No.4863
How can we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory passages of Marx's? Are they even contradictory?
From Critique of the Gotha Program:
>Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.
From Capital Vol III:
>Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.
Similarly, does Engels contradict Marx's above passage in Capital in his letter to Karl Kautsky on the 20th of September, 1884?
>Present value is that of the production of commodities, but with the suppression of the production of commodities, value 'changes' or rather, value as such remains and merely changes its form. But in fact economic value is a category that appertains to the production of commodities, disappearing with it, just as it did not exist before it. The relation of labour to product prior to and after production of commodities no longer expresses itself in the form of value.
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No.4864
>>4863>the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.this is not commodity exchange
>the producers do not exchange their productshe's referring to commodity exchange
>just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.he means labor prices don't appear as something inherent in products the way that value is inherent in commodities, but instead, as something transparently socially agreed upon and determined through somewhat arbitrary social accounting methods
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No.4865
>>4864So were both Marx and Engels asserting that the law of value does not exist under the lower stage of communism, following the abolition of commodity production?