Transcript the commodity

International Friends of Ilyenkov
Using Dialectical Logic to solve
today’s problems
Gerry Gold
Ilyenkov sums up - and sets us on course
The radical, materialist rethinking of … [Hegel’s]
logic (dialectics) …. was linked with affirmation
of the objective reality of the universal …
… a law-governed connection of material
phenomena… . in the context of a selfdeveloping totality or aggregate…
…all the components of which were related by
virtue of a unity of genesis….
Dialectical Logic
chapter 11
‘a unity of genesis’
the
commodity
Use
Value Value
Exchange
Commodity
Commodity
Money
Commodity
Money-commodity
Commodity
Money
Commodity
{More} Money
{More} Money
the commodity and money..
…a “contradiction in determinations”
Marx found the source of surplus value in
labour-power:
– a commodity whose actual consumption is a
process whereby labour is embodied,
whereby therefore value is created.
Dialectical Logic,
Chapter 10
…today’s capitalist crisis
What form do these contradictions take
in 2014?
How are they resolved?
Use Value
Exchange Value
The worldwide financial and economic
crisis that blew up in 2007/8 arose from
unprecedented tension between the two
“poles” of value and use-value
Increased
tension led to
‘globalisation’
Lehman collapse sends
shockwave round world
What the crisis expressed was the
contradictions within and between
– the cheapening of the labour which
produces commodities
– the saturation of world markets
– the unprecedented volume of global credit.
Use Value
Exchange Value
Volume of
commodities
Diverse forms of credit - forms of
exchange-value - were stretched far
beyond their limits in attempting to
sustain the expansion of production and
consumption.
By 2008, global debt was 300% of GDP
- higher in many countries.
This contradiction was intensified by new
forms within the capitalist economy:
commodities that
•
•
•
appeared “free” or “weightless”
integrated consumers into the global market
commoditizing their identities through the Internet
Use Value
Exchange Value
The contradictory reciprocal relation
between value and use value was
negated into a global crisis, which
endures.
A further negation of the negation is
emerging by way of China’s banking
system.
As the principal contradictions within the
capitalist economy developed as cause,
their effects were equally
transformational:
•
•
•
A proliferation of waste (Marco)
A qualitative change in global climate as a result
of the dependence on carbon fuel (Penny)
A qualitative change in the form and role of the
modern state, leading to an inner-crisis (Paul).
the dialectical logic driving the rise
and demise of capitalist society
The forming of the capitalist, commodity system
appears in Marx’s theoretical analysis as a
complicating of the chain of connecting links through
which the poles of value, mutually attracting and at
the same time excluding each other, have to pass.
The path of the reciprocal transformation of value and
use-value becomes longer and longer, and more and
more complicated, and the tension between the poles
increases.
The relative and temporary resolution of the tension
takes place through crises, and its final resolution is
through socialist revolution.
Dialectical Logic Chapter 10
Using dialectical logic we can (following
Marx)
– extrapolate from the germ-cell of the
commodity to the social relationships that
arose and came to constitute today’s capitalist
society
– demonstrate the logic of today’s crises in the
internal contradictions of capitalism.
Capitalist globalisation creates
its own opposite
Billions now communicate through
previously unimagined channels:
– promoting their creative products,
– bypassing corporate control and
– organising the overthrow of brutal regimes.
Capitalist globalisation creates
its own opposite
Hundreds of thousands of creative
individuals develop the constantly
changing foundations of the web,
superseding the model of privately-owned
products protected by patents and
copyright with a new regime and collective
products legally constrained to be freely
available to all.
Capitalist globalisation creates
its own opposite
The electronic foundations for a
participative, global and local democracy
are under construction.
Negation of the negation
Ilyenkov’s “socialist revolution”
To resolve the crisis we must transform the
opposites through conscious practice:
• replacing the exploitation of labour with not-forprofit production
• Replacing exchange value with use-value as the
main focus of production
• instituting co-operative ownership in place of
private ownership
• creating new forms of democracy to give effect to
this strategy.