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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.

[ALB]

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.

[ALB]

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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Here's a recent example of a misinterpretation of "fictitious capital" by a group in the Marxist tradition leading to a theory of the financial meltdown of capitalism similar to that embraced by many currency cranks. It's from a new manifesto by Internationalist Perspectives who emerged from the ICC some years ago now and some of whose stuff isn't that bad. Unlike this:

Quote:

Capitalism has, especially in the last 60 years, increasingly sought refuge in money creation, either to stimulate production and consumption, or to stimulate the growth of the hoard, propping up its “value” despite a declining rate of value creation in the real economy. In other words, a massive creation of fictitious capital, not resulting from new value but created out of thin air, has been mixed into the pot. Money has grown at an increasingly faster pace than “the real economy”, that is, than the value of the commodities that are actually produced and sold. Therefore, it must devalue. But that only happens when production and consumption are stimulated despite the lack of profitability. The result is high inflation, endangering the value of money as such and thus of the entire hoard.A second approach has been more efficient: by forking over newly-created money directly to capital (meanwhile demanding austerity from the rest of society), the hoard has been successfully defended. Most of that new money never enters into circulation except within the hoard itself. It therefore causes no inflation (again, except in the hoard). While propping up the demand for financial assets, the money is sterilized in the coffers of central and private banks in the fortunes of the super-rich. There, it does no good (only a small fraction of it re-enters the productive sphere) but also no harm. Precisely by not re-entering the circulation of commodities, the hoard hides the fictitious nature of the money that is created without a corresponding creation of value. The program of the capitalist left would accomplish the opposite and reveal the fiction. And it is on this fiction that capitalism rests. The belief that money is value and that value is real wealth. If that belief falters, capitalism breaks down.

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Name hasn't been decided by EC yet. Last time we contested (2012) it was "The Socialist Party (GB)". But we can now use "The Socialist Party (SP-GB)" if we want or of course "The Socialist Party of Great Britain". Personally, I like "The Socialist Party (SP-GB)".We will use our only registered emblem. It's different from what we used in the general election. I'm sure Gnome can post it here.

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Danny Lambert, Bill Martin and Vahe Stepanian

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Cameron has finally admitted that he lied about there being 70,000 "moderate" rebels in Syria ready to support Britain's bombing campaign against ISIS. As everybody knew from their words and deeds, most of these so-called "moderates" are fanatical Islamists just as bad as IS, rival gangs that want to impose sharia law on the workers and peasants of Syria instead of ISIS:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12096133/David-Cameron-admits-70000-moderate-Syrian-army-contains-relatively-hardline-Islamist-militants.html

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That's not quite what he said, just that technology replaces jobs. This doesn't mean that technology creates wealth instead of workers, but that fewer works create wealth using the new technology. It's still human labour that creates wealth or, rather, fashions, using human made machines, materials that originally came from nature into useful goods and services.

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