David Harvey Accuses Marx of

March 2024 Forums General discussion Social Reproduction David Harvey Accuses Marx of

#92332
twc
Participant

David Harvey Accuses Marx of “Arbitrary” Value AccountingDavid Harvey’s unprecedented video lectures on Marx’s Capital [http://davidharvey.org] contain deep flaws that arise from his serious doubts over Marx’s materialist conception of history and the foundational role that it plays in Capital.Nevertheless, Professor Harvey clearly describes the aspects of Marx’s Capital that trouble him beyond his capacity to understand them. He thereby simplifies the critical task of any reviewer of his course who understands how Marx grounds Capital on the materialist conception of history.In a Q&A session within lecture 8 for Volume 2, David Harvey reiterates his utter bafflement over why the labour associated with distribution is socially necessary, while that associated with exchange is not.Q&A — starting 53m:30s into the lectureQuestion [Interviewer]In Chapter 14 of Volume 2, Marx singles out “communication” and “transportation” as “special sectors” that have important knock-on effects upon the rest of the economy. How do you think about Marx’s approach to these two sectors?Answer [David Harvey]At first sight it seems a little strange.Marx says “most things that go on in the marketing process are not productive of value”.“They are necessary costs of circulation”.But, with transport and communication, Marx says “No, they add value”.It’s often seemed rather curious to me why he decided that they were productive of value, and retailing was not.Marx’s argument is that a commodity is not complete until it has arrived at market. [If it’s at the factory gate, it’s not complete because it hasn’t got to its market place yet.]On the other hand, there’s a separate kind of addition of value that has nothing to do with the original production process.It’s a complicated kind of argument he’s making here.I’m sometimes not sure it all adds up right.Still Poisonous Academic ContextWhat is striking about David Harvey’s noncommittal waffle — make up your mind, Prof. — is its serene academic unconcern over finding Marx’s value theory incomprehensible, and so nonchalantly disposable.The understandable context, of course, is that attacks on Marx’s value theory became a mark of academic pride after Baran and Sweezy (1966) resurrected Bortkewicz’s Marxian demolition accounting for [but actually against] Marx’s value theory, and attained their zenith when genial Meek and hostile Steedman (1977) turned sympathetic Sraffa (1960) diametrically against Marx’s value theory.Thanks to Andrew Kliman (2006), that context has been well and truly subverted, and these assaults upon Marx’s value theory should really have lapsed into history. Except they haven’t, and academic vestiges of them persist, with varying degrees of hostility [e.g. Steve Keen].Reproductive CyclesDavid Harvey’s confusion over Marx’s value accounting is best understood by reference to reproductive cycles (1) and (2), and their capitalist [mis]conception (3), quoted here from the previous post:

Quote:
social-reproduction ≡     production → distribution → consumption ↻ (1)
Quote:
capital-reproduction ≡      production → distribution               ➚ profit          ⇥ exchange  [= market]               ➘ consumption  ↻ (2)
Quote:
capitalist-class-false-consciousness ≡               ➚ profit            exchange  [= market]               ➘ consumption  ↻ (3)

The Materialist Conception of History is the Theoretical Foundation of CapitalOf course, David Harvey can’t formulate his bewilderment in terms of our cycles (1) and (2) because he has already dismissed the materialist conception of history as plain wrongheaded [“reductionist” in his terms] — an approach that prevents him from taking Marx’s claim seriously that the materialist conception of history is absolutely foundational.To us, Marx means exactly what he says in his famous Preface that the materialist conception of history is the “general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies”. If the materialist conception of history is flawed then so is most of Capital.David Harvey mistakenly confuses circulation [the transformation of capital through all its forms, the most obvious being the tangible ones of commodity and money] with distribution [the movement of commodities from their productive “source”, e,g. a mine, farm or factory, to their consumptive “sink”, the consumer].In his confusion, he blends distribution into exchange — an understandably capitalist misconception. Despite Marx, he misconceives capitalist reproduction from the narrow standpoint of the capital-reproductive sub-process exchange [cycle (3)].Capital-reproductive cycle (2) makes it abundantly clear that distribution facilitates [→] circulation, while exchange impedes [⇥] it. The two are not identical as he assumes. They are fundamentally antagonistic.Thus his limited viewpoint generates an implied accusation that Marx adopts “arbitrary” value accounting practices in Capital — a very serious charge indeed!While seemingly innocent, this episode is characteristic of the long line of ultimately mischievous anti-Marxian accusations that arise from confusion and misunderstanding.David Harvey well knows what Marx says, but arbitrarily selects those bits of Marx that appeal to his still bourgeois-clouded mind. Marx is all or nothing. Marx is a scientist who is never arbitrary. David Harvey, however, is. His own arbitrary selectivity is the onlie begetter of his claim of arbitrariness.Realizing Surplus Value is a Cost to the Capitalist — the Market is a Drain on ProductionThe capitalist market is not just a barrier to distribution — as we see from the circulation of capital, cycle (2) — but the labour and means of production consumed in setting up the market and realizing surplus value impose a gigantic drain on production. These two observations are proof positive that the market is a parasite imposed-upon and living-off an absolute social necessity — cycle (1).The economic cost of the gargantuan capitalist mechanism of exchange is something way beyond David Harvey’s comprehension, but it is plainly there for all to see in Marx. Value associated with the parasitic edifice of the capitalist market is negative — not “additive” in any way at all as David Harvey thinks, but rather “subtractive”. The market is — how shocking — a cost to capital.The reason, of course, lies in the deterministic necessity of social-reproductive cycle (1). That is fundamental to social reproduction. It is the inescapable invariant of social reproduction.Though capitalist-reproductive cycle (2) is autonomous and independent, it is ultimately subservient to the determinism of cycle (1). This subservience relays to cycle (2) the purely dependent determinism of a parasite that is ultimately bound to a genuinely deterministic process, which it must preserve in order to preserve itself.The determinism of the circulation of capital — the blather about “unseen hands” — the patently false assertions about “market efficiency” — derives solely from the necessity for a parasite to preserve its host.The proof that Marx sees the circulation of capital from the standpoint of cycle (2) is that he sees all labour and means of production associated with exchange [the market] as a cost to capital. Precisely the destructive role of a parasite.In other words, Marx sees the market as a necessary cost to capitalism. He sees it as destructive to value, and any labour or means of production involved in exchange [the market] as mathematically negative value, or value destroying, not creating.Since labour and means of production in the advanced capitalist world are increasingly associated with exchange [the market], a huge proportion of labour is now destructive of value. This is entirely so in capitalist terms.Marx’s “Socially Necessary” refers to Cycle (1) — Exchange is not Socially NecessaryWilliam Morris and Robert Tressall long ago showed that labour and means of production associated with exchange were unnecessary for social reproduction. But Marx had already shown that, in capitalist terms, they were essentially destructive of value — the very thing the capitalist seeks.If the costs of marketing are too high, distribution falters, and so production grinds to a halt. Society cannot live off exchange — only the capitalist class can. Society cannot live off the market — only the capitalist class can.The parasite must bear the burden of its parasitism. The capitalist must carry the cost of extracting surplus value. Capitalists don’t get to consume all the surplus value that arises in production and distribution because those pesky workers engaged in exchange must consume part of it. And, shockingly, their labour is not productive of surplus value, but effectively consumptive of it!The modern capitalist class employs a vast destructive labour force economically analogous to the drone Roman proletariat, but one that is actively engaged in extracting surplus value for the capitalist class, and therefore consuming what rightly belongs to the “deprived” capitalist class.What a degrading social system it is for workers of the world that it must of necessity employ the relatively well-to-do workers of the advanced capitalist world to exploit the relatively impoverished workers of the developing capitalist world to maintain the extremely well-to-do capitalist ruling class of the world in the luxury that these world-class parasites claim as a social — but actually their class — right!Re-stated at the Level of David Harvey’s DiscussionDavid Harvey naturally states the reproduction of capital in Marxian value terms as value-schema (4):  M — C ··· P ··· C′ — M′             (4)where M = value in its money form;  C = value in its commodity form;  P = the process of producing surplus value:    production → distribution    [as in cycle (1)];  M′ and C′ = money and commodity forms expanded with surplus value.As does Marx, David Harvey divides the value of the commodity C into socially-necessary means of production MP and socially-necessary labour power LP, value-schema (5):       MP   M — C ≺  ··· P ··· C′ — M′          (5)        LPWe’ll now make explicit the “socially-unnecessary” [or Marxian value destructive] means of production mp and labour power lp that are exclusively involved in changing the form of value from M to C and from C′ to M′. These constitute Marxian socially-unnecessary means of production and labour power, as expressed in value-schema (6):     mp    MP        mp′   M ⊀  — C ≺   ···  P ··· C′ ⊀  — M′    (6)      lp      LP       lp′The fact that exchange [or the market] and the means of production tied up in it [buildings, communications] and the labour devoted to it [retailing, marketing, advertising, stock-trading, and general swindling] are socially unnecessary is at the core of the case for replacing capitalism with socialism.Socially Necessary means/implies DeterminismMarx states point blank in Capital Volume 1 that political economists have “never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him”. This is the expression of determinism.The fact that the market — a necessary cost to society for capital to rob society — is generally perceived as being socially necessary is part of the protective illusion of the capitalist superstructure that must be unveiled.A socialist society based upon our Party Object will deterministically relate through socially necessary labour and means of production [cycle (1)], entirely free of any vestige of a market excrescence that the capitalist class now imposes upon it [cycle (2)] to enslave the rest of society in its narrow venal class interest.[The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Party.]