Young Master Smeet
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Sepehr wrote:2- A recurring mistake that I see here is the idea that somehow under socialism all the value produced by an association of workers is going to be distributed among them, therefore, based on this premise, it is concluded that surplusvalue ceises to exist. This is a huge misunderstanding. As I mentioned earlier, this was originally put forward by Lassale and Marx despised him for it. Under socialism, still workers will continue to produce a surplusvalue, but that surplusvalue is controlled collectively and goes to a social fund for development programs or other social or communal programs.
You're referring to the critique of the Gotha programme. Marx was criticising the idea that the full value of each worker's labour would be returned to them, merely pointing out that a portion of their product would have to be used for new means of production and social assistance, that is, the product would be distributed among the whole community. Marx does not mention surplus value there, nor would that be surplus value, it would simply be a fraction of the total product. It would only be surplus value if the commune purchased labour power at its commodity value, but that wouldn't be the case (even with the labour time vouchers Marx discussed as an option).
Sepehr wrote:The concept of communes is at the core of communism. Notice that communes is in plural form, i.e. there are several communes interacting with each other in a given society and that interaction will definitely include commodity exchange too. However, this exchange will acquire new qualities and is different from that undertaken between capitalist firms. Therefore it is impermissible to suggest a communist society is no different than a Ford plant!Something from the late Marx:
Late Marx wrote:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htmBakunin wrote:The Germans number around forty million. Will for example all forty million be member of the government?Certainly! Since the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune.
I'd also note that a Ford plant is part of an assembly process where doors are manufactured in one country, windows in another, and engines in yet another, these are internal within firm transfers, much as they would be between the different branches of the world socialist commune.
Sepehr wrote:Besides, I did not invent that statement myself. Go back and read the statement I had quoted from Marx.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch19.htmThe quoted section comes from a discussion of the notion of 'three revenues', and the thrust is that value comes from labour, not from land nor interest. So the phrase "In this a commodity produced by a capitalist does not differ in any way from that produced by an independent labourer or by communities of working-people or by slaves." is directed against the idea that the capitalist (nor the landlord) bring anything to the table, value-wise. This doesn't say anything about the nature of surplus value, nor would would happen under production among a conscious association.
Sepehr wrote:How interesting indeed! According to Marx, and this is delineated well early in the very first volume of Capital, the definition of surplusvalue is any value generated excess to the "necessary labour";Sorry, just spotted this, whilst fact checking. For Marx the exchange value is the average socially necessary labour time: surplus value is the differenence between the value of commodity labour-power and the socially necessary labour time employed. If, thus, we cease to purchase labour power, we abolish surplus value. You may be thinking of surplus-profit.If, to take an example, a co-operative sets out to sell it's products, and divides all the income not needed for constant capital purchase and amortisation between its members, there is no surplus value (though we could notionally calculate one if an existing labour market could tell us the respective value of the labour-power of the co-op members), but there is value.
Charlie wrote:Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm
Chuck wrote:In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch18.htm(My Bold — Also, note, not socially necessary labour time, but labour time, also note that vouchers are not essential, but an optional add on).Also, lets not forget Marx' distinction between concrete and abstract labour. Where we have socialised production we are working to achieve definite ends.
Charlie (with the Help of The Devil Himself) wrote:Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.)With associated production, there won't be exchange, any more than there is exchange between different parts of a production line in a Ford plant.
The other point is that the government could just declare the living wage (something Labourites have been campaigning for since the 1920's) as the minimum wage by fiat, thei 'interim measure' would in fact be pointless.
Ike Pettigrew wrote:I don't find your comments logical. I don't accept that just because something is accidental, that this means it doesn't exist or isn't significant.Without some essense, some core "Thing" that is "race" all we have are accidental clusters of certain genes. there is no 'instinct' towards creting those clusters, merely old geographies (the presence of absence of trade routes, migration vectors, etc.). So, if the movement of people changes, and the introduction of new communities togetehr leads to different clustrs of genetic information, that is neither a good nor a bad thing, there's no point protecting an accident.As for logic, I'd have thought it is clear: children are as much a threat to demography, culture and language as foriegners. In fact, I'm just as much a threat as I sprardle words with muxgo.
Ike Pettigrew wrote:On the point about culture, I don't understand the analogy with children, but I think culture is an important part of what keeps people together as a 'community', and therefore it might play an important part both in the transition to socialism (which I would argue is already well under way) and in the socialist society itself.Well, that's obvious. But it's widely dem,onstrated that language difference exist between generations (and even within people across a lifetime) language isn't stable.Culture isn't stable, as the maroon communities demonstrate, people make new cultures as they come to live together.Race doesn't exist, at most there are historic accidental demographies.We are about replacing the accidental associations of language with the conscious association of producers. I have more in common with a Syrian worker than Iever will with a British capitalist, and their struggle against the authorities that would drive them into the sea rather than help them flee the war is my struggle too.
Ike Pettigrew wrote:I fully support solidarity with workers internationally, but that does not necessitate that they come here en masse and destroy our societies.They only 'destroy societies' in the same way children destroy societies, they speak a different language, have funny food and dress differently too. Should we ban children?As it stands, we want to destroy capitalist society, and it's artificial division into nation states, and replace it with a world community.
ALB wrote:Yes, I thought that there weren't supposed to be any workers in America as everybody (except the filfthy super rich) there is supposed to be middle class. Revealing slip of the tongue on his part.I wonder if that is an effect of Sanders or maybe even subtle support for him?The speech also includes "Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage."Even this:
Obama wrote:But there should be other ways both parties can improve economic security. Say a hardworking American loses his job — we shouldn’t just make sure he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him. If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills. And even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him. That’s the way we make the new economy work better for everyone.[/quote is closer to European style welfare statism and social democracy.Of course, a valedictory address is more or less pie in the sky, so maybe that's why he can range onto such topics. but also dealing with wealth inequality in the same speech is interesting.The Bogey Man wrote:Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history (history is here simply meant to comprise all the spheres – political, juridical, philosophical, theological – belonging to society and not only to nature), the ideologist dealing with history then, possesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through an independent series of developments in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to its own or other spheres may have exercised a co-determining influence on this development, but the tacit pre-supposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of a process of thought, and so we still remain within that realm of pure thought which has successfully digested the hardest facts.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm
The Devil Himself wrote:As to the realms of ideology which soar still higher in the air, religion, philosophy, etc., these have a prehistoric stock, found already in existence and taken over in the historic period, of what we should to-day call bunk. These various false conceptions of nature, of man's own being, of spirits, magic forces, etc., have for the most part only a negative economic basis; but the low economic development of the prehistoric period is supplemented and also partially conditioned and even caused by the false conceptions of nature. And even though economic necessity was the main driving force of the progressive knowledge of nature and becomes ever more so, it would surely be pedantic to try and find economic causes for all this primitive nonsense. The history of science is the history of the gradual clearing away of this nonsense or of its replacement by fresh but already less absurd nonsense. The people who deal with this belong in their turn to special spheres in the division of labour and appear to themselves to be working in an independent field. And in so far as they form an independent group within the social division of labour, in so far do their productions, including their errors, react back as an influence upon the whole development of society, even on its economic development. But all the same they themselves remain under the dominating influence of economic development.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm
This Man is Never Right wrote:The essential difference between human and animal society consists in the fact that animals at most collect while men produce. This sole but cardinal difference alone makes it impossible simply to transfer laws of animal societies to human societies. It makes it possible, as you properly remark:“for man to struggle not only for existence but also for pleasures and for the increase of his pleasures,… To be ready to renounce his lower pleasures for the highest pleasure.” [Engels’ italics – quoted from Lavrov’s Sierra article]Without disputing your further conclusions from this I would, proceeding from my own premises, make the following inferences: At a certain stage the production of man attains such a high-level that not only necessaries but also luxuries, at first, true enough, only for a minority, are produced. The struggle for existence – if we permit this category for the moment to be valid – is thus transformed into a struggle for pleasures, no longer for mere means of subsistence but for means of development, socially produced means of development, and to this stage the categories derived from the animal kingdom are no longer applicable.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_11_17-ab.htm
Lbird seems unable to understand analogy. The immediate point is the vote doesn't make the car (and, indeed, a car can be made without a vote), just as a vote cannot decide that gravity is made of cheese.As you yourself note, all a vote can do is decide whether the produced goods meets our purposes, i.e. reveals our minds to us. the only question a vote anwers, is what do we think? But, we cannot define success alone by the vote, we could vote that the car building project jhas worked, but if the reality is that the cars keep breking down, then it is a failure, whichever way you cut it.
You can vote till your blue in the face, but someone has to actually make the car. All the vote tells us is what the community wants. Condorcets jury theorem aside, that's all voting does, is inform us what is in the minds of the members of the community.Furtehr, you cannot vote to instruct scientists to prove that gravity is made of cheese, just as you cannot vote for car workers to mkake one that goes at the speed of light.
LBird wrote:The real debate, here, is not 'the future', but why some argue 'now' that 'knowledge' is an elite product, and so can't be voted upon.No one is arguing that. Just as you cannot vote a car into existence, you cannot vote scientific knowledge into existence. Just as not everyone in society will be making cars, not everyone will be making knowledge. Just as the free association of producers means no-one is compelled to work, and from each according to their abilitries means we will be doing different work, etc.
Anyway, away till tomorrow now, so, LBird is unable to answer these questions, and that is how his contributions should be judged: 1) How can we know the results of the vote, without a vote to tell us the results of the vote?2) Is the material substrate differentiated? Does it bring any qualities to the relationship with human labour in producing organic matter?3) Can consensus gentium be subject to coercion? Could a mobilised dictatorship enforce a vote, and thereby determine truth as a minority with the acquiesence of the majority?
LBird wrote:A novel political interpretation of 'superior to society', YMS. Perhaps Charlie had better things to do, that day, than go on about politics and power, yet again.Matter speaking to you, again, perchance? Indeed, for you.A mere dabbling in English suffices, especially given the mwaning of the preceding sentence, superior does imply connotations of above and outtside, but a superior whiskey does not imply that it can order otehr whiskies about. Indeed, the antonym is inferior, which usually means worse rather than a synonym of subordinate.And, yes, the words are made of matter, as is my brain, so this was all achieved with matter.
