Yes, I know from a rhetorical perspective they’re a bunch of jerks who do nothing but complain, but is there an actual takedown of their ideological notions? Because just saying they suck without further explanation makes it hard to dismiss them when they pop up. I don’t agree with them, I just want to know why I shouldn’t. Something about statues and logic and being chained in a courtyard with wind and all that. I’m not sure where to put this, sorry.
Here’s a comment from a Left-Com on :reddit-logo: trying to explain the core of their belief system. Let me know how far you get before your eyes glaze over lol
TLDR; Commodity-Capital, or the commodity-form of capital, it is the name of products used to make surplus value. It existed in the USSR. Without it, currency would not exist, and things would be distributed by need, rather than the accumulation of value. ML’s say it exists in the lower stage of communism, LeftComs say it does not.
Wall of Text: I know you know what it is, but I wanted to explain anyway. Just go down a bit for the answer. :) In capitalist production, objects have two values- a use value and a labour-value. The former is easy to explain- is the thing useful? If so, it has a use value. The latter is how much socially necessary labour-time it took to make the object.
The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.
When supply and demand are in equilibrium, this labor-value is equal to the price of the commodity.
From now on, I will just call the labour-value value.
Value used to create more value is called capital, and the director of this capital is a Capitalist. The capitalist wants to create as much Capital as possible, or in other words, wants to accumulate capital.
Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!
This is also the inspiration for my username :).
This capitalist invests capital-value in the form of money into buying labour (wages) the the materials used to create commodities (the means of production).
The labour and the means of production combine to create new commodities- the value of the total commodities produced is equal to the value of the labour (called variable capital, or v), plus the value of the means of production (called constant capital, or c), plus Surplus Value, or v, which comes from shortselling the worker out of his value-producing labour. In other words, the value of the product is equal to v + c + s.
This value is all stored in the commodity, and when the commodity is sold, manifests itself in the form of money, or money-capital. Then this money capital is invested back into labour and the means of production, and the cycle begins anew.
The transfer of Money for Commodities can be simplified as M - C. The purchase of Labour and the Means of Production with Money-Capital can be simplified as M - C(L + MP). The production process can be simplified as C(L +MP) … P … C’, with the ’ next to the C symbolizing the extra surplus value added to the commodities. The sale of the newly produced commodities for money can be shortened to C’ - M’.
In total, the capitalist cycle can be shortened to
M - C(L + MP) … P … C’ - M’,
which can loop over and over.
Every step of this cycle is a form of capital. When capital is manifested in commodities, it is called the commodity-form of capital.
WITHOUT FURTHER ADO…
THE ACTUAL ANSWER
Both Left-Communists and Marxist-Leninists agree that in a fully Communist world commodities would no longer carry this capital-value, and would only contain a use value- meaning, the products would be distributed based on who needs them, rather than who has money. But while Left-Communists claim this applies for every stage of socialism/communism, Marxist-Leninists claim the lower stage of communism follows LTV, and thus contains commodity-capital. If you belive the latter, the USSR was socialist. If you belive the former, it was capitalist.
Here are the two best examples of evidence for each side:
From Economic Problems of the USSR, by J. V. Stalin.
It is sometimes asked whether the law of value exists and operates in our country, under the socialist system. Yes, it does exist and does operate. Wherever commodities and commodity production exist, there the law of value must also exist.
In the second phase of communist society, the amount of labour expended on the production of goods will be measured not in a roundabout way, not through value and its forms, as is the case under commodity production, but directly and immediately…
From Dialouge With Stalin, a direct Left-Communist response to Economic Problems by A Bordiga:
We have explained in various texts (avoiding to say anything new) that every system of commodity production is a non-socialist system; this is exactly what we will reaffirm.
In the famous Stalin pamphlet one finds these concessions regarding the Russian economy: even if the large firms are socialized, the small and medium-sized firms however aren’t expropriated: on the contrary, this would “be equal to a crime.” According to the author [Stalin], they should transition into cooperative firms. Currently there are two sectors of commodity production in Russia: on the one hand the public, “nationally owned” production. In the state-owned enterprises, the means of production and production itself, thus also the products, are national property. How simplistic: in Italy, the tobacco factories and accordingly their sold cigarettes are owned by the state. Does this already qualify for the assertion that one is in a phase of the “abolishment of the wage labour system” and the respective workers weren’t “forced” to sell their labour power? Surely not.
We therefore not only haven’t got the first phase of socialism in front of us [in the USSR], but also not even a total state capitalism, that means an economy, in which – even though all products are commodities and circulate for money – the state disposes of every product; so, a form in which the state can centrally determine all proportions of equivalence, including labour power. Such a state as well couldn’t be controlled nor conquered economically/politically by the working class and would function in service of the anonymous and hiddenly operating capital. But Russia is far away from that anyways: all that is there, is the after the anti-feudal revolution arisen state industrialism.
And, finally, here is a quote from Capital Volume 2, Part 3, Chapter 18, Section 1, by K. Marx, which both sides claim supports them respectively. You can decide.
Under socialised as well as capitalist production, the labourers in branches of business with shorter working periods will as before withdraw products only for a short time without giving any products in return; while branches of business with long working periods continually withdraw products for a longer time before they return anything. This circumstance, then, arises from the material character of the particular labour-process, not from its social form. In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.
To be fair, I found a decently clear person. My point is they typically pump out walls of text.
But, that’s not a reason for them to be disregarded. It just means they’re bad at explaining themselves.
Out of this wall of text (I skipped the whole math section) and some of the theories they discuss on Swampside Chats podcast, my layman understanding is that they want to abolish money for money’s sake and distribute work and resources another way, according to need, directly in socialism, as opposed to having the same mode of production we have right now but with better bosses(DoP) or with worker democracy.
Some more thought out thinkers propose labour vouchers, or standartized work hours, to replicate the function of money as an accounting measure and exchange, but they all IMO have the problem of not offering a way to get there, you just have a revolution and turn on a switch and now everyone just knows to use labour vouchers.
