ALB
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I think you have to go to the article itself in the online issue of Socialist Standard in which it appeared and click "Comment" at the bottom of the article. Then it auomatically appears in the Comments section.
I am not advocating that we only count the labour-time expended at the last stage of the production of something. That would be absurd and lead to the anomalies that you point out. But this is what those who like the idea of labour-time vouchers are committed to as their scheme is based on recording the time spent by "living labour" producing goods and providing services and on fixing the "prices" of goods the vouchers can be used to claim to reflect of this.I am not at all arguing against calculation but just against the need to calculate the labour-time content of everthing, i.e the need for some general unit of account. Of course socialist society will have to count what work resources are available to produce what is needed, but it will also have to count what other resources are required but in specific units. Labour is counted by time (and particular skill), steel in tonnes, electricity in killowatt-hours, and so on.Why try to reduce all producive resources to a laour-time content and to make a point of minimising this — that's what the economic laws of capitalism work to bring about. Even work-time itself need not be minimised when the work is interesting and satisfying. Socialism allows humans precisely to escape from the tyranny of minimising costs that capitalism imposes and allows other thngs to be taken into account such as working conditions and impact on the environment. Labour-time counting and minimising would tend to bring about the same result that capitalism's "law of value" does.
The Turkish translation of this, together with answers to further questions about the Russian revolution, has now been published here:http://cdn.haberajanda.com.tr/contents/files/dergiler/sayi134/index.html#70It continues on pages 72-3 and 74.Anybody out there know Turkish to see what the introduction says? All I know is that the magazine's name "Ekim Devrimi" means"October Revolution".
Bijou, the points you make are covered, in almost the same terms, in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative, i.e goods and services for individual consumption being a more or less self-regulating way in accordance with what individuals take or use, with major infrastructure decisions made democratically:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative
None. So all workers are poor on Owen's first definition of poverty. But how many workers in Britain are poor on his second definition of poverty as lacking or only just getting the "bare necessaries of existence" (what might be better called "destitution")?What this discussion shows is the importance, as always, of defining terms, otherwise you are going to end up talking at cross purposes.
I still think these are references to matching living labour, i.e the work resources available to socialist society, to what needs to be produced in a given period, which will obviously have to happen and will involve calculations (though not just of labour time available but of the availability of other productive resources too). In other words, it's about current production e.g. about the labour-time needed to produce a steam engine from materials already available. But the amount of labour-time spent during the last stage of the production of something (which is what would be involved here) is not the same as the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it (which includes the labour-time spent on producing the raw materials, energy, and wear and tear of the machines). In Marxian terms, it's v + s (as opposed to v + s + c). In conventional economics it's "value added" not total value.Note also the clear statement that "value" won't exist in socialism.
The change of name is no doubt a fallout of the recent "Anarchy in the AF" with its Leicester section taking the side of the class-struggle anarchists rather than the lifestyle, identity politics ones.
Historical materialism was a development from Physical Science materialism which was a weapon used by the rising bourgeois class in its struggle for the control of political power against the landed aristocracy which then held it and which relied on Catholic Christianity as its ideological weapon. This is quite well explained in the early chapters of Anton Pannekoek's Lenin as Philospher (which incidently is a criticism of Lenin not an exposition of Lenin's views):https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/
Dave B wrote:Yes not only value in communism but surplus value Jim ! but not as we know it now.Next you'll be telling us that peasants produce surplus value (one of the trick questions in the questionnaire to stand as a Socialist Party candidate at elections) ! Value and surplus value are categories that apply only when analysing capitalist society. Of course even in socialism there will be a "surplus" over what the producers consume (to maintain those who can't or don't work and to expand the means of production if need be, as you point out) but this won't be surplus "value". The fact that the view you and Alan hold of something like value under capitalism surviving into socialism as "surplus value" is proof that it is incoherent on he principle of reductio ad absurdum.Having said this, to be honest, I have to admit that Marx probably envisaged some form of general labour-time accounting in socialism but hadn't thought it through properly since, as you pointed out in a previous posting, he didn't think that "socially necessary labour" could be measured in advance of being established by the market even under capitalism, let alone in socialism where no market forces would operate. What would be the point of trying, in socialism, to second guess how to achieve the pattern of production that the market is supposed to bring about under capitalism?
Quote:Capital Vol. III Part VIIRevenues and their SourcesChapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of ProductionSecondly, 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.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htmFunny you should quote that, Dave, as it was what Ted Grant, later of Militant fame, quoted back at me when I said that socialism would involve the disappearance of money at a meeting of the Labour Party Young Socialists in Newport ages ago. Of course it doesn't refute what we say about money and I know you don't think it does either. But what do you think Marx meant by "the regulation of labour-time" and "the distribution of social labour among the various production groups"? Was he talking about living labour or about dead labour? About the labour-time available for current production or that embodied in past production?Here's another quote from another of Marx's unedited works, the famous Grundrisse:
Quote:On the basis of communal production, the determination of time remains, of course, essential. The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. Just as in the case of an individual, the multiplicity of its development, its enjoyment and its activity depends on economization of time. Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself. Society likewise has to distribute its time in a purposeful way, in order to achieve a production adequate to its overall needs; just as the individual has to distribute his time correctly in order to achieve knowledge in proper proportions or in order to satisfy the various demands on his activity. Thus, economy of time, along with the planned distribution of labour time among the various branches of production, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production. It becomes law, there, to an even higher degree. However, this is essentially different from a measurement of exchange values (labour or products) by labour time.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm
Alan Kerr wrote:I notice that you don’t mind about counting. You just mind about proper counting that is better than the market. But it is sloppy counting (no better than the market) that leads to scarcity…Of course I don't mind counting, but the question is what is to be counted? I'm in favour of counting, as part of calculation in kind, actual living labour, i.e. the amount and type of working skills society has available for production. Nothing sloppy about that. You are (or seem to be) in favour of trying to count abstract labour as embodied in raw materials, machines, buildings produced in the past and used in current production. I don't see the point of trying to do this, of resurrecting a general unit of account to replace of money. I don't think those around when socialism is established will either as it would be a waste of time and resources.
Agreed that what constitutes "the bare necessaries of existence" is socially-determined and in Britain will be higher now that it was over a hundred years ago in Tressell's time but I don't think we could get away with saying that a worker living in a centrally-heated house with two or three rooms, hot and cold running water, freezer, television, computer, mobile phone, three meals a day, etc is only getting the "bare necessaries of existence". Such a worker is only "poor" in the sense of being excluded from ownership of means of production and therefore forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary in order to live. Also, of course, in some parts of the world, there are people not getting enough to stay alive properly. Few people in Britain are in that position.
In that passage where Marx uses Robinson Crusoe as an example, he is only talking about the alloction of "living labour",, i.e the total amount (and types) of working skills available to socialist society for production. As he wrote:
Marx wrote:Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community.This is not at all what you are proposing when you, in your claim that socialist society would be better able to calculate "socially necessary labour" than the market, talk of "labour-in (all told)",i.e. that Crusoe should also count the amount of "dead labour" involved in the production of the raw materials and instruments of labour he uses. Obviously socialist society will have to count the labour resources available alongside raw materials, machines, buildings, energy, etc. This not require making labour-time a general unit of account, but is just a part of calculation in kind.
Marx wrote:it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption.True, Marx does mention the idea of "labour-time vouchers", here as he says to illustrate a point, but it is unclear to what extent he thought this should be a way of allocaing consumer goods and services in socialism. In any event, the SPGB has never thought that labour-time vouchers are a good idea or advocated them. Those that have gone down this road have logically had to give goods and services a labour time "price" tag and some have ended up advocating circulating "labour money".As Ludwig von Mises also said …..
Alan Kerr wrote:Good luck with your way to count that's no better than the market. That means a) scarcity b) soviet bureaucrat's forced labour camp and c) return to the market.But your calculation is not the same as "socially necassay labour" under capitalism. That was my point. It would be actual labour time, which is not the same. In theory your calculation could be done but what woud be the point? You talk about "total labour-in (all told)" by which I take you to mean all the labour-time involved in producing it from start to finish, i.e that involved in producing the raw materials, contituent parts, transporting them, in making the machines used to make them, energy, etc. A huge, bureaucratic accounting execise.What I was envisaging was something less complcated — counting particular labour skills alongside materials and energy involved in the last stage of producing something (much as builders do now to organise building a house). You seem to be talking about using labour-time as a general unit of account to replace money. Hopefully, you don't envisage putting a labour-time "price" on products for which "labour-time voucher" would have to be handed in to get them. I don't know.
