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What does it mean to be a left wing economist today? |
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Page 3 of 38
Marx knew that in any form of society, capitalist or not, the direct producers must somehow be induced to give up some of the product, if only to provide for those who do not produce (at least the very young, the sick, and the very old), and if only to provide inputs for continued production (e.g. at least saving some grain as seed to plant next year). Nevertheless, he clearly did not approve of the juridical framework of this particular form of society, in which the direct producers are separated from their products because the owners of the means of production are the legal owners of the commodities produced.
In the pages leading up to the famous passage quoted, Marx relies on a distinction made by Aristotle between selling in order to buy and buying in order to sell.
Schematically, the first option, selling in order to buy, is:
C → ---> M --->→ C
Commodity → Money → Commodity. The peasant brings a pig to market, sells the pig for money, buys sacks of grain with the money, and then goes home with the grain. The purpose is use. The value is in use, in eating the grain, together perhaps with some vegetables the peasant family produced itself, and together perhaps with eating the other pig the peasant kept at home and did not bring to market. Use is the objective of the C -->→ M--> C series of transactions.
Marx the scientist, Marx the anti-romantic and anti-sentimentalist, Marx the modernist who never advocated regression to older social formations, does not conceal a certain admiration for the humble honesty of the C -->→ M--> C pattern that Aristotle before him and Rosa Luxemburg after him called the pattern of the natural economy. Aristotle for all his faults got something right: when accumulating money becomes the objective, something has gone wrong.
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