‘Surplus Theory’ versus Marxian Theory
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I was just flicking through a book, yesterday:ISBN1137277742 (hbk.)TitleCooperatives and socialism : a view from Cuba / edited by Camila Piñeiro Harnecker.ImprintBasingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.Collationxii, 351 p. ; 23 cm.The chapter on the legal framework for co-operatives in Cuba didn’t enthral me, and described situations very much like what Wolff seems to envisage (co-operatives are sanctioned state patrimony, with usufruct rights of land and resources, where workers get wages and a cut in the profits).But, the first chapter on Marx, Engels and Lenin on co-ops was interesting. Marx’s view was that co-ops were a progressive, powerful force, showing workers could run their own industries without capitalists, but that they could also become the workers exploiting themselves within the market system.We don’t need clever exegesis to work out what Marx thought of co-ops, he expressed himself pretty clearly.
In his article Colin quoted from what Rosa Luxemburg wrote about workers' co-operatives in chapter VII of her Reform or Revolution pamphlet:
Quote:Co-operatives – especially co-operatives in the field of production constitute a hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be described as small units of socialised production within capitalist exchange.But in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.What can we add to this except to say that the experience of workers' co-operatives since she wrote this in 1900 bears out her contention?
colinskelly wrote:There is some good stuff in Wolff and Resnick's work on the roots of the current crisis, atlhough the underconsumptionism tends to push it towards Keynesian conclusions (as with David Harvey).Here's quite the worst speech that David Harvey has ever been recorded as giving in which he in effect urges a return to Keynes:http://experimentalgeographies.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/david-harvey-at-occupy-london/Generally, his writings on economic theory are OK, but this was terrible, especially the bit about the need to "reverse Thatcherism" and return to the pre-1970s situation:
Quote:Well, since Thatcher, there’s been a systematic assault, to try to turn more of the costs of social reproduction into externalities. Costs that capital will not bear. ‘You bear the cost of your own education, you bear the cost of your own health care. and if you get sick and you die, that’s your own fault. It’s not capital’s fault.’Now in the 1950s and 1960s, the state was forced by political circumstances to bear some of those costs and to tax capital, to bear some of those costs. But what Margaret Thatcher started to do was to say, ‘Look, we are actually not going to pay those costs anymore, they’re up to your wn personal responsibilties, it’s up to your own personal savings, it’s your own personal life and you have to take care of it, and if you don’t take care of it and get into trouble, that’s your problem.’Now that was what Thatcher launched, and actually there’s a pattern that goes on here. Everybody thought when Thatcher was gone—-got rid of Major as well—-that things would change. No! We got Tony Blair. And what did Blair do, he deepened what was going on. Blair started to introduce the top-up fees at universities, Blair is the one who started to push this Thatcherite agenda even further. And right now what we’ve got is a situation where the Thatcherite agenda is with us even though she is long gone.(…)And we have to end what Thatcher started, and reverse it entirely. In other words, what we have to have is a political program to end the whole Thatcher era because it has not ended at all, and what we see with the current conservatives right now is that they want to make it even more Thatcherite than Thatcher.That this, if you like, what the political task is. To force capital to bear all of those costs that it doesn’t want to bear.No, it's not. It's to get rid of capitalism altogether. The politics of some of the big names in Marxist theory today is crap.
David Harvey in the Enigma of Capital raises the problematic nature of neoliberalism for capital accumulation. It disempowers labour through attacks on trades unions, global relocation, etc."But disempowered labour means low wages, and impoverished workers do not constitute a vibrant market. Persistent wage repression therefore poses the problem of lack of demand…"(p.16)He also says"Whether we can get out of this crisis in a different way depends very much upon the balance of class forces. It depends upon the degree to which the mass of the population rises up and says, 'Enough is enough, let's change the system.'"(p.12)The question is, change it to what? The inference that can easily be drawn (sometimes he is explicit, as in ALBs quote) is that what is needed, first and foremost, is resistance to neoliberalism. The first task of changing the system is to roll back neoliberalism in order to save capitalists from themselves by restoring 'effective demand' and profitability.But neoliberalism itself is a response to the denouement of the post-WW2 period of growth, which now appears as what it really was – a period of prolonged growth following a period of prolonged destruction of capital (the depression& WW2) – rather than the result of regulated capitalism with a prevailing Keynesian economic orthodoxy. One result of the prolonged post-war growth and the period Keynesian orthodoxy was that trades unions tied themselves up too closely to political manouvering and pay bargaining within the 'mixed economy' which led to massive shock and emasculation when this context was removed with privatisations and state hostility. Even if it was desirable to get back to a post-war 'golden age', which it probably isn't, how on earth are the left supposed to achieve it? Harvey's political conclusions fly in the face of much of the historical materialism he applies so well to analyse the problems of capitalism.
In reply to Alan Johnstone re. letting Wolff have the last word, I have tried to contact Wolff for a more prescient response to the article but have had nothing back as yet. In any event I plan to write a foot-noted essay later in the year following up my views in more detail. I will post details if/when it is published.
Just discovered that Kevin Carson (of anti-capitalist free markets fame) has made his work on anarchist organizational principles free to air:http://mutualist.org/id114.html"Studies in the Anarchist Theory of Organizational Behavior"Chapter 7: Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth (the Corporation asPlanned Economy)Is quite interesting, as he 'goes through' (to use the academic jargon) the calculation debate to show how large capitalist firms are just as subject to the problems of calculation as the 'socialist commonwealth'. It's worth reading, because at the least it is suggestive of the necessities of what socialism proper will require (the active engagement of those doing the work in planning the work, open aaccounting and free information, etc,); and because it's kind of fun to see the tables turned.
Here is a link to a recent review of Resnick and Wolff's 'Contending Economic Theories' critical of 'surplus theory' from a Marxian perspective:http://mccaine.org/2013/07/10/book-review-wolff-resnick-contending-economic-theories/
Another article, just out, by Wolff defending workers cooperatives still producing for a market as the "alternative" to capitalism and redefining socialism to fit this:http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18323-debating-capitalism-redefining-outdated-termsHe is of course right that it is inadequate to see capitalism v socialism as the market v state planning. But while capitalism is not incompatible with state planning that doesn't make socialism compatible with the market.
This article clearly shows the incompetence of its writer on the most fundamental concepts of Marx's labour theory of value. Professor Wolff has shown a great deal of generousity by providing his comment on it. That, I believe, originates from his life-long vocation as a teacher. To me, however, it sounds like a deliberate and intentional distortion of well-established concepts in an attempt to discredit the insights provided by Wolff and Resnick.I have neither the time nor the genorousity already demonstrated by Wolff and Resnick, so I shall restrict my criticism of this frivolous article to only a single point. without pointing to which, I could not sleep at night!Somewhere in the article, it is stated that under socialism there would no more be any such thing known as surplusvalue…How interesting indeed! According to Marx, and this is delineated well early in the very first volume of Capital, the definition of surplusvalue is any value generated excess to the "necessary labour"; it existed in all pre-capitalist modes of production, i.e. slavory and serfdom. In the second volume of Capital, Marx introduces a system of two departments: Department I, production of means of production, and department II, production of means of consumption. And he goes into great details to illustrate how "surplusvalue" is distributed between the two departments in a way to sustain and reproduce the whole system. There, he explicitly mentions how the same process could be achieved under "communism", consciously and without mediation of markets and money.To say that surplusvalue ceases to exist under socialism is so absurd and astray that it could only demonstrate one of the two, or perhaps both, of these cases:1- The writer, and all who endorse this article, are totally ignorant of anything Marx has ever done, wrote and said.2- The writer, and all who endorse this article, are simply another group of malevolent pundits who work tirelessly day and night (what a waste of their toil!) to discredit genuine science and aberrate people from finding out how they could ever end the misery which is set to wipe off life itself from the face of the earth, to wit, capitalism.
Sepehr wrote:the definition of surplusvalue is any value generated excess to the "necessary labour";What is "value" and is "value" and "labour" necessarily the same thing? If "value" is generated by labour does this necessarily mean that all labour produces "value" under all historical-socio-economic conditions?
Sepehr wrote:"communism", consciously and without mediation of markets and money.What is it that has changed once social production is no longer concerned with the production of commodities and the buying and selling of labour-power? Is it coherent to speak of "value" existing in such a society?
Yes, what an ignormamus who can't tell the difference between "surplus labour" (labour producing wealth over and above what is needed to maintain the producers) and "surplus value" (the form this takes under capitalism where wealth is produced by wage-workers producing it for sale) but the style of writing suggests it's probably a troll.
Of course, the working day in all societies is divided into necessary labour (that part where the means of living of the worker is reproduced) and surplus labour (that part above and beyond the amount necessarily consumed to reproduce labour). Marx was at pains to explain that surplus labour was a feature of all societies but that private ownership of the means of production meant that this surplus was siphoned off by the owners in different ways: “It is just as important for a correct understanding of surplus-value to conceive it as merely a congealed quantity of surplus-labour time, as nothing but objectified surplus labour, as it is for a proper comprehension of value in general to conceive it as merely a congealed quantity of so many hours of labour, as nothing but objectified labour. What distinguishes the various economic formations of society – the distinction between for example a society based on slave-labour and a society based on wage-labour – is the form in which this surplus labour is in each case extorted from the immediate producer, the worker.” (Vol.1, p.325)Wolff argues that if surplus-value was to be re-distributed amongst the workers who produced it then society would be post-capitalist as there would be no exploitation. He is of course perfectly at liberty to argue his point but wrong to call his theory Marxian economics. By all means let it stand separately and contend with Marx’s theory but he should not conflate his surplus theory with that of Marx. The article on Wolff quotes Marx’s well know criticisms of co-operative enterprises as involving “self-exploitation” so requires no further justification. Wolff envisages a supposedly post-exploitative world with commodity production still intact, a world of production for exchange with prices and wages. However, let Marx speak for himself as to the post-value nature of post-capitalism (socialism, communism, free association, call it what you will) where the product of work will be things (use-values) and not prices (exchange-values):“Let us… imagine… an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force… The total product of our imagined association is a social product. One part of this product serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another part is consumed by members of the association as means of subsistence.” (Vol.1, pp.171-2)Marx then goes on to talk “for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities” that the apportionment of the share of the social product for individual consumption could be determined by labour-time but this is a different debate altogether. The key point Marx is making is that it would be an apportionment of things, not money (exchange-value) and that a society of free association produces things “in accordance with a definite social plan”, “under their planned and conscious control” and not as commodities for exchange. In other words there would be no production for exchange, no prices, no wages – and no value or surplus-value but still necessary labour and surplus labour, consciously planned and distributed.
According to Marx:"The process of production expires in the commodity. The fact that labour-power was expended in its fabrication now appears as a material property of the commodity, as the property of possessing value. The magnitude of this value is measured by the amount of labour expended; the value of a commodity resolves itself into nothing else besides and is not composed of anything else. […] In this a commodity produced by a capitalist does not differ in any way from that produced by an independent labourer or by communities of working-people or by slaves. But in the present case the entire product of labour, as well as its entire value, belongs to the capitalist. Like every other producer he has to convert his commodity by sale into money before he can manipulate it further; he must convert it into the form of the universal equivalent." (Capital, Vol II, Chapter XIX, 5. Recapitulation, pp. 235, 236) That should give you a hint of where you are going astray. Getting lost in purely scholastic arguments is a direct consequence of a lack of understanding about Marx's dialectical method. Value and labour are different concepts, but they are also dialectically interwoven. Marx goes into great details to dissect these concepts in order to finally build up his labour theory of value. He argues that every commodity has got a use-value and an exchange-value. Since use-value of different commodities are different, therefore it is immensurable and cannot be the substance of exchange-value. Then he introduces the concept of socially necessary labour time as the origin of exchange-value, or value for that matter. Hence why your question is incorrect and arises from misunderstanding these basic concepts:"What is "value" and is "value" and "labour" necessarily the same thing?"And finally, only in primitive societies, when humans lived a life of hand to mouth, the society was not concerned about production of commodities. Commodities will continue to exist even under communism. Any product which is produced for the purpose of exchange is by definition a commodity. This exchange, of course, is not necessarily exchange with money, nor for the purpose of accumulation of surplusvalue to private owners. To see this, go back and read the first statement I quoted above from Marx.
Thank you for quoting those statements from Marx. That is very nice of you to vindicate my argument this way.However, your next contention about "Wolff argues that if surplus-value was to be re-distributed amongst the workers who produced it then society would be post-capitalist as there would be no exploitation" is totally erroneous. Wolff has never said so. The idea of redistribution of surplusvalue among workers, which was originally proposed by Ferdinand Lassalle", was even explicitly disdained by Marx. As Engels once said: “[…] when a man wants to deal with scientific questions he should above all learn to read the works he wishes to use just as the author had written them, and above all without reading anything into them that they do not contain.” And finally again you are confounding the concept of exchange with the specific form of exchange with money. See my previous comment for some extra hints on this.
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