comprised of matter for Marx, have the quality of being use-values in being exchange-values (that is, their use for the seller is always to be exchanged, regardless of their specific use for the buyer), I think this is enough.

        Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies.

        I already responded to this:

        Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.

        research and development

        Not necessary.

        Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.

        Right, because I’m not countering an argument; a presupposition isn’t an argument.

        You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth.

        Right no I got that, it’s just that it makes no sense to reference that here, as I explained. There’s no way this isn’t a mistake, and there’s no way the confusion is on me. “You can call it a mistake if you want” is a funny response though.

        Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.

        You evidently do not understand what I’m asking.

        Again, not a mix-up.

        Again, there’s no other explanation. Which is why you just transition to a different point in the next sentence.

        Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.

        He can address it all he wants, it contradicts his argument I went over in the first place, that exchange of use values necessitates the presence of value. Forget everything else, this is the argument.

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