[A-List] Mark Jones: law of value now and in Stalin's time

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/9/02 4:11:28 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
cburford at gn.apc.org writes:

Cburford did not write but relayed:

> I would argue that it is David Walters those like him who are the true 
> authoritarians, not the harmless realists like me. For it is not me but 
> these techno-optimists, you panglossians, who produce smooth-sounding but 
> suspiciously vague formulae about how good things will be 'under socialism' 
> while missing out the central issue of how you get things done, how, that 
> is, you coerce people to do stuff when there is no Law of Value, no free 
> labour market, capital market etc, to allocate factors of production. When, 
> in fact, you are planning to override the Law of Value and put it into 
> reverse. The Law of Value is a curse which oppresses capitalists with its 
> draconic logic as well as oppressing workers, but it works and people buy 
> into it because they get more goods on the shelves and more personal 
> freedom than from any other system. David Walters is claiming (I would say 
> this claim is pure pretence) that 'under socialism' factors of production 
> would be allocated better and goods, including energy, would be more freely 
> available. There is no evidence whatever to support this claim, either 
> historically or theoretically, and a great deal of theoretical and 
> empirical evidence to show the opposite.
> 
> 

Comments:

Comrade Wizards, I bring you greeting of the event horizon. 

"The Law of Value is a curse which oppresses capitalists with its draconic 
logic as well as oppressing workers," and no amount of sorcery - from the 
most powerful alchemist, Marxist or bourgeois wizards, can vanish its 
material power. 

I resisted rereading Stalin's "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" 
for the thousandth time and pulling volumes 30,31,32, and 33 from Lenin's 
collected works off the self, as well as several articles by Marx and Engels 
specific articulation of the law of value in his "Anti-Duhring" and several 
of his letters. Nevertheless, my last copy of "A Textbook of Marxist 
Philosophy" was pulled from the shelf and placed next to my keyboard: it has 
healing properties. This 1937 text was prepared by the Leningrad Institute of 
Philosophy under the direction of M. Shirokov, and contains powerful spells 
and logical frame works that will assist all aspiring wizards in defeating 
the alchemist wizard and makes tearing from his hand the Philosophers Stone. 

The Philosopher Stone is a code word for a method of combining chemical 
substances - after one has unraveled their opposite properties and separated 
them into distinct qualitative configurations, to produce a base substance 
that has the power to transform one quality into another - lead into gold. 
The base substance, which has the power to transform, is called the 
Philosophers Stone. In its organic form, this base substance creates 
immortality when ingested: a substance code named atomic white. 

The Law of Value is being unraveled on the basis of the material power of 
production that has sustained its life in human history by sustaining human 
history as life. No mortal has ever superseded this law or rather halted its 
self-movement. 

Comrade Wizards:

the infinite night is coming to an end and its demise can be gleamed on the 
edge of the horizon, if ones mind can look closely at the space that 
separates the night from the day. It is true that the law of value springs 
from biological man/woman and is given form in the process of production. 
However, the law of value is not man or production. Nor is the law of value 
simply the relationship of people in production. 

The law of value is first of all a law. Our bourgeois wizards have cursed the 
word "law" with a spell that hides its nudity. Lets us retreat into the space 
that separates night from day and disclose meaning. Mortal men do not make 
real "laws" of self-moving matter, although woman can cast a spell on you. A 
spell is not a law. 

A law or law system does not hail from mortal men, their governments or 
representative institutions and appears as a riddle. A law or law system 
contains principles and regulations and the words "principles" and 
"regulations" are the magical sounds that express what the minds eye sees. 
Yet, principles and regulations by governments and men is not the meaning of 
the word "law."

Many many years ago, one man said, "I am the Law" and then went on to murder, 
plunder and rape. He was not "the law" but a man with evil in his heart, 
foolery in his mind and a bad disposition. Man is not "the law" but is always 
driven by the unseen principles and rules that give the words, "the law" 
meaning in the first place. "The law" arises like an invisible breath of air 
from the life force of men and impregnate mans surroundings and activity.  

"The law" is the principles by which things are governed. 

"The law system of value" came into being from the breath of air in the mouth 
of the man that is driven to wear the clothes called society. Once man is no 
longer beast he passes from a community - identifiable collection, of beast 
to an organization of people doing things to live in harmony and catch the 
spell of the woman and make babies who can make babies that make more babies. 
Babies are good. Catching woman's spell is not bad and organization of people 
doing things to live in harmony, manifest - make flesh, the invisible law the 
naked eye cannot see. You cannot see "the law" as itself because it lives in 
the moment that separates night from day. 

Something happens in the life of the babies made by the babies that were made 
by the babies. "The law" is the principles by which things are governed. The 
babies put on clothes and with this, the principles by which things are 
governed are no longer naked and hard to sense. 

"The law" is the principles by which things are governed. 

Do clothes make the man or do the man makes the clothes? Neither. Clothes 
make nothing about the man and give him an altered appearance. We cannot 
forget that the man did not make the first clothes, which are a product - 
creation, of nature. 

"The law" is the principles by which things are governed. 

What are the principles by which value is governed? The principles by which 
value is governed means that we know what "value" is. 

Value is the amount of socially necessary labor that lives inside the 
production of commodities. Commodities are all the things the man needs and 
think he needs in life. You know of these things because they are everywhere 
at the same time. 

Value is the amount of socially necessary labor that lives inside the 
production of commodities. 

The law of value means the principle that governs the amount of socially 
necessary labor that lives inside the production of commodities. 

Is exchange of things the principle that governs the law of value? No, it is 
not. Exchange lives in the same house as value and often sleeps in the same 
bed with value like man and woman. Woman is of course not man because man is 
not woman and they are two different states if being. Exchange means that the 
value is already inside that which is being past from one to get something 
from another. 

Is price the same as value? No, it is not. The amount of socially necessary 
labor that lives inside the production of commodities is the meaning of value 
and this meaning has no way to be understood by all men. Value said, "I shall 
be understood by everyone by wearing a set of clothes called price. This way 
all men will have a way to pass me from one hand to another."  

Value also stated "you better recognize mutherfucker, that price is my 
clothes or mode of expression of my principles, so that you will not be 
cheated for eternity." Value also stated "it is not good to pay a heavy price 
for me when I am not worth more value than what I am." 

The law of value means the principle that governs the amount of socially 
necessary labor that lives inside the production of commodities. 

What are the principles that govern the amount of socially necessary labor 
that lives inside the production of commodities? The wizards of economics 
have argued this question for what seems like an eternity and created bad 
sounds to give voice to their bad thoughts. Some say that the amount of 
socially necessary labor that lives inside the production of commodities 
shall be titled "the labor theory of value" - LTV, but this makes no sense. 

This makes no sense because value is socially necessary labor in the 
production of commodities and there can be no talk of "the labor theory of 
the socially necessary amount of labor."  

The principle, which governs value - the amount of socially necessary labor 
that lives inside the production of commodities, has a good word in the 
sentence called "amount." Amount means how much. How much what? . . . Is the 
question. The answer is the easy riddle: how much labor is the answer. How 
much labor means how many people, working for a certain amount of time, using 
a specific state of development of tools and instruments backed up by a 
definable energy source. 

Man is a slave to the principles of the value system until there appears on 
the horizon a certain stage in the development of the material power of 
production that kicks the man out of the production process as the primary 
contributor in all of society to the production of commodities. The riddle in 
this sentence wears the clothes called "primary contributor."  To solve the 
riddle we must count all the people on earth and then divide them by the 
amount of people needed to make the things the man needs and think he needs 
and then see what the remainder is. 

Now the man is going to always be needed to service man - or himself. But, 
when a new technology appears that creates the possibility for one-man do the 
work of ten-thousand men, due to advanced robotics, computerization and 
digitalized production process, the law of value begins to cry because it is 
dying as the most active social force in the organization called society. 

Powerful wizards of not that long ago - Marx and Engels, traveled the four 
corners of the earth - in body and spirit, and stood at the edge of the world 
and looked into the unknown abyss. The abyss looked back into them and 
revealed itself as the event horizon - the point at which the leap or great 
magic takes place.  

"You (do not have to) coerce people to do stuff when there is no Law of 
Value, no free labour market, capital market, etc., to allocate factors of 
production," once society - the organization of the man, has made the 
transition - leap or event horizon, to a place where the primary contributor 
to the production process is bore by the slave called the robot. Coercion as 
we know it - as it revels itself, is riveted to a certain stage in the 
development of the material power of the productive forces (the Wizards 
formula).  

The people that will have to be coerced are individuals who will want to and 
do, use the administrative apparatus - the general worldwide public 
computerized system of production control, to take "cuts" in front of other 
people. 

Man will always be blessed with the gift of insight to shortchange and even 
destroy himself. Value will be mortally slain but linger on in the minds of 
certain men as the ancient spell that will not go away. Principles do not 
disappear like magic but lose their forces and live on in the minds of 
individuals. Is this not why the alchemist died the ungodly death? 

This is why we fight evil from one eternity to the next. 


P. Nivlen - Melvin P. 
Your wizard in training. 
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