冒頭商品論の現代的再考のために(<特集>マルクス商品論の現代的可能性)

抄録

The first chapter on the commodity in Marx's Capital forms a theoretical microcosm, where all the essential germs of the whole principles of capitalist economy are condensed. Therefore, we have to reexamine its theoretical implications or problems in view of the whole theoretical system of Capital. This essay presents four points which seem worthy of our contemporary reconsideration on this chapter. (1)This chapter begins with an impressive sentence that "the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of commodities'". What does the wealth of (either capitalist or other) societies mean? The central theoretical analysis in Capital shows how annual flow of labour products constitutes the social substance of wages, profit and ground rent in capitalist societies on the basis of labour theory of value. However, the wealth of societies must contain stock of asset as well as flow of income. Although analyses of values of fictitious capital concerning financial securities or land are analyzed to a certain degree in Capital, what to understand capital gain or loss in asset values seems to remain as a theoretically thorny problem in relation to the labour theory of value. (2)The first sentence of Capital introduces analysis of the commodity as an elemental form of capitalist societies. However, Marx well recognizes in the same chapter that commodities appeared before capitalism, originally as inter-social exchange trade relations. By emphasizing such an external historical origin of the forms of commodities, Kozo Uno reformulated Marx's theory of forms of value as the pure theory of forms of circulation without referring to the social substance of value. In this context, Marx's dialogue with Aristotle on the historical ground for evolution of the concept of value needs further reflection.(3)Marx's unique theory of value dualizes the notion of value into the forms and the substance of value. Prices as the developed forms of value of commodities and the quantities of labour-time embodied in commodities as the substance of values need not be directly proportional so long as surplus labour-time can be flexibly used outside of maintenance of reproduction of commodities. There is a problem how to incorporate such a range of disproportion between the forms and the substance of values consistently in our attempt to complete Marx's labour theory of value including the solution of long-standing transformation controversy. (4)Marx's treatment of complex labour has been another major source of debates against his labour theory of value. Following Ricardo, Marx basically disconnected the causal relation between the value and usevalue of labour-power. However, concerning the complex labour-power, he left problematic statements that the higher value of skilled labour-power enables its use-value hourly to produce more of labour substance in comparison with the case of general unskilled workers. My own reinterpretation on this issue is suggested from a more egalitarian theoretical stance.