[robbo203]

Marcos wrote:

That conception of Alt-Left is just a stupidity, there is not a movement or an organization in the USA called Alt-Left, anything that  opposes the Republican Party, or the right wingers, is called Alt-Lef, it is like the term Liberal  that is being for all  kind of situation, except for the real ones, there are not liberal in the USA, and Liberalism does not exist either. Most of the so called Alt-Left are just a bunch of reactionaries, recalcitrants,  and similar to the right winger. Leninist which is the real leftists do not support the so called Alt-Lett

 There is a FB group called "Alt-Leftist Empire" which has over 10,000 members and calls itself a subset of liberals and leftists distinguishable from the "regressive left" – it is purportedly in favour of free speech ad opposed to Antifa and the Alt Right.  I tried to join the site to exchange ideas but it didnt allow me in.  My suspicions are that it is a front for Ancaps of various kinds

[robbo203]

That is an interesting article, Alan. But Bookchin the Younger demonstrates, unfortunately,  the same kind of black-or-white thinking that Bookchin the Elder exhibited.  I'm thinking of these two paragraphs in particular: Municipalism rejects seizing state power, which we all know from the experiences of the twentieth century to be a hopeless pursuit, a dead end, because the state — whether capitalist or socialist — with its faceless bureaucracy is never truly responsive to the people. At the same time, activists must acknowledge that we won't achieve social change simply by taking our demands to the street. Large encampments and demonstrations may challenge the authority of the state, but they have not succeeded in usurping it. Those who engage only in a politics of protest or organizing on the margins of society must recognize that there will always be power — it does not simply dissolve. The question is in whose hands this power will reside: in the centralized authority of the state, or on the local level with the people.It is increasingly clear that we will never achieve the kind of fundamental social change we so desperately need simply by going to the ballot box. Social change won't occur by voting for the candidate who promises us a $15 minimum wage, free education, family leave or offers platitudes about social justice. When we confine ourselves to voting for the lesser of evils, to the bones that social democracy throws our way, we play into and support the very centralized state structure that is designed to keep us down forever. Why is it that so often on the Left, the Marxist argument for seizing the political instrument that we call the state, is just automatically and in knee jerk fashion, equated with a programme  of reforms implemented by some "faceless bureaucracy"?  This  shows a lack of imagination or readiness to think laterally and project into a future state of affairs,  if and when there is a very substantial socialist movement  that has materialised out there (without, of course, which there can be no socialism). There is no necessary reason why the democratic capture of the state as a strategy should go down the road envisaged by  Bookchin -providing it is made clear at the outset that this is not what it is being used for.  I am very sympathetic to the idea of local intiatives along the lines Bookchin suggests but I am also aware that the fundamental social change we are arguing for absolutely requires large scale coordination  backed up by large scale so-consciousness. It cannot  happen peicemeal in the systemic sense we are talking about… This, to me, is the  absolutely key advantage that the  " parliamentary road to socialism" possesses which  no other strategy seems to possses – namely its symbolic coordinating function that concentrates the wishes of a majority in a form that enables the switchover from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production to happen – and in a manner that effectively de-legitimises the moral authority of  capitalism to continue (thus reducing the prospect of destabilising violence which is not in our interests).  How else do you coordinate the changeover from private ownership to common ownership of the means  of production? This is what the opponents of the parliamentary apporach never ever explain.  It is a huge lacuna in their argument; a fatal flaw, in my opinion Perhaps it might  be worth contacting Debbie Bookchin to engage her in an exchange of ideas on precsely this point

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MBellemare wrote:

Hence a new elaborated analysis is required. Thus, a term like "creative-power" which encompasses both quantifiable labor-power and unquantifiable labor-power.Now, the working class is the most numerous, and thus its creatice-power is the bulk of creative-power expenditures. Who else could support a football team, with outlandish prices and wages, certainly not the few capitalists who organize a stadium and/or the premier league. Workers, who are the bulk of creative-power, expend their creative-power, in believing in football or hockey and consuming football and hockey. 

 Michel, you have me confused now about this concept of yours of "creative power".  I was thinking of the ability to attract huge price increases for  products well above their cost of production  – in contrast to the Marx's "cheapening of commodities" brought about by technological innovation and enhanced productivity.  Branding as a form of advertising is a good example  of this because it invests the commodity in question with layers of signfiicance and emotional associations.  As I suggested earlier, you are lulled into thinking that buying  a pair of Nike shoes is like buying into a way of life Now you are saying creative power is really just an attribute or extension of labour power and as such resides substantially in the working class itself – in its ability to imagine.  I dont quite get this.  You say workers expend their creative power supporting their football or hockey team and paying through the nose for the privilege of doing so.  But does this connect with the idea of raising prices way above the cost of production.? I had thought the expenditure off creative power was something that benefited those who did the expending.- like the football stars you mention.  Now you seem to be saying the opposite – that the workers in whom this creative power substantially resides are the victims of their own ability to exercise creative power even to the extent of leaving themselves without enough money to put food on the table or gas in their cars as I think you mentioned earlier.  They are the ones who have to pay the high price of supporting their football or hockey team Could you possibily clarify this?

[robbo203]

MBellemare wrote:

   Well, fellas, I am glad that Robbo does acknowledge, some truth to my perspective. And, like Robbo, I think Klein's book "NO LOGO" is a gem, 

Michel, yes there is some truth in what you say but this applies at the micro-level of analysis NOT the macro-level and for the reason I stated – that we are talking about zero sum game as far as price rises are concerned.     Individual business can indeed, by means of branding and the like – what you call the application of “creative power” – leverage huge price rises for their products and thus garner huge profit as a result.  There is nothing particularly “post-modern” about this either though you seem to think this is some radically new departure.  Thorstein Veblen at the end of the 19th century was writing about this sort of stuff  – about how the “Leisure Class” are willing to pay over the odds for certain status goods (dubbed Veblen goods) to differentiate themselves from the riff raff who couldnt afford these goods.  It’s called conspicuous consumption and these so called Veblen Goods have the peculiar attribute of inverting the normal economic logic of capitalism whereby prices rises are supposed to discourage, rather than stimulate, purchases.  But as I say, one business’ increase in market share is another business’ loss in market share.  Your whole analysis suffers from the shortcoming of focussing only on the winners in this game of one upmanship, rather than the losers.  In other words you are not seeing the wood for the trees.    If some business is able to raise its prices to some absurd level then self-evidently the people having to pay these astronomical prices will have less money to splash out on other commodities.  This is the opportunity cost of their decisions which you are overlooking.  Less money to buy these other commodities mean the demand for them will fall and hence also their relative prices (discounting inflation)  You mention in a previous post that  “CEOs command obscene bonuses and salaries. To support such salary-hikes requires fundamental network-control over the nodes of production, consumption and distribution. You cannot measure network-control yet network-control can have a substantial influence of value, price and wage-determination.  Network-control is a type of unquantifiable generator of value, it enacts its creative-power in various ways upon the minds of the population, upon conceptual-perception” I would dispute this.  “Network control” or “creative power” does not in itself generate value, at least not in the Marxian sense of value as “socially necessary labour time”.  What it does is aid the redistribution of wealth in favour of those who use and manipulate that creative power for their own ends and at the expense of others.   Advertising itself, for example is totally unproductive of value in the Marxian sense; it adds no value in that sense though certainly it adds value in the subjective sense and it is that that encourages the consumer to buy the product in question by “talking it up”, by investing in it a certain emotional appeal.  As I noted earlier, Klein herself pointed out that advertising itself is subject to the law of diminishing returns. The more advertising there is out there, the more aggressively do business need to push their own brands to make them stand out in an already overcrowded market of brands– meaning they have to run faster and faster simply in order to stand still or defend the share of the market they have cornered  Finally you refer to the obscene bonuses and salaries that CEOs – or, at least, some CEOs – command in particular, in companies such as those listed in the Dow-Jones index (to use an American example) which comes to an average compensation package of about 20 million dollars per year per CEO.  Now, to me, this unequivocally puts these individuals in the ranks of the capitalist class, albeit the lower rungs of that class, meaning that their income is substantially unearned income, the fruits of a process of working class exploitation.  These salaried exploiters occupy a position analogous to that of the Soviet capitalist class, the Red Bourgeoisie, who extracted their share of the surplus value for personal consumption in the form of bloated or pseudo salaries.  The point is that if you look at all these hugely successful corporations with their handsomely paid CEOs, very often at the base of this pyramid of wealth generation are the kind of grim sweatshop factories Klein talks about which you are likely to find in places like Vietnam or the Philippines where work is subcontracted out and where the actual workers who produce all this wealth are paid an absolute pittance.   I don’t think you really bring out this vital connection between extreme wealth and extreme poverty in your analysis.  Free floating “creative power” such as is evidenced in the branding of products like Nike shoes is said to “add value” to the product as reflected in its increase price but it is almost as if the value, or socially necessary labour time, of those who actually produced the product in the first place is forgotten or barely figures in this subjective calculus of “value”…. 

[robbo203]

MBellemare wrote:

      Let me answer your other question, why doesn't a network of capitalists raise prices to outlandish new highs. Well, sports does it all the time. Stadiums have raised the price of entry in North America with huge mark-ups. Sport stars demand obscene salaries, CEOs command obscene bonuses and salaries. To support such salary-hikes requires fundamental network-control over the nodes of production, consumption and distribution. You cannot measure network-control yet network-control can have a substantial influence of value, price and wage-determinations. Network-control is a type of unquantifiable generator of value, it enacts its creative-power in various ways upon the minds of the population, upon conceptual-perception. In fact, convincing the segments of the population that paying outlandish prices, is part of having a good sport team, it is about belonging, it is about pride in one's city, in one's nation etc., its about irrationality. So to quote NIKE "JUST DO IT". And so the working population dishes out, dishes out when they cannot even put gas in their own cars and food on their own tables.      

 This statement by Michel gives the game away and reveals what I think is the fundamental flaw in his basic argument. In fact reading through his posts, reminded me of Naomi Klein's book  "No Logo".  If anyone here hasnt yet read it,  I would recommend they do – it is quite a compelling read and stuffed with juicy tidbits of information. Klein wrote of the power of branding products – "you are selling a lifestye not a pair of Nike shoes" – which transformed the world of advertising from roughtly the 1980s onwards and led to a huge increase in global expenditure on advertising (which in 2016  reached a total of $579 billions).  The rise of the logo and of branding which eased out the old fashioned approach to advertising which focusssed on the merits of the products themselves rather than their invented assciations with a way of life or some hip cool attitude, seems to me to be a particuarly striking example of Michel's "creative power" employed by his "networks of capitalists".  There is no doubt that, on the back of branding, some businesses have made astronomical fortunes – by hiking up prices and garnering huge profits.  To that extent Michel has a point .  But even so, he is failing to see the wood for the trees.  He is failing to see that what we are talking about is a zero sum game.  Some businesses can indeed dramatically increase their market share but the necessary corrollary of this is that the market share of others must shrink You cant have more than 100% of the market and you cannot conjure market demand out of nothing.  Michel more or less concedes this point.  He talks of the abilty of the sports industry to hike up prices to outlandish highs and to convince working people to go along with this "when they cannot even put gas in their own cars and food on their own tables".  Exactly.  They have bought into the mythology of the logo at the cost of having to divert more of their hard earned cash from other, some would say rather more important or useful, expenditures. Its the same in the world of business.  Klein talked of the law of diminishing returns in branding products. The more branding there is out there (for which read Michel's "creative power"), the more aggresively do business need to push their brands to make them stand out in an overcrowded market.  In other words they have to run faster and faster in order to stand still.  The winners in this game can only win at the expense of the losers and this is the basic problem with Michel's whole argument.  He is only looking at half the picture; the winning half.  More fundamentally, he is using value in the subjective of the term, not in terms of socially necessary labour time which is the Marxian sense of the term.  This is why he talks of creative power adding value  to the product in the sense of pushing up its price.  From a Marxian standpoint this makes no sense.  Value is not made in circulation, at the point of sale (it is only "realised" there).  It is made at the point of production. From a Marxian standpoint, the sum total of values must equal the sum total of prices. Consequently, if the price of some goods is above their value the price of other goods must fall below their value.  Logically there cannot be any other way. I am not decrying Michel's use of the term value in this way.  You can define "value" or for that matter  "class" in any which way you want but the question is whether the definition is fit for purpose. The purpose for which Michel employs his notion of value is to acount for the ability of some capitalist businesses to hike up their prices by employing smoke and mirrors to enhance the perceived value of their products in an aggresively competive market.  That's OK as far as it goes but it is not the purpose for which Marxists employ the term value.

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MBellemare wrote:

 Come on Robbo, that  I somehow misconstrue Marx, is the last rung on the critique ladder. You cannot go anywhere with this line of argument. It ends up by me stating back unto you that you have misunderstood Marx. There is not a fundamentally true understanding of Marx, there are interpretations of Marx.  The holy grail of Marxian truth does not exist its full of nuances.  Most certainly Marx, founded his science on scientific quantification. That's what he wanted to do, a scientific understanding of capital and surplus value, what regulates capital flows etc. The law of motion is measurable and quantifiable and expresses itself as the regulatory mechanism of socially necessary labor-time. By the simple fact Marx uses the word "labor-time", means he corrolates labor-power and the commodity-form in general to time segments, measurable time segments. There is no getting out of that one. Now, whether these time-segments, embodied in a commodity, are valorized/realized in circulation is another matter all together. What did Marx say in Volume 3: Total Value = Total Price. Once again price is a numerical number sitting-in for the nebula of value. However, in our everyday lives  value is both measurable and immeasurable. That's why in reality, and I think Marx, states this, value and price do not equate. They oscillate. Well that's because value cannot be reduced to absolute quantification, there are values outthere essential to the production process, that are not scientifically quantifiable. 

 This is slightly confusing.  You seem to be both agreeing with what I am saying ( "there are values out there essential to the production process, that are not scientifically quantifiable.")  and disagreeing.  I urge you to read again, carefully, the passage  I quoted.  Value I asserted, is not something that you can dirctly measure with a stop watch and Marx never suggested that it was.  Value is rather a constantly shifting potentiality that reveals itself ONLY in market exchange –  in exchange value or the ratios in which commodities exchange and then only in an average sense over the long run.  So, one pair of boot exchanges for ten pairs of socks such that the socially necessary labour time to produce a pair of socks is said to be – in theory – one tenth of that required to produce a pair of boots by virtue of the former being one tenth the price of the latter.   However, . insofar as  the price (which is indeed quantifiable) of a pair of boots is 20 dollars and the price of each individual pair of socks is 2 dollars this will be due to factors quite other than just  the socially necessary labour time that went into making the respective commodities in question.  Notably, it will be influenced also by the supply and demand for these commodities which is why I say it is only in the long run  and in an average sense, due to the tendency of markets to equilibriate which allows us in theory, to discount the influence of supply and demand on prices such that the ratios in which commodiities exchange can then be said to reflect their value content.  However, markets NEVER achieve a state of equilibrium and this is why, in practice, trying to measure value is like the search for the holy grail Moreover, note the point that Pilling makes in the quote I provided:  And it is only when the producer of a product tries to sell this product on the market that he discovers its real, objective value (if any). During periods of capitalist slump the piles of unsold goods signify that the concrete labour embodied in them was socially unnecessary. Such labour cannot, through the market, be transformed into abstract labour and therefore creates no value. But the owner of capital can never discover this beforehand, even though he may be armed with the latest ‘market research’ techniques and may even have read Capital. The essence of capitalist production here is that he can only discover whether the labour incorporated into his products was socially necessary at the end of the process. Our task is not, therefore, to seek some measuring rod for the processes of capitalist production There is no guarantee under capitalism that the commodity you produce will be sold.  That being so how can you measure the value of something when you cannot be sure there will anything to measure in the first place?  

[robbo203]

MBellemare wrote:

   A side note to my recent previous comment, I'd like to add a quick comment on competion,i.e., the coercive laws of competition.  It seems to me that for product costs to steadily go down and for prices to steadily go up across a sphere of production or pertaining to a specific commodity, competition between producers must be short-circuited.  

 If it is the case that production costs are steadily going down and prices are steadily going up then it must also be the case that the rate of profit must likewise be going up.  That does not appear to be borne out by the facts which if anything suggest a long term decline in profit rates.  See for example this working paper  http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1098&context=econ_workingpaper

[robbo203]

MBellemare wrote:

    Many interesting points, here, which I fueling this debate tread very well. I'll try to add a little more fuel to the fire, a little @narchism . I think some of you are seeing the unquantifiable nature of value, there is something not quite right with Marx's law of value, there are things within the economy influencing price, value and wage, which are intangible, unquantifiable. I am of the firm belief that Marx wanted to give the world a Science, a scientific understanding of capital and how capital works. He was part of the 19th century's fetishization for laws, there must be laws to all phenomena, including the economy. This is why Monsieur Marx, sent a copy of Das Capital to Darwin, I felt they were cut from the same scientific determinist cloth. And repeatedly throughout Marx's Capital series of books, he states labor-time is quantifiable, labor-power is determined by social necessity, and this socially necessary labor-power expended in production, always mesurable. His whole concept of the commodity is as a container of use-value and surplus valus, necessary labor and surplus labor, measured in quantifiable segments of labor-time, clock-time. Which is pure science, the application of the scientific method to labor-power. How victorian of Marx, to do this, a man of his age and epoch. 

 Michel,  I think you are seriously misunderstanding  Marx and his labour theory of value judging by some of your comments here, Marx did not envisage value or abstract labour to be something capable of, or lending itself to,  empirical measurement or quantification.  Allow me to quote a lengthy exceprt from Geoff Pilling's 1980 book "Marx’s Capital, Philosophy and Political Economy"(https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/geoff4.htm) "A ‘measure’ of valueThese comments by Marx about the nature of social labour raise another directly related topic. For in these statements Marx is by implication rejecting what for political economy was one of its main tasks – the search for some ‘measure’ of value, or what amounted to the same thing, the attempt to arrive at a true definition or concept of value. (We shall deal later in more detail with this question of Capital’s concepts.) We have seen that in a commodity-producing economy the equalisation of labour is achieved through the equalisation of the products of labour. This is but another way of saying that all varieties of concrete labour are reduced to abstract labour through the market and thus become social labour. But nobody can or does ‘measure’ these many forms of labour empirically. To imagine that this is so would be to ignore an essential feature of commodity production – its spontaneous, anarchic nature. Considerable misunderstandings will arise (as Rubin, Theories of Surplus Value, has rightly pointed out) if the law of value is seen as an ‘instrument’ which makes possible the comparison and measurement of the various products in the act of exchange. It has been widely (and wrongly) believed by many economists and others that Marx emphasised labour precisely as this ‘practical’ standard of value. As opponents of Marx, such writers have directed their efforts to showing that labour could not be accorded this privileged status; they have argued along these lines because of the absence of precisely established units with which to measure the various forms of labour which are different from each other with regard to intensity, skill etc.Such a line of attack utterly misconceives the nature of Marx’s value theory. It is both impossible and unnecessary to discover a measure of value which will make possible the equalisation of labour or the products of labour. It may be a simple point, but none the less profound, to insist that this equalisation of labour takes place objectively, spontaneously and indirectly – that is, independently of any participants within the capitalist system. It is in this real, objective process that value is measured. Out of the process of the production and circulation of commodities money (gold) arises. Gold is not some ‘external’ measure, standing outside the world of commodities. Nor was it ‘selected’ by conscious planning on the part of economists or politicians. This measure (gold) was historically selected, after long trial and error, in the sense that it was its physical-material properties which enabled gold to select itself as the most suitable money-commodity. The matter can be reformulated thus: it is not money that renders commodities commensurable; on the contrary, it is because all commodities as values are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values find their measure in one and the same commodity. By a social and historical process this commodity is converted into money. Unless the objective nature of these processes is grasped, then the significance of all Marx’s categories of political economy is lost. We have already spoken of the social character of the labour which creates value, summed up in Marx’s concept of abstract labour. Marx insists that the measure of value is not labour-time, but socially-necessary labour-time, that is labour-time required to produce a commodity at a definite stage in the development of the productive forces. And it is only when the producer of a product tries to sell this product on the market that he discovers its real, objective value (if any). During periods of capitalist slump the piles of unsold goods signify that the concrete labour embodied in them was socially unnecessary. Such labour cannot, through the market, be transformed into abstract labour and therefore creates no value. But the owner of capital can never discover this beforehand, even though he may be armed with the latest ‘market research’ techniques and may even have read Capital. The essence of capitalist production here is that he can only discover whether the labour incorporated into his products was socially necessary at the end of the process.Our task is not, therefore, to seek some measuring rod for the processes of capitalist production. The very process is its own measure. Value does not measure commodities; commodities discover their own measure of value. The task of Marxism is to discover how this is done, to discover the laws and tendencies of this process, laws and tendencies which do not appear empirically on the surface of society but appear always in the form of crises:"in the midst of the accidental and ever-fluctuating exchange relations between the products, the labour-time socially necessary to produce them asserts itself as a regulative law of nature. In the same way, the law of gravity asserts itself when a person’s house collapses on top of him. The determination of the magnitude of value by labour-time is therefore a secret hidden under the apparent movements in the relative values of commodities."In short, instead of the vain search for some formal standard by which to measure the magnitude of value, Marx set out to abstract the laws of the development of capitalism (‘law of motion’), that is to uncover the (highly contradictory) processes whereby this problem was actually resolved in practice.

[robbo203]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

 I guess the same argument can be applied to musicians and other types of artists. In fact, i am sure CEOs would also endeavour to claim their "talents" as a special resource, although that is much more debatable.

 CEOs might well claim that, Alan, but in their case, at least as far as the top ranking CEOs commanding many millions of dollars income per year, it is much more straightforwardly a case of surplus value extraction via, for instance, a stock options component in their compensation package as well as the grossly inflated "salaries" they receive (as was also the method by which the Soviet ruling class took their share of surplus value to fund their lavish lifestyle) This is where Michel's argument gets questionable as an attempt to refute or marginalise the labour theory of value.  The income CEO's receive bears no relation to the socially necessay labour time required to produce and reproduce their skills..  But why should it if such CEOs are not strictly part of the working class but rather that capitalist class – or at least on the lower rungs of the catalist class

[robbo203]

Hi Michel.  A few more comments… 

MBellemare wrote:

Robbo, you do state think-points that deserve consideration. May be I am exaggerating, but I don't think so and I think with time you'll come around. Working myself in the artworld, I can say that with almost perfect certainty that labor-time expenditures have nothing to do or very little to do with how the artworld functions as an artist. Network, networking and image is paramount, labor is secondary to creativity and conceptual-perception, i.e., what one thinks and what people think. Now, you may think that the artworld is an exception, but I don't think so, I think it is a central economy/ sphere of production and consumption in post-industrial, post-modern capitalism, that flows into other spheres like other the art-form economies, advertising etc., it is usually celebrated as a diamond of western societies to show the world, how democratic, inclusive, cool and multi-cultural, bourgeois, neoliberal capitalism is.

Well, there are several points I would make here by way of response. The first is to question your cut-and-dried distinction between art and labour as if the one does not involve the other (and vice versa).  That, I think, is to diminish and impoverish both. Working in the art world you would probably have heard of the great Victorian artist and revolutionary socialist, William Morris. The SPGB long go published a pamphlet on Morris which I would recommend to you.  Here's the link – http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/art-labour-and-socialism Secondly, while it is perfectly true that networking, image manipulation, advertising hype and so on can add monetary value to a particular product, what you overlook is the labour theory of value is, and can only function as, an economy-wide theory of value.  It is not a theory of the value of any particular product.  Your approach to the subject matter, with respect, unfortunately suffers from the shortcomings and myopia of methodological individualism which does not permit you to see the wood for the trees.  Of course there are many reasons why the price of any particular product can diverge from its value and you cite some of these.  But at the end of the day, the sum total of prices must equate with the sum total of values generated.  This is absolutely crucial to understand. If some goods sell at prices above their values this necessarily means other goods selling at prices below their values.  In that regard we are talking about a zero sum game  

MBellemare wrote:

    The fall of communism is related to how seemingly free-spirited western societies and their artistic productions looked to those behind the iron curtain. But this art-economy and those related to it, were constructed on networks designed to manufacture, value, price and wage on conceptual-perception, and not labor-time. For example, supposedly the CIA, funded the arts in America during the 1950's, which enabled abstract-expressionism to take off. Now, I am not into conspiracy theories, but there seems to be good evidence, that CIA backed certain galleries to purchase abstract art, i.e., they socially constructed value and price, primarily in the arts price dictated value. This may be an exception, but the art-world functions like this to this day. Gone is the CIA, but networks of galleries mutually support each others' stable of artists in essence artificially and arbitrarily sustaining socially constructed prices, values and wages, labor-time is truly secondary. There is a propaganda element to this, where media, universities etc., in a post-industrial, post-modern societies indoctrinate and normalize us to certain preconcieved, artificially fabricated values, prices and wages that are in essence emphemeral.

I am not quite sure what you mean by this statement.  In practice prices have always been ephemeral or changeable because of constantly shifting interactions of supply and demand, post modernism notwithstanding.  Of course, ideological considerations make themselves felt in artistic constructions.  I don’t know enough to comment on your suggestion that the CIA might have funded the arts during the 1950s to promote a particular kind of art form – abstract expressionism – to serve as a kind of ideological tool.  Of course Soviet state capitalism, for its part, also strove to promote its own particular forms of artistic expression – notably so called “socialist realism”.    However, I cannot see how any of this invalidates the labour theory of value as an economy wide theory of value.  The art objects from the so called Cold War era may now attract astronomical prices in some cases but, as I said, as one off orginals they are not strictly commoditities in the Marxian sense.  They are merely exceptions that prove the rule.  Insofar as artistic effort is appplied in advancing that rule, this does not add value in the Marixan sense over and above the labour that it involves.  It merely allows those products that are more attractively packaged to be sold at the expense of those that are not.

MBellemare wrote:

     CEO salaries function in this manner, its fundamentally about belonging to certain well-connected networks, via these well-connected networks, these individuals are able to circumvent the regulatory mechanism of socially necessary labor-time and establish their arbitrary obscene salaries in the realm of conceptual-perception. And as long as average people do not rebel, these artificially constructed salaries, founded on whim and nonsense, continue to persist.

But as I explained in my earlier post, the “obscene salaries” that some of these CEOs enjoy has got very little to do with their labour input and a great deal to do with the fact that in large measure these so called salaries represent their cut of the surplus  value generated by their employees.  There is nothing whimsical about this at all! These CEOs, insofar as they constitute minor capitalists in their own right, are substantially drawing an income based on the exploitation of the working class and their so called labour contribution serves merely as a fig leaf to hide this exploitative relationship.  This is what your suggestion that they “circumvent the regulatory mechanism of socially necessary labor-time” boils down to.  Of course the income of the capitalist class circumvents this mechanism for the very simple reason that it is substanitally based on the exploitation of those who provide that socially necessary labour time in the first instance  

MBellemare wrote:

  I do believe that what Marx thought about all these types of fabricated economies was an exception. However, I've come to believe that artificially, fabricated prices, is now much more prevalent and central. 

But in a deeper sense all prices are artificial and fabricated and always have been.  The labour theory of value fully allows for the divergence of individual prices and values.  The capitalists have always sought to get as a high a price as they could possibly get by whatever means available including stylistic adornment as a way of promoting product differentiation.  Indeed, so called “Veblen goods” named after the late 19th century economist who write a seminal work called “The Theory of the Leisure Class” (1899) are basically goods, the demand for which rises as the price rises – thus inverting what is normally supposed to happen.  This is because the ability to afford such high prices imparts high status to the individual purchasing them and separates him/her from those unable to afford such goods (http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1164/economics/veblen-goods/).  There is nothing really new about post-modernist theory though it likes to market itself as some kind of unique insight into our contemporary condition, that displaces or has rendered redundant all other explanations

MBellemare wrote:

     I know this may sound like there is one ideological edifice of bourgeois capitalists, dictating the value, price and wage to us, deciding everything. YES!, I agree there is much in-fighting between capitalists, capitalist-entities, capitalists-networks, capitalist-industries, which gives credence to the coercive laws of competition, Marx spoke about, which eventually destroy capitalism. There is not one power-block of capitalists governing. However, it seems to me that there is one unifying logic to these seemingly, at war, capitalists, namely, the logic of capitalism, "to maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". So, I do agree with you that there is not a singular body of people dominating us and that this body of people is constantly at war between themselves, however, I do posit a totalitarian unitary logic, i.e., the logic of capitalism, as directing the actions and thoughts of people living within the confines of capitalism, specifically in the upper levels of capitalism. There is no cabal deciding world-affairs and world-market affairs, but their is a totalitarian logic, the logic of capitalism, call it what you will, an ideology or an ideational comprehensive framework, directing world-affairs and world-market-affairs. Yes, there are many conflicting ideologies out there, but (in the last) instance, the logic of capitalism, to maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible, decides, determines and governs. The logic of capitalism, expresses itself in different manners, it is imprinted on all sorts of activities, thinking processes, institutions, social relations etc., it is pluralized across the stratums of everyday life, but, in last instance, it is always about maximizing proft by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible. The outer-shell of the logic of capitalism is plural, it expresses itself in many different ways, and has done so throughout history, but its inner kernel, its inner logic, is always the same, to maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible.  Those fundamental, ruling networks of people, who govern, can change, and do change their stripes, their make-up,  these ruling networks are plural and in certain instances they are unified, but in the end it is the logic of capitalism that always remains and determines value, price and wage, according to what serves its imperative best.   

 Yes, it is perfectly true that capitalists are united by their desire to maximise profit by any means possible but the point I am trying to impress on you is that this very imperative brings them into irreconcilable conflict with each other.  The desire to increase their market share is necessarily and logically, a zero sum game in which some may gain only at the expense of others.  There is no way around this.  Increasing your market share is accomplished by undercutting your rivals, encouraging consumer’s to switch loyalties from them to you. Lower prices, whether for consumer goods or producer goods, is the apple that induces them to make this switch. This is the basic reason why I am somewhat critical of your whole approach, sympathetic though I am to some of the points you make.  Your whole argument seems to be based on the idea that capitalists can just arbitrarily or whimsically raise prices in the face of declining unit production costs resulting from technological innovation.   But you cannot just arbitrary raise prices above what your competitors charge or what the market can sustain because, if you do, what you will end up is a stock of unsold products languishing in the warehouse. To get rid of that surplus , to clear the market s to speak , you will be forced in the end to lower your prices.  It’s like water finding it own level, notwithstanding the best  efforts of the capitalists to impose what your call their “ideational comprehensive framework” of thought on the consuming public. 

[robbo203]

Hi Michel, Welcome to the forum.  Here are few random thoughts in response to your post 

MBellemare wrote:

 1. The Art-world, completely operates outside the bounds of labor-power and Marxist economics. And I quote Andy Warhol, although I am not a fan of Warhol, he is correct on this point "Its not how much labor that goes into artifact/aesthetic-commodity that determines its value/price, it is how much you can get for it!". I can place a useless object with absolutely no value whatsoever, completely damaged or rusted out etc., in a well-connected gallery and if I can convince a patron or collector that this is a significant art-piece and worth 1 million, presto! you have a sale of a useless object, with little to no labor-time involved, now fetching 1 million on the art market. This is not fashioning value out of thin air. It is fashioning value in and through conceptual-perception, "creatively". (There are many other forms of profiteering out there like this.) 

You make a valid point but the point that you are making has to with those exceptions that prove the rule.  An original Warhol work of art is not strictly a commodity in the Marxian sense since it is not reproducible. Certainly, it can be bought and sold and at a price some would say is totally out of proportion to the effort put into making it but even so, you cannot really talk of it being a commodity.  Marxian value or socially necessary labour time would not be applicable here since this refers to a sort of industry wide average whereas the work of art we are talking of is unique and one-off.  However, should print copies of this work of Art be manufactured on a large scale, you would indeed have a case of commodity production and unsurprisingly, this will be reflected in the huge price differential between the original and the (multiple) fakes attempting to imitate the original on a semi industrial scale.   So it is not quite true that “The Art-world, completely operates outside the bounds of labor-power and Marxist economics”. The reproduction of art products, I would argue, is indeed subject to the law of value and even the production of originals though, by definition, not reproducible, involves the application of labour power.  Moreover, beyond that relatively small segment of human activity you call the Art World, and for all the hype surrounding it, the vast majority of products do indeed take the form of commodities ans as such are subject the law of value governing their exchange  

MBellemare wrote:

2. The same scenario and logic applies to CEO salaries, Sport-Star salaries, Reality-Star salaries etc., their value/price/wage have nothing to do with "quantifiable labor-time expended within the production process". It has everything to do with the networks they belong to, the conceptual and material networks of power. To quote, an important saying of mine, "whatever one can get away with in the market-place" is valid and legitimate. When it comes to value, price and wage, if you or your network have the power to back up, artificially fabricated values, prices and wages, then it becomes normalized over an extended period of time and space, through routine. Sport stars exist in an oligarchical, highly-controlled-market, where competition is very lax between clubs, i.e., there is an oligarchical network controlling the sport, while competition is fierce between players. I cannot start a club in any city, I cannot move a club where there is already one in place, unless I get approval from the league, i.e., the oligarchical network, etc. The rules are endless, nonetheless, through these rules professional sports artificially fabricates an oligarchy with highly inflated, highly obscene, highly arbitrary wages, prices and values, that have nothing to do with labor-time or labor-power and everything to do with conceptual-perception, namely, creativity in maximizing profits. People are conditioned, both materially and conceptually, via media, and other enterprising-networks/social relations to flock to sport stadiums to pay exaggerated commodity-prices, to support exaggerated wages, concerning a completely useless set of activities, that if abolished, wouldn't change a thing. The reason is that these artificially fabricated pseudo-economies produce nothing but useless empty-spectacle. These types of pseudo-economies, which are now almost everywhere, are outside the traditional Marxist factory and theory, and operate based on much that is (unquantifiable), subjective, artificial and most importantly, arbitrary. If the league gets together at its annual meeting and decides to charge 15 dollars extra for tickets or 15 dollars for a beer etc., (which happens with hockey in Canada and North America) then this has nothing to do with socially necessary labor-time and everything to do with "what one can get away with" in a sphere of production and consumption. In a post-industrial, post-modern socio-economic formation, like neoliberal-state-capitalism, power and control are paramount in determining value, price and wage, and when this is the case, everything is skewed, slippery and arbitrary, subjective, artificially fabricated. That is, all the conditions, the old post-modernists have been describing in language have come to infect and have infected economics, and the economy, for better or worst. Consequently, the fount of value is not per say strict scientific quantifiable labor-power/labor-time, although this has not totally gone away, it is, in my estimation, creative-power, a fount that is both quantifiable and unquantifiable. For example, you cannot put a scientifically measured value on "networking", being well-connected, being born in a wealthy family etc. If I marry the US presidents daughter and as a result, have the president's ear, I can have an enormous amount of influence on policy, that, in turn, influences/determines value, price, wage and profits in a particular sphere of production and consumption down the line. And if I am influencing value, price, wage and profits down the line, thus I am involved in the manufacturing of surplus value, a type of manufacturing beyond the factory floor, that is unquantifiable and creative, such is, creative-power, a power greater than yet encompassing labor-time.       (The only thing unifying these post-industrial, post-modern economies and wacky phenomena is the logic of capitalism, to maximize profit byany means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible.)    

Again there is an element of truth in what you say but you grossly exaggerate the significance of what you are talking about.  The overwhelming majority of us are not sport stars but wage slaves and our wages being the price of working ability which we sell to our employers are indeed subject to the law of value.  Sports stars play a role analogous the production of original works of art in the Art World.  They are merely exceptions that prove the rule. It is the rule that should interest us in the formulation of social theory rather than the exception, fascinating though the latter may be.  Social theory is, or should be, focused on generalisations that seek to capture the main outlines of the object of our study.  Disregarding the circumstances of the great majority, the lives of “ordinary” folk and what they do, as if they did not really matter in the larger scheme of things, betrays a kind of elitist outlook which to some extent is endemic in the Art World itself with its snobby name dropping and rich well connected patrons. Allow me to make one or two further points under this heading.  Firstly you say to “CEO salaries, Sport-Star salaries, Reality-Star salaries etc., their value/price/wage have nothing to do with quantifiable labor-time expended within the production process". Well, according to the American trade union AFL/CIO website, median compensation for CEO's in all industries in the US early 2010 was $3.9 million; $10.6 million for companies listed in Standard and Poor's 500, and a staggering $19.8 million for the companies listed in the Dow-Jones index.  Now if you happen to have an annual income of nearly 20 million dollars then certainly that would place you in the capitalist class, albeit in the lower rungs of that class.  In that event, it is entirely to be expected that your income will not reflect your labour contribution but will greatly exceed it.  This is precisely what the Marxian theory of exploitation states.  CEOs, of course do contribute some labour but the remuneration they receive in the guise of a compensation package will bear little relation to this labour contribution, a major component of which derive from the fruits of other people’s unpaid labour. This is not that different from the situation in the old Soviet Union where the nomenklatura or de facto soviet capitalist class took their share of the surplus value in the guise of inflated and multiple salaries as well payments in kind of all sorts.  The fact that they formally received their income as a “salary” only served as an ideological fig leaf to hide their status as an exploiting class. As for those grotesquely overpaid sport stars, though their income may not appear to derive from the exploitation of others you can be certain that a large chunk of this will find its way into the capitalist investment cycle where it will reproduce itself through precisely the process of exploitation.  Finally, you refer once again to “quantifiable labor-time expended within the production process”.  But again I would point out that socially necessary labour time is not something that can be measured with a stop watch.  It is an industry wide social average which only manifests itself post sale in the ratios in which commodities exchange.  It is not something that lends itself to empirical quantification – though some commentators have attempted to quantify Marxian labour values in a rough and ready sort of way    

MBellemare wrote:

3. I also describe two trends happening across the post-industrial, post-modern economy, 1. The cutting of production costs to increasingly new lows. 2. The raising of prices, pertaining to these specific commodities, within a specific sphere of production.The result is increasing debt for commodities our parents and grandparents could pay outright and the result is ever-increasing financial inequality. I mention two, Apple and the Car industry. Apple wants to cut production costs, thus they move their factory to china etc., pay less for workers etc., (Marx is in accord). Apple then sells these cheap products for exaggerated sums in North America, because they operate in a closed-economy and sphere of production, a type of oligarchy, where they and their competitors, which are not in my estimation competitors but friendly jousters, agree (wink wink, at arm's length) to sell according to a certain similar range of prices, which every year or so, magically rise, across the board (the same applies to insurances, bank rates, mortgage rates etc.), due to the fact that all companies must maximize profit by any means necessary. Via a closed-economy and/or sphere of production, shared among a select few, competition is pushed to periphery and down to the grassroots of the specific closed-economy/sphere of production, where the global working class is located and at war with each other for jobs, better living conditions, human rights etc.  Contrary to Neoliberals, we do not live in free markets, where everyone gets an equal kick at the can, markets are highly controlled affairs, value, price and wage are highly controlled machinated affairs. Economic laws hide the backroom machinations, behind, a seemingly unbiased, invisible hand that somehow always bestows its favor on the same select few. Financial inequality is not the product of any invisible-hand or economic law, i.e., law of value, it is the product of people in positions of power, exercising their creative-power, both material and conceptual, based on the fundamental imperative of capitalism, "to maximize profit by any means necessary, at the lowest financial cost, as soon as possible". All sort of economic gimmicks spring from this because if an entity, human or otherwise, can fashion a closed-economy/sphere of production, they can set prices, values and wages whereever they like. It has nothing to and/or very little to do with labor-time expenditures in production. It has to do with what conceptual-perceptions of the public are, what they are willing to live with. And as we know, the general public can tolerate a lot of shady stuff, maybe indefinately.   

Once again, yes there is something in what you say here but you exaggerate.  Producers will strive to charge monoply prices if they can get away with it but even with closely knit cartels there is always a temptation to break rank.  You can’t just set prices, values and wages as you like, completely arbitrarily.  There are countervailing pressures.   You talk of production costs (including wages presumably) falling and prices of commodities rising nonetheless.  But this is misleading.  At some point if wages steadily fall and commodity prices steadily rise, you will end up with vast  amount of unsold stock (which will in turn will exert a downward pressure on commodity prices) Some prices have risen but others have fallen in real terms and adjusted to account for inflation .  Have a look at this chart supplied by the Bureau of Labour statistics  covering the period the period 1997-2013 https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/long-term-price-trends-for-computers-tvs-and-related-items.htm.  This is precisely what Marx means by the cheapening of commodities brought about by technological innovation and enhanced productivity per worker.  A fall in the rate of profit through mechanisation is compensated by an increase in the resulting mass of profit through an increase in the sheer volume of output making for a decline in individual prices You mention China and Apple again.  You say “Apple wants to cut production costs, thus they move their factory to china etc., pay less for workers etc”.  Yes the wages are low and the shifts appalling for workers but again it is misleading to suggest that Apple can just get away with doing whatever it wants with impunity.  The very fact that this case is highlighted shows pressure is and can be brought to bear on those concerned.  See for example this https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/feb/20/foxconn-apple-china-wages Generally speaking as I said wages have been rising in China and this is in part a reflection of the greater degree of militancy among workers.  And it is because of rising wages that Chinese capitalists are showing an interest in forms of mechanisation such as robotisation   

MBellemare wrote:

4. We are stuck between the chicken and the egg. Does value create price ( I think Marx might be situated here)  or price create value (Crank economists)? Marx agreed that price could create value, although he theorized that this was an exception. I am inclined to state within the arrival of post-industrialism, post-modernism that increasingly mechanisms and networks of power, both conceptual and material, are fashioning price, value and wage, not out of nothing (like crank economists) but out of creative-power, i.e., the ability to set price, value and wage and sustain these artificially fabricated values, prices and wages over an extended period of time and space, via powerful networks both conceptual networks and material networks. Marx, stated that the connection between value and price was an ideal one, meaning it was localized in the mind (I state exactly where in a prior DV article). I have followed Marx's logic and I took the next logical step that price, value and wage is based on conceptual-perception and moreover a ruling ideational comprehensive framework, or a ruling ideology, i.e., how an ideology defines reality, favors certain phenomena over others etc., how ideology is produced, reproduced and functions at all levels of human existence to fashion a bias framework of comprehension and understanding, both to what constitutes value, price and wage, including what constitutes labor-time, productive and unproductive labor etc. The concept of creative-power both acknowledged Marx's concept of labor-power, and humans as the producers of their social existence and, broadly speaking, the many unquantifiable energy expenditures that cannot be measures, such as creative-innovation, art making, networking, control, oligarchy, child rearing etc., whereupon one cannot scientifically measure the quanta of influence. Creative-power gets radical economic theory out of certain theoretical jams, without falling into the crank economist trap, and explains certain economic phenomena, which can be considered post-industrial and post-modern. 

I am not quite sure what you mean when you say “Marx agreed that price could create value, although he theorized that this was an exception”.  Could you elaborate on this possibly with a reference from Marx? I don’t really understand what you mean by creative power or how it “gets radical economic theory out of certain theoretical jams, without falling into the crank economist trap, and explains certain economic phenomena, which can be considered post-industrial and post-modern”.   You say that “Marx, stated that the connection between value and price was an ideal one, meaning it was localized in the mind” and that you have followed Marx’s logic and have taken the “next logical step that price, value and wage is based on conceptual-perception and moreover a ruling ideational comprehensive framework, or a ruling ideology”.  I might be misreading you here but this seems to be suggesting a single monolithic source that exercise determinative influence over these magnitudes of price value and wage.    I would argue to the contrary that the magnitudes are emergent properties resulting from the interactions of multiple agents.  The ruling class, the supposed source of this “ruling ideology” is not a monolith but is endemically prone to factional infighting and competing interests.  It confronts a working class that is also able to exert an influence in these matters 

[robbo203]

I have looked at Michel Luc Bellamare retort to the discussion on this subject on this forum,  Here are a few thoughts of mine in response.  Michel's comments are in bold First and foremost, for structural-anarchism, value is not created out of thin-air. It is created via a ruling ideational comprehensive framework, namely, when an idea and/or activity, emanating from conceptual-perception and/or physical exertion, is validated by the ruling ideational comprehensive framework of a socio-economic formation as having value, specifically, as having a specific number value, which is agreed upon by the governing representative-agents of the ruling ideational comprehensive framework, and later grudgingly accepted by the masses. In our current, capitalist socio-economic formation, it is the logic of capitalism, expressed through various governing entities, human or otherwise, that predominantly determines and allots specific numerical values to things, services and/or manufactured images  I am still not quite sure that the writer means by all this. Yes, there is an “ideational aspect” to the process of assigning numerical values – prices – to “things, services and/or manufactured images”.  Entrepreneurs settle on a price for a particular good which they bring to the market, which price they believe will be low enough to enable the commodity to be sold while at the same time high enough to enable them to make a profit. What price they settle on will be based on informed guesswork – not scientific certainty – since they cannot be certain how the market will respond.  That involves having to “think” about what ought to be the appropriate price and amongst other things it involves looking at what other entrepreneur capitalists are selling their commodities for.  If you pitch your price too high you will lose out to your competitors. Of course, you might try to get round this through product differentiation, by suggesting that your particular product has some particular ingredient or quality which your competitors’ products lack. This also requires “thought” – ideas  However, this idea that a “specific number value” is agreed upon by the “governing representative-agents of the ruling ideational comprehensive framework, and later grudgingly accepted by the masses” seems to imply that price makers are a monolithic body and that price takers are likewise a monolithic body that “grudgingly” go along with whatever numerical value the former determine should be the case and never engage in such subversive activities as switching brand loyalties.  But capitalist entrepreneurs are not liberty to assign whatever price they chose to the product they are trying to sell – except perhaps in the rare instances of monopoly situations and, even then, there will be other constraints that will be brought to bear on them (originating notably from the capitalist state which is concerned with the interests of the capitalist as a whole including those capitalists that would have to bear the costs of these higher prices). Prices are in other words emergent properties resulting from the interactions of multiple agents  Scientifically quantifiable labor-time, which is so central to any Marxist analysis, is only one possible avenue for determining value, price and wage, namely, it is only one consideration among many, when ruling enterprising-networks have consolidated their governing power over a specific sphere of production. It is in this regard that, contrary to Marx’s estimations, production costs can steadily decrease across a sphere of production while prices steadily increase across a sphere of production.  Again I am not absolutely certain what the writer is saying here.  If you define value as socially necessary labour time then you can’t have different avenues for the determination of value where only one of these is “Scientifically quantifiable labor-time”.  What the writer is doing is mixing up qualitatively different concepts of value. Moreover, he seems to be unaware of the basic Marxian axiom that the sum total of prices must equate with the sum total of values, however much individual prices may diverge from individual values.  To the extent that some commodities sell for a price above their value that necessarily means other commodities sell for a price below their value.  Production costs also involve prices – namely the price of the inputs required to produce the goods in question (including of course labour power).  Why one set of prices should steadily decrease and another set of prices should steadily increase is not explained   For Marx, numerical value-sums, price-sums and wage-sums are the product of scientifically, quantifiable, expenditures of labor-time, there is no ideological influence involved in value, price and wage-determinations. For Marx, values, prices and wages are completely independent of ideology. Everything for Marx depends on socially necessary labor-time and scientifically quantifiable expenditures of labor-power within the capitalist production process I question this statement on several grounds. I would say that the value content of particular commodities – in the Marxian sense of value – is not something that can be directly measured with a stop watch but only reveals itself in a post hoc sense in market exchange – in exchange value, in the ratios in which commodities exchange and even then only in a general sense,  You cannot say, for example, that because a particular pair of shoes sells for the same price as ten pairs of socks, that the value content of that pairs of shoes is literally tens greater than a pair of socks.  Other factors beside value influence price – namely supply and demand – as Marx pointed out.  The Marxian labour theory of value is a rationalist and deductive one and though there have been various attempts to measure value in the Marxian sense, these can only ever be rough approximations  I would also question the claim that for Marx there is “no ideological influence involved in value, price and wage-determinations”. There is one case in which Marx clearly envisaged a role for ideological influence to have a bearing on the determination of value – namely labour power itself Labour power is different from other commodities as Marx points out in chapter 6 of Capital vol 1:  :On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed.In contradistinction therefore to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless, in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known.     In fact, it is those capitalist-networks, capable of controlling specific spheres of production, which are able to establish arbitrary values, prices and wages, that is, values, prices and wages which have nothing to do with actual expenditures of socially necessary labor-time and/or scientifically measurable quantities of labor-power, and everything to do with power and an entities control over a specific commodity and/or sphere of production. Once again, we find here the writer jumbling different conceptions of values.  If he is talking about establishing arbitrary values etc. which “have nothing to do with actual expenditures of socially necessary labor-time”, then clearly he is not using value in the sense that Marx uses this term.  He is actually advancing a subjective theory of value in my opinion and as such his argument is subject to the same devastating criticism that can directed at the subjectivist school of thought such as that it is based on a circular reasoning Moreover to say that prices and wages have “nothing to do” with actual expenditures of socially necessary labor-time is way over the top.  Nothing to do at all? That’s absurd! Granted the prices of commodities don’t, and cannot, exactly correspond with their value content but there is surely a rough correspondence here.  Why would a Rayleigh bicycle consistently sell at a price below that of a Ford Escort?  Answer: because their values are markedly different, amongst other things     It is in this regard that APPLE Inc. can grind wages down in China to almost nil, while charging ever-increasing sums for products in North America and Europe, where production costs are relatively minor and/or miniscule in comparison to commodity-prices and profits  If production costs in North America and Europe are “relatively minor and/or miniscule in comparison to commodity-prices and profits” why would business corporations bother to relocate their operations to low wage economies? As for Apple Inc grinding down wages to “almost nil” in China, what we have seen in China is a rise in wages in recent years and relatedly, a switch to more capital intensive production.  It is no coincidence that China is a major centre for developments such as robotics.  China used to be a low wage economy based on abundant supplies of labour.  This is what attracted the capital that financed China’s spectacular growth.  But in the race to the bottom other countries like Vietnam or Cambodia have overtaken China as low wage economies attracting inward investment from the Multinationals   It has been argued that inflation/deflation have a part to play in all of these seeming arbitrary value, price and wage-determinations and fluctuations, but for structural-anarchism economics, the effect of inflation/deflation are simply a by-product and/or an effect of the practical applications of conceptual-commodity-value-management. That is, inflation/deflation are effects of the artificial fabrication of arbitrary values, prices and wages by ruling enterprising-networks and not the other way around The writer has based his argument on the fact that there has been a steady increase in prices because of some arbitrary determination of values whereas I have pointed out that this could at least in part be the consequence of inflationary policies – increasing the currency in circulation.  Now we are told that this inflation is the effect of this “artificial fabrication of arbitrary values, prices and wages by ruling enterprising-networks and not the other way around”.  I don’t get this at all. Am I reading this right or is what is being suggested here is that prices rise because the powers-that-be desire it, that they attach more value to commodities being sold?  If so why would not the producers of production goods, the inputs of the final goods producing sector not also want to see an upward re-evaluation of their goods?  This is odd because the whole argument presented by the writer seems to be based on the alleged widening chasm between the prices of commodities and the costs of production  For example, a Black Friday Fire Sale, which is a deflationary microeconomic situation, is not the product of autonomous, law-like, market mechanisms. It is a conscious decision by an enterprise of some sort to artificially lower its commodity-prices, thus manifesting a microscopic deflationary situation, whereupon, through the practical application of conceptual-commodity-value-management, purchasing power is significantly increased for consumers temporarily, resulting in a mad rush and/or a purchasing frenzy. Inversely, when prices are manually increased after the Black Friday Fire Sale to their former levels or higher, thus setting the stage for next year’s anticipated Black Friday Fire Sale, an inflationary microeconomic situation is manufactured, whereupon, consumers shy away from purchases, due to their artificially decreased purchasing power But if consumers shy away from purchases then this rather defeats the whole purpose of the exercise, doesn’t it?  In fact what you would find is other businesses jumping at the opportunity to increase their market share by underselling their competitors. Hence the periodic price wars between the big supermarkets.   Consequently, from the Marxist perspective, value is something definite and scientifically quantifiable. It is something that can be scientifically measured in the sense that one can measure the exact labor-time socially necessary to manufacture a particular commodity. And for Marx, this scientifically measured labor-time, embodied in a commodity, is the basis of value; i.e., it is value, itself. And being true to the scientific method, for Marx, value, which cannot be neatly translated into quantifiable labor-time; i.e., exact temporal units of labor-power, or specifically, a scientifically determined socially necessary labor-time, which governs a specific economic branch, is in the end not value, it is unproductive Again I don’t think you can “measure the exact labor-time socially necessary to manufacture a particular commodity” because socially necessary labour time is an industry wide average, generalisation.  It’s like saying the average family consists of 2.3 children.  No such actual family exists  Producing more cheaply means the ability to sell more cheaply and this also means the capacity to sell more goods and to appropriate a greater segment of the market, and “if [the capitalist] attains the object he is aiming at…[and] prices his goods only a small percentage lower than his competitors. He drives them [i.e. his competitors,] off the field, he wrests from them at least a part of their market, by underselling them”.10  In this regard, according to Marx, competition drives capitalists to ever-increasingly produce below the average production time limit set by the regulating mechanism of socially necessary labor-time.  Yes and selling more cheaply as a condition of competition itself, is a countervailing influence against the desire to just arbitrarily raise prices because you have revaluated upwards the worth of the commodity you are sellingNotwithstanding, this Marxist concept of a law-like mechanism; i.e., socially necessary labor-time, regulating capitalist production, is predicated on the assumption that value, by Marx’s own definition, is only scientifically quantifiable labor-time and nothing else. For Marx, “the substance of value [is] labor-time”11, specifically socially necessary labor-time, measured in scientifically exact quantities of time deemed socially necessary, pertaining to a specific sphere of production.  However, is Marx correct in his definition? Or has he missed the amplitude, multitude and magnitude of value; namely, has Marx reduced the concept of value to the narrow confines of scientific measurement and by doing so, missed the importance, malleability and fluidity by which multi-dimensional value, informs, shapes and influences price, wage, profit, production, consumption,  distribution and capitalism, in general, etc.   This is somewhat misleading.  Marx does allow a role for use value. In fact a commodity that possessed no use value would not be sold.  The desirability of a commodity to a consumer will therefore influence its price through the interaction of supply and demand.  However in the long run – but only in the long run – there will be a tendency for supply and demand to equilibrate.  At that point, use value only explains why commodities exchange not the ratios in which they exchange.  As Marx notes:  If supply equals demand, they cease to act, and for this very reason commodities are sold at their market-values. Whenever two forces operate equally in opposite directions, they balance one another, exert no outside influence, and any phenomena taking place in these circumstances must be explained by causes other than the effect of these two forces. If supply and demand balance one another, they cease to explain anything, do not affect market-values, and therefore leave us so much more in the dark about the reasons why the market-value is expressed in just this sum of money and no other (CapitalVol 3 part 2, ch 10)   

[robbo203]

jondwhite wrote:

Thanks. Just read the letters in today's issue. Robbo, have you joined or is that a bit of Leninist license? Also good to see someone complain about letters from Freeman and Downing.

 No its licence on the part of the Editors  LOL

[robbo203]

Here's one interesting response from the above site.  So could the NRA being playing left off against the right to  boost small arms sales?:     "I'm pretty shallow and generally just post my gut reaction to the various articles RS posts. I have been wrestling with my feelings regarding this story since yesterday morning.I agree with all of the politics of the Redneck Revolt. I side with the working class, I abhor white supremacists, I hope for an end to racism. Woody Guthrie was my earliest hero. I've visited Ludlow, Colorado and cried for the striking miners and their wives and children, etc, etc. So the article got me all excited… these guys are speaking my language.I have always been a pacifist and believe in strong gun control. I'm tired of living in a country where the populace is so easily gunned down. I don't believe in open carry. I want to live in a civilized nation where the populace doesn't go to the grocery store armed to their teeth. So I wrestled with the Redneck Revolt and their desire/need to arm every member of the left. I went to their site and saw that some of their fund raising is dedicated to purchasing arms.FWIW here is where my wrestling with the issues of working class heros and guns took me:We all know that the NRA's main purpose is to sell arms for the arms manufacturers. These last 8 years the NRA has used the trope "Obama is gonna come and take your guns" to drive up the sale of guns. And it worked. There are now more than 300 million guns in the hands of civilians in the US. That's one for every man, woman and child.But the Obama threat is gone so what is the NRA going to do to keep the gun manufacturers churning out weapons and reaping profits? I think I know.I've seen the recent NRA ad which tells the right that the left is armed and dangerous. And now I've seen the Redneck Revolt, which has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 6 months, saying the left needs to become armed and dangerous. And I smell a big, fat capitalist rat:The NRA is pushing a narrative to get the Right AND the Left to purchase their product.And all this talk of being armed to withstand capitalism and tyrannical government? I've seen it before and, no matter how well armed, the little guy ALWAYS loses because the guys with the money and the power ALWAYS have bigger and better weapons. They lost at Blair Mountain when the government started bombing them. They lost at the Bonus March when the government rode in on horses and destroyed their encampment. They lost at the Tulsa Race Massacre when incendiary bombs were dropped from crop planes. They lost at Occupy Wall Street. The only thing that being armed guarantees is more injuries and deaths at home and in our communities during the regular course of day to day activities. And being armed also guarantees more and swifter and deadlier punishment when we dare to question the status quo.Until we are 100% automated the working class has the means to gain control. All they have to do is unite. And they don't need guns to unite."

[robbo203]

robbo203 wrote:

The argument the writer seems to present is that there is a flaw in Marx s thinking.  Increasing automation and the replacement of living labour by dead labour, should have the effect of reducing the value content of commodities  – the amount of socially necessary labour time embodied in them,  This is because only living labour can create new values; machines only transfer the value already contained in them,  So as machines replace human labour, the effect should be a reduction in the value content of commodities,  That in turn should result in a lowering of prices since on average and over the long run commodity prices reflect their values,  That is not happening according to the writer .  Hence the flaw in Marx's theory:" In fact, increasingly post-industrial, post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism is abandoning, with the advent of ever-increasing automation, the limited parameters manufactured by socially necessary labor-time in favor of the unlimited parameters manufactured by conceptual-commodity-value-management, namely, arbitrary, socially constructed value, price and wage-determinations. " 

 A further thought occured to me.   Michel Luc Bellemare bases his whole argument – that the labour theory of value  is being rendered increasingly irrelevant by a process of arbitrary valuation –  on the grounds that automation is reducing the value content of commidities but the prices of commodities are steadily rising,  If value ultimately determines prices this shouldnt be happening.  Prices should fall along with value, Here is where he explains this:  This is the reason why value and surplus value can be progressively decreasing within post-industrial, post-modern bourgeois-state-capitalism, with less and less value being spread unto commodities, while commodity-prices simultaneously are ever-increasing. Two quick points : Firstly , presumably he is not taking into account the effect of inflation which would obviously distort the picture.  What we need to know ifs the movement of real prices not inflated prices caused by monetary policy Secondly, the prices of numerous commidiities  have indeed been falling along with technological innovation.  I'm reading through Paul Mason's book on Postcapitalism at the moment and he cites several examples particularly in the area of information technology.  The whole argument about capitalism's supposed trend towards  zero marginal cost promoted by people like Mason and Jeremy Rifkin is actually quite a striking confirmation of the labour theory of value and Mason goes out of his way to point this out

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