ALB
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Sympo wrote:ALB wrote:
"Value (in the Marxian sense) is not the same as 'the average amount of labour put into a certain commodity' (from start to finish)."So what is value?
Value is the form wealth takes in a society where goods and services are produced for sale on a market. It's what lies behind exchange value and is expressed, in exchange, as the amount of socially necessary labour that has to be expended to produce a commodity from start to finish. Wealth in socialism will still be the product of so many hours work but, socialism being a non-market society, will not take the form of value. So the same product of labour will be value in capitalism but not in socialism, i.e. labour content and value are not the same as the former can exist without being the latter..
Sympo wrote:"In principle, 'total price' = 'total exchange value'."What does this mean exactly?That the sum total of the prices all the goods and services on sale is the same as the sum total of their exchange-values. But don't forget the words "in principle" as this assumes that capitalism is a static economy whereas it is not. As productivity increases, the exchange value of the commodities concerned diminishes (because the amount of socially necessary labour to reproduce them does) so that in practice total prices won't always equal total exchange values even if this will be the tendency. In fact, capitalist being a dynamic economy, it is unlikely that the equilibrium is ever reached.The point is that you can't adequately explain prices without recourse to exchange-value (and value). Modern academic bourgeois economists think they can but that's because they are only interested in the surface appearance of things, and the business managers, whose approach they reflect, can work very well without the concepts of value and exchange value.No objection to your explanation of how the producers are exploited under capitalism.
Oh no, not that again ! What a bore. Marx and the emerging industrial workers' movement versus Bakunin and his band of old-fashioned and conspiratorial insurrectionists from the less developed parts of Europe (plus some artisans from Paris who favoured a small-scale market economy).
Sympo wrote:This may be a dumb question, but why exactly do we need the concept of "value" if by value we mean the average amount of labour put in a certain commodity(if this definition is incorrect please correct me)?Value (in the Marxian sense) is not the same as "the average amount of labour put into a certain commodity" (from start to finish). We will still be able to calculate this average amount in a socialist society (if we wanted to) but it wouldn't be value. This labour takes the form of "value" only when the product has been produced as a commodity, i.e for sale. Value and value production are features only of a society that produces for sale. Value is a description of the form wealth takes in such a society. In socialism wealth will not take this form but will simply be a use-value.
Sympo wrote:Labour power is a commodity, right? So is labour power priced according to the "price of production"?Labour-power is indeed a commodity but its price is its "cost of production" (which might not be the same as the sum of the values of the commodities involved), i.e "price of production" less the element of "average profit" which is obviously not applicable in this case.
Sympo wrote:Also, what is the point of having the concept of exchange-value if it does not have anything to do with the price of a commodity?It does have something to do with the price of a commodity, but only indirectly. In principle, "total price" = "total exchange value".We're using the definitions of Marxian economics here, which is not the only way of describing things. It is quite possible to describe the exploitation of workers without having recourse to Marx's economic concepts such as "value", e.g work on materials that originally came from nature is the only source of wealth (goods and services useful in a given society), so if there's a class of people who live off a non-work income that income must derive from the work of those who do or have worked.The case for saying that capitalism is based on the exploitation of the producers and that socialism will end this does not rest on Marxian economics. It's just that, in our view, Marx elaborated the best explanation of how capitalism works.
Sympo wrote:Also, what is the difference with exchange value and value? I thought there were two types of value according to Marx, exchange-value and use-value, and that he often refers to exchange-value as just "value"?Yes, in some of his earlier writings on economics (his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy that came out in 1859, for instance), Marx did not make a distinction between "exchange value" and "value" but in the various editions of Capital (from 1867 on) he did. As YMS has just pointed out, "exchange value" is the expression of "value" in exchange, i.e is the two are not the same. As we said in this Education Document, dating from 1973:
Quote:Wealth, we know, only takes the form of commodities under certain social conditions, specifically when it is produced for sale. Similarly with labour (used-up human energy. Cf. “work“ in engineering); under the same social conditions it becomes “value”. Thus value is not something you can find in the physical or chemical properties of a commodity, for it is a social property, a social relation. However, as value only expresses itself in exchange, as exchange-value, this social relation appears as a relation between things. This is what is behind Marx’s writing about the “fetishism of commodities”. Price is the monetary expression of value.So, value is a social relationship (between commodity producers as producers producing something for sale) while "exchange value" is a relationship between things.When money has evolved "exchange value" is the same as "price". So, if you don't distinguish between "value" and "exchange value", you end up with only use value (utility) and price, like modern academic economics which preaches that you don't need the concept of "value".It also leads to misunderstanding the Marxian Labour Theory of Value as a a Labour Theory of Exchange Value (or Price) as it was for Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Which leads to all sorts of complications and contradictions.As a matter of fact, Marx did not think that under capitalism, where there is not just production for exchange (the market) but there is also production for profit (surplus value), commodities were priced at their (exchange) value. Due to the tendency for the rate of profit to be the same in all fields of capitalist investment, commodities were priced at what he called their "price of production", which was cost price + average rate of profit. Only accidentally would this be the same as the amount of socially necessary labour needed to produce them from start to finish. But, as items of wealth produced for sale, they were still expressions of the underlying social relationship of "value".
Actually the Production for Use Committee continued until a year or so ago when it was amalgamated with the Education Committee. Some of its work was used for articles in the Socialist Standard or for talks. For instance:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no1289-january-2012/too-many-people-or-not-enough-food-productionhttp://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/events/102162132/
That's what he, the new Minister for Brexit thinks (dreams). Shrewd move by Maggie May to put Brexiteers in charge of the Brexit negotiatons. They'll have a better chance of selling what they come up with to keep access to the single market to the xenophobes who are more concerned with keeping foreigners out.
robbo203 wrote:ALB wrote:If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?"Like today but without money" would be a helluva lot different from the world we live in today, though, Adam!As is often pointed , its not so much money that we seek to get rid as the socio-economic relationships that necessitate money. The disappearance of these relationships could not but make for a radically different kind of experience in so many diverse ways. Which is why I would question the logic of the argument that socialism equals capitalism minus the money
Saying that Pieter Lawrence thought that "socialism is capitalism without money" was of course a caricature but it's what we used to say, in part because he also argued that the police, the courts, criminal and contract law would continue into socialism. The ironic thing is that he also wrote some very good stuff on alienation under capitalism and how relationships in socialism would be different. See his articles on the Marxist Internet Archive here:https://www.marxists.org/archive/lawrence/index.htmActually, the Production for Use committee's work did have an outcome: the publication of our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative( http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative ) which Pieter drafted. It's good stuff. Very good stuff. It was published in 1987 and is now outdated in one respect: it didn't take into account the spread to the general population of the internet and mobile phones and the possibilities this opens up. A warning that any "blueprint" is going to have to be constantly updated.I am all in favour of us showing how socialism is technologically feasible, e.g that there are enough resources to eliminate poverty, malnutrition, etc but I don't think that will satisfy Ralph. He won't be satisfied till we can tell him where he can park his car or what he will have for breakfast in socialism.
If I remember right Pieter Lawrence thought that socialism would be like today but without money. Maybe he was right. Obviously it will be to start with. Will that do?
robbo203 wrote:I find this whole train of thought stemming from Marx expressing an ingrained reluctance to “write recipes for the cook-shops of the future" deeply regrettable. As a matter of fact had Marx been more forthcoming in that regard it would have been far more difficult for the Leninists of all hues to assimilate Marxian thinking to their own anti-socialist and statist project.Actually, Marx did say quite a bit about your (1) and (2) and certainly enough to counter Leninist distortions:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-832-december-1973/marxs-conception-socialismIt was (3) he wasn't so keen on (and of course the "cook-shops" of Marx's day, where you could buy ready-cooked meals, were quite different to those of today). Others like Edward Bellamy and William Morris were prepared to have a go But these are descriptions of what the writer would personally like socialism to be like not what it actually will be. I don't think that would satisfy Ralph. He does seem to be insisting on knowing what the cook-shops of the future will be like rather than could be or might be.
I agree that the workers had no alternative but to resist the fascist action to overthrow political democracy. In fact the only practicable outcome of some benefit to the working class there would have been the consolidation of political democracy, which would have allowed them to organise to fight the class struggle on the economic front and for socialist and other ideas to be propagated and discussed. But this was not to be either, due to the intervention of outside dictatorial powers. Germany and Italy on the fascist side, and Russia on the Republican side though this presented a problem since Russia wasn't really in favour of political democracy.A statement that appeared in the May 1937 Socialist Standard (Baltrop in The Monument mistakenly says it appear in March) gave general support to defending political democracy but left it up to workers on the ground in Spain to decide how best to try to defend it:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1930s/1937/no-393-may-1937/spgb-and-spainBarltrop said it caused a controversy, from two different directions: those who said it did not go far enough in its support for those (literally) fighting for democracy and those who said it went too far. The same sort of issue came up 60 or so years later over the movements for political democracy in Eastern Europe though not complicated by the question of armed resistance.
I see Chomsky figures among the signatories to this statement:
Quote:At a time when austerity, insecurity and racism remain real threats to the lives of many people in the UK, we believe that Jeremy Corbyn can help to provide a way out of the mess we are in.Sympathy with Corbyn for the way the media have treated him as a person is one thing, but support for his reformist Old Labourite policies which failed in the 60s and 70s is another.
This contemporary article (from 1937), by someone who had an intimate knowledge of Spain and what was happening there, explains why the Spanish revolution was not going to succeed and what would have happened had the CNT succeeded in implementing its plan for trade union control of the Spanish economy:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/spain-turns.html
Quote:The Spanish Revolution – and a revolution is taking place – is limited by the following conditions:1. The unsocialist outlook of the population of Spain. 2. The unsocialist outlook of the population of the rest of Europe. 3. The low level of the economic development of Spain, working for the eventual defeat of revolutionary action that is limited to Spain.Quote:Functioning for any length of time in the midst of the world market, the industrial enterprise taken over by the Catalonian trade union and coordinated into a national system through the "Federation of Industry," must undergo the same influences that act on any producers' cooperative. They must "pay." They must be profitable in the capitalist sense, the only sense possible or go under. Effected on a national scale, complemented by the State or Federation monopoly of the country's foreign trade and by this single control of the economic-financial activity of the nation, such "socialization" might work again, in the capitalist sense. For as a result of this monopoly, the national "cooperative" would assure itself of a constant market at home and thus subtract itself, on the domestic field, from the laws of competition. But the national "cooperative" will not be able to escape the laws of competition in the international arena. There it will have to stand up against all comers all other sellers and buyers in order to dispose of its goods at a profit and to pay for credit. …. In order to be able to do that, the National Federation of Industry its central control will have to adopt toward its workers the erstwhile free cooperators the same attitude that any capitalist entrepreneur takes to his employees. The national cooperative soon the national capitalist will have to squeeze out of the producers working in the total national enterprise enough surplus-value to realize at least an average rate of profit on the world market. It will have to do that or drop out of the world market and collapse into backward sel-sufficiency.Sad but true. That was the tragedy of the Spanish Revolution. It was never going to succeed.
DJP wrote:Bookchin's criticism is that the anarchists allowed political power to flow away from them and unwittingly gave it to their opponents.In which case, to return to KAZ's original question, it was the non-participation, not the participation, of the CNT in the regional government of Catalonia that would have been "detrimental".
DJP wrote:I'm in agreement with Bookchin on this. The anarcho-syndicalists controlled the economy of Catalonia but they allowed the "socialists" to remain in control of a significant portion of the state machinery. This would come back to haunt them later, and would seem to confirm what we say about the necessity of gaining state power.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2015/no-1336-december-2015/book-reviews-next-revolution-killing-fields-ineqIn that book Bookchin makes a valid point but seems to be suggesting that the CNT did not enter the regional government of Catalonia but surely they did, even if only as the junior partner (as, for a while, did the POUM). Did they or didn't they?
