jondwhite wrote: I was

[Anonymous]

jondwhite wrote:

I was listening to the CPGB podcast on the SWP last week (http://cpgb.podbean.com/2011/12/19/swp-internal-bulletin/) and in at the end they said that following their suggestion that the SWP is wrong to say “workers create all the wealth”, the SWP have amended it to “value”. SPGB Declaration of Principles Clause 1 suggests workers create all the wealth, should this read “value” instead?

 Wealth and value are inseparable within capitalist society.Wealth is a product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. This identifies wealth with use-value. But capitalism is a society where wealth becomes a commodity having exchange value also, and sometimes only a socially-bounded use-value that is peculiar to capitalism.Value is a social relationship between people which expresses itself as a material relationship between things. The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary abstract labour time needed for its production and reproduction.The labour theory of value explains how wealth is produced and distributed under capitalism, and how the working class is exploited. Human labour power applied to nature-given materials is the source of most wealth. The wealth produced, however, belongs not to the workers but to those who own and control the means of wealth production and distribution (land, factories, offices, etc.). Wealth production under capitalism generally takes the form of commodities produced for sale at a profit.For more information on this and related subjects see:-http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/z-marxism