A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

PRIORITIZING USE VALUE OVER EXCHANGE VALUE
MARC VANDEPITTE
The starting point of the text: the difference between use value and exchange
value, is bang in the middle. It is the most fundamental contradiction
of capitalist economy. Indeed, each commodity both has an use
value and an exchange value; but it is the latter out of which profits are
generated; which is the source of accumulation. In order to maximize
profits and to maximize accumulation, every economic actor in het capitalist
system reduces commodities to their exchange values and tries
to produce as much exchange values as possible. This maximization is
not a question of ambition or endeavour, it’s a necessity because of the
iron law of concurrence.
1. A voracious dynamics
This maximization of profits and accumulation engendered in the past,
and engenders until today a colossal historical dynamic. A dynamic that
changed really everything in the world and through which history gained
momentum. Capital conquered the world with the power of a tsunami.
Why? In order to maximise profits capital tries to transform every good,
every commodity and all human activities or even activities of nature,
into exchange values. But that transformation is a radical and no easy
process. It supposes that capital dominates, submits and instrumentalises
all the goods and activities it wants to change into exchange values.
It’s a never ending process of subsumption, of subordination. This
process is more about commodification, more than converting goods in
merchandise. It’s also moulding en re-creating the entire planet, the
whole society, all social relations and ideas in function of the needs of
capital. In other words, capital acts as a permanent demiurge of society.
So it’s important to see that the basic economic paradigm is part and
parcel of an overpowering dynamic. One cannot separate the former
from the latter. If one wants to change or transform the economic paradigm
one has to stop and break that all-embracing dynamic. If one
wants to fly, one has to stop or neutralise the laws of gravitation. Let
me give some important aspects with relevance to the text.
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