[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

I thought that even followers of the view that use-value entered into economic value (the theory HM Hyndman described as "the final futility of final utility") had abandoned the view that subjective utility can be measured (as it differs from person to person, eg Tim) in favour a more "objective" approach based on averages. In other words, they think in terms of more and less (relative) than of an absolute figure. Or maybe there are still a few backwoodsmen around who think you can measure use-value?

 The Austrian school of economics – von Mises and co – never did believe that subjective utility could be measured and attacked those early attempts you refer to, to produce some kind of objective measure of utility or use value (i think "utils" was name of the unit of utility suggested by some economist whose name I forget).  The Austrians argued that subjective judgments could only ever be  ranked along an ordinal scale and could never be measured in a cardinal sense The question is how then do subjective preferences get translated into measurable prices, what is the mechanism by which this is supposed to happen?  I think it is at this point that whole explanation offered by them collapses. They don't really have a plausible theory of how prices are determined by subjective values – how, for example,  does the subjective value that a starving pauper places on a four square meal impinge on the price of the meal? – because they can't seem to see that subjective values are mediated by other factors like how much purchasing power you have. Subjective values can obviously influence prices but they don't in the end determine them

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

 Marginalism treats each commodity as if it were a unique instance that can be monopolised, and so arrives at the view as per Marx above.  because Marx goes into the system behind the exchange events, he derives value from a social system.  basically, all exchanges are what the buyer and seller are willing to pay (the libertarian fantasy) when seen at that precise moment.  The question is how we got to that moment.  Nor does it account for the infinite utility of money, there is no marginal utility of money, more money can always buy more and do more.

Yes this is something that Mandel pointed out. The problem centres on the difficulty of“reconciling the theory of prices resulting from supply and demand with a theory of prices resulting from the quantity of money in circulation”. According to Mandel: It can be said that the Marginalist school was never able to solve the problem of the “marginal value of money”, and that for this reason it remained dualistic, combining a subjective theory of value with an objective theory of money (e.g. the quantity theory). It is clear that an increase in the “stock of currency” does not necessarily reduce the “marginal value” of this stock, as would happen in the case of an increase in a stock of corn, since money can be used to buy, one after another, commodities which correspond to different needs of equal intensity. The dualism of the theory is seen if one imagines an increase in the stock of currency suddenly causing a rise in wages, without any change in the marginal value of the commodities concerned" https://www.marxists.org/…/marxist…/marginalists.htm) This along with Bukharin's devastating critique of Marginalism (that it is based on a circular argument) and various other criticism that can be made of the subjective theory of value means that it rather resembles a piece of cheese full of holes

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Tim Kilgallon wrote:

Clearly the second ice cream you eat yields less utility or use value/pleasure  than the first and third even less than the second , I would dispute this statement!

 Why Tim? I don't think its an unreasonable gneralisation.  I mean there are exceptions to the law of diminishing marginal returns but by and large it holds true, I think. If you continue to eat ice cream after ice cream I guarantee your desire for ice cream will diminish to zero soon or later. Unless you have an infinite capacity to eat ice cream! Thinking about it,  the law of diminishing marginal returns bears an interesting relation to that basic dogma of bourgeois economics – that our demands are unlimited. I understand its more complicated than this and that as the utility we get from one good diminishes so we are supposed to switch our attention to another that we can lust after,  but all the same…

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Sorry, but i don't even understand the question….Spell it out more simply for the ignoramuses. 

 Hi Alan,   The argument is the the LTV is not a theory of  prices and that the prices of goods generally sell either above or below their values even if, in the long run, they coincide. Theoretically this must be the case since the pressure of market competition constantly works to eliminate discrepancies between supply and demand thus cancelling out their effect Marx explained this rather well here: 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” (Marx, K, Capital v3 pt 2, ch 10) The point is that  supply and demand never do cancel each out and the market is in a constant state of disequilibrium. Hence the divergence of price from value at all times,  This doesn't negate the law of value, it simply qualifies it and according to some, gives some scope for the subjective theory of value to come into play as an explanation for the determination of prices,  For example, there is some merit in the law of diminishing marginal utility (although there are also exceptions to this law). Clearly the second ice cream you eat yields less utility or use value/pleasure  than the first and third even less than the second ,  There comes a point – the margin – where eating more icecream yields no utility and even make for a disutility – you feel sick! That is when supply equals demand and the price starts falling thereafter What I am suggesting is that there are aspects of the subjective theory which we can accept but not the larger claims it makes about the relationship between price and value – in particular, its claim that prices are solely determined by subjective judgements of individuals which is pure bunkum. Bukharin demolished this argument by amongst other things that subjective value judgements are also influence by prices so the subjective thoery of value was in effect based on a circular argument. Marx is I think acknowledged a role for subjective factors when he pointed out that"nothing can have value, without being an object of utility” (Marx K; 1867, Capital V1 Ch 1 §1).  The difference is that the subjective theory of value makes exchange value a function of use value whereas the labour theory of value sees these things as quite separate

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ALB wrote:

Fair enough but how come you still have the vote? Don't expats get cut off after a number of years?

 I think its only after 15 years or maybe 20, Can't remember but Im within limit whatever its is,  The  govt seems to be making quite a concerted effort to rope in the expat vote and in Spain there are about 400.000 Brits living here I believe

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AHS wrote:

For information, this is my union's official position: "The GMB have taken a position of ‘angry yes’. We know the EU isn't perfect, there are plenty of problems with it, but so many of the rights we've fought for over the years are guaranteed by Europe. So we'll fight to make Europe a Europe that works for working people, not big businesses, but we can only do that from within, not by leaving. There's too much at risk."

 AHS,  I think your Union's official position is  rather naive and misleading.  There is no way Europe can be made to work "for  working people, not big businesses".  That's akin to saying  that capitalism can be run in the interests of the working class,  It cant given the very nature of capitalism itself. So the statement could have been better phrased in a way that would acknowledge this  point – that no political arrangement can be cobbled together that would work in the interest of working people.  All working people can do is strive to get the most out of a bad situation which is intrinsically biased against them and fundamentally inimical to their interests. Having said that, I agree with your basic argument that staying  in the EU is (marginally) better than leaving.  So I will probably be voting for the Stay campaign albeit not out of any enthusiasm and more for negative reasons .  Such as that Im fed up to the back teeth with Little Englander nationalist crap that seems to emanate primarily (though not exclusively!) from the Leave campaign. I suppose being in resident in Spain is also a factor and it is no surprise that almost all expats here will be voting to Stay

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imposs1904 wrote:

who do you think? I'd wager it was the same SC who wrote Eddie Grant's obituary for the Socialist Standard. The clue is in the Islington Branch connection.

 Ah now I get it! You're as sharp as mustard.  Coleman's mustard to be precise.  LOL,  Anyway, what  is Steve doin these days?

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ALB wrote:

Have you looked at this section of the website as well as the one on pamphlets as such?http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education

 I had overlooked that – thanks for drawing it to my attention… Yeah the stuff is good and some of it quite focussed but it is not quite what I had in mind.  These seem to be mainly shortish articles but I was thinking of something a little more substantial – somehere in between an article and a pamphlet in length I dont quite  know what the appropriate term would be – maybe "Discussion Paper".   Also perhaps suggesting a somewhat different approach – more rigorous,  systematic, modular and – dare I say it – "academic"  in its treatment of the material.  Does the SPGB have a Research department, or something like that, that could be responsible for putting out this kind of thing into the public domain? Actually the "Study Guides" that I now see listed under "Education" is a little closer to what I had in mind.. So perhaps what I am suggesting is to expand the list of Study Guides or Discussion papers to cover a lot more topics to make up for the dearth of pamphlets and particularly recent up to date pamphlets….

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As a matter of curiosity , who is "SC" who wrote up the obit?

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Matt wrote:

You need money to start the ball rolling. I can see some obvious advantages, if one was participating in economic activity, working on the side say and wished to disguise this, by not banking cash. Kind of 'weboffshoring' smaller transactions and deals in black economic activity. I haven't a clue beyond that so sorry re. your main question.

 Matt, I think the argument that the Ancaps are making is that bitcoin enables you to bypass the mainstream financial insititutions, thus depriving them of the ability to take a cut of your hard earned cash. So the argument ties in with a wider argument about debt and financialisation of the economy.  The Ancaps seem to be saying that we are living in a rentier economy not a truly capitalist economy and that developments like bitcoin which they passionately support will collapse the whole bloated surperstructure of corporatism and deliver a free market utopia I think they are talking bollocks frankly and engaging in pure wishful thinking.  Meanwhile back in the real economy the concentration of wealth is extreme and getting more pronounced.   Impoverished workers who imagine they are stepping on to some magical escalator to significant  material improvement by escaping the perils of what is called "secondary exploitation" forget that there is still primary exploitation and that the means of prpduction are still massively concentrated in the hands of the capitalists.  Moving around a few bitcoins between ourselves aint gonna make a blind bit of difference to the wider picture

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LBird wrote:

.I've shown many times that we can control the outcome of all experiments, and 2+2 can equal 11, and that both can be decided by a vote.

Can you tll us a bit more about this vote you propose 1) who is going to participate in this vote?2) how are you going to organise this vote?3) What happens if some of us continue  to think 2+2 is 4 or even, lets say, 7?

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Vin wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Morality, as you say, is a set of rules – or expectations – governing behaviour, 

 Surely that remains to be proven and not simply assertedI suggest: ‘Morality is a set of rules governing propertied society imposed upon us whether  we like it or not’We and other animals are naturally caring and compassionate and we don’t need an imposed morality as the early capitalist philosophers  would have us  believe.There was never a Hobbesian  ‘state of nature’. Such concepts were invented to justify the state and the imposition of a morality by the developing capitalist class.Without morality and the state we would have  ‘a war of all against all’. Implying that humans are not social animals with compassion and empathy and the capitalist state is inevitable We will get along fine without 'morality'

  Sorry, but I strongly disagree with your whole line of argument, Vin. I think what you are doing is conflating one particular form of morality, based on private property, with morality per se.  Morality predates property society and indeed as I indicated earlier, a kind of proto-morality can even be found among some species of animals – in particular the primates – where there is substantial evidence of rule governed behaviour being reinforced by sanctions and rewards. Not only are you confusing one form of morality with morality itself but you are also confusing it with the actions of the state.  You are arguing that morality is some kind of ideological form or contrivance invented by the state to enforce compliance which is actually a rather idealist way of looking at the subject – that morality was somehow magicked into existence to suit the needs of a ruling class. Logic suggests otherwise. The very force of moral injunctions in the hands of a ruling class surely derives from the fact that ruling class morality represents an adaptation to a pre-existing tendency for human beings to think and behave in moral terms.  If such a pre-existing tendency did not exist, the efficacy of ruling class morality would probably be pretty feeble if not non existent. In fact you fatally undermine your whole argument by asserting that there never was a “Hobbesian state of nature” prior to the appearance of the state and private property.  Exactly!!  And how do imagine these pre-state hunter gatherer societies held together if not through strong bonds of moral affilation and moral identification with the group? If “We and other animals are naturally caring and compassionate” the logical corollary of that is that we are naturally also moral animals. While being caring and compassionate, in itself, is a necessary but not sufficient, grounds for a moral outlook, the application of these attributes or qualities, I suggest,  cannot but express in the form of a set of rules or expectations about how we ought to behave towards one another.In other words, in the form of morality

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SocialistPunk wrote:

Vin, I agree that the traits suggesting empathy in certain animals has nothing to do with morality. Morality simply refers to a social code of conduct.Socialist morality would simply be a set of rules based around the need to curb what would be deemed anti-social behaviour.

 Hmm,  I wouldnt say empathy has nothing to do with morality, SP.  It has something to do with morality just as recipocrity or notions of fairness has something to do wth morality as well.  These things are the building blocks of a moral outlook and are presupposed by a moral outlook. Morality, as you say, is a set of rules – or expectations – governing behaviour, which rules can vary from one society to another and from one class to another.Ultuinately these rules ,or expectations,  are framed with the interests and wellbeing of others in mind as opposed to just one 's own interests anbd wellbeing  (which is a prudental rather than a moral concern). Socialism is necessarily both a prudentual and moral project becuase, as I have argued, you simply cannot get to socialism except on the basis of uniting with others – workers – whose interests and wellbeing are a concern to you as well as your own and becuase these other individuals are regarded by you as having value in themselves.  That is to say, socialism necessarily involves an altruistic component Translating our altruistuic regard for fellow workers into a set of tacit rules or expectations is precisely what a socialist morality consists in and we cannot do without it as socialists even if some ous like to pretend it doesnt exist!

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TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

 

robbo203 wrote:

Do you imagine for one moment that the world that exists is one that correlates with your hypothetical dreamworld  of a level playing field? Do you really think that the 62 multibillionaires who  currently own between them more wealth than half the world's population – 3,500,000,000 people – have contributed as much to humanity as the latter?  I would put it to you that the "rewards" that these  62 individuals have received has very little, if anything ,to do with their own effort but overwhelmingly has to do with efforts of those who produce their wealth for them – the working class.  The workers in effect run capitalism from top to bottom but are largely excluded from the means of production However  hard they work it is the owners of capital that reap the benefits simple because they own capital and not because they merited or worked for what they  receive

 Please tell me you're joking right now.   

Nope. The production of goods and services under capitalism is carried out from top to bottom by the working class of wage and salary earners, even though capitalism itself is essentially run in the interests of the tiny nonproductive owning or capitalist class – that is to say, essentially geared to the pursuit of profit from the investments made by the latter class.  What part of this statement do you disagree with or don’t understand?  

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

As for the rest: Those billionaires aren't these lazy, useless invalids you think they are. They give huge sums to charity, they invest huge sums in businesses. They're the lifeblood of capitalism. Without them, capitalism would crumble. They're far more important than expendable workers who can just be replaced with another person if they screw up. 

It is not part of my argument that the billionaire class consists of “lazy, useless invalids”.  Actually, even if they all worked their socks off 24/7 and 365 days of the year it would still be the case that overwhelmingly the money they have acquired to invest in business or give away to charity would have come from the efforts of the working class, not them  They have acquired this money simply by virtue of the fact that they have ownership rights over the means of production and are thus able to exploit the excluded property-less  majority by paying the latter significantly less in wages and salaries than the value of the goods and service the latter provide or make As Ray B. Williams notes:Some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in North America say there is no such thing as the "self-made man." With more millionaires making, rather than inheriting, their wealth, there is a false belief that they made it on their own without help, a new report published by the Boston-based non-profit United For a Fair Economy, states. The group has signed more than 2,200 millionaires and billionaires to a petition to reform and keep the U.S. inheritance tax. The report says the myth of "self-made wealth is potentially destructive to the very infrastructure that enables wealth creation."  The individuals profiled in the report believed they prospered in large part due to things beyond their control and because of the support of others. Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world said, "I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned." Erick Schmidt, CEO of Google says, "Lots of people who are smart and work hard and play by the rules don't have a fraction of what I have. I realize that I don't have my wealth because I'm so brilliant."  ("The myths of the "self-made man" and meritocracy"  Psychology TodayJune 13, 2010)Also, your views on the nature and motive force behind philanthropocapitalism strike me as a little naïve and gullible.  Check this out  https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/george-soros-philanthrocapitalism-millennium-villages/  

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

 You ignored the problem. Your argument against the existence of banks is that they take up unnecessary space and resources. I was simply pointing out that the use of those resources would just be replaced by the administration necessary in socialism. You need the administration to figure out rations and make sure people aren't taking more than their fair share. You also need the administration to keep track of who has what. Socialist society requires people be able to obtain what they need, but how are they supposed to do that if no one knows where the item in question actually is? Just walk around until you find someone who has it? Your counter to the rations argument will be to say that people will only take what they need out of 'good will'. To this, I direct you to Denmark in 2012, a welfare state in which only 73% of independent citizens had any kind of employment, and a lot of this employment had very short work hours too. This includes people who work only because working is necessary to have the money to live properly. Imagine how much that willingness to work would decrease if Denmark were to abolish money and give everyone, even if you don't work, the resources necessary to live comfortably. 

  This is an absurd argument you are presenting here.  Once again – where is the need for the  administration "to keep track of who has what” in a socialist society and what on earth has this got to do with banking and the provision of finance which would not exist in a socialist society?  By socialism we mean quite literally a society based on the common ownership of the means of producing wealth.  Common ownership necessarily means the absence of economic exchange or to put it differently economic exchange = markets – implies the existence of private property and hence the absence of common ownership. Given common ownership of the means of production what this also means is people have direct free access to the wealth that is produced which in turn implies that the wealth that is produced is done so on a completely voluntary unpaid basis. All of these features are logically interconnected: common ownership, no economic exchange, free access, volunteer labour.  You can’t have one without the other. The administration required for a socialist society to operate will be a tiny fraction of the size of capitalism’s sprawling bloated bureaucracies.  What will need to be kept track of is not what individuals consume but broad patterns of consumption in respect of the aggregate demand for specific lines of goods to ensure there is an adequate supply to meet future demand.  This is something that is already done today in the guise of a self-regulating system of stock control based on calculation in kind e.g. numbers of tins of baked beans on the shelves.  However, alongside calculation in kind we also find today, monetary calculation.  Socialism will dispense with the latter but retain the former so simple logic will tell you that in terms of its administrative apparatus socialism will be vastly more streamlined than capitalism. On the question of work incentive, it is a complete myth to suggest that without monetary incentives individuals will be less inclined to work.  Actually there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that monetary incentives (so called) actually have the effect of undermining the intrinsic motive to work.  See for example "Does Pay Motivate Volunteers?"  (Review of Economics and Statistics, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich , Working Paper Series , ISSN 1424-0459 , Working Paper No. 7, May 1999) which is a classic study in that field. A further point to make in this regard is that most of the work that we do even in capitalism is unpaid.  This is what constitutes what is called the grey economy which is counterposed to the official white market economy and the unofficial black market economy. Studies undertaken by social reearhers and bodies like UN  have shown that in terms of total hours worked , the grey economy is marginally larger than both the white and black economies combined  

TheSpanishInquisition wrote:

So a socialist state's production would be only enough to meet human needs, and not human desires. Sounds like a horrible world to live in if the food available to you is only what is necessary to live, where entertainment is scarce because you don't need it; only want it. Where no one can go on holiday because they don't need to; only want to.

There is no socialist state in socialism.  In the classical definition of socialism the state disappears since it is an instrument of class rule whereas with socialism classes cease to exist in the Marxian sense.  Hence, Engel’s observationThe people’sstatehas been flung in our teeth ad nauseamby the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm On the question of needs and desires – who said anything about socialism providing just a bare minimum to sustain life?  This is purely your invention and projection onto socialism what you imagine it to be. Quite simply, socialism will provide whatever the people of a socialist society will want it to provide – not a nanny state, not a corporation but the people themselves, freely and voluntarily. Socialism is all about the removal of barriers to what human beings desire not adding to the already substantial barriers presented by the market.  “Need” is, in any case, a socially and historically variable concept.  100 years ago we did not “need” television or washing machines. Can the same be said today?

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Human beings are, by nature, moral animals.  Its part of what makes us human.  It stems from the fact that we live in societies – that we are social creatures.  

A bold statement , cde. Which animals to you consider immoral or non moral and why? 

Slight difference between "immoral" and "non moral", Vin, since immorality presupposes a systen of moral values to begin with whereas non morality or amorality does not.  Human behaviour has both moral and amoral components . And not just human behaviour.  Some animal behaviour too – particularly in primates – is morally driven or at least exhibits the rudimentary building blocks of a proto-morality.  Read Frans de Waal on the subject or check out this    https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals?language=en

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