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Capitalist Pig wrote:

I know Marx said 'that he was no marxist' and wanted nothing to do with people calling themselves marxist

The first part is true insofar as Marx was reported as saying that he wasn't a Marxist but the second is not, i.e. it is not true that Marx wanted nothing to do with people calling themselves Marxists. After all, they were people who were sympathetic to his point of view, so he was in effect telling them not to use the term. The term was in fact invented by Marx's opponents in the First International in the 1870s to describe those who took Marx's side. They, in turn, dubbed their opponents "Bakuninists".Eventually, after Marx's death, socialists who accepted his analysis of capitalism, his theory of history and his advocacy of political action to achieve socialism accepted the term and began to call themselves Marxists. And it stuck. Unfortunately, there are Marxists and Marxists (or even Marxists and "Marxists").I think it safe to say that Marx would have wanted nothing to do with "Marxism" as the ideology of state capitalist regimes, past, present and future (Russia, China, Trotskyists, etc) as regimes which maintain minority rule, wage-labour, production for sale..

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Looks more like Attlee getting a taste of his own medicine. He criticises (presumably) those who criticise him for accommodating to capitalism when he was prime minister as "doctrinaire socialists" only to be criticised by the Tories as one himself. But, again, when he make the alleged statement?

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jondwhite wrote:

I heard recently that Attlee spoke out against what he called "doctrinaire socialists". Is this a simple Labour misrepresentation or is there more to this?

When exactly did he say this? That will have some importance as to what he meant.

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Horace Jarvis was a member. See his obituary here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1975/no-856-december-1975/obituary-horace-jarvisWhen he was in the Communist Party he had been in their front organisation, the League of Militant  Atheists, but when the CP adopted the Popular Front policy of union with any anti-fascists including Christians it was dissolved. He refused to accept this and this presumably was the reason he was expelled.The Party did not publish his pamphlet as its approach (eg pointing out the contradictions between different passages in the bible) was old-fashioned Free Thinker atheism. So he published it himself. It's ok if you like that sort of thing but the Party has a more sophisticated, materialist analysis of religion.

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Quote:

only sheep need leaders

I'm beginning to wonder whether this slogan is correct. I am on holiday in the middle of Wales and was stopped on the road by a farmer's daughter and told to wait as a flock of sheep was coming. I looked carefully for a leading sheep but couldn't identify one. Their movement appeared to be governed from behind by someone in a landrover and two sheepdogs.I am not sure what the political consequences of this are.

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It's surprising how many people who should know better take that view on Corbyn. The triumph of hope over reason, I suppose

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Dave B wrote:

To add the following15As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/notes.htm

That quote from Engels is just saying that "all that would be left" of the concept of value in socialist society is that products will still be products of labour that took a certain time to produce and would (in his opinion) continue to be measured as such, as the full passage to which the footnote refers makes clear:

Quote:

From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average. Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. Just as little as it would occur to chemical science still to express atomic weight in a roundabout way, relatively, by means of the hydrogen atom, if it were able to express them absolutely, in their adequate measure, namely in actual weights, in billionths or quadrillionths of a gramme. Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”. *15

Whatever else Engels might be saying (and like Robbo I have my doubts about the system of labour-time accounting he seems to be advocating — "labour" is not the only resource that would need to be measured in physical quantities), he is not saying that "value" itself will continue to exist in a socialist society.Since we are both agreed that there will be no exchange and so exchange-value in a socialist society this is a bit of an argument about definitions, with you defining value as "labour time content" and Marx and Engels tying it to "exchange". Obviously, products in socialism will have a labour-time content but won't exchange. Whether or not you say  "value" will still exist depends on how you define it.

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Two things are being mixed up here:(1) Did Marx think that "value" would continue to exist in socialism as a society that no longer produces for sale?and(2) Did Marx consider that labour-time accounting would exist in socialism?While he probably did think labour-time accounting would exist in socialism, he certainly didn't think that value would.The quote you give, Dave B, is merely saying that what determines value in a capitalist society, i.e. a product of labour's labour-time content, will continue in socialism. That's obvious as products of labour will still be …. products of labour. What they won't be is products that are bought and sold (exchanged) so that their labour-time content won't express itself as "exchange value". I take it you agree that exchange value won't exist in socialism.I would think that there will be accounting/measuring of labour used in socialism, but it won't be labour in general, but specific numbers and time required of specific types if work. In other words, it will be part of calculation in kind with the "kind" in question being capacity to work, alongside the materials and energy needed to produce something.

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I see it's still risky to eat vegetables too:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ecoli-deaths-mixed-salad-leaves-linked-outbreak-after-two-die-food-warning-a7142656.html

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Dave B wrote:

So then if idealistically, from a formal logical proposition etc; if the (‘substance’) of the value of something is the amount of human effort that has been expended to produce it then; in feudalism, simple commodity production, capitalism, communism and Robinson Crusoe on his non social Island of one, things that are produced have value.Karl and Marx also said they did, and would, and had.

No they didn't. All they said was that in all societies, including socialism, wealth (something useful fashioned from materials that originally came from nature)would be the product of human work, which could be measured by time taken. But that, it was only in societies where wealth was produced for sale that products of work assumed the form of value.That's the way they defined "value". Of course we are not bound to follow their definitions and if you want to define value in your way as labour-time you are free to but not to attribute it to Marx. And you'll need to explain why products of labour have an "exchange value" in some societies but not in others.

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Trying to work out why the ruling class and their media should be so apparently unfairly opposed to Corbyn (when he's only a harmless reformist advocating what Harold Wilson did 60 years ago), I wonder whether the vote in parliament yesterday on Trident gives a clue — they don't want the main opposition party, which has a chance of forming a government, to be unilateralist? It might be a coincidence but they encouraged the SDP breakaway in 1981 which effectively ruled out a possibly unilaterialist Labour Party from getting into government in the likely future. They want nuclear weapons because, in the capitalist world of competing states, "might is right", so this is of vital interest to them.

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Here he is endorsing the belief  "that Jeremy Corbyn can help to provide a way out of the mess we are in."http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/labour-jeremy-corbyn-and-the-search-for-the-partys-henry-viiHe's all over the place or, at best, a curate's egg.

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Here's some notes Marx once made on the difference between the German words for "value" and "worth". Not sure that we need to go into that much detail though 

Quote:

The only thing which clearly lies at the bottom of the German stupidity is the fact that linguistically the words value [Wert] or worth [Würde] were first applied to the useful things themselves, which existed for a long time, even as “products of labour,” before becoming commodities.  But this has as little to do with the scientific determination of the “value” of the commodity as the fact that the word salt was first used by the ancients for cooking salt, and consequently sugar, etc. also figure as varieties of salt from Pliny onwards (indeed, all colourless solids soluble in water and with a peculiar taste), and therefore the chemical category “salt” includes sugar, etc.As the commodity is bought by the purchaser not because it has value but because it is a “use-value,” and is used for definite purposes, it goes without saying that 1. use-values are “assessed,” i.e. their quality is investigated (just as their quantity is weighed, measured, etc.); 2. if different sorts of commodities can be substituted for one another for the same use, one or the other will be given preference, etc., etc.In Gothic there is only one word for Wert and Würde: vairths, τιμη, //τιμαω, assess, i.e. evaluate; to determine the price or value, to rate; metaphorically: to appreciate, esteem, honour, distinguish.  Τιμη—assessment, hence: determination of value or price, evaluation, valuation. Then: estimation, also, value, price itself (Herodotus, Plato), αι τιμα—expenses in Demosthenes.  Then: estimation, honour, respect, place of honour, honorary post, etc., Rost's Greek-German Dictionary.(….)Furthermore it should be noted that—even in this linguistic connection—if it follows automatically, as if by the nature of the thing, from the original identity of Würde and Wert that this word also referred to things, products of labour in their natural form—it was later directly applied unchanged to prices, i.e. value in its developed value-form, i.e. exchange-value, which has so little to do with the matter that the same word continued to be used for worth in general, for honorary offices, etc. Thus, linguistically speaking, there is no distinction here between use-value and value.

I think, YMS, that the Anglo-Saxon word is: veordh, vurdh. The English word value must come from French.

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Matt wrote:

If you want to jump aboard the good ship Socialism and join us, you can help out with  fresh sea breezes and bright wheezes in the  Education Committee.

Well, Ralph, what are you waiting for? The reason why work on the Production for Use project stalled has been a lack of members to carry it on properly. So, as Matt says, there's a place for you. Or have you some other objection(s) to our approach?

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Good. Socialists stand for the class war not the sex war.

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