Comments on: Eric Reasons: Value is not Capital

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:04:54 +0000

In reply to Eric Reasons. Thanks Eric, your commentary is always most interesting, Michel

By: Eric Reasons

Eric Reasons — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:06:32 +0000

Jose-

Your comment worked, thanks for visiting the blog, and thanks for your comments.

In response, what you call “exchange value”, I call “capital”, then then we’re pretty much saying the same thing. I think Marx has a lot to bring to the table in understanding this third space of creating social value without creating capital, but I think it’s mostly by accident.

Lastly, I feel that the massive disruption of the music industry has indeed cost millions of dollars (not that it’s unwelcome). Their expectation of revenue may be absurd looking towards the future, as artists and fans learn that they don’t need an intermediary; but that doesn’t mean that once upon a time they didn’t add real value, and value that could be captured by capital.

By: José Canelas

José Canelas — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:23:06 +0000

Tried to submit the comment bellow at Eric’s blog, don’t think it worked.
“You stumbled upon the difference between use value and exchange value. The use value of music is constant. What was reduced recently was the ability of the music industry to restrict access and therefore continue and increase the extraction of *exchange* value. You can observe the same with Free/Libre Software that exploded use value but makes it very difficult to enclose and make scarce. That is why only a fraction is transformed into exchange value (and then fixed capital). Marx explained it all very well, look it up.

Also, it’s not that “a massive disruption of the music industry that has cost billions of dollars”, but that the disruption *prevented them* from extracting millions of dollars. Their expectation of revenue is not cost, no matter how many times they try to confuse and mystify the issue.”