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Dave B wrote:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm

It's some time since I've read this but, you're right, there's some good stuff in it (even if rather dated). For instance:

Quote:

The only value known in economics is the value of commodities. What are commodities? Products made in a society of more or less separate private producers, and therefore in the first place private products. These private products, however, become commodities only when they are made, not for consumption by their producers, but for consumption by others, that is, for social consumption; they enter into social consumption through exchange.

Quote:

Commodity production, however, is by no means the only form of social production. In the ancient Indian communities and in the family communities of the southern Slavs, products are not transformed into commodities. The members of the community are directly associated for production; the work is distributed according to tradition and requirements, and likewise the products to the extent that they are destined for consumption. Direct social production and direct distribution preclude all exchange of commodities, therefore also the transformation of the products into commodities (at any rate within the community) and consequently also their transformation into values.

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 (…) 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”.

Quote:

The concept of value is the most general and therefore the most comprehensive expression of the economic conditions of commodity production. Consequently, this concept contains the germ, not only of money, but also of all the more developed forms of the production and exchange of commodities. (…) The value form of products therefore already contains in embryo the whole capitalist form of production, the antagonism between capitalists and wage-workers, the industrial reserve army, crises. To seek to abolish the capitalist form of production by establishing "true value" is therefore tantamount to attempting to abolish Catholicism by establishing the "true" Pope, or to set up a society in which at last the producers control their product, by consistently carrying into life an economic category which is the most comprehensive expression of the enslavement of the producers by their own product.

Value as "the most comprehensive expression of the enslavement of the producers by their own product". Strong stuff, and why we've always described an exchange economy based on workers coops producing for the market as "workers self-exploitation".

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Sepehr wrote:

I will not waste my time responding to those who obviously know nothing more than reiterating their dogmatic views, and therefore do not seek to learn the slightest point.

No wonder you don't want to defend your dogmatic views on "value" as you haven't got a leg to stand on. That Marx thought that value would/could continue into socialism is just plain wrong. It's also wrong irrespective of what Marx may or may not have thought. Socialism is a non-market and therefore a non-value society.

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Sepehr wrote:

One of the main features of Marx's method is the fact that all of its elements are interconnected. Therefore a seemingly minor error in one place will have massive ripple effects in all directions. I say this because I believe your position on internationalism, nationalism and value theory are interconnected. Revision in one area will necessitate revisions in all other areas.

If this were true (which it isn't) then this would apply with even more force to you since you are not just "revising" Marx's value theory but are totally rejecting it in favour of a rival one.Discussions about Marx's strategy and tactics in the 19th century for furthering the cause of socialism are interesting from a historical point of view but in adopting them Marx was wanting to further the cause of socialism, i.e a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society of common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, not your cause of an exchange economy of competing workers co-ops. That wasn't his aim and so the political positions he adopted in the conditions of the time had nothing to do with achieving it. There were of course people around at the time who did have this aim, Proudhon and his followers for instance. Dave B has suggested that Duhring ( of Anti fame) might have been one too, if we want to revive the arguments of the 19th century.

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According to this, Israel is still toying with the policy of balkanising Syria proposed in that document from the 50s or 60s that Dave B dug up and mentioned here.Here's what Nuttyahoo said at Davos the other day:

Quote:

Regarding the future of Syria, the prime minister said he “doubts” a unitary Syrian state can ever reemerge.“I wish it could happen, but I’m not sure you could put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I’d say the best result you might be able to get is a benign Balkanization, benign cantonization in Syria. That’s as good as you’re going to get.”

The establishment of Israel itself was of course a Balkanization of Palestine and his government is implementing a not so benign cantonisation of the part of Palestine not (yet?) included in Israel.

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Dave B wrote:

Don’t be a rotter Adam and throw Wolf in my teeth

That really would be a rotten thing to do, but I didn't. I was making the point that Wolf didn't even advocate the sort of general labour-time accounting that you seem to be (and which maybe Marx did though he didn't regard this as value calculation), but that he actually envisages the continuation of production for the market and so of value (in the Marxian sense) and monetary calculation; which of course you don't.I'm not quite sure what to call Wolff's scheme for an exchange economy of competing workers coops. It has more in common with anarchist mutualism or Green small is beautiful capitalism than socialism. Utopian is an obvious description but then we shouldn't use this in a perjorative sense like others do to us. Anyway, it's not the solution to the problems that the wage and salary working class face under the capitalist exchange economy.

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Dave, If you are saying that in a non-exchange, socialist society there will still be a need to count labour and labour-time I don't disagree. But I don't think that this is the same as "value". For a number of reasons. What socialist society will be measuring is not "socially necessary labour" but concrete, actual labour, i.e specific kinds of labour power, in the same sort of way that it will measure the other things needed to produce things (once again, as physical quantities of actual things).I don't see the need to try to reduce everything to its abstract labour content. That would require a huge bureaucracy that would be as wasteful as monetary calculation is today. Besides, it wouldn't be easy, in fact it wouldn't be possible, to measure "socially necessary labour time". This is established in the end on and by the market but there will be no market in socialism. It can't be measured directly under capitalism either even with markets (as Marx pointed out in his criticisms of the various labour-money theories of his time). The other big problem would be reducing skilled labour to units of simple labour. Another impossible and pointless task.So, not only has socialist society no need of the concept of "value" which is a market concept but it won't need a general labour-time unit of account either. It will just need to calculate what particular types of labour power are available or needed (measured by skill and time) just as it will to calculate the particular types of materials (measured in physical quantities).Wolff and his follower here  are of course saying that value (in the Marxian sense) will continue into "socialism" as they envisage exchange relations to continue, only between workers co-ops rather than capitalist business enterprises. On this they are right. It would continue under such a utopian scheme but it wouldn't be socialism.

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This is a essentially an argument over the meaning of socialism and, secondarily, over what Marx meant by socialism (or communism as he preferred to call it). Does socialism, can socialism, involve an exchange economy? We say no. Wolff and his followers say yes. Marx said no too, but that's a matter of historical interest and accuracy.

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Actually, Bowie had nothing to say about socialism. His last political statement was to call for a No vote in the Scottish referendum in 2014 but on British nationalist rather than anti-nationalism in general grounds.  I don't think much of him myself (all that bawling and prancing!) but he does seem to have had a cultural influence on attitudes to dress and sexuality. So, worth at least a passing comment and we happen to have someone who can do it.

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Sepehr wrote:

He clearly mentions commodities are produced under all modes of production. If there are commodities, there is exchange. If there is exchange, there is value. If there is value, there is surplusvalue, i.e. produced value excess to the socially necessary labour time. And socially necessary labour time exists in all societies, whether capitalist or non-capitalist.

If this is the passage you are referring (and quote in an earlier post) then Marx is not saying what you say he is saying(that "commodities are produced under all modes of production"). What he is saying is that

Marx wrote:

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)

What he is saying that wherever commodities are produced, i.e whenever goods are produced for sale, so is value, irrespective of who produces it and under what conditions, whether by a wage-worker employed by a capitalist, a worker working for himself on his own, by slaves (as, eg, in the antebellum American South) or by "a community of working people" (e.g a cooperative of one sort or another). If, on the other hand, the producers are not producing commodities (wealth for sale) then no value is produced, again irrespective of the conditions, whether by subsistence farmers, slaves or serfs producing for their direct use and the direct use of their masters, or free producers in socialist society.But this passage does mean that Marx, you and us agree on one thing: where commodities are produced by "communities of working-people" (as Wolff and you propose)  then so is value and, if you like, "surplus value" (as the value produced over and above the value of what is needed to maintain the workers fit to work). The point of disagreement is over whether or not Marx regarded such an arrangement as socialism. We think not, and the evidence is on our side. Marx clearly wanted to see an end to commodity-production, of which capitalism is the highest form, and its "fetishism" (alienation).

Sepher wrote:

If there is value, there is surplusvalue, i.e. produced value excess to the socially necessary labour time. And socially necessary labour time exists in all societies, whether capitalist or non-capitalist.

Here you are mixing up two different concepts of "necessary labour" in Marxian economy. There is (a) necessary labour in the sense of the labour needed to maintain the producers as producers and (b) socially necesssary labour as the content of value. No doubt (a) will exist in all societies, including socialism, but (b) is something different.  It is a measure of the labour embodied in a commodity which of course is more than "necessary labour" in sense (a). If the value of commodities was determined by the amount of sense (a) necessary labour then of course they would be selling at a price much lower than they actually do. True, it wasn't a good idea to use the term "necessary labour" with two different meanings but there you are.

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Dave B wrote:

The confusion is understandable after a fashion because the word ‘value’ lends itself to confusion with ‘economic’ value; whereas it should be understood as ‘a’ particular  value as in something that can be quantified.It would be therefore better I think if was dropped totally and all the words ‘value’ substituted for ‘quantity of human effort’, denominated in time, for the sake of convenience.

I don't think that would be helpful as it suggests that "value" is a thing but this is precisely the point at issue. That's a definition which, like any definition, can be defended as it was, for instance, by David Ricardo, but not by Marx.This is what he wrote when introducing the concept of "value" in the opening chapter of Capital (in Section 3, a few pages in)

Marx wrote:

The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.

So a product of "human effort" only has value (in this sense) when it is produced to be exchanged for other such products, i.e to be bought and sold. And, although the substance of value is a "quantity of human effort", the value of a item produced for sale (a commodity) is not the actual amount of  effort exerted to produce it but the quantity of "abstract social labour" which is not the same and which can't be measured independently of the market; in fact it is the market which establishes what it is. This is why of course value in the Marxian sense won't exist in socialism as a non-market, non-exchange society. In fact to say that socialism is a non-market society is to say that is a non-value society.So, what you write in the following about value isthe  exact opposite of what Marx was trying to say( "that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity"):

Dave B wrote:

“Value”, like mass?, as a property or quantity of human effort that is ‘embodied in something’, as a predicate, is a ‘thing in itself’ that as such ‘categorically’ continues to exists independently of any relationships they may have with each other.

For Marx products of human effort only have value precisely because their enter into relationships with products of human effort. A product of human effort on its own does not have any value (in the Marxian sense).Of course if you think it does then value has always existed and always will. To say something had value would just be another way of saying that it was a product of human effort..

Dave B wrote:

Would ‘value’, or ‘quantity of human effort’, continue to exist or ‘matter’ in free access socialism?

Of course in socialism products would still be the products of human effort and could be said to embody of a "quantity of human effort" but that wouldn't be value in the Marxian sense. And it would be the product of specific types of human effort not of "abstract human labour". Yes, it will need to be measured as will all the other resources used to produce something. But this will be part of calculation in kind and won't be a value calculation.

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The openly pro-business lot in the Labour Party will be horrified as they see it as a voter-loser (or, more importantly for them, as a seat-loser) but a promise like this won't necessarily lose the Labour Party votes at this juncture. Whether, if ever introduced, it would have the desired result is quite another matter. Reforms which impinge on the profitability of capitalist enterprises tend to backfire and have unintended consequences. In any event, Corbyn is still thinking in terms of a capitalist economy with profit-seeking enterprises and just wants to try to reform it.

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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.

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One of the first, perhaps the first, to do some original research on this was SPGBer Moses Baritz, as in this article in 1934 in the Manchester Guardian as it was then called:http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/engels-his-20-years-in-manchester-1934.html

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That tweet was only banter, didn't make any political point. Still, would have kept our name in view.

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Perspective article here confirming that there is no  "moderate" opposition to ISIS and the Syrian government:  the vast majority of them are Islamist and Sunni sectarian gangsters who despise and hate secular political democracy:http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/01/syria-isis-nusra-aleppo-opposition-jihadi-assad-terrorist.html

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