Everything Must Go! The Abolition of Value

222 Pages·2017·3.12 MB·English

Go!
EverythiMnugs t
ThAeb oliotfVi aolnu e
Bruno Astarian
GilleDsa uve
Everything
Must
Go!
TheA bolitoifoV na lue
Bruno Astarian
Gilles Dauve
Everything Must Go:
the abolition of value
Bruno Astarian
Gilles Dauve
2015
licensed under creative commons
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LBCBooks
Berkeley, CA
LBCbooks. com
Foreword
Part One:
CRISIS ACTIVITY AND COMMUNISATION
Bruno Astarian
Introduction
I. Crisis and Crisis Activity 3
1.1 With the crisis of the reciprocal presupposition of the classes,
automatic social reproduction disappears 3
l.2 Proletarian individualisation in crisis activity 6
l.3 Taking possession of capital elements, but not to work 8
Conclusion 10
II. The Current Crisis 11
11.1 Periodization 11
11.2 The conditions for communism at the outset of the 21st c. 11
11.2.1 Anti-work is back 12
Case of the textile workers, Bangladesh 15
Case of public transportation 17
11.2.2 Demassification of the proletariat 19
Case of Greece, December 2008 20
Conclusion 21
Ill. Communisation 23
111.1 Communisation and transitional society 23
111.2 The issue of gratuity 24
111.3 Production without Productivity 26
111.3.1 The struggle for totalizing activity 27
111.3.2 The end of separation of needs 29
111.3.3 The issue of the individual 32
111.4 Consumption without necessity 34
Conclusion 35
General Conclusion 35
Part Two: VALUE AND ITS ABOLITION
Bruno Astarian
1 Marx's vision of the abolition of value 37
1.1 The Critique of the Gotha Program 37
1.1.1 Distribution of the social product and rate of
exploitation of "free men" 38
1.1.2 Abolition of the market and abolition of value 40
1.1.3 Work certificates, the law, and the police 41
1.1-4 Father Enfantin's benediction 43
1.2 GIK and labor-time accounting 47
2 Marx's theory of value, per chapter 1 of Capital 51
2.1 The starting point: the commodity 51
2.1.1 Use value 51
2.1.2 Exchange value, value 52
2.1.3 Rubin on abstract labour 54
2.2 The substance of value: the issue of abstract labour 55
2.2.1 -From commodity to labour-substance of value 55
2.2.2 -The two approaches to abstract labour 56
2.2.2.1 -Social approach 56
2.2.2.2 -The physiological approach:
the expenditure of human labour power 58
2.3 Measure of value 60
2-4 Value and society in the first chapter of Capital 61
2.4.1 Which producers? 61
2.4.2 Which exchanges? 64
2.4.2.1 Selling 65
2.4.2.2 Buying 66
2.5 Commodity fetishism 69
3 Marx's theory of value revisited 72
3.1 The starting point: capital resting on its own basis 72
3.2 Interdependence and multiplication of capitals 74
3.3 Value-producing labour (abstract labour?) 78
3.3.1 Productivity 80
3.3.1.1 Productivity and socially necessary
Jabour time 80
3.3.1.2 Competition and monopoly 82
3.3.2 Standardization 84
3.3.2.1 Usefulness of objects and utility value of
commodities 84
3.3.2.2 Labour standardization 88
3.3.3 Valorizing labour 92
3.4 Substance and magnitude of value; value realization 92
3-4·1 Time, the substance of value 93
3.4.1.1 Embodiment of valorizing Jabour in the
commodity 93
3.4.1.2 The substance of value, that which
circulates 94
3.4.1.3 The substance of value, that which is
measured 97
3.4.2 Exchange of commodities, realization of value 98
3.5 Provisional conclusion 100
4 What is at stake in casting the theory of value concretely? 101
4.1 Doing away with abstract labour 101
4.2 The false threat of life's commoditization 104
4.3 Is the proletariat's struggle against value or capital? 107
4.3.1 Labour market 108
4.3.2 Production 109
4.3.3 Private life 110
4.4 Value and class struggle 111
4.4.1 Daily struggles and devalorization 112
4.4.2 Insurrection and "devaloration:" changing the
social form of nature 113
4.5 Value abolished: abolishing concrete labour 118
4.5.1 Negation of productivity 119
4.5.2 Negation of standardization 122
Conclusion 125
Part Three:
A TO z OF COMMUNISATION
Gilles Dauve
Autonomy 131 Politics 176
Blue Collar 132 Query 179
Class 135 Revolution 181
Daily Life 138 Sex 183
Ecology 141 Time (is of the Essence) 187
Family 145 Unlabelled 192
Giotto 148 Value 195
Habitat 152 Work 198
Insurrection 153 Xenophilia 200
Jailbreak 158 Yesterday 203
Karl (Marx) 162 Zomias 206
Labour 165
Money 158
Non-Economy 171
Obfuscation 174

Foreword
Are the times a-changin'?
Well ... yes.
On a historical scale, a new alternative was born out of the crisis
of the stormy 1960s-70s: in short, proletarian "anti-work" activity
brought with it an altogether different perspective.
The emergence of this ground-breaking paradigm, however,
has proved more of a sign of times to come than an epoch-making
landmark. The social earthquake was powerful enough to bring
a new proletarian subjectivity to the fore, but it was not strong
enough to reach a point of insurrection. What it did achieve was
the unsettling of certainties inherited from Marx via the ( councilist,
Bordiguist ... whatever) Communist Left.
Until the 1970s, communist theory was built around a set of
measures to be applied once the proletarian insurrection had taken
power. Despite contrasts and oppositions, the fundamentals were
fairly similar: dispossessing the capitalists of their property and
imposing self-managed and planned work on everyone.
This agenda did not become obsolete because theorists refuted
it, but because a sizeable active minority of the proletarians reacted
against work and practically dismissed the programme of a work­
focused and production-centred society, even in the form of
communal cooperative work, i.e. of wage-labour freed from capital.
Such was the undercurrent that caused people like us to reject
some of the Communist Left tenets, including their contemporary
variants. For example, because of ecological awareness, people now
rarely equate the "transition period" with a huge growth of heavy
industry productive forces, but quite a few radicals still have no
objection to the persistence of key capitalist categories like money
and work, as long as these realities come under true adequate
proletarian or popular control.