1. It is argued here that social planning cannot develop automatically in an environment dominated by the market; the development of social planning represents a political task requiring explicit political action.The most important and most systematic treatment of the relationship between commodity production and social planning in Marx’s work can be found in the Fourth Section of the First Chapter of the First Volume of Capital (entitled “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof”). It is well known that this chapter was considered by Marx himself the key to his central work,[1] as well as that it is the most controversial chapter of all, which tends to corroborate Marx’s view.

2. The objective of this argument is not to engage in an academic quibble about “what Marx really said.” On the contrary, the main concern is with the present interpretations, that is, an “omission” in the present interpretations, and not the “true” interpretations of Marx’s work. More concretely, this argument concerns the treatment of the subject of self-government as social planning that tends to emphasize its “democratic” aspect as its central virtue. This view is based on an implicit or explicit assumption that commodity production is a perfectly intelligible process that allows perfectly rational self-government decision-making. Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism attacks precisely this assumption, as will be demonstrated below.

3. Marx opens the Fourth Section with the following words:

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.[2]

As an object possessing use value it is certainly not mysterious, continues Marx. “Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labor, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities?”[3] And Marx immediately answers: “Clearly, from this form itself.”[4] Not from capitalist relations of production, from capitalist exploitation, private ownership in the means of production, or the similar, but from this very form! “A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor.”[5] It should be noted that commodity is defined simply as an object produced for exchange, that is, not for consumption (consumption sensu stricto or productive consumption):

As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labor of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labor of all these private individuals forms an aggregate labor of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labor does not show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labor of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labor of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes between the producers.[6]

What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they make an exchange, is the question, how much of some other product they get for their own? In what proportion the products are exchangeable? When these proportions have, by custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from the nature of the products. […] The character of having value, when once impressed upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and re-acting upon each other as quantities of value. These quantities vary continually, independently of their will, foresight and action of the producers. To them, their own action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.[7]

Marx continues:

Let us picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labor-time of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labor-time of the community […]. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organization of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labor-time. Labor-time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the proportion of the common labor borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labor and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also distribution.[8]

It must be emphasized that the whole discussion of social planning is set in the context of intelligibility of social relations between producers. Marx does not speak here of “efficiency,” “rationality,” “market imperfections,” “democracy,” etc., but of intelligibility versus obscurity of social relations of production! Marx concludes:

The religious world is but a reflex of the real world […]. The religious reflex of the world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to Nature.

The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production of freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.[9]

4. Let us return to the problem suggested above. It has been argued quite often that self-government as social planning can gradually transcend commodity production by progressively limiting the sphere of action of the market and related institutions. The principal tool in this process is the contract between pairs of producers. Self-government is understood here as the motor of transcendence of commodity production. Also, it is argued that the development of self-government is cumulative, progressively approaching abolishment of commodity production and all social phenomena associated with it.

This kind of argument assumes that everything concerning commodity production is perfectly clear, and that the decisions of self-governing bodies cannot fail to be optimal, or are at least not structurally prevented from becoming optimal. However, to merely democratize the management of social affairs is not sufficient. Social relations of production must be perfectly intelligible, that is, “transparent” or “legible” for self-government to be cumulative, to have a liberating and educating rôle. Otherwise, the opposite purpose may well be served: progressive mystification of the social relations of production and further ossification of an arbitrary initial set of relations between producers. The increased understanding of a mythical world may only increase man’s ability to manipulate it. A comprehensible world is a precondition for self-government, since only in that case the process of learning is at the same time the process of humanization. The world of commodities, as Marx demonstrated, does not satisfy this precondition.

5. Contradiction between commodity production and social planning is often put in terms of the planning-market controversy, where the emphasis is on the economic aspects of the problem. Even if we assume away the contradictions here, there still remains the contradiction between commodity production and social planning because of the intrinsic nature of commodity production, that is, because of commodity fetishism.

6. We may conclude that the process of gradual replacement of commodity production by self-government as social planning is by no means automatic. This objective requires an explicit revolutionary political force acting as the motor of socialist development. This also requires “a certain material ground-work” without which this political force may be forced to exaggerate its rôle, and even to see itself as the substitute of social and material conditions that Marx did not elaborate upon. An excessive gap between the levels of development of the social forces and social relations of production may then inhibit social development instead of stimulating it.

Addendum I (December 11, 1977)

My argument can be fortified with a few quotations from an excellent book by Isaac Illich Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value.[10] Rubin is concerned here with the interpretation of the rôle of Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism.

What does Marx’s theory of fetishism consist of, according to generally accepted views? It consists of Marx’s having seen human relations underneath relations between things, revealing the illusion in human consciousness which originated in the commodity economy and which assigned to things characteristics which have their source in the social relations among people in the process of production.[11]

But, this is not central to Marx’s theory. Rubin continues:

However this interpretation, though generally accepted in Marxist literature, does not nearly exhaust the rich content of the theory of fetishism developed by Marx. Marx did not only show that human relations were veiled by relations between things, but rather that, in the commodity economy, social production relations inevitably took the form of things and could not be expressed except through things.[12]

And this is why Rubin claims that “the theory of fetishism is, per se, the basis of Marx’s entire economic system, and in particular of his theory of value.”[13]Now, what does Rubin mean by “commodity economy”? “The distinctive characteristic of the commodity economy is that the managers and organizers of production are independent commodity producers (small proprietors or large entrepreneurs).”[14] What matters here is not ownership, but independence of producers! More specifically, in the commodity society

[p]roduction is managed directly by separate commodity producers and not by society. Society does not directly regulate the working activity of its members, it does not prescribe what is to be produced or how much.[15]

The real connections and interactions among the individual—one might say independent and autonomous—firms are brought about by comparing the value of goods and by exchanging them. On the market society regulates the products of labor, the commodities, i.e., things. In this way the community indirectly regulates the working activity of people, since the circulation of goods on the market, the rise and fall of their prices, leads to changes in the allocation of the working activity of the separate commodity producers, to their entry into certain branches of production or their exit from them, to the redistribution of the productive forces of society.[16]

Rubin concludes: “Because of the atomistic structure of the commodity society, because of the absence of direct social regulation of the working activity of the members of society, the connections between individual, autonomous, private firms are realized and maintained through commodities, things, products of labor.”[17]

Via the market, “the seeming mutual independence of the individuals is supplemented by a system of general and mutual dependence through or by means of the products.”[18] As Stojanović put it in another, but related, context: “when there is no real community, a surrogate for it is indispensable.”[19] Quod erat demonstrandum. Commodity fetishism is a necessary result of commodity production, regardless of the formal definition of ownership. Even more, private property is implicit in commodity production. The formal definition is irrelevant in this context.

Addendum II (July 8, 1980)

It should be noted that “freely associated producers” are conspicuously missing in Rubin’s interpretation of Marx. He assumes that “society” will be represented by a central organ entrusted with the task of planning. By 1926 Soviet Marxism explicitly or implicitly assumes this device. The very foundation of Marx’s theory thus becomes a mere curiosity to be interpreted away in one way or another. Rubin’s excellent book only contributes to this development. The critique of Soviet planning may thus begin with a rereading of Rubin with this perspective in mind.

Addendum III (June 17, 1982)

As 1937 was approaching, M. wrote a poem containing the lines: “One fancies the battlements of a wall not yet begun, / with soldiers of captious sultans tumbling down / from foaming stairways to fall apart and separate in spray below, / while frigid eunuchs serve up poison all around.” The image of “a wall not yet begun” shows how well he understood the insubstantial nature of all our grand ambitions. At the very beginning of the thirties he said on one occasion: “Why should we get so excited about Five-Year plans? If somebody we knew suddenly went and stopped eating in order to decorate his apartment and buy typewriters and toilet bowls in bulk we should say: ‘To hell with him’.” There is always something suspicious about a whole people existing only to fulfill plans; the greater the success of the plans, the worse everybody lived—you could “fancy battlements” all right, but of the wall there was no sign. The reference to “soldiers” in these lines shows how much the quasi-military analogies and all the talk about discipline had sunk in during those years. One glance at our newspapers and official decrees is enough to see how saturated they are with this kind of terminology. M.’s attention is focused on the victims of the “captious sultans,” on the unbearable way in which they are reduced to isolated atoms: he likens them to the surf into which a wave is smashed; they “fall apart and separate in spray…”

From Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Abandoned, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976, pp. 194-195.

Footnotes

1. See, e.g., the Preface to the First German Edition of Capital.

2. Marx, K., Capital, Vol. I, New York: International Publishers, 1967 (first published in 1867), p. 71.

3. Loc. cit.

4. Op. cit., p. 72.

5. Loc. cit.

6. Op. cit., pp. 72-73 (emphasis added, R.B.).

7. Op. cit., pp. 74-75.

8. Op. cit., pp. 78-79 (emphasis added, R.B.).

9. Op. cit., pp. 79-80.

10. Rubin, I.I., Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, Detroit: Black and Red, 1972 (translated by Miloš Samardžija and Fredy Perlman, from the third edition, Ocherki po teorii stoimosti Marksa, Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1928).

11. Op. cit., p. 5.

12. Op. cit., p. 6. This is stated more elaborately on pp. 61-62.

13. Op. cit., p. 5.

14. Op. cit., p. 7 (emphasis added, R.B.). Rubin repeatedly points out independence as the differentia specifica of commodity production. On p. 68 he uses an interesting synonym—”dissociated” commodity producers. By implication, “associated producers” and “commodity production” are incompatible notions.

15. Loc. cit.

16. Loc. cit.

17. Op. cit., p. 8. Rubin gives a more succinct statement to this effect on p. 59:

The absence of direct regulation of the social process of production necessarily leads to the indirect regulation of the production process through the market, through the products of labor, through things.

18. Marx, op. cit., p. 108.

19. Stojanović, S., Between Ideals and Reality, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 119.