Young Master Smeet
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I feel inspired. Curently, there is value in commodities. , How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to accept the use value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other commodity as the form of its own value.The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifestation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents value alone.Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expression of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural property common to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coat, in the expression of value of the linen, represents a non-natural property of both, something purely social, namely, their value.All my own work.
Yawn
Marx wrote:Truth, the cognition of which is the business of philosophy, was in the hands of Hegel no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, which, once discovered, had merely to be learned by heart. Truth lay now in the process of cognition itself, in the long historical development of science, which mounts from lower to ever higher levels of knowledge without ever reaching, by discovering so-called absolute truth, a point at which it can proceed no further, where it would have nothing more to do than to fold its hands and gaze with wonder at the absolute truth to which it had attained.Measure does not equal absolute, it is an abstraction/approximation which contains compnents and movements. National walth is an asbtraction, just as labour time accounting i, the point is the degree to which they are both useful indicators: tools for humans.
Imagine we made tools out of lego bricks (just go with me on this):n each tool would need to be accounted for in its own right, but, theoretically, they would be broken down into their basic bricks,a dn those bricks could be re-purposed: it would be useful to track the stocks of each type of tool, and by extrapolation, the number of available bricks that could be re-purposed. Also, assuming bricks can be made into intermediate and end products, it's worth watching the balance between the two. As per my quote from Marx, to keep us on track, it's about going beyond abstract global figures, to get into the guts of production, and open out all the processes and inventories.
robbo203 wrote:Even if you could "follow the labour trial" – I think you seriously underestimate the scale of the task given the thoroughly integrated and socialised character of modern production – to what end would you do this?. What is the point of the exercise? Past labour is past labour. Also how would you weight different kinds of labour anyway? Is one hours labour by a neurosurgeon equivalent to one hours labour by a janitor, say? If not what is the ratio you recommend – and why?No ratio, like I said, rough reckoning which would show what share each sector/enetrprise was taking of the total available workforce: bnut we'd also need specific records of specific types of labour, just as we would any other inventory item. We wouldn't compare dentist and mortician, we just need to know how many hours of each and by how many people. We might also have a commonly agreed working week, where everyone works a certain number of hours within a restricted range of industries (e.g. 20 hours a week on farming, say)…
As, again, I think Engels wrote:
Quote:Individuals producing in society – hence socially determined individual production – is, of course, the point of departure.To try and return to the theme of the thread, he also, IIRC wrote:
Quote:The obvious, trite notion: in production the members of society appropriate (create, shape) the products of nature in accord with human needs; distribution determines the proportion in which the individual shares in the product; exchange delivers the particular products into which the individual desires to convert the portion which distribution has assigned to him; and finally, in consumption, the products become objects of gratification, of individual appropriation. Production creates the objects which correspond to the given needs; distribution divides them up according to social laws; exchange further parcels out the already divided shares in accord with individual needs; and finally, in consumption, the product steps outside this social movement and becomes a direct object and servant of individual need, and satisfies it in being consumed. Thus production appears as the point of departure, consumption as the conclusion, distribution and exchange as the middle, which is however itself twofold, since distribution is determined by society and exchange by individuals. The person objectifies himself in production, the thing subjectifies itself in the person; [9] in distribution, society mediates between production and consumption in the form of general, dominant determinants; in exchange the two are mediated by the chance characteristics of the individual.But Marx makes this interesting point:
Marx wrote:The concept of national wealth creeps into the work of the economists of the seventeenth century – continuing partly with those of the eighteenth – in the form of the notion that wealth is created only to enrich the state, and that its power is proportionate to this wealth. This was the still unconsciously hypocritical form in which wealth and the production of wealth proclaimed themselves as the purpose of modern states, and regarded these states henceforth only as means for the production of wealth.GDP as an abstraction ignoresd the state of various classes, and the conditions of life within society, but it is a measure of the only measure of success for capital, the increase in the nominal amounts of money accumulated.The point for socialists, is to get away from such asbtractions, but to get to the real people beneath.
I can barely believe it, centrist antlanticists Blair-alike Macron has a book out called Revolution.https://www.amazon.co.uk/R%C3%A9volution-Emmanuel-Macron/dp/284563966X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486639482&sr=8-1&keywords=macron+revolutionNuff said. Any Francophones willing to waste money?
Clearly you're not explaining yourself very well. The actual is social and the social is actual, as Hegel didn't say. I know you're next going to say Zimzalabim and Abbracadabra, sorry, Theory and Practice. But, I'm sorry to say that no vote is going to make a million bricks get laid out in three seconds.I prefer to continue looking at concrete humans in their lived circumstances. They will be able to decide what they need, and design and co-ordinate the work to realise their needs, through co-operation and social practice.
Robbo,But each team at each stage of the production process will have calculated the contrbution of themeselves in labour terms, and we could, if we wanted, follow the full labour trail: but, concrete labour types are not commensurate, abstract labour would only ever be a rough and ready reckoning across the whole system.Lbird,just to be clear, I'm saying average doesn't exist, and like the owl of Minnerva, only comes with the dying of the light. You can set a fiat average if you like, but it won't correspond with the actual trends in the system, the actual labour time embodied in any given commodity, nor (except by accident) to the labour time contained in the system as a whole. Labour time is an emergant property of the process of social production, the actions of human beings in social production (and in commodity production, it onl;y comes into being at the moment of exchange).
robbo203 wrote:It seems to me that the whole notion of labour time accounting whereby society seeks to establish “how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production”, is so problematic and vulnerable to error as to be more or less useless and thus a waste of time and resources. I really cannot see the point of the exercise.But it's no more nor less what managers in any enterprise do now: look at how many staff they have, stimate material outputs and work toward their targets (and hire more staff or reduce if they need to). Hands on managers think in task time. We'd always need to know how many hours of X work are required to perform our tasks, or find ways to substitute if a particular skill is in short supply, that doesn't need any statistcial bureaue or anything like it, and an be done at the firm level.
LBird wrote:I would suggest that 'voting' would be an appropriate method for 'measuring'.So, I think we can 'measure socially necessary labour', and indeed will do so within socialism. This social estimation will not, of course, involve 'money'.We couldn't vote on what socially necessary labour is needed, partly because there's a missing term: average (it doesn't matter if we use Mean or Mode, though I think mode is more apposite when dealing with labour values). No commodity would represent the average time (or if it did, it would do so accidentally). Imagine a thousand physically identical bars of soap, each one would represent a varying amount of real labour time (depending on the operatives, the conditions of the day and a thousand or more other factors that will induce variation by the second).A vote could assign an arbitrary value to the goods, but this would necessarily differ from the actual value, which would assert itself through informal markets and the like if we had labour vouchers.Moreover, some values couldn't be assigned, ther are physical limits: a bricklayer cannot lay out 1 million bricks an hour, that will never be possible. Moreover, there are only 24 hours in the day, and will only ever be. As I think Engels wrote:
Quote:Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of “saving” and “abstinence.” Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working-day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things.We most certainly would look at labour times invovled in actyivities, but I'd suggest not abstract labour: we'd look at how many hours of bricklayer, how many hours of dentist, how many hours of plumber, computer programmer (and teacher/trainer, to develop those skills if we find we're in short supply). Yes, we'd keep an eye on that as fractions of the total available working population, and adjust activity in one area to make time available for another where necessary and desired, and that would be done through democratic free association of producers.
Lbird,but the point is that Socialism is about achieving definite ends, not using the least labour possible: we might, like ancient peoples choose to throw labour unnecessarily at a task because we enjoy doing it and want to show how much labour we have.
LBird wrote:Since this form of 'labour' is 'socially necessary', only the society that determines its own necessities can 'measure' its labour; and furthermore, only it can determine its 'measures'.Socialism means the end of abstract labour, and its replacement with concrete labour, so that means the abolition of socially necessary labour time as any measure. That also means the the end of commodities, and production towards definitee ends.
Chucky wrote:(It is only where production is under the actual, predetermining control of society that the latter establishes a relation between the volume of social labour-time applied in producing definite articles, and the volume of the social want to be satisfied by these articles.)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htmAnd just to republish another one:
Chaz 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
Chaz 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.ALB wrote:[That's because they are measuring actual labour rather than socially necessary labour. Don't know how you would measure the latter. Not sure you can. In criticising various schemes for "labour money" in his day Marx suggested it couldn't be.I think Kautsky answered that that is precisely what money and market prices do:
Kautsky wrote:Such a system as this might assume the form that each worker would receive a token for every hour of labour which he performed, and this token would entitle him to the product of an hour’s labour. It would be necessary to calculate how much labour every product cost. For the wages of a working day the worker would always be able to buy products which required one day to produce.[…]This involves a two-fold calculation. The worker’s remuneration would be fixed according to the labour-time he actually expended, while the price of the product would be fixed according to the labour-time socially necessary for its production. The results of these calculations ought to be identical. But this would almost never be the case.How is the law of value discovered? By observing the movements and relations of prices. Ever since the mass production, of commodities for the market has been a systematic process, it has been noted that the prices of each commodity, in spite of all its fluctuations, continuously seek a certain level, however much they might at times be above or below it. On the other hand, it was found that the relations of the prices of each commodity to each other, amid all temporary fluctuations, showed a uniform tendency. Yet these relations and this level were not unalterable magnitudes; they did not follow the fluctuations in the state of the market; they altered only with changes in the conditions of production.So, if hole digging and filling fulfilled some sort of demand (in the usual case, of the government relieving unemployment) then that would be a real addition of value. Of course, the government has to get the wages to pay the workers from somewhere.I suppose it could be made productive, if the government paid people out of taxes to dig holes, and then charged householders and road users to fill them in again…
Sarkozy faces trial over party finances:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38890993Although not a candidate, it'll add to a kind of sleaze ffect (especially as Fillon's defence is 'Other MPs did the same'Of course, le Pen has been found to have mis-allocated EU funds:http://europe.newsweek.com/marine-le-pens-eu-salary-be-halved-after-misspent-funds-scandal-551025?rm=eu
Lbird, I'm not the SPGB.Your said:
Lbird wrote:Those who argue that the producers can't vote on the issue of 'the existence of matter', which includes you Vin, must argue that this issue is then determined by 'elite specialists' with their own 'decision-making power'.(emphasis added). I rejoined, that it is not true that we "must argue that this issue is determined by elite specialists". That is untrue, and demonstrably so, as I have demonstrated, there are other options, you are committing a birfucation fallacy.
