Are there particular politics that necessarily flow from a value-form analysis, or

form-analysis in general?

James Furner 11/16/14: This is a very good question, Alexander, and I think that it helps to set it up as
you do, by distinguishing the theoretical question (1) what political commitments are inseparable
from, or compatible with, value-form theory; from the empirical question (2) what political
theory or even what political perspectives have people who self-identify as value-form theorists in
fact come up with? Many of the latter will be German. But the greatest value-form theorists, in respect
to seeking to understand its implications for law and politics, the 20's Lukacs and Pashukanis, were not
German. (It goes without saying that knowing the German language is a necessary condition for
developing value-form theory; as is not being parochial). I think we would have firmer responses to
question (1) if L and P had had the kind of influence in generating research and fellow thinkers that e.g.
Habermas has had. Having said that, the obvious Marxist current that value form-based theory
contrasts with is class-based Marxist theory, i.e. is the most fundamental aspect of Marx's
critique of capitalism the commodity form, or is it class exploitation? Now, if we think about the
theoretical and empirical questions (1) and (2) in relation to class-founded Marxist theory, is it really
the case that we get any less uncertainty in respect to (1) and any less variation in respect to (2) than in
the case of value form-based theory? I doubt it. Another thought: to know what follows from the goal
of a value-form-less society (no less than the goal of a classless society), one would have to spell out
why such a society is a good (i.e. do some normative political philosophy), and spell out what kind of
means are necessary or possible to achieve it (i.e. do some empirical analysis). Since there is not much
Marxist normative political philosophy in general, it's not surprising that the uncertainly in respect to
(1) applies not just to the value-form-based strand of Marxism.
< Locascio's RE: I'd say it's class exploitation as mediated by the commodity form.
< Furner RE: this comment is a little cheap, if I may say. It does not address the distinction I was
making (which was of course offered as a description of existing approaches and not a statement of my
own view). I was distinguishing strands of Marxism on the basis of what they take the _most
fundamental aspect_ of the Marxist critique of capitalism to be; and you can't have two most
fundamental aspects. Postone and Cohen are obvious examples of each. My point was that as many
positions are allowed by class-based
(i.e. class-as-the-most-fundamental-aspect-of-a-critique-of-capitalism) Marxism, from Cohen to people
who have nothing in common with analytical Marxism, as are allowed by value-form-based Marxism.
Any discussion of the fact that many positions are allowed by value-form-based Marxism needs to
acknowledge that fact (or dispute it); but your comment does neither.
Alexander Locascio: What I find useful in Pohrt is rather the notion, probably better stated and
grounded by Elbe, that the critique of political economy is not a revolutionary theory, but a theory
of why revolution does not happen. It is then incumbent upon communists to make structures of
reification transparent, rather than pin hopes upon an automatism of liberation.
Dario ankovi: The worker's movement thus far, rather than seeking its self-abolitionand this is
the whole insight of the communization currentshas sought to affirm itself, and, insofar as it is just
one pole in the capital-labour relation, it has also reproduced capital. I find the case for the view that
'workers' collective experience naturally leads them to contradict and act against their domination by

capital' dubious at best, if not outright disconfirmed by history. Rarely, if ever, have workers' struggles
risen above economism, and even in those historical conjectures where the question of the abolition of
capitalism was raised, that might have been more a function of recently formally subsumed dclass
artisans and peasants rebelling against formal subsumption, than a function of a working class fully
subsumed by capital.
Jasper Bernes: This conversation strikes me as very odd. The ultraleft position has always been that
theory develops spontaneously out of the experiences of the working-class, and that the
revolutionary leadership of the party (a la Kautsky, and Lenin via Kautsky) is unnecessary.
Lukacs tries to split the difference, and marry a spontaneist approach to proletarian theory to the
Kautskyan argument for the necessity of the intellectual leadership. Althusser, as I read him, is from
start to finish an argument for the necessity of revolutionary theory as a vital element that the rebelling
classes don't have access to, and an assertion that they fail because of this lack of access to proper
theory. It's a defense of his own critical readings of Capital, etc., as a vital element necessary for
successful class stuggel (because "ideology"). Therefore I'm confused by Andrew Ryder's critique of
Heinrich's position on working class fetishism from an Althusserian/Leninist position. These are all the
variants of the same (intellectualist) position, and have historically been opposed by those ultraleft
theories -- represented today by Endnotes -- that insist that theories emerge directly as a consequence of
proletarian struggles, and what ould deny the necessary mediating role of party intellectuals and
theorists.
Andrew Ryder: Althusser writes about a class instinct. I think the standard reading of Althusser as
some kind of theoreticist is actually totally wrong. In large part, his work is about introducing class
struggle into the epistemology of science. It's true that in Reading Capital he makes an argument for a
kind of pure theory, for which he later wrote a self-criticism. But really, many of the most difficult
moments in Althusser are about confronting the philosophy of science with class struggle, not about
like lecturing the masses in some caricatural professorial kind of way.
Jasper Bernes: Here's what I think about the fit: 1) VFT concentrates focus on the core mediations of
the capitalist mode of production as the defining feature of capitalism; this sets a much higher bar for a
socialist/communist revolution, as you can no longer simply displace bourgeois class rule, you have to
abolish those mediations. This makes the theory a friend of the ultraleft; 2) the emphasis on money,
however, has some curious political entailments; the whole point of Rubin's original intervention was, I
believe, to demonstrate that abstract labor was something completely different than the socially
homogenized labor in the USSR, and that therefore the USSR was not capitalist. While this is true, as
far as it goes, the ultimate implication of this theory was not ultraleft in any way; it was to suggest that
the USSR was already socialist. So, there are strong ambiguities in the theory.
Automattic Abject: i find Jasper's previous comment really helpful. I too feel there is a gap somewhere
there. It is not a coincidence that Postone's take (putting forward a critique of the mediation of labour although I feel he is quite ambiguous in its relationship with value-form) is in some ways very much
closer to, let's say, TC, and other members of the comunisation current(s), who critique labour as a
separated activity. I believe that VFT in general, or for that matter, monetary theories of value, tend to
adopt a somewhat transhistorical view of labour as a content by concentrating on the form (I 'm afraid
this issue remains even in the most nuanced developments of abstract labour, like that of Arthur's who
talks about the form-determination of labour etc). I 'm not saying though that this is the only reason for
the difficulty to fit VFT with ultra-left (or a similar (anti-)political strand).
<Oscar Dybedahi RE: In some sense this is right, but its entirely non-problematic. VFT tends to adopt

a transhistorical notion of labor in the same sense that it adopts a transhistorical view of use value or
wealth. It is trivial that "use values" (if this general or empiricist abstraction is taken for granted, and
Marx certainly had no problems with it) are transhistorically necessary for every society. (The same
goes for labor.)
The form theoretical point is that neither labor nor use value can have a non-mediated or transhistorical
existence. The use of "use value" or "labor" as transhistorical categories does not entail a transhistorical
"*conception* of use value or labor. It entails precisely the opposite: a conception in which the
existence of labor or use value are always and necessarily mediated in historically specific ways. The
broad use of labor and use value are conceptually necessary precisely for making this point.
Nicholas Gray: Bullet points due to lack of time: if you take value-form theory along the lines of
Arthur's systematic dialectic of capital, then the theory of the value-form is necessarily a theory of
exploitation (and class-struggle). There is no commodity-form of value without the capital-form of
value. These are internally related moments of an organic whole. No capital-form of value without
exploitation and class struggle. James Furner's distinction collapses (and Wertkritik is dispatched).
Conversely, the abolition of capital is the abolition of money and commodities, exchange, and (all
forms of) value. Bye bye Proudhon, bye bye market socialism. This implies the abolition of the
economy (including centrally planned ones, which in spite of the formal absence of the value-form,
attempt to replace it through central planning (and do a worse job than the anarchy of capitalist
production mediated through the market with price signals facilitating the allocation of resources etc).1
This is the theory of "state capitalism" as operating with a shadow, deformed form of value.
Whatever that is, it ain't a transition to communism.
A further fit between value-form theory and communisation is in state-derivation theory:
Pashukanis/NML derives the state-form from the value-form, trashing the Leninist vulgar
instrumentalist theory of the state. Marry that with young Marx (Crit of Hegel's Phil of Right,
On the Jewish Q., Intro to Crit of Hegel's PR) i.e. Marx's critique of the state as alienated sphere
which is the counterpart to alienation in economic relations, i.e. Marx's radical anti-politics, and
then you are entering the domain of communisation theory. Marx against Marx (e.g. against the
Marx of the Critique of the Gotha Programme)? Marx la carte? Perhaps, but equally it could
be argued this is a reconstruction adequate to the 21st century.
As to the question of consciousness and the party-form: it is true that Heinrich, Elbe et al. argue that the
wage fetish prevents workers from seeing through the mystification of capitalist forms, hence the need
for intervention by theorists. However, in communisation theory, the new configuration of the class
relation post-restructuring tends to undermine the trade union/ economistic consciousness in proletarian
experience of struggle (no more real wage increases in return for productivity increases), no more
soziale Partnerschaft, no more social corporatism: tendentially proletarians experience the imposition
of capitalist categories as an external imposition, and these lose their mystique of natural history. So
here, communisation goes against the NML (or you could argue that Heinrich's didactic endeavours
merely complement a process of demystification occurring in practice).
If the three sources of Marxism were once considered to be German philosophy, French socialism and
British political economy (Lenin), in the 21st century we could say these are now: Teutonic value-form
theory, Gallic communisation theory and Anglo-American empiricism (although the latter has to know
its place, acknowledge that it is constitutionally unable to engage in theoretical questions, and resign
itself to acting as the handmaiden of the other two, doing the empirical donkey-work).

Is it a worse job? See https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/

http://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-communisation-and-value-form-theory
http://howsickly.blogspot.gr/2013/09/value-critique-and-politics-or-not.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/391008070999854/
http://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-the-moving-contradiction