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PARTISAN REVIEJT
Thus the
real value relation,
if one speaks in capitalistic terms, is
the necessity for distributing social labor in definite proportions–
the need for the social co-ordination of individual operations based
on the social division of labor in order to satisfy human, i.e.,
social needs.
The capitalistic value relation
is a
specific form
of
this
real "value relation."
However, in its
capitalistic form
the
"law of value" cannot serve as a
continuous
"automatic regulator"
that squares the social needs with the social division of labor.
There never was "equality" of power and opportunity either in
society or among the capitalists, there never was "equality" in the
exchange process. Consequently no "regulation" could be brought
about by a "law of value" that was realized through the exchange
of "equal" quantities of labor.
11
In capitalism, human necessities must first be translated into
value relations before they can be realized. But
value production
is
surplus value production.
It is the profit need that determines
what and how much is produced. The profit need may or may not
coincide with the needs of social life.
If
it coincides, this is merely
accidental. In brief, the class relations in society and the produc·
tion of surplus value that they imply "regulate" production and
distribution, supply and demand. No mysterious "invisible hand"
is guiding society; it is "regulated" by the relentless permanent
social war.
Because of the fact that capitalist production is profit-produc–
tion, the accumulation of capital is an accumulation for the sake
of accumulation. This accumulation, in turn, destroys competi–
tion. Each capitalist, in order to remain such, must fight other
capitalists; the famous profit incentive is the incentive to destroy
capital. The whole production, being a production to appropriate
the surplus labor of the workers, is a production that
continuously
disrupts the connection between social needs and capitalist needs.
Instead of mastering production, the people are mastered by pro·
duction. The more capital accumulates, the more it destroys both
the capacity to
continue the accumulation process
and to
maintain
some sort of proportioning of the social labor
in order to secure
"In his book
The Politics of Democratic Socialism
(p. 101) E. F. M. Durbin
writes:
"If
hitherto industries lived by strangling each other, and benefits were gained
for a section by starving, not by feeding, the whole of society, with the increase of
the number of monopolized sections, even the sectional benefits diminished, as all
prices rose against everybody. We came to live, not by taking in each other's washing,
but by each man garroting his neighbor."
