Young Master Smeet
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It seems the minority government is creaking, and a no-confidence motion is heading in the vague directioon of Enda Kenny: clearly FF reckon a quick heave could see a fresh election and a stable coalition for them.Kenny has been highlighting the risks of Brexit to Ireland:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/16/enda-kenny-says-ireland-will-oppose-any-post-brexit-hard-borderAs Kenny notes, the EU shores up the All-Ireland agreement and peace process: also, unmentioned in this article, the economic relations between Britain and Ireland are important (I wouldn't be surpised if some London planner is looking at pulling Ireland out of the EU to resolve the border question).
The battle continues, and nary any pres coverage:https://theconversation.com/despite-reports-of-imminent-success-mosul-is-still-a-dangerous-flashpoint-72987
Quote:It has lately been reported that IS “sleeper cells” are present in eastern Mosul, but of much greater immediate concern are the frequent attacks being mounted in the supposedly liberated part of the city. Although supposedly under government control, the east is frequently subjected to attacks by mortars, suicide bombs and armed drones.More worrying in the long term is that in its efforts to maintain control, the Iraqi government appears to be relying not on regular army units but on Shia militias, who already have a reputation for harsh treatment of Mosul’s mostly Sunni civilians. This puts the CTS units in a bind: reluctant to hand over their garrison role to the militias, but unable to rely on the regular army to replace them.Mosul is not falling. The Iraqi army is taking a pasting.And Raqqa is not going to be attacked soon:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-trump-scrap-retake-raqqa-isis-islamic-state-barack-obama-months-old-plan-a7561886.htmlAnd the running commentary from the BBC: doesn't make the top headlines, but it's there so they can say they have covered it.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37702442Fighting until June, they're reckoning.
Marx Premise 1 wrote:Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third.Marx Premise 2 wrote:If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1Pretty much the whole of Capital rests on these two premises, and lives or dies by them.And, finally, another long quote, from the chapter on Exchange, which I think is quite key
Marx wrote:It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make exchanges of their own account. We must, therefore, have recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners Commodities are things, and therefore without power of resistance against man. If they are wanting in docility he can use force; in other words, he can take possession of them. [1] In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects, and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognise in each other the rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of the real economic relation between the two. It is this economic relation that determines the subject-matter comprised in each such juridical act.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm
Well, I'd have thought it would go 'by definition', so you're back to the first premises of Labour theory (that it's the only universal element of all commodities): if value is by definition human labour, and surplus value by definition is the difference between the value of labour power and value of labour added, then machines can no more add value than seas or trees can.
LBird wrote:Of course, for my part, I can provide many thinkers who argue that 'materialism equates to Leninism'.Go on then. I'll find you some non-Leninist materialists and refute that utterly, how's about that?Now, to returnj to the theme of the thread, it has been pointed out in the past that teh Sovs used Net Material Product:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_material_producthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_Product_SystemAs the WP article notes, the definition of unproductive labour was closer to Smith than to Marx, but we come back to unproductive for whom? The p[oint of the definition of productive labour was that it didn't generate profits, and all these national; accounts are accounts of howwell the system is performing for capital: otehr indicies are needed, like infant mortality, life expectancy, etc. to show us real performance (much as the Two dollaars a day is largely mythical as well).Whilst these things are useful for the big picture, we need to drill down to the individual experience of the economy.
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.
