In the Pitts

This was going to be a small reply to ellenleinwand from my post here, but it grew large enough that it needed its own post.

As I am reading Open Marxism 4, I have come across a presentation of the matter by Frederick Harry Pitts appropriate to the comments here.  Pitts, explicating Heinrich as the most representative of the New Reading of Marx (NRM) proponents, says,
"The NRM suggest that value does not consist in the amount of labour-time expended in production by any one labouring individual.  It relates to the amount of time 'socially necessary for its production' (Marx).  For the NRM, value is subject to a social validation made after the concrete expenditure of labour (Heinrich 2012).  In production, value can thus only be a potential quantity, pending validation in the exchange of commodities."

The first two sentences are quite correct.  The third sentence however begins to express a problem.  "Value" is not subject to a social validation made after the concrete expenditure of labour, the quantity of value is, unless the value-form itself is only potential until C' become M', in which case we return to traditional Marxism via the back door that production is only verifiably capitalist if the end result is successful valorization.  Like traditional Marxism, capitalism remains in exchange, but does not go into production itself, and retains the capitalism as maldistribution-modernity split Postone and the Krisis/EXIT! journals levels such a trenchant critique of.

Pitts then seems to adjust course in the next sentence by stating that "In production, value can thus only be a potential QUANTITY."  And if I may nitpick, since it is critical in such an explication to dot the i's and cross the t's, it is possible that he should say instead of "In production..." "In the exchange of commodities for money", especially as Heinrich's claim to fame is his "monetary theory of value".

However, that is followed by another statement that is evidence that the slippage back and forth is not an accident, as it immediately reappears.

"In this respect, a product of labour is not automatically a commodity.  By means of its sale it must be validated as such in order to enter into the value relation,  For a product to bear value, it must be a commodity."

Insofar as a commodity is something produced for exchange, that is, a presumed use-value for someone other than the producer, whose use-value for the producer is as something to be exchanged for another commodity or its universal form of appearance i.e. money, it is a commodity already prior to succeeding to be exchanged.  In point of fact, Marx does not refer to the C or the C' in M-C...P...-C'-M' as potential commodities, but as commodities (labour power, means of production and raw materials, that is, constant and variable capital, are already commodities because exchange has already taken place before production ever begins, and thus by the time production begins we are already wholly within the capital cycle, that is, M-C-M'.)  In other words, the value-form is present from the beginning of M-C-M', not only in C'-M'.  Let us not leave aside that assuming that we have a commodity which is a use-value sometimes and a use-value\value at other times assumes a separability of value and use-value that threats the commodity as composed of two separable realities.

Secondly, a product of labour is obviously not necessarily ever a commodity.  Marx makes this point himself, but in relation to kinds of labours that, by their form, are not possibly value-producing, such as personal services in which the labor purchased is not used to produce something for exchange with something else.  However, in the way Pitts puts the matter, in the context of the expanded capital cycle, he is not following Marx but Bailey.  He conflates what makes something a Commodity with whether or not particular units of output succeed in being valorized.

Thirdly, let's take a situation of actual capitals, as opposed to the aggregate capital of Volume 1 where particular capitals are not what is under discussion, and let us say that we had 3 producers of computers, where column 1 is MoP, column 2 is labour power, column 3 is surplus value.

Let's assume a Rate of Surplus-Value of 100%, each produces 100 widgets in an hour, with constant and variable capital and surplus-value in dollars.

Producer #1 (socially average labour time)
50 + 50 + 50

Producer #2 (poor productivity)
50 + 80 + 80

Producer #3 (fully automated, no workers)
50 + 0 +0

$410 for 300 widgets
$150 constant capital
$130 hours of labour power (value)
$130 hours of surplus-value

Each widget is worth about $1.37, therefore each producer receives $137.77, so that Producer 1 has a rate of profit ~27%, Producer 2 has a rate of profit ~6%, but Producer 3 is way ahead with a rate of profit ~64%.

In a capitalist world, insofar as the realization of value in exchange is the determination of an aliquot part of value to each capital based on its productivity relative to the average socially necessary labor time, we have the peculiar outcome that for an individual capital, it is possible to have a 0 labor power expenditure, but insofar as each producer is in the broad mesh of total capital, they all appropriate via their sales some portion of total value created by the total expenditure of labor power at the socially necessary average.

Pitts, and if he is correct, Heinrich and NML, cannot comprehend this: that an output that is not a product of labor is still a commodity and can appropriate surplus-value, insofar as it participates in the total capital cycle.  It did not become a commodity through successfully being sold, it was a commodity because it was in the total cycle.

For a product to bear value... it must be part of total capital process, it must have had money spent on its production, even if that money is only on constant capital.  The point here being, insofar as the use-value was produced in the process begun with M-C...P... C' leading necessarily to M', it cannot but be a commodity entitled to an aliquot part of the total monetary expression of value equal to its C+V.

The only exception to this is the case in which something is produced and not one unit of the output is sold.  If even one unit of the output is sold, the originating capital receives an (however infinitesimally small) aliquot part of total surplus value, although quite possibly not enough for the reproduction of that capital.

To not realize this, Pitts, and I am suggesting Heinrich as well, move loosely back and forth between treating Volume 1 as about particular capitals and as capital as a whole.  Following Fred Moseley, I hold that Volume 1 is about aggregate capital, not particular capitals, and thus everything produced is a commodity because it is considered in the total capital cycle of M-C-M'.

Finally, if Pitts is correct his presentation of Heinrich, then it implies that their notion is that Value is not merely realized in exchange, but only produced in exchange, since the output is not even a product of Commodity production if the commodities did not successfully get sold.  Taking a step further, the suggestion is that the value of the commodity is only a determinate social form through exchange.  Again, Bailey, not Marx.