Reply To: Chattopadhyay's new book, calculation in kind, the SPGB …

He favours some form of labour-time accounting, though in terms of actual labour rather than in terms of an attempt to mirror the “socially necessary labour” brought about by the market under capitalism. At least this is what he replied when I asked him “was I right in concluding that, when it comes to measuring labour in a socialist/communist society, it would have to be in terms of actual labour rather than in terms of some estimated ‘socially necessary’ labour?”:

You are right. The actual labour of the individual in a system of collective production is social labour from the start, it does not need any mediation to prove its socially necessary character. The social necessity of the actual labour is pre-determined due to the collective character of production.

 

I wonder how Paresh deals with the problem of the “heterogeneity of labour” which is commonly invoked in critiques of labour time accounting.  Saying that complex labour can be treated as multiples of simple labour is no answer because we cant really know by how much one can be reduced to the other.  This is a quantitative matter.  For labour time accounting to work on its own terms, accuracy is essential otherwise this would result in a gross misallocation of resources.

As for “socially necessary labour time”, Marx’s view was that this could only be (indirectly) revealed through the market process itself which is obviously precluded in socialism so yes, there is only “actual” or past labour (the kind that you can measure with a stopwatch) that the proponents of labour time accounting are let to play with, with all the attendant problems this entails including the enormous bureaucratic costs that Stephen referred to.

I dont see any problem with treating labour power as an input, just like any other input, within the framework of  a decentralised or polycentric self regulating system of stock control and based on the assessment of the (ever changing)  labour requirements of particular production units.   (It is quite easy to imagine something equivalent to todays’ job centres, or an online version of them, operating in a socialist society).

To me this is the only viable form of “labour time accounting” on offer.   What is usually meant by this term is both impractical as a procedure (particularly when it comes to guesstimating the labour content of intermediate goods such as machinery)  and quite unnecessary anyway.  What purpose does it serve that cannot be served  by the much more straightforward procedure involved in a  self regulating system of stock control which no large scale, technologically advanced society – including capitalism – could do without?