(Yet more) Notes on
Value
On the
&Nature* of Value#
I
Process/time
and &value* (price, exchange value).
What
are the implications of &value* when considered as a time-based, contingent
process? The answer must in some measure include the question of value as
quality or as &subjective*, so involving the notion of temporality (the
experiential relation of past, present and future), as also quantitative,
measurable or &objective*, so involving what we call &time* (social time). This
later sense, it is worth noting straight away, is primarily about something
measurable - and is as true of &time* as of &value*, and once these measures
are agreed with others (as &time* and &money*) then they both become
usable, exchangeable. All
these measures are involved, evoked, even born, in the light of comparison
(again, also true of one measure of value, money).
So
what we already have here are two very different kinds of &value*; the first
divisible between a personal use value and a higher value (&values* or what we
hold &sacred*) and an exchange value or means of comparison (imaginary, largely
arbitrary units of measure, &money* or &time* as the basis of exchange). The
two kinds of value echo the two similarly different forms of &time*, &inner*
and &outer*: the first, our felt temporality, is based upon the experience of
an on-going &eternal present* - with its illicit but indispensable
generalization, home to universals, axioms and gods alike, &eternity* (
&ground* of the &higher values*
just mentioned above) The second, involves the comparison, or overlay,
of abstract quantities (years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds and their
fractions) with, or onto, observable natural cycles. In short, values change
and what is valued may be measured (meaning that what is valuable one day may
not be so the next, what is valuable to one may not be so for another, or that
what is valuable in one &economy* may not be so in another, we may contrast the
addition of objects or &wealth* in a household with a market, or the making of
objects for the household or the market - or, again, that what one day may be
found to have a value measured, may, the next, have no value at all# we see
this in reselling, some things increase in price, others no longer have a
price# so reflecting their situation or context of being valued or being
without value). Both (or all) are products of their cultural context. All are
certainly &man-made*. The first pair (values, temporality) are
felt, experienced, by every human subject: the second (money, time) invented,
then regarded as an object (&objective*). The social fictions of money and time
are then often put together to form labour as paid
for according to units of time (when not in units of made objects or their
production and distribution - or in services). The latter offers the intuition
of labour time as value: but two fictions do not make
a real object. If we ignore the subject side (again our old friend, or bad
habit, the *restricted economy* is at hand) then this new fiction, appearing as
objective, simply leads to a mismatch with reality (price) or objective (read,
empirical) irrelevance# The inclusion of the subject-ive
side, returns the question of value as values, embodied individually, but
communal, social or cultural shared realities (as opposed the useless fiction
of *social labour* or &socially necessary labour time* invented to square the circle of the labour theory of value with actual prices - that is with
the real process of exchange in the 每real or imaginary- but &restricted*
economy of &the market*, as abstracted from the sum of exchanges that make up
our lives; &restricted* because also clearly avoiding the subjective,
value-giving, side of personal desire or cultural values, and their expression
as gift or sacrifice). These values range from immediate desire, use value or
consumption, to, higher on the scale, what we most value, or &what we hold
sacred* as it appears to whatever individual or whatever social group or
community of belief or &structure of feeling*, in whatever phase of human (or
pre-human, that is hominid) history. So from the assertion of individual value
or values in agency and aim, action or transaction, the subject side may be
generalized into the social, collective or community forms of value or
significant values (which are also individual and collective forms of desire 每
and so of identity, whether of recognition or assertion or expressed in
consumption). And without this kind of value, there can be no price# (just as, in terms of experience, the object is contained
within the subject). By contrast, objective dominance, as price, comes in as
part of a collective transaction; just as &objective* means &witnessed by more
than one*, or the implication of &truth* as inter-subjective, so price also is
a collective transaction requiring at least two 每 the result of the meeting of
values and the means of exchange or its negotiation according to custom 每
however, here too, the &price* paid as part of the exchange may not necessarily
reflect the &market* price).
(However the &labour theory of value* as an intuition or value, as part
of a system of values, does have one important use, one I will discuss below#)
With
respect to economic or social (or just any) static, structural or &equilibrium*
models, the first thing to note is that, regarding the cycles and rhythms and
process(es) of real time, there is no &feedback loop*
- only a &feed-forwards loop*# In a word: there is no equilibrium. The future is not (will not be) the same
as the present; so no &return* is possible to find the &original* or &real
value* now lost in the past (that is to say &value* is not that kind of direct
cause and effect relation); this value changes according to situation, one
minute having price, the next one without, then used or stored, then revalued
(say as antique) and so on, until worn out, used up or stored in a museum
(*beyond price*). Forwards movement or change, the movement of time, changes
the situation or context of valuing and exchanging. Moreover, this &outer*
movement or change in time每space (process, cycle, rhythm) echoes our &inner*
movement or change as diremption (oscillation), where
we move from &subjective* to &objective* (between present and past, or wait
until the future becomes the past, the recent memory that, in turn, informs our
present) and &back* again, to the subjective present in terms of desiring and
valuing, pricing and exchanging# (except that, again,
strictly speaking, there is no &back again*, things will have moved on#). So
moving &forwards*, or change, mutability, process, temporalises
value as felt or imagined in context, and as made actual, &objective*, only in
context, at the point of exchange in an on-going process (the same is true of
the &cost of production* as &true value*# again, time moves forwards not
backwards# forwards to actual price of exchange... if any# whence &making a
profit*, or &making a loss*#).
Process
demystifies. If the present makes the value (subject side, how we feel about
something, now, and how much we might be prepared to pay for it), or the actual
price or exchange relation or ratio (what and how we agree with others), then
the past makes the present (object side) bringing together all the elements of
the exchange relation (made or found object, the one who wants it, and the
price paid or terms of exchange according to the actual situation then
obtaining). Finally, however, the present decision is made by people according
to their values in coordination with the given situation# In a glut the objects
may be worthless, but we may pay a token to show &fairness* 每 a nod towards the
&labour theory of value* as respect for the other*s
work time (however this too is subject side, a question of values, the rest,
production and price, are describable as objects only after the event, too late
for the negotiation of a prior transaction# as past, untestable# and generally
irrelevant to the question of context). Again the &object side*, the cost of
production, actually (a part of) the object*s past, is not only irrelevant but
anyway incomplete (the calculation to invest was made with an eye to profit in
the future). As just noted, this picking out of features from the past, is at
best a description after the event (as in models of &total social* labour or capital, or supposed &feed-back* processes, etc#) and redundant, because un-applicable, retrospective
description# in a word, abstract. Concrete is: how many people and materials
are needed to make or build something? This we know: for the State the decision
is a matter of political values and political will; for the market it depends
on identifying demand and being able to make the object (&commodity*) at below
market price (efficiency and profit) or at market price (profit as payment for
management and investment, another kind of labour and
interest)# But things change (between production and the return found on the
market there may lie a myriad of interceding events) and we only know when the
object is finally sold# if sold at all. And resold # for value in goods is the
same as in ethics (has value, is &good*) or like &beauty* in aesthetics; it is
culturally contingent on subjective interest and taste# and desire# (as when an everyday object becomes an antique, and we wish
to buy or sell it). Again the &general economy* not only includes desire, value
as subjective, concrete and in context, but suggests that one cannot view nor
understand human activity, social process, indeed a culture*s mode of exchange,
without it# Witness the element in identity which refuses the &right* of
objects, reason, norms and customs (assertion, sacrifice, the negative or
destructive forms of &gift*) or seeks for, or bestows, value (commodity and
identity in consumerism, &cultural capital*, distinction, sub-cultures#). And
we remember the earliest trade, food apart, featured tools and ornaments, the
making of things and the making 每the asserting- of identity#
With
apologies to Marx, it is not the commodity that stands as fiction of his or her
own creation against the producer, the commodity form is just that form most
suitable for a mass market, for circulating goods we all need (and much the
same could be said for the colonialist, negative comparative, of &commodity
fetishism*), rather it is *money* which is the fiction that we stand in thrall
to, a fiction that, when taken beyond its role as a facilitator of exchange, destablises the market at the cost to the many, for the
benefit of the very few 每 as we see in financial crises#
Actually this designation of value
as social, as cultural, as culturally specific, as cultural practice (again
contingent, as opposed to the labour theory of value
as the solid essentialist &secret* or hidden &deep structure* or &truth* of
value and the commodity) is already present in Marx*s theory of &commodity
fetishism* (as noted by commentators from Rubin to Graeber
每 and many in between每 from the early 20th to the early 21st
century). Often overlapping, or being confused, with the term &reification*
(where a relation is taken for a thing). Again, leaving aside the negative
comparison or name-calling, (colonialist) use of the term &fetish*- a making
negative of what is from another culture and religion, another history and
social formation, tribal and implying another &race*, or skin colour, of what is, for that culture, the very essence or
repository of the sacred (like the institution of the Kula, centering on an
object of cyclic &gift* exchange). Leaving this aside, &commodity fetishism*
may more usefully be taken as referring to the subjective or identity side of
what is &sacred* in capitalism or rather, in the modern market, in mass market
exchange (only a feature of post-World War 2 advanced capitalism), for with the
mass market we no longer have commodity against worker (which in practice
usually means the producers produce for the middle classes and not for
themselves), but commodities for all, as in a well-regulated economy, all
appear as both producer and consumer.
Either
way, it is the present (subjective temporality or &eternal present* with its
input of memory and &objective time*, or &time now* with its past
determinations) that decides both value and price of exchange (&exchange
value*) or, the commodity object*s place in our values and its price in
negotiation or on the market (what buyer and seller will agree to# or what the
law, or relevant power structure, demands#). Other *knowledge*, other &relevant
facts* (capital, materials, wage and transport costs, coordination and
logistics, etc) come after the event (just as
historians may be knowledgeable - in retrospect#). After the
market event, the moment of exchange, regardless of the calculations of the
capitalist, investor or manager#
Regarding the future aspects of the
process in question# Forwards looking is like credit (which usually is needed
to make the process actual, before, with and after, &money*) the pay-off (or
not) comes later# This question of trust is foregrounded as the social or
cultural context of any transaction; the relations of exchange, precisely as#.
relationships (to which we might add the modern legal context). Also in this
sense of economic categories as cultural categories meaningless outside of
their social context or context of use (the exchangers and the cultures that
inform them), Piketty is probably right to work with an expanded notion of
&capital* as what we (in any given culture or period) invest to achieve a given
end (higher productivity), from early tool making to modern financial tools# in
effect, paralleling the evolution of technology as &labour-saving*
or more precisely, increasing the productivity of labour
(mental or physical, production or transport). Leroi-Gorhan
also works with this sense of a complete &culture*, a network rather than an
artificially abstracted &economy* 每 indeed the ideological separation of
&economy* from society, may be one source of the economic and social problems
of wealth distribution# as a narrow (self-deserving) definition of &economics*
drives politics and law making#
The
decisive role of context should not surprise us, given its role in linguistics,
in making actual meaning, in interpretation, even in identity (in all senses of
the term, who we are, as where and when and with whom#. or as the *law of
identity as non-contradiction* surpassed by change, by the passage of time). So
why not value too: and not only the contingencies of subjective valuing, of
desire or the expression of our values, but also the objective nature of price
(with its concrete alternation from objective availability to subjectivity in
the preparedness to pay, or accept # how much?) This is always a question of
values as well as needs and desires - and of course the ability to pay. As in
the case of &identity*, however, we all seem to gravitate towards the
all-explaining, over-arching (hyphenated) concepts and their offering of a
definitive closure of meaning (&first and last things*), or primarily cohesive
forms of explanation. Returning to economics, Mandel in his own ambitious
(economic) history, proposed, regarding the weakness in quantifying and
demarcating, that is specifying, the role of the &labour
theory of value* (the &essence* of price as opposed to actual price) that we
use it as the cohesive final or general explanation of historical movements of
price (but an explanation with no predictive power) 每 other economists who have
used Marx have found that as they cannot quantify so they can do without#
However we all use empirical past experience to predict (memory and the future
as proposed repetition) that is, we collect facts and figures and make
projections. As for cohesion as an excuse for abstract conceptualization and
unexamined default axioms, quantum theory shows us the way of doing away with
this: not only by refusing Einstein*s &classical* explanation, but by refusing
all and any other coherent &cohesive* theory, indeed of &cohesion* as such if
it interferes with the empirical facts - so showing a preference for a diremptive model or non-model of reality as &totality*
(ironically, a favourite term for those that work
with untestable abstractions and generalisations).
Again we are saying goodbye (a &long goodbye*, and in metaphysics, all goodbyes
are &long good byes*) to the age-old presupposition, the default position of
the history of human thought#*till now*# of a unified manifold as guide to
correctness (the &law of non-contradiction* on a &totalising*,
mega-scale as the meta axiom of &sense-making*). Returning to economics, we may
remove the mystical, metaphysical element, first by returning &economic
activity* to society and culture as a set of evolving, but repetitive,
processes (cycles) and second by returning subjectivity and volition, that is
the relation of value and choice, agency and action, to the actual actors of
the process and then, third, by noting the difference of our &subjective*
experience of, or &as*, the Eternal Present (and so of the values present
there) as compared to &objective* empirical observation (first, second or third
hand)# So perhaps also leaving aside 每for a while- the mediation of theory (if
the theory is hell-bent on creating an abstract totalisation,
usually a harmonious monism made &harmonious* by excluding what does not fit#).
And so finally noting the role of the diremption in
the social or human sciences as also providing the dividing line between a
concrete &cultural* view and our variable individual moments of viewing; &our*
change in views according to our contingent, embedded position &in the world*
(immediate context), and our received thought position or ideological, cultural
point of view (social and historical context). Or just our oscillation between
subject and object, self and other, between inner and outer points of view#
together with their parallels in our culture at large: that is, of &doxa* or public opinion (a &collective subject*) and the
more objective pronouncements of official science; which may in turn be divided
between empirical data and experience and conceptual, theoretical marshalling
of the facts in the coral of a set of outdated expectations (interestingly the
quantitative here is on the side of the &subjective* or &partial moment&每 just
as in quantum theory 每 and opposed to the &god*s eye view* of universalising or would-be &objective* laws 每 anyway always
self-contradictory). This division in a zone or field of culture is the &outer*
manifestation of the diremption (as found operating
in the arts and sciences and in human thought or philosophy).
Running to the
object for objective description, then running into its concrete observing,
experiencing subject-ivities (first in &our* present,
then &finally* in my present); running to the subject and its agency, its
self-assertion, then running into its abstract envisioning as object (self as
object, as other), the object of past description# (and
so on# in &eternal* oscillation#).
It
would appear that the lessons of quantum theory leave all the fields of
knowledge open to new thinking. With some theoretical physicists (Penrose) even
suggesting that the opposite forces, magnitudes or extremes assumed as the
beginning and end of the Big Bang may turn out to be &the same*, their
difference a matter of (our human) point of view# Now whether this openness to
new models, new conceptualisations, is due to
previously incorrect models (that is the &nature of matter* as liable to
verification and update) or to &the nature of ourselves*, of our embedded human
viewpoint with all its contingencies, is another issue, an undecidable - aporetic. Much like the thesis of strong linguistic or
cultural immersion as determining our understanding of the world or as &worlding* (from Sapir-Whorf to Heidegger) there is a point
where we are in a grey area, a &both# and* type of proposition, where we cannot
tell (there being no externality or &outside* from which we can view#
ourselves, here, &within*). And after the diremption
and its constitutive oscillation are taken as the basis of human &being* (human
becoming), we might suppose that both opposing theses appear to operate in turn
(or even produce a &neither# nor*, as we wait for something better to turn up).
When most people
talk about their objectivity and &the real world* they do not mean objectivity
in the empirical, inter-subjective, to have witnessed, or group verification
sense (&correspondence*): rather, they mean their latest model or over-arching
theory or narrative (&cohesion*) in which they place their faith (the model or
story as such being untestable), this belief then, together with an explanation
that unites everything around a single concept, mapping a total field, is what
seems to be required 每 a matter of faith, or habit, or maybe we should say
desire# Theories, I do not need to add, are subjective on two counts: they are
held and not perceived, not experienced but inherited, or assembled through
reason (and sometimes even mathematics - formal languages all are part/whole
overlays on an untidy because ever transforming manifold); and because they are
often generalisations 每 which again only occur in the
mind. Matter knows no generalisations. Only the
particular is concrete, found in a given context, only the particular is real#
is a real object (of perception).
*
Values
and price come together as what you would actually pay (exchange value or price
paid as influenced by values), and what you would actually pay for (values 每or
identity- as expressed by what we decide to buy, &what is worth paying for*, as
first a question of values). &Supply and demand*, or
&markets* as just an abstraction (as irrelevant as &labour
time*, a moral 每subjective- term for fairness, so again expressing &value* as
the product of values). Concrete problems require concrete, particular
solutions. Otherwise we make laws to adjust as we need# unless the direction of
State is captured by a minority in quest of enrichment (and entitled enrichment
at that) at the expense of everybody else and the social fabric itself (after
which they would usually leave#).
Labour (time) spent may
be for personal use or for others; for others as gift type exchange or for
market type exchange 每 and indeed a thing made for self might one day acquire
antique value for others# The net result being, as noted above, a net increase
in goods and services - that is &wealth*. So labour time
(simply having done something) cannot be used as an actual measure, even labour time &intended* for the market, for sale - at best
one factor among many (unless as an aspect of personal time management, or a
moral measure between friends and family as index of fairness). There is simply
no direct cause and effect relation. Wages too are dependent upon the market;
but markets are never level nor fair. &Socially
necessary* does not mean socially necessary according to values, but &on the
market*# but this is notoriously contingent, at best a partial picture# and
changeable. If something needs to be &socially necessary* in the sense of
marketable as its source of value, then it is not a question of labour (an object could be found, in nature, another*s waste,
etc). Rather we have a question of the values (which
values 每 market economic or as a gift to the community) that determine where labour will be spent (State investment augmenting or even
guiding &market* investment is a case in point). Price is a concrete relation
of exchange in time-space. Time does not flow back (to re-find the original,
essential and &true value*), but forwards, whence credit, and also a new
situation (and maybe a new price, new conditions of exchange). Either way, the
old time of labour time (&time how long* in the time
of making) or &costs of production* is long gone: price then changes according
to (every) new situation# Like everything else, its meaning (its
*value*) is its context# in process# (a process that includes an
imaginary element, that is subject-ive, the matter of
values or the values that matter and an actual element, that is object-ive, the exchange value or price, or the price of exchange
as evoking, embodying, the values of both parties). Everything is context#
&Bad* investments do well in a continuous long boom: &good* investments do
badly in a recession. All is context# (the rest is so
much wishful thinking).
As are the
objective &laws* that are said to govern &it*; social process requires ever new
descriptions#
The *object* we
view, then describe, but which has, by then, moved on#
*
Wealth
(of Cultures) and production (of cultures)# more contexts#
Wealth
or *economic* growth# a matter of the increase of objects and services# and of
the free time to use them (from labour saving in the
home and work place to new objects and services, new culture, to fill the
time#). Money, if used, is just a means (of exchange), a matter of tokens and
debt settlement; its use value, along with the rest, a convenience 每 time
saving# (saving the &eternal present* from a being it
would not wish to be in, from a becoming it would not wish to share#). Culture
increases in volume and (hopefully) quality, a movement from values (the values
that tell us what we should and should not consume, and how#) to objects and
services (and their value to us as expressed in terms of price); an increase in
what we can use (the imposition of markets and removal of taboos is also one
way of doing this, the modern way; so is theft, tribal, ancient and feudal# as
is slavery). In subject/object terms: subjective experience, as desire and need
find their objects and services as mediated by our values. In terms of the diremption proper (co-implicating, but otherwise
exclusive), the subject and object points of view are complementary in that the
*external point of view* is our imagination of our selves (as others might see
us) doing whatever, and also including, right or wrong, the implied moral point
of view of the other as Other - our basking in harmony and approval if doing
the *right thing* (if &wrong* or illegal, however, then we may experience the
guilt which incites viciousness). Temporally speaking, need arises (present 每
or both present and not present as desire or &day dream*, an extension of the
waking imagination or the sleeping dream), we identify it, that is we remember
its origin (past) and end (past into future) always allowing for the fact that
it fits in with our (social/cultural) values as held to be (as if) &eternal* 每 or
guaranteed by an outside, or &Absolute Other* (so not a fact). This latter
would be the &external* step of the oscillation, the alternation of the terms
of the diremption (as described above). Having first
imagined ourselves doing so, we then go to look for this object or means of
satisfaction (to find and &pick*, steal, loan, order or buy 每 by means of
immediate or 每temporally- extended exchange) - or we may make it# (a thing, a service performed, or a problem solved)#
Production#
what we make, from objects and services to ideas. From the Paleolithic to the
Modern, humans have used their time for labour or
leisure, or labour as leisure (leisure activity as
creativity, as culture forming), some of that time used to save time (invested
time or time as &capital*) or to permit time for other activities, or just to
satisfy a passing need or desire# First making things, or doing things, for
self and intimates, then for extended others, for exchange in all its forms#
and for further exchange, for trade and markets# (forced
or unforced)# for anonymous others# as a passing job, a &gig*, or as a career.
And if we are lucky we like what we do and the conditions are good. If not, if
we hate what we do (economic coercion or wage slavery) and the pay and
conditions are bad, then we have exploitation 每 not because of the question of
&surplus value* (who does not live beyond or above this &below surplus* level,
a relative cultural value not an absolute economic fact 每 unless in disaster
conditions or 19th century industrial capitalism at its worst#). I repeat: this
is not a matter of &surplus value* (which disappears when all the work
involved, manual and mental, is taken into account 每 but of course, certain
jobs and certain perks or &incentives* may be fictional, &positional*#), but of
the violence of exploitation (pay, conditions, arbitrary abuse of authority,
actual and symbolic violence). The &secret* of value (much metaphysical
speculation has been expended on this) is simple: we agree to make more and to
use more, and unsurprisingly we have a growth in things and services and# &value*; &net value* 每 that is the &economy* grows (the
agreement to do so, is, of course, a matter of &values*). At some stage our
values may decree that it does not need to grow anymore#
In ritual terms
much of the above is repeated action, habit, all linked to identity (the
&always already* diremptive self-image) as part of a
given culture, a matter of self-image in that context, and, in special cases,
in intense experience, as in special expenditure or consumption as sacrificial
(&gift exchange*) as in celebrations from reunions to annual festivals, from
self-sacrifice - from the element of sacrifice as gift exchange in every
consumerist purchase, the &sacrifice* we make for our identity, that is our
&values* 每 especially the &important ones*, so to self-denial,
self-mortification and suicide, to the sacrifice of the other# (ritual symbolic violence, scapegoating, pogrom, &ethnic
cleansing*, etc).
Sacrifice too (in
whatever guise, god &maintaining*, expiating or propriating,
purifying, or spiritual advancement) in all cases a ritual exchange (our
identity reaffirmed) guaranteed by an &outside* 每 its supernatural
&explanation* is only an extrapolation from the range of everyday and special
exchanges (of which it is one) of human or social relations, our culturally
specific bonds of debt to one another, to the imagined heavens and their
equally imaginary personifications (as is the parallel and supporting
extrapolation from the everyday experience of the eternal present to the
positing of &eternity*#).
II
Process,
ritual and value (diremption and value: time and
money)
From
the point of view of becoming or process (change in time-space as given, or
default) ritual is the process we must go through (and repeat) which attempts
to freeze time, that is, to resist change or repair its wear and tear (entropy,
in this case social and psychological) 每 or to mark a new beginning. In either
case, old or new, we witness the assertion of an identity: an identity usually
communal, shared. Ritual in this sense is conservative, its role is
conservational; this half-frozen, half-moving situation is an attempt to stabilise some, often imaginary, state of Being 每 centering on some aspect of identity (a remembered
and desired state of affairs which is quickly overtaken by change, as its
object-hood, and indeed objectivity, is quickly proved to be positional,
limited, subjective). However, as all is always in a state of Becoming or
change, process is the only realistic default form of understanding of &things*
and &identity*; so change arrives as &time* moves on and as entropy eats away
at structure; any static state therefore then can only be temporary, indeed,
illusory, and its evocation or repair through some form of intervention or
ritual must therefore be repeated at frequent intervals. This repeated, often
cyclic, action is the process we normally call ritual, or rituality, or ritual
&exchange* (time, space, goods or persons, for identity). It is also the way we
create (or use up) value precisely as an expression of values and so (a)
culture 每 the values of a culture, the values of a given identity. The cyclic
aspect, the repetition of these rituals, echoes the cyclic nature of natural
change (the seasons) and of time (its measure) in the course of which our
social bonds, on which we depend, may loosen. The rhythm of ritual thus follows
on the rhythms of change and entropy, repairing its damage and re-asserting
identity where difference (or in-difference) may have begun to predominate
(this is as true of the handshake and passing glance of recognition confirmed,
as of the celebrations and major festivals that reunite families and friends
and reaffirm collective identity). An identity and its values are, in all
cases, what is being asserted, a sense of self and
community is reinforced or reinvented#
&Being asserted*
indeed; in the face of Becoming#
As are the
objective &laws* that are said to govern &it*; social process requires ever new
descriptions#
The
role of the ritual process then is to repair the damage of process as such by
fixing things (in both senses of the verb, &to fix*); to construct identity or
being, in the face of entropy or change, or# to cement change, &fixing* a new
identity or sense of community or connection, relationship# to asset what it is
that we value, hold important or sacred (and so the connection with &religion*
and the religious element in ideology). Culture is recreated, alliances and
beliefs and values made certain.
A presumptive
&a-temporality*, or &provisional eternity* is asserted which is clearly
designed to combat the actual changes of real processes (social entropy) and
not the abstract ticking away of &social time*, the means of measure or
comparison that we often confuse with physical time - time as change. This
assertion takes place in our lived temporality (the sense of being in an
&eternal present* 每 we really should say &becoming* in an &eternal present*,
or, even more strictly, in terms of our experience, &the eternal present*, our
&always-place* - which gives birth, by generalization, to the sense of
&eternity*, the *no-place* where we hide our universals and sacral beliefs,
gods and Nature). This is the temporality in which we re-assert our values
through the experience of ritual, a special and entirely imaginary time-place,
where the desired sense of identity and community is again felt to be eternal 每
placed again, for a while, beyond the reach of &time* 每 that is, rescued from
change.
If
we look at the question of value in terms of the &eternal present* as our
experience of an on-going subjectivity (both active and aware) then the object
in mind (the object of perception or imagination as also that of the object of
desire) is the object of use value (desired action), but perhaps also
accompanied by an idea as to price or exchange value (at this stage imaginary,
based upon memory and comparison) when we bring others (also imagined from
memory) into the equation. The others in question are then sought out. We now
have the context of exchange, the collectivity or community, society, its
relations and expectations or &laws* and so some manner of famework,
or &market*. &Market* here means no more (and no less) than, the general aspect
of exchange relations as a collective relationship - involving at least two,
but always with community values implicit &behind* - so together with an
awareness of certain general shared values as above purely personal use, gain
or desire as constituting value alone (if we maintain that it does then we end
up with no exchange, or forced seizure# so asserting one*s own values, or
value, above everybody else*s). Such shared &values* would, especially in
public, work to counteract monopoly or desperation as sole source of value 每 as
in the case of hunger, for example 每 where very different values (a sense of
fairness, say as opposed to profiteering) would result in a very different kind
of &price* 每 a price that might even be &a gift*. It is this collectivity or
the social nature of &objectivity* (as in the sciences where &truth* is
inter-subjective) that brings &price* as an actual relation in actual exchange.
So moving from (subjectively desired) qualities to (objective) quantification
(again, this may not need to be abstract money, countable goods, or quantities
of objects will suffice).
*Price* in this
light also is a kind of becoming# as all the values governing the exchange
relation (its actual context) determine the actual terms of exchange (its
&price*). &Price* (money, other accepted equivalent, deferred exchange or
credit) as process suggests the value as something fluctuating according to the
actual situation - its context determines its meaning# its price, and its
meaning to a subject (its use value) constitute its desired quality and its
quantification. The price may appear objective: but regardless of other
factors, its actualisation finally rests on the
desires of the two concerned (in turn conditioned by scarcity or ability to
pay). The element of social desire in the equation is what is sacred# has
sacred value# family, friends, education, health, &nation*# all the forms of
community identity and recognition# these too determine -or refuse- price#
And the movement of
the abstract market# (&macro* economics)? It is never abstract,
always part of an on-going process of boom/slump, technological development,
political juncture, boycotts, credit withdrawal, or just fashion# (mostly, &understood* or even &understandable*, only after
the event#). Likewise there is no abstract finance; useful for funding projects
- the rest is speculation to be outlawed as hazardous to the social fabric# (based upon rent, credit and debt as a way of reallocating
-read, recentralizing- wealth).
The
proximity of ritual and value allows us to apply the same scale we applied to
rituality, to value and values; so ranging from the everyday, relatively weak
or of low value (but like weak nuclear forces and matter, making up much of our
&reality* or mind as everyday cohesion) all the way to strong or intense or
&high* (think &art*) or sacred value or values (often accompanied by strong
emotions and a sense of &right*) often in fact reinforced by periodic or
festive or holy ritual practice# In this, ritual reflects or cements or creates
values from the &micro-adjustments* of the everyday to the &macro-frame* of the
ceremonial (and in a society with money we spend accordingly#). Whence the role of taxation in social or individual expenditure.
The above comments
also invite a comparison of time to money, as twin, &necessary social
fictions*#
&Time*
we may divide between: actual change, concrete cycles in process (from galactic
cycles and gravity waves to quantum wave or particle *spin*); subjective
temporality (the eternal present, with its pasts and futures); and abstract
quantification (social time, a cultural product, abstract sub-divisions
overlaid onto natural cycles, which we experience as orientated around the
present). Money can also be divided into: its physicality as valued object used
for exchange (gold, chickens) and a pure social token (paper money or the
mental or physical memory or mark of credit) with its embodied but contingent,
that is &agreed*, physicality or record (again, even if only in the memory).
This abstraction, or agreed function, is what makes its units individually
valued 每 its value in the present, to us, now (even if the use may be sometime
in the future). In this sense, concrete objects and services are particular to
the individual, as objects of subjective desire; of practical use, but
including belonging, recognition and connection 每 in short, identity, which we
may buy with the goods and services in question (life style, &look*, &standing
out* or conformity) or exchange through ritual exchange (identity exchange as
the support for the self as &eternal present* with its, memory-based, identity
propositions). These definitions are usually collected under the term &use
value* (or function) and contrasted against &exchange value*, an abstract
quantification, but one based upon a very real society, its laws and mores# and
a kind of social contract (&the bearer promises to pay#*) or general
&understanding*. Exchange value is represented by money or &price* (real or
virtual) and is entirely a social invention, a product of on-going interaction
(when confidence runs out, when interaction stops, the currency crashes).
Prices or money, as with mathematics or other formal, that is, artificial
languages, also has a utility, as accounting, mapping, description, comparison
and convenience. But when &folded* against itself, to make money out of money
and not make services and objects (restricted to &refined* types of &rent*),
then dangerous#
All of which
clearly foreseen by Adam Smith in his description of the &first* bank fraud,
but lost to modern *economists*# who could not, at the time, explain 2008 (I
remember scouring the pages of the Economist and other journals for a
reasonable explanation and finding none 每 perhaps no one wanted to give the
game away)# Leaving policy to the pragmatic, sensible
(non-ideological and anti-neo-classical) response - in practice a kind of
neo-Keynesianism.
Exchange
value is clearly a social fiction (but like time and what they both share,
abstract units of measure, of comparison,
a very useful one). We agree to it out of convenience: and when we don*t 每 due
to loss of confidence in a currency, share, or bank (when we withdraw our
desire, our collective desire, as in, no one wants it anymore)# it loses its
value# it collapses. When we make things for self and others these are &gifts*;
gift or relationship exchange 每 with a long cycle of return (objective when we
trust others to give to us in turn, or subjective as when the resultant
feeling, the assertion of an identity, is our reward). When we make them for the
market, these are &commodities*, for &abstract exchange*, for an immediate
return (or an immediate promise of return); actually for a 每valueless- exchange
token (credit as trust in an institution) with which we may then buy something
else. &Objective* as in the sense of an agreement between plural selves (the
definition of objectivity) and as (by agreement) quantifiable: subjective as
when we choose to buy what we desire or need 每 what is of value to us at that
moment.
Made for ourselves
or friends, as &a gift*, and made for others, known or abstract, for the
market, as &a commodity*; these relationships may of course be interchanged.
Moreover they are always united in the commodity as symbolic use value (the
role of our identity or values in the ostensive use value) and its exchange
value (the price we are prepared to pay for this#).
With trust or
belief functioning as the ritual repetition or expenditure or exchange which
asserts its value (&forever*, into the future) or until we no longer perform
the ritual, no longer make the exchange, no longer believe in it# withdraw our
subjective &identity exchange* from the social or objective transaction, give
no privileged place in the &eternal present*# leaving entropy to do its work of
undoing, in this case, what was after all only anyway an &imaginary* structure#
And how interesting that &time* and &value*
are both human and social creations, a product of our collective creativity
(product of a collective subject, or subjectivity, so object, or indeed &objective*,
if agreed as such). With clock time and
money as the measure of these &objects*. All forms of social, that is
socially agreed (or imposed), objective, measures or quantification, as well
as, supported by individual faith, personal desire, temporal embodiment *now*
(subjective, as desire and need and temporality 每 all experienced as the
&eternal present*). Our desire for coherence in our relations to others, things
and actions (including ourselves) again requiring fictions. And how interesting
that one (time) is often thought in terms of the other (value) and vice versa;
we spend time (and money) on something or someone if we value them, it
expresses our subjective sense of value as also our values; and conversely
&objective* value as actual price is often thought of as labour
time, more concretely, how much time we need to work to earn the given quantity
of value exchange equivalent (money). Or, again, how much time we spend on, or
devote to something# (this too expresses a value, that of care or fairness#
otherwise, value -that is how much we might pay- may equally be thought of in
terms of the degree of demand, of objective need or subjective desire, or
supply as monopoly or glut#). And as we value something, so we will pay for it,
its exchange value or actual price, that is, how we value our identity is shown
in the commodities and (commodified) services we buy (recognition,
distinction), or how much we contribute to a religion, charity or cause# or to
family, friends, or community of identification (what we feel is really
important, what we &hold sacred*).
I
have pointed out elsewhere that value is a relation of opposition, a relation
of subject and object - including imaginary objects (and all objects 每and
others- are at some stage, perceptual, mental, &imaginary*# not least when
objects of recall or memory). This relation is the result of what we call
subjective and objective experience or &inner* and &outer* realms, and so is a
facet of diremption. A diremption,
the terms or &poles* of which, we move between frequently (oscillation).
The thought of (and processes of) use and exchange equally perform the diremption as division or difference and inter-reliance or
co-implication. (And we note that &exchange* must have contiguity for physical
exchange to take place, &over a border*, the borderlines of identity and
possession, which must have a means of comparison or similitude, which in turn
must be quantifiable, a product of part/whole relationships as the basis of
mathematics and logic, our formal, artificial, forms of representation 每 so
involving all three of our modes of meaning making, contiguity, comparison and
counting - the units that make up the whole to be compared and co-exchanged#
which entire process is first imagined in the minds of both parties 每 a process
which includes self as object, and so is diremptive).
But this phenomenon we call &diremption* is not
simply a matter of thought or mind, at least not taken separately 每 not a
simple matter of subjectivity, experienced or asserted# rather the place of
subjectivity in all forms of representation and description# The difference
between these terms, experience and assertion and representation and
description (also glossable as present and past, or
happening and happened, mind and matter, described, subject made object #). For
it is in the four zones of human culture, in art, philosophy, the physical and
the human sciences, where we find the fault-lines that show how the diremption runs through all aspects of human culture. In
effect, interposing an unbridgeable fissure into the practice of each &one* (a
practice which joins them, but does not unite them). So with respect to the
social or human sciences, &use* is concrete, particular, contingent,
contextual; the use of objects, our consumption, and the agreement to exchange
objects, something for something, has its (doubled) subjective moments - as
both sides decide what &price* they will pay or accept (whether in relation or
at a distance 每 &the market* without an actual market). So we can see that the
combination features both subject and object and is both subjective and
objective, has both subjective and objective &moments* (all aspects are riven):
use as desired and actualised; exchange as involving
objects (even if one is deferred, lengthening the exchange cycle) and the
moment of value-giving or choice. Moreover in the relations of exchange, both
sides imagine the object body before them as (containing) an other, and then
themselves as the other might see them 每 so bringing into play the view from
inside and that from &from outside*, the aspects of the diremption
as inner and supposed outer points of view 每 &do you take me for a fool*. The
price is the value of that moment# in an action too, degrees of subjective
desire and subjective greed will &distort* the price. As such &market* prices
of &fixed price* super markets are always being adjusted according to consumer
demand. A market will not give a &true price*; there is no &true price* over
and above that which obtains in the moment, result of a contextual nexus of
forces (of physical and symbolic force, the power of laws and values), a result
of the contiguity of two subjectivities even if apparently mediated by
institutions and power (and finally even &recommended price* may dissolve into &sale
price* 每 just as the price of fruit and fish on the market will fall). Their
exchange values, then, are the result of all the values brought to the relation
of exchange, together with &exchange value* as the culturally specific
quantitative object medium or language used as the means of comparing objects
and services as well as representing them (both desired objects in mind as in
matter).
Even
if the exchange is not immediate, it will function as a part of the memory (an
exchange over an osmotic line of identity), and is still in this way, concrete
and contextual, not ideal nor abstract - that is, nowhere# Adam Smith is most
clear on this: the worship of the market is not science; like all worship, it
is a religion 每 this is the religion of capitalism (as Smith*s rhetorical and
strategic, anti-feudal, anti-monopoly, &Invisible Hand* becomes the Invisible
God of economic ideology, paid lip service to by every would be monopoly whose
only aim is to &corner the market*). A &religion* which augments our identifications
according to nationalism and consumerism and class (or social differentiation,
&distinction*) so supporting or supported by the &three levels* of modern
identity (the meta unit, the internal sub-division and the self, or
geographical place, social place and the self-assertion of the individual as
place of consciousness 每 inflected by gender and generation to be sure), which
three have taken over from the traditional distinctions of identity as
religion, caste and family (or generational gender role). Even as it, &The
Market*, like all past and most present religions, is supported by law and the
State# (see also my articles on New York/Manhattan and
Capri in (Visiting) The Places of the
Dead: The Philosophy of Travel for more on capitalism and religion).
Note
on &fairness*. I have mentioned &fairness* a couple of times in the context of
the labour theory of value, posing the question: is
the labour theory of value (an intuitive key stone of
early economics, of Adam Smith as of Karl Marx) really just a matter of a sense
of fairness#? An expression where we show that we value the other*s time and
all that this implies. And here we must note, yet again, that value is
subjective# and changeable, our everyday experiencing and choosing is always also
an expression of valuing, of our values (along with aesthetics and morality).
This subjective and contingent origin of value also subsumes (as the subject
always contains the object) whatever objective claims are made via the sense of
exchange value, nevertheless the exchange takes place between two actual
parties who will exchange according to need, desire, and wealth or according to
scarcity or plenty or even to relations of force: the objective side, the
social aspect, is a generalisation and so a fiction#
Redeemable perhaps by statistics and empirical description: but as aggregates,
just so many guesses or biases# (and the most &general
laws*, pure guesswork# or asserted belief). It*s not that there is not an
object side 每 it*s just that the object language in question (economics) is
almost totally unreliable. And its main fault has been the disavowal of the
subject side (the denial of the diremption in the
social or human sciences), the elision of actual embodied humans in process
(whence the greater descriptive efficacy of anthropology). Including when the
subject side has distorted the discipline in order to excuse the channeling of
funds to a minority with monopoly advantages 每 indeed a reward for labour time, but one that has created nothing (or much less
than it would abrogate 每 so showing the constitutive relation of power to
value)... Fairness is a feeling subjective and, when shared with others with
which we have a bond, usually much in presence in our mutual behaviour. With those we do not have a bond with # well
that depends# some extend community (hospitality), others deny it, all the
better to rob, steal and exploit# So in fairness to each other (and not as some
would-be font of objectivity 每&in the final instance*- the &essence* behind the
Platonic curtain) we note &time how long* and perhaps effort and skill, often
putting aside desire and monopoly (demand and supply) in return for our sense
of community (our connection to the &object* we call &others* or to which we
believe we belong) and our sense of moral worth (our subjective reward or the
sense of our identity as a *good person* doing &the right thing* 每 as we see
ourselves as others might see us 每 the inner moral sense as another reward of
the diremption).
Money and markets
in all this are human created means# a means to an end# not ends in themselves,
and certainly not a-historical absolutes to be worshipped. Both as social
products are amenable to social agency 每 a change of values.
That &credit* or
&debt* (extended exchange) comes before (from gift to quantification to &tab*
and &reckoning-up*) and after money (from objects with another use value to
paper promises to virtual &promissory notes*) should be no surprise# For anyone
who has bothered to familiarize themselves with well over a century*s worth of
data# (see Mauss, &Essays on
the Gift*, for example). Or bothered to note the survival of gift type
relations in modern economies# including in the fusion of identity exchange
with the commodity (sometimes oddly called &commodity fetishism* 每 an issue
surely separable from &reification* or confusing relations for things).
*
Social
fictions (or cultural creations), the web of quantification, the spell woven by
money and mathematics and time, are abstract measures, abstract relations, on
all counts. Pure quantity in mathematics, plus the &now moment*, gives us the
nexus of lived temporality and &time* (the quantification necessary for &time
how long* and &time when*). Pure quantity as money, plus the &now moment*,
gives us value (from the identification of need or desire, &now*, or for the
future, as use value to the &how much* of exchange value - &time when* answers
the question of when the exchange is to be concluded# &time
how long*, the question of how long we need to work to make the price of the
exchange 每 whether we can, or want to, afford it). A basic unit in mathematics
as in time (&1* or &a second*) may offer more precision as compared to the
actual rhythm or cycle or duration in question (just &how long* is our &now
moment*?), but otherwise is abstract enough to allow division to infinity...
However, matter does not fit into this, not even quantum &matter*. Neither, (as
noted) does the &instant*, the &now* of human temporality (conveniently glossed
as &this second* in terms of time as measure), both are convenient fictions.
The moment cannot be abstracted from the process, not least from the process of
self (the &now moment*): the mathematical unit cannot be abstracted from the
flow of space time (with which it is always in comparison) - always something
is missing, left out (rounded up or rounded down). Process in mathematics (its
quantitative description or &picturing*) comes back as function (relating two
aspects in motion or in the process of change) or via logic using the model
provided by the law of non-contradiction as a model for alternation (A and not
A, recurring, recursive, but counted). In &time* we have quantitative measure
of &instants* and &now*# social time and its relation to temporality, often
called objective and subjective time, however &objective time* here actually
means measured time, or, more precisely, abstract measure in comparison to
natural cycles or events, so made from two parallel series (truly objective, to
do with the object, would be the actual processes of nature, matter, cycles,
all the &repeated* rhythms that range from galactic to geological to human,
right down to quantum wave and spin). And we might add: just as the self moves &in time* and &as temporality*, so in the
subject we have the object (precisely as in &in time* and in our temporality,
&now* as measured and observed and as experienced) which may even be taken for
&time* itself (for apart from, or framed in, present temporality, time can only
be remembered, projected, or imagined &as if* viewed# from elsewhere, with the
*eternal present* as outside time, as &eternity* 每 a generalisation
which is entirely imaginary and as contradictory as it is useful). All these are
modalities of the subject in relation to (its) object, (including &object as
other*, self as other or as object, self imagined as
for others or as other for self). All alternation as process# &In reality*, dirempt and oscillating 每 &in process*,
on-going, &Becoming#*. When isolated, represented, &reified*, become &object*,
become &being* (or &Being*), then a fiction to join the other fictions# often
necessary fictions to be sure# as held by actual subjects#
All object (object
language) description as requiring subjective origin and repetition, till
something else arrives# So again the oscillation typical of diremption
(typical of bumping into the processes of the real) kicks in#
This, apparently
vague, emphasis on process, on becoming, on rituality# in practice, returns
agency and action, and subjectivity as self-made (&though not always
consciously), and as collectively made# (and remade#
as we live# while we live). So re-makeable, otherwise# (consciously).
*
What
if we were to go beyond the subjective side of the diremption
and examine the objective or larger or external side as constitutive of human
culture? Well, first-off, in one sense, we cannot, because &finally* the now,
the subject, the &eternal present* contains the object (as representation in
process in our subjective process of experience 每 what we see, hear, taste,
smell, feel - and fixed or replayed, as memory, what we remember, and may then
project onwards, as &the future*). In absolute terms there is no &beyond* to
human experience or imagining (the nearest thing to an &existential metaset*).
The subject is its embodiment or actually existing, certainly
&actually-experienced* container# The oscillation due to the diremption also requires continual return to the subject
side or the subjective point of view of a particular &eternal present*# &Objectivity*, is something else, it
exists on another level, that of inter-subjectivity# agreement between
witnesses.
(As are the objective &laws* that are said to
govern &it*; social process requires ever new descriptions#)
And
it is this objectivity that we use to create our &four zones* of culture. Four
genres of reality or four regions of description and expression we negotiate
collectively, if institutionally, across varied and unequal distributions of
power, and into which, or across which, the diremption
extends, this gives us the arts and philosophy, the physical sciences and the
social sciences. Among the latter is economics# extracted from society or &the
Social*, and so itself a &restricted economy*, excluding the subject-ive side of human experience to be sure (despite an
interesting attempt to return it as &marginal utility*) as also the particular
and embodied aspects of human exchange relations, of our inter-connectivity#
And so leaving anthropology to return &the missing link* to actually existing
humans (as in research in religion and economics, or nationalism and economics,
ideology and economics, or &magic* and economics 每 leading one to suspect that
the epoch of &political economy* never actually ended#).
One might well say:
measure what you can (econometrics) and on the rest be
silent#
*
But
are we not still thinking with, living with, limiting ourselves to# a
restricted definition of value. Indeed a &restricted economy* of value# One
that not only leaves out the production of things we make and value but do not
sell (that we sometimes value the most) but also the reproduction of ourselves,
people. This, traditionally, was women*s work, from child-bearing to nurture,
from baby-sitting to rearing, a culture of care extended also to the care
giving of the &men at work*. So it would appear that the support for the whole
restricted domain (&the economy*) is from without, from another realm of human
activity - is left &outside* of the calculation (or the wage is the &price* of
the worker*s reproduction 每 presumably including &his* family). This whole
process is reliant on women*s work or labour or time,
or their value# a value elided. And when finally quantified, commodified,
brought &inside* and &rewarded* by a fiscal remuneration 每 underpaid. Moreover,
there is an even more extended context to &labor* or production, what is taken
and what is &given back* as waste (and &where from*, and &where to*), a
&general economy* - indeed, for now all is taken into account# And our view of
value is a little different, less masculine, less &workerist*/*productionist* (ideas too are the fruit of labor) even less
sapiens-centric# For a simple, naïve (or self-interested) labour
theory of value devalues the context, our context, our environment# was the
product of a severely restricted and artificial, that is, legally reinforced
mode of exploitation# (of humans as reduced to &wage
slavery* and debt, and for the environment, two hundred and fifty years of
increasing despoliation and pollution#).
But values change.
*
III
Temporality,
diremption, oscillation and &value*#
I
noted above how the present determines the value accorded to an object or service
(this latter includes &human labor*, that is human activity of all types, the
objects and services, that is, the culture we produce). Decision making,
applying values, takes place in the present and is notoriously subjective#
However the past makes the present# (yet when defining &value*, or rather
price, only selected bits of the past are selected as apposite, the bits said
to be &economic*, &costs of production*, for example). But this (objective)
observation, perhaps as part of a process of (subjective) self-reflection or
&stepping-back* and &picturing*, that is imagining, a prior process, does not
determine value: if anything the reference back (past as temporality, our
memory as recall, remembering) is almost irrelevant. Rather it is the future,
our present picture of what comes next, what we want next# that determines the
value of something (or someone) for us - that determines what we would give for
it, that determines exchange value or price. The
context here is not just what we are doing now, but what we are doing with an
eye to the future# For the &time* here under consideration is that of our
temporality, always concrete, &in* the present and including its oscillation
between (or containing) two &other* poles, the past and the future (this is
speaking experientially; in terms of the human as object, of &mind* as
&matter*, they are the same, the future is the past projected forwards, a
repetition of something based on what happened before#). In either case,
however, we have the experience (and observation or self-awareness) of the
oscillation due to the subject/object, from inside and &from outside*, set of
relations, whether present or imagined, as present in our lived temporality
(with the possibility of the past, including past self, imagined as if ahead,
yet to come, as &the future*, our thought object, perhaps as an imagined
external &point of view* as we picture what we intend to do). So the past (as
the history of the object or services in question) does not enter the equation
unless part of the present (our past as our desire and values 每 in consonance
or in contradiction) which is conducted with an eye to what happens next 每 our
sense of the future. Others may quote facts at us till they are blue in the
face 每 if we don*t want to pay a given price 每 then we won*t. Here object
relations as memory, recall and recognition are present in the on-going frame
of the &eternal present* and also projected as the future. In effect, past and
future both (or &as one* if they are thought of as &the same*, or as &other* to
the present) oscillate with the present (or in the present). The difference of
the type of the memory or projection is probably quantitative, a matter of
intensity and duration, as, at one end, a barely recognised
flicker (with a bottom line in unconscious recognition as the work of memory or
predictability as part of any on-going action 每 in turn again based upon
expectation, fed by memory) or as a longer duration or insistence - even
persistence (memories we cannot &shake*, in the case of regret and mourning or
anxiety and planning). Temporality (as the point of view of our experience)
therefore also suggests that value as experience does not depend on the past as
a privileged moment in production but rather as (the past as forming) the
present as site of activation of values in the context of desire (or need) and
the future. The past has gone and the new situation features only the values
that persist as the *culture& of the person in question, in the situation in
question# and these all may be in thrall to the future# (all
in turn in thrall to a changing situation#).
As we can clearly
see in the case of money as credit or debt (or the fact of debt itself: future
payment, mortgages, &arrears*) and in investment, and expectation as key to use
(value) and return (exchange value as &capital*) as in &technology* as an
aspect of this 每 of putting aside immediate &return* or results for the future,
because expecting more efficiency than available in the present and the past
that it is soon to become#
So
the subjective, or subject side of experience in the present (value as due to
values and desire and means of exchange as context now) joins the objective, or
object side or history as the past (gone never to return, regardless of
theories that feature &feedback loops* or the magical insistence of &cause* in cause and effect, genealogy as historicism) with
the objective situation as &context now*, to determine the value of the object
or service in question (and so its price# if any). If the time involved in the
production or finding, or personal history in the case of service provided, may
count as naught depending on the values of the one who wants to buy and the one who wishes to sell (as
degrees of desire and desperation) and the laws governing the situation (both
as custom and as legal precedent), then the future as the place of the use of
the object or service in question 每and the use of the payment made for it- most
certainly does (the other two aspects of human temporal experience as dream and
the non-place of &eternity*, play other roles, the first not relevant, except
perhaps as daydream as a function of desire, the second, &eternity* as one
basis of the law and customs and values in question which we regard as
sacrosanct# so as binding#).
Within
these rhythms the place or moment of value is still the present. The present is
the time of value, of the valuing, with the next relevant temporality being the
future, the present of its expected actualization or use (or its continuation
as in the case of ritual and identity). The value of time, while only &actualisable* in the present, again is in debt to the
temporality of the future, it is a gift of the future (as well as gift for the
future), which site of actualization, imagined in the present, gives it its
worth (this does not mean that objective factors, aspects of the past
described, held or asserted as relevant and perhaps quantified, do not play a
role, rather that these are always filtered through the prism of the present
and so always through the subjective experience of concrete actors# finally
oneself# &now* 每 as such they may or may not be held as relevant# switching to
the objective pole, then, we can see that the relevant frame is not some
abstracted &economic process*, but the whole process of a society &deciding*
what it needs to make - again value becomes a function of values#).
The
&buying* of an identity in the future by means of ritual exchange (ranging from
the role of self-image in commodity purchase to festive expenditure to more
destructive forms of sacrificiality or
subject-assertion), what I prefer to call &identity exchange*, is a good
example of the use of that other (Absolute Other) kind of time, &eternity* 每 as
the imaginary guarantor, or &place* of guarantee, of the ritual transaction.
The guarantor of our values is always elsewhere (in practice, like the making
of things and services, a product of a community or society). Interestingly,
the other time, that of &dream* (sometimes present as reverie or delirium, in certain
contexts evoking Myth) is often also evoked in this context 每 so putting all
forms of temporality into play simultaneously.
*
Just as we see the
past, as bodily need and ac-cultured form of desire immediately translated, in
the present, into the future, as locus of imagined aim and satisfaction 每 a
desire (with recognition, distinction and anxiety) found in dream (as in the
imaginings of daydream) and as regulated and supported by the belief systems
&grounded* in &eternity* (be it &Nature*, the heavens, universals or some
manner of universalized personification#).
Time and
temporality, objective &social time* and the subjective experience of time, the
past and its descriptions (and future intensions) and the present with its
perceptions and assertions, all feature the divisions of the diremption and so the motions of its unity as a process, a
&unity in difference* - its oscillation.
Which is where we began.
Internal view and external view, or the view from within and our view of
ourselves as imagined from without, as others might see us. But this later is
still the view from within, (like past and future, also featuring other times
and places, all framed within the present); respectively the description from
within and the description from without; so respectively offering recursive
contradiction (self-reference) and metaset contradiction (the picture from
&outside*) in both words (logic) and symbols (quantitative formalisation)
- echoing the limitations and alternations of our visual imaginary. And how
intriguing that both &realms* (verbal and visual) not only are divided in
themselves by &inner* and &outer* modes, each having two levels or layers
(inner or outer description or vision), two &points of view* which we then pass
between in permanent oscillation, but that also between these two realms there
is also a similar situation regarding the complementary relation of visualising verbal or quantitative description and vice
versa (no one can see exactly what I see, without &standing in my shoes* but we
can understand the verbal and formal modes of description offered). So offering a difference analogous to that of the present/past,
self/other, subject /object, and inner/outer distinctions or alternations.
Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Investigations,
notes how the visual, &the picture* is always needed to complete the logical or
verbal (a &picture* we may describe in natural language). Whilst Gödel offers
in his theorem two levels or parallels which permit creativity to augment, to
add to, and so transgress, any attempts at restrictive, rigorous, formal
closure, as if the restricted formal language cannot forget its origins in
natural language (origins which come back to haunt it) and as the user, the
subject, by the very act of using (similar to the *use/mention* distinction),
operates on a different level from the formal or object language 每 interposing
picture and natural language with their openness# so adding something that had
been, that was supposed to have been, excluded#
Where there are two
levels, two &sides*, there will always be contradiction, aporia
and paradox, also there will also be their complementary relation, their
alternation, their oscillation. So, for example, in mathematics we have the two
minimal terms of the function f(x), and verbally we have subject-predicate, the
minimal &differences* that make up, respectively, formal languages and natural
languages, often present as the difference between specialist object languages
and everyday subject or natural languages. And the &diremption*
or &being human*, more precisely, the process of human becoming, suggests that
there will always be two levels to any phenomenon, activity or experience#
*
So to the web of
fictions in which we have enrapt ourselves; and now, rapt, decline to believe
in our creative presumption 每 or rather believe only in their object-hood#.
Once more on &time*
and &money*#
If we recapitulate our three levels of
time#
First
(as experience) there is our subjectivity &in* or better as temporality, home
of the eternal present and also to the other experiences of time (past, future,
dream, &eternity*). Here, we experience our feelings towards objects and
others, to what we do and who we meet - as in a good or bad experience of a
place, or a situation, of work or of others - and our values, at once rational
and emotional# all are first qualitative, then quantitative in intensity (we
can compare them)#
Then,
objectively: that is, as &pictured* from the outside as narrative, as a &time
line*, the passage of an object or other (then, if collectively agreed as real,
as true, as# &objective*) 每 but not of ourselves, for
ourselves we have, we are, temporality (again, unless we imagine ourselves from
without#). This is &time*, or &social time*, more precisely, measure, even more
precisely, a matter of comparison - of abstract quantities matched with real
processes# a &ruler* paralleling or laid over natural rhythms, cycles and
periods (into which they then must fit). The designated quantities (second,
minute, hour#) meant to measure and coordinate with real processes, become
their representation, and thus a &thing in itself* rather than a &thing made by
us*, and an abstract, imaginary &thing* at that# This &time*, called &social
time* by Norbert Elias, is matter of cultural specificity; different cultures
do, or did, this very differently. Now we all use the same *universal* measure
- giving us the illusion that this measure IS time 每 again the process moves from
the cycles and rhythms of things to that of an abstract measure, taken as
something real (for a good collection of &other ways* of &doing time*, see,
Anthony Aveni, Empires
of Time).
Then,
finally, we have the real processes of the physical world, each with its own
speed of change or entropy, its own patterns of repetition or cyclicity, its rhythms or frequency# in the world of which
the artificial &instant* counts for as little as equally abstract reductions,
sub-divisions (or extensions, projections) to infinity#
Now
the relation of temporality to real change, to real things or objects, is our
perception and experience of this change, including the experience of self,
including the imagining of the self as other 每 as someone no longer in
temporality but as if seen from outside in social time or on a &time line* (and
already the diremption is here). Likewise
the oscillation of present to past and future, to memory and to projection 每
our archive and our oracle. In this we too become objects (to our subject#).
In the present we witness change; in memory we remember change or make
comparison with the &now moment* 每 perhaps then making predictions (from
crossing the road, to making a date, or choosing an investment). In the world
of the object, some changes are slow, some fast. In dream, things are radically
otherwise 每 general exchangeability reigns. And our imaginary notion of
&outside of time* is where we use &eternity* as the place of a-historical
stability 每 a fiction, like &time* itself (again, there is no &time* abstracted
from the process of real change - so measured time is simply an overlay# not a
thing# its &outside*, an &Absolute Elsewhere*, or Absolute Other, is a yet
further abstraction).
If
we look at the relation of this &overlay* of measure (often called &objective
time*) to the experience of self or temporality and to the world of real
processes, then we find# Regarding the relation to real process, an infinite
variety of different rhythms homogenized# From quantum to gravity wave, what is
&an instant* here? # and what of geo-bio cycles# all with no relation to
abstract quantity, even if these quantities were once originally based upon
natural phenomena, the phases of the moon and months, the diurnal cycle and the
*24 hour day*, the four seasons, the equinoxes and one year# (but into which they do not precisely fit). Typically two
abstract or imposed &instants*, of no value in themselves, are mapped onto the
duration of the process in question (the specific &place* where the instant
meets an otherwise indivisible reality is always a matter of convenience 每 if
the calculation works then we do not need to bother about the remaining
issues).
If
we look at the relation of this &overlay* of measure to &the instant* as a
point representing the &now* of subjective temporality, then we find we have
yet another unmeasurable abstraction, a &measure* or &point* separable only in
the imagination (again convenience rules). Our &now moment* is the instant that
slots us into a place in measured space-time, the intersection of quantitative
grids# (again the issue is one of co-ordination 每 and
for what end# and in how much detail, what degree of accuracy). However,
regarding temporality or subjectivity and &objective* or &social time*, we also
have a variety of mismatches and distortions available, ranging from day dream
and boredom to ecstasy and loss of self, all refuse to fit the clockwork
ticking of regular measure. Ecstasy, or just being preoccupied, means time
moves fast, boredom means it moves slowly 每 in experiential terms, the clocks
ticks on as before #unchanging in speed# When we are not aware of time passing
it passes quickly (as if &in an instant*): but when we are aware of time
passing 每 it will not# the slowness of the watched kettle is legendary. Time we
value goes fast: that we dislike, de-value, as in waiting, expectation, a
situation of discomfort, goes slow# Except this is not &time*; it is the
mapping or comparison of experience onto clock-time. The clash of subjective
temporality and objective &time* is one where it is not the &time* that is
&valued*, but what we are concretely doing (real process plus degree of
awareness)# if absorbed, there is &no time* and so we are surprised by the
speed of its passing. If we are waiting for something or someone, or just plain
bored; imagining (that is comparing in our memory) all the things we could be
doing that we have previously done and enjoyed 每 then we are bored and the
clock moves ever more slowly. Awareness of time is awareness of the passage of the
clock 每 the comparison here is between the present and the future, but these
are not only different levels of temporal experience (so one kind of diremption) but also our subjective temporality, &the
eternal present* and &object time*, represented by the quantitative object
language as measured by the clock (another aspect of the diremption).
The result being that objective clock time is distorted in our experience,
stretched ever longer, every second dragged out beyond its proper length, so we
feel, as we compare to the moment we wish would arrive# for it is not &time* as
such of which we are aware (this does not exist) the &change* here at issue is
the change on the face of the clock (quantitative &social time*) and its
relation to our required moment in the future. Furthermore, our temporality
oscillates between now and then, our present and our required end, but the
clock before us will not move in this way nor alter its speed, its stubborn
regularity is, as a result, rendered ever &longer*- slow indeed, compared to
the rapid oscillation of our present and our awaited end (our imagination of
our awaited end in the present). Our future in the present clashes with our
perception of the clock, which the more we focus upon it &now*, the slower it
appears to move, the further away seems the end in mind. The result:
temporality distorts clock time in our perception (for more of this analysis
and the metaphysical abuse of &everyday time*, see my article on Heidegger and
boredom).
For
the moment &in time* we value is elsewhere, and the clock time represents its
absence, where we outside of a station waiting room, say waiting on the
platform, or otherwise away from the sight of a clock, we might be distracted
by the sights and sound of the scene around us (and be further distracted by
the associations they evoke), even the others in the waiting room might be a
welcome source of distraction: but the focus on this clock is a constant
reminder of the absence of the awaited moment - again an issue of comparison
(of two different levels forced together - so again the process of
oscillation).
We should note,
moreover, then when in the course of the above, we use terms like,
&convenience*, &end*, &actual use* or &result*, then we are really talking
about desire 每 and what could be more subjective (or# in terms of the stimulus
coming from the body and or memory, taken -by a subject- as object, what could
be more# objective#). For it is desire, what we want of something, that
apportions the degrees of the calibration 每 the terms of the &object language*.
And
much the same is true of &money* as has just been said for &time*#
The
experience of exchange is more immediately present than that of measured &time*
(again, unless clock-watching), the physical presence of one is contrasted to
the absence of the other. Whether as the exchange of money (or other exchange
equivalents, including the verbal agreement to pay in the future) or objects or
services (or indeed symbols, or communication) an exchange is normally a
meeting of two sides, proximate or at a distance, real or virtual (real or
imaginary as in an imagined communication, as when we &talk to ourselves*), a
transaction that has its moment, the moment of exchange, in the present.
Regarding the role of money and exchange (regardless of actual time of payoff),
we are more quickly aware of its social that is &contractual* origins as a
convenience born of co-ordination - here the co-ordination of objects and
services - not just in space-time, as coordinating positions (the role of maps
and &time*), but for the purposes of exchange. Both &time* and &money* are
facilitators of co-ordination (of co-incidence and exchange). Otherwise, the
relation of &time* to &money* as parallel fictional entities seems to work in
opposite ways. The more aware we are of money, or whatever exchange equivalent
or means of exchange, the more we seem to value it, the more it seems to be
worth (the more &it means to us*); the less aware, the less we value it, the
less it is worth 每 until its value collapses# and exchange is refused or
otherwise made impossible. Whilst with &time* as discussed above, it is the
activity we value, that &we value*, that we miss, and so are unhappy at its
absence (&time* appears &to fill the gap*): otherwise we are &lost* in the
activity we are engaged in# as &time* is put aside and 每in our temporality-
does not exist.
We might say that
in matters of exchange (rather than co-ordination of place in &time*), that is,
the co-ordination of objects or services for exchange, the role of money is
like that of time in the description given above; that is, &money* replaces
&time*, as means of coordination (just as the price, in money or exchange
value, replaces time as labour time - money spent
replaces time spent# in &both directions*, in the making and in the earning#).
The means of exchange requires the means of &spatio-temporal
location*: measured time is required so that we may meet to exchange by means
of money.
If
now we posit three types of exchange, or, more specifically, relations to
&money*, associated with the three types of &time* (temporal, social, process),
which also therefore correlate with subject, measure and object, then, we have
a set of relationships that looks like this# First, in terms of experience, we
have use value as subjective (the desire, need of the subject, present in the
temporality of the &eternal present* as experience and as &future object* of
consumption) with the use value of &money* as facilitating exchange,
coordinating objects - with the term &money* becoming ever more abstract as
digital forms of exchange equivalent or accounting take over. Second, the
relation to a real object or service as aim or &object*, which is possessed or
(more likely) controlled by someone else with whom we will co-ordinate in
&object, measured or social time* 每 this transaction too may be seen as
increasingly taking place in digital space, in tandem with some manner of
algorithm (if there is a &real owner*, then the use value for the object is, or
may be, may become, its exchange value) 每 in all this the object or service is
a slice or period of process &cut out* from its context by some manner of
desire or need. Lastly, we have the means of exchange, that is, the relations
of the two terms above coordinated by exchange value (means, medium as measure
or &money*) as they are coordinated by means of &social time* in terms of
co-incidence in time and space (this type of exchange would be accomplished by
&gift exchange* in a tribal &debt economy* or between intimates or peers or,
conversely, as a marker or assertion of hierarchy in all social forms). So
regarding the relationship of social time and money, we have the meeting of two
forms of quantification (three, if we include the quantified grids we use to
map space).
Yet
we must immediately note that as the product of a relationship, it is our
values that govern both our relations with others and with objects (our
environment) as with the exchange process itself. These values are culturally
and historically specific and often incommensurable or in conflict (morality
and gain, Family versus State). Underlying all sense of communal or shared
values, what we find is a kind of &time* extended beyond everyday temporality into
a sense of the generally &right way* to do things 每 values are felt to be
beyond contingency. The use of &time* here in this way may at first sight seem
strange. Yet if we take a closer look we see that this relation of morally
correct or adequate action is imagined &as if* outside, &as if* looking at the
action or transaction from &elsewhere*. Now this is a function of two kinds of
temporality: a function of the future as the imagined transaction &to come*;
and a function of the illusion of the &eternal* borrowed from the eternal
present 每 in fact not temporality or &time*, but defined against these, as
&outside time*. Yet still part of our temporal apparatus 每 and a crucial one at
that. Part of our &species being* as such (not part of our species becoming
because &being* -what we think we are- is an entity requiring &fixing* by
reference to eternity, just as the entropy of becoming is &fixed* by
rituality). In logical terms, we have the illicit swerve into the metaset, as
we reference values felt to be universal, eternally valid or &above the moment*
(intuitively a-historical, to be applied to the things we hold sacred).
Equally, with &money*, what we have is exchange value, extended beyond first
hand, face to face relationships (where gift and debt and reckoning-up type
relationships may prevail). Extended, again, into an &as if viewed from
outside*, kind of abstraction 每 &the market* viewed as eternal truth, universal
and, yes, as sacred (the deification of the *invisible hand*). So &time* and money* too are the fruit of relation (ships) which,
despite their presence as quantification, nevertheless require values rooted
&elsewhere*. Both working, &designed*, evolved, to work, in an extended
field, where their extension beyond &the eternal present*, beyond first-hand
experience, requires the borrowing of the &sense* of &eternity* from the
eternal present, as their &foundation*, their ever absent guarantor (&fixed*,
because &outside* of history). Just as we all believe or intuitively feel
(almost regardless of what our rational minds tell us 每 indeed often bending
reason to this belief) that our values are in some way, &universal*,
supra-historical, non-contingent, &of value* beyond the moment or culture in
which they are embedded, as possessing &right* for# &an
eternity*.
The absent
foundation of values is extended into money and time too, enlisted as their
support... &beyond time*##
Two abstract or
abstracted putative &universals* or even materialised
(&reified*) as &things* (both generalized and reified
每 abstract and concrete, both &inside and outside*)# but simply, just means of
coordination, two measures, themselves coordinated# (where
and when we exchange/d x for y) as &time when*, and &time how long* regarding
the process of exchange, and &how much* we exchanged for a given object or
service. And if the service was work, and the object was made by us, then the
question of &how long* now refers not to the length of the transaction, but the
transaction as including the time &how long* to make and &how much* (given the
object or service is adequate)# Again the two co-ordinations (of time and
money) do not imply equivalence (although it is easy to see why early
economists equated the two). It is the quality of the object or service that is
being paid for, not the quantity of time (&though of course the quality may be
function of this).
Two co-ordinations. Both
often guaranteed by law as much as by custom. Between them
mapping out our lives. Mapping out our position, our &place* geographic
and social, and what we are doing, making and exchanging, whether, things,
services, greetings, gifts, or exchange and ritual (&identity exchange*).
Exchanging things and services, some of which are symbols, ideas, information,
all according to our habits and values# Doing what we value and trying to avoid
what we don*t - according to assorted values (not necessarily
consistent#).
Things we want to
avoid. Exploitation as suffering and being cheated#, unfair wages, restricted
access to &the market*# but the labour market as
&fixed*, or rule governed, but by biased laws or the law maker*s biased
interpretations# (&the market* as the object of
definition of a few). All redeemable by negotiation? By a change of values?
*
Making and doing
things in time, for sale as price, is not labour time
as value, but the co-ordination of object (or service) and use and (means of)
exchange#
Coming
to grips with &labour time*, as a real factor in the
process of making value, neither to be ignored nor deified: finally it must be read
as one factor among many# For if there is no privileged relation of &labour time* to price or exchange, yet there is a moral
link# and perhaps an ideal linkage too# in both cases as &fairness* (perhaps,
speaking ideally, with a place in Utopia). Actually, Marx is about buying the
time, the ability to do something (including sometimes the quantification of
the result as ends or objects), as with slavery, debt-repayment labour, serfdom, corvee and wage labour, in all cases for an end not belonging to the doer#
but to be possessed and used by someone else# Yet in a mass society and mass
market some kind of wage labour may be the fairest
way of rewarding necessary work: call it salary or recompense or reward as you
will, any way the transfer of some manner of exchangeable token 每 a &debt*
token to be paid in exchange for required objects and services (the fairness
lies in the conditions or context of labour and the
reward#). Otherwise &labour time* = time of doing
(&time how long* as combined with the required end 每 and already we have a
caveat, the object, in both sense of the term, is what counts# and not only the
object as &real thing*, but as &object for others*). So as we are always
&doing* something; the issue is making something, doing something, for somebody
else (to give, to buy, or to sell), but we take different times to do the same
thing, and the &time taken* is not the end product or object (think quality
check, think &piece work*). Yet it is this object 每the object of labour- and its use value that are what is required# In
other words, the object is just an object without desire. Observing &time how
long* is a polite nicety, a nod in the direction of fairness# If badly made or
not according to specifications, then not wanted# regardless of time and energy
spent 每 clearly it is the object (or end) and then the variety of factors that
constitute its &marketability* that are the crux of the issue. Indeed, the
price on &the market*, that catch-all concept encompassing a multi-causal
situation, encompasses a plenitude of contributing factors: desire, need, or
utility, including self-image (symbolic exchange or symbolism as utility);
means of payment together with &why selling*, availability and degree of desire
for sale (from lackadaisical to desperation), then there are also laws and
customs together with the custom of appearance; the operation of secular laws
and of intuitively felt &Law* as the subjective presence of semi-sacred values.
All these (and more) &determine* this fluid thing, the price of exchange# (the &market price*) for it is what it is as it is done#
(context is meaning, and &the meaning* of the exchange is its
*price* 每 the rationale or meaning for the participants is their
individual use-value 每 with the whole process as mediated by laws, expectations
and cultural values#).
In the end, &labour time* may be at is most present, most felt, and,
therefore, most subjective, here and now, and also at, at the same time, its
most objective, as influencing our relations with objects and others, as when
we must buy what we need or want# and (other factors, rent, or shares as income
may come into play) we must exchange according to what we earn (&according to
our means*). This is the true presence of labour time
in our everyday lives (as true of salary as of wage, of piece work as of
waiting hours in &maintenance* or in the office, or say of firemen and their
white collar staff), the presence of the pay we receive and that we must use to
buy what we need or want within the said amount# (and
then there is credit#). And again we might note, that it is not necessary to
actually labour in the &labour
time* to be paid for it# (again the examples of office
longeurs, much managerial bureaucracy, and those &on
call*). If it is our wages or salary that gives us the means of exchange (and
this is surely the fairest way to apportion socially necessary work and pay,
its reward) then this is where the labour theory of
value has concrete sense and concrete application (and not the posing of some
abstract &social* essence)# This is the realm of the producer as consumer#
their &time* quantified and the means of purchase, &money* received, likewise
quantified 每 the key exchange relation of our lives, tempered, to be sure, by
pleasure and vocation, but still the same 每 what we have to do to get what we
want. Historically, this relation has also been much tempered by violence, by
physical and legal coercion: that economic coercion may also be a violence is a matter of the relation of efficiency to
fairness 每 the balance struck a matter for politics. The
matter of our future.
You may say that
the market determines price as pay; the reply would be that this is again too
abstract; for example, if we value a certain kind of work, and require better
workers (or indeed mangers), then we up the pay over the &market rate*# by
attracting those better workers we have changed the market price# in the real
world this is how &markets* work# they too are concrete processes# Price here
is subject to social value 每 that is &our* values. Again contrast &market* and
&social market* societies, say the USA and Denmark, and note which is felt to
be &fairer*# (and where more people are happier).
*
Afterword. Distance as one
key to understanding.
First,
second and third hand experience?
First, second, and third person relations?
Close,
as within our temporality (as first-hand experience of first and second person
relations), of friends, family, those nearby, our intimates, part of our lived,
perceived, cycles and our position in them# made up of the &time of day*, and
our interactions# gifts and favours (and duties).
Distance, however, requires the coordination of measured &time* and some manner
of measured token, &money*, for the coordination of place-time, people and
objects - for meeting and for exchange (which, in the absence of, usually
cursory, &meeting* remain completely on the level of third hand experience and
third person relation 每 third person exchange). All the more so, as our lives
become ever more abstracted or distant, based upon abstract laws and absent
decisions (third person relations)# or requiring transport, across land and
sea, or across airwaves and disembodied symbols (third hand &experience*).
Giving us a set of passages, a radius extending along the centripetal experience
of the self and the expanding circles or relations of the centrifugal self;
extended networks posing ever greater challenges of co-ordination: ranging from
intimate to impersonal; from family, friends and peers to institutions; from
community to society#. indeed, to mass society# to international society, with
international communications and international markets and trade. Distance
together with multiplication; the result is mass society as requiring the
abstract to co-ordinate activity# and the medium of the media and state and
managerial bureaucracy# impersonal# ever distant.
So the relevant
movement here, the movement of history, if you will, is not from gift to
commodity: but from gift and its understood measure, to the measure of exchange
and gift element (as found together in the modern commodity) as identity# so,
to come full circle, as influencing &value* by values.
Relations. Coordination of matter and the exchange of
this (including &matter* as symbol 每ideas- and as services)# So
&time* and &money* - but again also values.
Distance# &covered*
by quantitative grids, the relation of two lines in space and two points in
&time* (our &now* and the &this second* in social time; if past or future, then
as &time when*; the two points appear together in &time how long* as social
time and its relation to natural process or &the object*: then there is the
relation of the quantity of money and the required &object*), so immediately
bringing into play, in the field of the individual, as in the fields of the
social, the co-implicating poles of the diremption,
with perception, thought, knowledge, decision and doing as their oscillation#
with the decision to act, to do something this way and not otherwise, as an
expression of value(s).
*
From religion we
inherit, obedience, worship, respect and value, how to value things and others.
If the first two are made from fear, and must be subject to exorcism, then life
is unthinkable without the last. Or perhaps it was religion that inherited the
terms above, copied slavishly by ideologies, learnt as a child at our parent*s
knee, to be unlearnt as adults when we keep respect as recognition# as we value
those we care for# as we care for the things we value#
*
Note:
Other*s Value. A quick look at several influential theoretical approaches to
the question of value - all incidentally influenced by Marx (but in different
ways#). Value accompanies diremption in Gayatri Spivak who, in her
article, &Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value* (In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics)
one of number on this issue, actually walks a fine diremptive,
or binary differential, line, so showing the workings of the &double economy*,
in a two handed alternation between# a &materialist predication* with a &textualised answer*, a &textualist
chain* and a &materialist theory of subjectivity*, and the &textuality of
value* and the &materialist predication of the subject* 每 inevitably, the usual
suspects, &idealism* and &materialism* also put in an appearance. Until she finally opts for the &materialist predication of the
subject* (her metonymic term for the &materialist* theory of value).
Jean-François Lyotard (Libidinal Economy) also takes the external path, as he decides for
a source of new value as coming from &outside*# from new products inciting new
desires, to technological evolution and new markets (perhaps confusing value
with growth in a new sector or &what*s new* in a new boom 每 a restricted
definition). All this whilst arguing for the role of desire in economics. Yet
whilst his &libidinal economy* tries for a comprehensive or &general economy*
(the inclusion of desire), its one-sided attribution of &the source* means it
remains restricted# David Graeber, in Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value,
suggests value as part of human culture, as concrete to a given culture - the
usual anthropological solution. So no problem; or, rather, the evasion of a
&metaphysical* problem, as value is understood as the product of a complex
process which includes all aspects of subjective experience, cultural identity
and interaction with others and objects. Others* values.
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2022