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Magee’s Disease

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Steven Magee

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“Exchange converts a good into a commodity, an object no longer intended for the satisfaction of an individual need or brought into existence and vanishing with that need. On the contrary, it is intended for society, and its fate, now dependent on the laws which govern the social circulation of goods, can be far more capricious than that of Odysseus; for what is one-eyed Polyphemus compared with the argus-eyed customs officials of Newport, or the fair Circe compared with the German meat inspectors? It has become a commodity because its producers participate in a specific social relationship in which they have to confront each other as independent producers. Originally a natural, quite unproblematic thing, a good comes to express a social relation, acquires a social aspect. It is a product of labour, no longer merely a natural quality but a social phenomenon. We must therefore discover the law which governs this society as a producing and working community. Individual labour now appears in a new aspect, as part of the total labour force over which society disposes, and only from this point of view does it appear as value-creating labour.”

SocietySatisfactionGoodLabourNeedCommodityExchangeIndependent ProducerSocial Circulation Of GoodsValue Creating Labour
Book:Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development
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“Exchange is thus accessible to analysis because it not only satisfies individual needs, but is also a social necessity which makes individual need its instrument while at the same time limiting its satisfaction. For a need can be satisfied only to the extent that social necessity will permit. It is of course a presupposition, for human society is inconceivable without the satisfaction of individual needs. This does not mean, however, that exchange is simply a function of individual need, as indeed it would be in a collectivist economy, but that individual needs are satisfied only to the extent that exchange allows them to participate in the product of society. It is this participation which determines exchange. The latter appears to be simply a quantitative ratio between two things,[4] which is determined when this quantity is determined. The quantity which is turned over in exchange, however, counts only as a part of social production, which itself is quantitatively determined by the labour time that society assigns to it. Society is here conceived as an entity which employs its collective labour power to produce the total output, while the individual and his labour power count only as organs of that society. In that role, the individual shares in the product to the extent that his own labour power participates, on average, in the total labour power (assuming the intensity and productivity of labour to be fixed). If he works too slowly or if his work produces something useless (an otherwise useful article would be considered useless if it constituted an excess of goods in circulation), his labour power is scaled down to average labour time, i.e. socially necessary labour time. The aggregate labour time for the total product, once given, must therefore find expression in exchange. In its simplest form, this happens when the quantitative ratios between goods exchanged correspond to the quantitative ratios of the socially necessary labour time expended in their production. Commodities would in that case exchange at their values.”

NeedCommodityExchangeSocially Necessary Labour TimeCollectivist EconomyIndividual Need
Book:Finance Capital: A study in the latest phase of capitalist development
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