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Critiques of labour in value

Value is the form of capitalistic products, which also transforms the process of 'production.'

However, the form in which this value is depicted can vary. Marx's formulation is subject to several, potentially valid objections.

Further, 'value' is not an organic form, rather it arises from the form of the social process. This is not restricted to official 'production,' of course. Nonetheless, Marx stresses that value is inorganic, and hence must arise from the social process. This insight is not unique to Marx, of course; most observe that economic categories are a social matter. The capitalist economic categories are premised on several traits of the social process, which allow people to face each other in the atomised yet unified mode characteristic of capitalism.

In dealing with people's conduct within capitalism, capitalism itself might seem slightly relaxed. It does not, of course, tell people that they must spend money in one way or another, or that it represents anything. This is merely a postulate of ideologists. Ideologists also try to take issue with the 'metaphysical' nature of value - as if money just 'happened' to be an inherent property of things. It is not, hence the 'metaphysical' appearance. Hence, all that ideologists are doing is taking a social process that happens to occur, and taking its treatment of forms as inherent to them. The coin just is money, the spending of money is for one purpose or represents a certain thing. In truth, money is merely an emblem of the society as a force against the individual or concrete. Further, human society must necessarily relate to this capitalistic form with slight uncertainty - does capitalism really have any inherent concern over their conduct being 'ethical' or in one set of moral norms?

Hence, the 'metaphysical' nature of value is the pseudo-concretisation of social forms as an alternate or replacement form of the object. Hence, it is already implicit in things like the socially determined nature of money. As such, the 'social forms' encroach on and seek to replace the objects with something empty. They hence also seek to do this with humans, forming a seeming 'community.'

The ideologist merely wants to evade the 'metaphysical' so that they can excuse their own unthinking positivism.

The liberal positivist finds a systematic criticism too 'metaphysical' anyway, because the liberal is only interested in the immediate spurs and stimuli provided by a society which they positivistically accept. Hence, the liberal views a society of shifting hopes and dreams within it, not of 'absolute' forces. In the process, this 'hoping' becomes itself an abstraction that appears 'absolute.' As such, to enquire too far here seems to disturb this image, and hence 'metaphysical.' To criticise something as metaphysical in this sense is merely to say that it falls outside of their limited 'image' of the world, does not appear there. Their interest is in 'reform,' and indeed anything systematic is not understood - it is not merely reforms. Further, it appears 'dry' - 'reform' takes its momentum from positivist takes on social aspects, while the systematic eschews that momentum or does not start from the same place as liberal 'action' and 'excitement.' The liberal considers things within the system, but rarely the system itself.

Yet there are valid criticisms to be made, distinct from liberal prudishness.

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Qualms

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Social labour-time

Marx wants value to be determined by the total socially necessary average labour time, with labour hence considered as an abstraction. However, labour is not posited as a uniform, social mass without value. Hence, this cannot occur as an external relation of determination. It is labour necessary to produce a value that is relevant - 'value' is the telos of labour. Hence, it is a problematic category to base value on.

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Other factors

From a discussion, which touched on the criticisms made by Böhm-Bawerck:

As far as Marx opening with the commodity, it needn't be seen as stringently necessary. In discussing use-value, for instance, we are also implicitly discussing production - which is where some commodities are used. Hence, it isn't a strictly focussed opening or one that can exclude others stringently, or other ways of giving such an account. The category of production is introduced as something derived, as a result, and must be portrayed in this way throughout the account.

Interestingly, however, within this schema production and such can only appear as adjuncts of the commodity or as a result of analysing the commodity. As occurs. In this sense, Böhm-Bawerck's observation can have some validity, namely that many other things can be derived from and play a part in the commodity. Hence, so far as they are concerned Marx might make a valid point, nonetheless they then make a jump which is uncalled for from the commodity itself. Hence, this is akin to criticising the commodity as a starting-point, with some validity perhaps. It might have been clearer to start with production, then investigate how this is altered in commodities.

In general, it is valid to note that other factors go into the commodity. This is a basic factor of capitalism, that other things are subordinated to commodities, and to act as appendages of them. Hence, other factors are also important, because they contribute to the commodity. However, this is a limitation, as these factors cannot be economically integrated or given a notable status. This was somewhat relevant in times of Luddism and so on, where people were forced to sacrifice machinery and so on in order to demand more of a place for themselves. In any case, it forms a limitation in an economy which wishes to centre around something, yet cannot generally do so.

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 Receptivity

Value appears receptive, or other objects and processes can replace your own active process. 'Sociality' is here posited as generic submission of individuals to the empty core of capitalist society. Hence, this sociality of value appears as a general trait of it. It involves a situation of 'receptivity' where the one person's process is erased in order to unify with another's - your activity and existence is replaced 'seamlessly' by someone else's. Hence, it might not seem apt that it is restricted to 'production.' The act of production is not by itself formulated as being in a social form appropriate to the capitalistic situation. Rather, this is primarily a property of relations.

Of course, even Marx goes in this direction on occasion.

This point might seem straightforward, however it does take issue with the formulation of value as primarily a matter of labour and not of more properly 'labour formulated as part of a society organised according to value.'

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What's labour?

The labour process in capitalism typically takes place in a way directed by the interests of capital. However, this hence seems to give capital a role in 'labour.' Hence, capital would also play an active role in the process which 'determines value' - even if it is seemingly excluded from this. If labour is involved, then is not the force which directs social labour and drives it also a determining factor? This is a complex question. Although capitalists function only through capital, nonetheless social labour is conditioned and given direction by capital. As a result, it might be misleading to hypostatise the simple category of 'labour' onto labour in capitalism as if capitalist labour is still the same as labour in general. The labourers who would direct value are themselves directed. The category of 'labour' by itself hence rarely appears without other forces integral to it. This objection does have some significance, although it is important to be careful not to distort it into a more conventional dogma. Due to the 'determination' of value featuring several intertwined or directed forces, it would be misleading to speak of only one as being the sole 'determinant of value.' While rhetorically inconvenient, this is nonetheless the case. However, the classes still have relations to each other which are part of a capitalist system. Though the relations' form of appearance as a relation through objects is interesting, the fundamental objection to this class situation should remain the same due to its basis in the concrete class system as a human social structure. It is easy for people to reduce the criticism of capitalism to a portrayal where it seems like man primarily relates to objects when this is only a misleading appearance which is capitalistic in nature. It is clear why this portrayal may be limited, due to its basis in a capitalist mode of thought. Although it may be called 'Marxist-humanist' or 'German philosophy,' it is important to recall the centrality of the 'human factor' and structure of social relations to anti-capitalist critique within socialist thought.

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A revision of a Wyatt poem

Thomas Wyatt was a Tudor-era writer of crass poems. We have hence altered one of his poems, to more fully express the modern framework. His sonnets are typical and trite love poems, which were common in his era. Yet he was no good at this, while other poets of that era - like Sidney or Petrarca - exceeded him. Due to the dullness of his poetry, we have sought to refurbish it into something worth reading:

They Flee From Metal

They flee from metal that sometime did metal seek

With naked foot, in my hidden chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and metal,

That now are sell-outs and do not remember

That sometime they worshipped metal gods

To fight false metal; and now they range,

Busily seeking albums from Britney Spears.

Thanked be Marx it would be otherwise,

And thus twenty times better; but once in special,

In corpse paint array after a pleasant guise,

When deathcore from her outskirts did fall,

And she me caught with her deep gutturalness;

Therewithall sweetly did to me temporise

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you me now?”

It was not true metal: I saw their heresy.

But all is turned through my metalness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her piousness,

And she also, to use new pop music fads.

But since that I am so kindly treated,

I would fain slay her with the steel she hath deserved.

The Fascist

The struggle against 'fascism' - usually just perceived - which takes on a specialised form, is an exclusive preserve of liberalism.

Mainstream capitalist ideology is responsible for and compatible with a high degree of anti-fascism. This has very little to do with 'fascism,' that might not even be present, and more to do with the role of fascism in the self-vindicating mythology of modern liberal democracy.

It belongs to liberalism, or that part of capitalism which merely wishes for 'class-collaborationism' and to safeguard capitalism by ensuring mutual consent of its members. It necessarily serves to 'dilute' or oppose radical political trends that partake of it, or dilute the 'negativity' and 'hate' in a movement, such as to preserve the given social coherence. Positive sentiment and relations are encouraged in the present, a barricade against radical opposition to the present system of relations. Hence, if the movement against 'fascism ' is to be characterised, it is in these terms. However, it can often merely chase shadows, as, like a capitalist corporation that is forced relentlessly to produce new content even without a spur, it tends to 'manufacture' fascism even when it isn't there in order to maintain its empty sense of relevance and urgency. This is because it is selling a product, one that aims to dilute or undermine radical opposition to the system and which hence has to be kept going compulsively after some perceived 'fascism.' Nonetheless, this merely furthers its liberal nature, and gives it no other real basis.

In any case, what about 'fascist' movements? Fascism was not always a simply 'racist' movement. 'Racism' at the time characterised many nations. Further, the desire for a 'racial' nation is not one unique to whites - it is also a property of Judaism, known also for its racial warfare and belief in a 'chosen people,' and exists in many forms. Hence, racial nationalism is not by itself fascist. Fascism is an ill-defined term in some ways restricted to a 'concrete movement' or period, and hence is often reduced to something simplistic like 'racism.' It would be difficult to have a coherent movement against it. 'Anti-fascism' lives on because the capitalist establishment has declared Nazism the ultimate embodiment of its own fears, and so-called 'revolutionaries' have risen to the task of opposing what the system tells them is most evil. Of course, the system also considers revolution to be evil - but then, modern anarcho-communists don't really care about revolution, so long as transsexual people are given the appropriate gender pronoun and nobody seriously criticises Israel.

However, the spectre of 'fascism' nonetheless represents a force resistant to 'liberal democracy' and 'anarcho-communism,' a vision of nation with a sense of direction that unifies it. If one makes a dichotomy of anarchist and 'non-socialist' fascist, there is no room left for the Marxist or for socialism; the socialist aim of a guided society is wholly attributed to the 'non-socialist' fascist, or in any case is ignored structurally. Hence, such 'anarchism' is highly reactionary, in the end, and it is ultimately just a variant of liberalism. The more that liberalism is allowed to proclaim its ultimate emptiness and lack of direction as if this is substantial and benevolent, the more is conceded. The leftist panic over Trump, to which the obvious corollary was supporting Clinton, is one example of 'anti-fascist' panic being obviously used to undermine radicals and incorporate them into liberalism. Nonetheless, fascism is mainstream capitalism's very own vision of the devil, and opposition to it is nothing notably striking - further, this opposition generally cites the same reasons as the capitalist establishment. Mainstream capitalism is responsible for and compatible with a high degree of anti-fascism. This has very little to do with 'fascism,' that might not even be present, and more to do with the role of fascism in the self-vindicating mythology of modern liberal democracy.

Hence, caution is advised around this subject, for, 'the worst product of fascism is anti-fascism.'

A Poem

What lies within

In the wren-like standing grass
where light gathers slowly,
the flowers watch us walk past,
passing quietly.
Your sigh says we rest,
and we sit restlessly,
watching the flowers softly wave
past, the distant trees lapping quietly:
echoing the light.
As we watch, your shadow in light
takes on the shades of evening,
as you lean like a flower.
The path leads like a stem.

MADE YOU LOOK

U Can't See Me.

- ZeroNowhere.