How do I fit into the Labor theory of value?

[Aspiring Humanist]

I'm a cashier. I don't produce any goods, what is my labor worth?

[malcom]

You are part of the productive process. So 1 hour of your labor will add 1 hour of cost to the the final price of the goods or services you were ringing up sales for.

[Jose Gracchus]

You are part of the valorization process for the capitalist; without you he could not realize the surplus value exploited from the other proletarians directly in their participation in the production process as profit in the first instance.

[RHIZOMES]

Adding to Jose Gracchus's point - the idea that surplus value is only extracted from workers who make tangible physically existing objects is rubbish anyway. Things don't possess any intrinsic metaphysical properties that automatically make them into commodities. Rather commodities only exist when they are categorised as having use- and exchange-value in a capitalist social context. You are producing value for the capitalist, and by extenstion, you are producing an ephemeral commodity in the form of customer service.

[Red.Jack.Philly]

Your labor or, rather, your ability to labor (your "labor power") is worth the cost of your subsistence. As Marx put it:


The value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer.

:marx:

If your question is how much value do you add to the products sold at your workplace, then you don't actually produce any new value. Your labor is "unproductive" labor. That's not to say that capitalists aren't oppressing you or that your work isn't alienating though.

I hope this helps.

[u.s.red]

I think it is like this: you get paid, say $10.00 per hour, but the value of what you produce (checking out customers, bagging groceries, stocking shelves, etc.) is worth $20 per hour....you get the 10.00 and the employer or capitalist, gets the additional 10.00 for free. That is how the capitalist profit is generated. Also, this way of thinking about it depends on seeing service as a productive acitivity...which is how the economists see it: the gross domestic product is made up mostly of goods and services....Before Adam Smith economists (physiocrats) used to see only agricultural work as productive and manufacturing labor as unproductive. Smith believed that agriculture and manufacture alone were productive; lawyers, doctors, writers, etc were parasites. I think your labor adds value to, say, a loaf of bread, by moving the bread from the warehouse to the shelves and then through the checkout lane.

[Tim Cornelis]

Marx in Volume II (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Capital_Vol_2.pdf) on retail workers:


we shall assume that this buying and selling agent is a man who sells his labour. He expends his labour-power and labour-time in the operations C---M and M---C. And he makes his living that way, just as another does by spinning or making pills. He performs a necessary function, because the process of reproduction itself include unproductive functions. He works as well as the next man, but intrinsically his labour creates neither value nor product. He belongs himself to the faux frais of production. His usefulness does not consist in transforming an unproductive function into a productive one, nor unproductive into productive labour. It would be a miracle if such transformation could be accomplished by the mere transfer of a function. His usefulness consists rather in the fact that a smaller part of society's labour-power and labour-time is tied up in this unproductive function. More. We shall assume that he is a mere wage-labourer, even one of the better paid, for all the difference it makes. Whatever his pay, as a wage-labourer he works part of his time for nothing. He may receive daily the value of the product of eight working-hours, yet functions ten. But the two hours of surplus-labour he performs do not produce value anymore than his eight hours of necessary labour, although by means of the latter a part of the social product is transferred to him.

[u.s.red]

I'm a cashier. I don't produce any goods, what is my labor worth?

Strictly speaking, your labor is worth what it cost to produce...just like any other "commodity." If you require 10.00 per hour to live, on average, for rent, car, food, then the value or worth of your commodity is on average 10.00. However, that is an entirely different amount from what your labor produces. The employer is forced to pay you 10.00 for your commodity (labor) because he or she functions in a commodity market....However, the employer can then sell the product of your labor for its cost plus the value you added to it. The so-called "marginal" profit is the last profit obtained...you, i think, would add the last marginal value as a clerk...the thing sold leaves your hand last before it leaves the market process and enters into consumption.

[citizen of industry]

Marx from Grundrisse, on fixed and circulating capital:


Circulation costs as such, i.e. the consumption of labour time or of objectified labour time, of values, in connection with the operation of exchange and a series of exchange operations, are therefore a deduction either from the time employed on production, or from the values posited by production. They can never increase the value. They belong among the faux frais de production, and these faux frais de production belong to the inherent costs of production resting on capital. The merchant's trade and still more the money trade proper — in so far as they do nothing but carry on the operations of circulation as such, e.g. the determination of prices (measurement of values and their calculation), these exchange operations generally, as a function which has gained independence through the division of labour, in so far as they represent this function of the total process of capital — represent merely the faux frais de production of capital. In so far as they reduce these faux frais, they add to production, not by creating value, but by reducing the negation of created values. If they operate purely as such a function, then they would always only represent the minimum of faux frais de production. If they enable the producers to create more values than they could without this division of labour, and, more precisely, so much more that a surplus remains after the payment of this function, then they have in fact increased production. Values are then increased, however, not because the operations of circulation have created value, but because they have absorbed less value than they would have done otherwise. But they are a necessary condition for capital's production.

The capitalist needs you to realize the price of the commodity. Your wages are a subtraction from the surplus value the capitalist gained from the production process. You may not add to the value of the commodity, but you take away some of the surplus value gained in production. The less the capitalist pays you, the more surplus value he can realize.

[u.s.red]

You make a good point, Goti. However, I think Marx was too immersed in 19th century manufacturing to see that service workers could create value. In the same way the physiocrats could only see value being created by agricultural workers. Entire economies now exist based on service workers. In Wisconsin, U.S., teachers, police, fire fighters, civil service workers don't produce anything...yet their value cannot be denied.

[u.s.red]

Marx from Grundrisse, on fixed and circulating capital:



The capitalist needs you to realize the price of the commodity. Your wages are a subtraction from the surplus value the capitalist gained from the production process. You may not add to the value of the commodity, but you take away some of the surplus value gained in production. The less the capitalist pays you, the more surplus value he can realize.

Suppose you have this situation: A truck driver picks up a load of 1,000 loaves of bread and over the course of 3 hrs delivers the bread to five different WalMarts....Has the truck driver created any value by his work? Yet the bakery workers who operate the machines to mix the flour, bake and package the bread, don't they create value by their work?

[citizen of industry]

Suppose you have this situation: A truck driver picks up a load of 1,000 loaves of bread and over the course of 3 hrs delivers the bread to five different WalMarts....Has the truck driver created any value by his work? Yet the bakery workers who operate the machines to mix the flour, bake and package the bread, don't they create value by their work?

Well, depends on how you look at it. You could say the cost of fuel, wages of the driver, vehicle maintenance/cost etc. are part of the capitalist's fixed capital. Or you could say it is all part of the circulation process, and is just a subtraction from surplus value. I don't think the truck driver is creating any value in the bread itself, merely by transporting it. For example, if I am selling T-shirts in country A at $10.00, and I produce them in country A, and you produce them in country B and then have to pay $5 transport costs to get them to country A and sell them and compete with me, you can't charge $15.00 for the same T-shirt, you will go out of business. So transportation doesn't add to value. You sell the T-shirt for $10.00, ship in bulk to save transport costs, get the most surplus value out of your producers, etc. You are subtracting from the surplus value you gained in production. If you didn't have to transport and people bought the t-shirts straight from the factory you could get maximum surplus value.

[u.s.red]

Well, depends on how you look at it. You could say the cost of fuel, wages of the driver, vehicle maintenance/cost etc. are part of the capitalist's fixed capital.

I think that any kind of wage for human labor would be described as circulating or organic capital.


For example, if I am selling T-shirts in country A at $10.00, and I produce them in country A, and you produce them in country B and then have to pay $5 transport costs to get them to country A and sell them and compete with me, you can't charge $15.00 for the same T-shirt, you will go out of business. So transportation doesn't add to value. You sell the T-shirt for $10.00, ship in bulk to save transport costs, get the most surplus value out of your producers, etc.

In that case producer B would be carrying coal to Newcastle. If t-shirt maker A produces a t-shirt for $10, then t-shirt maker B in another country could never compete with A because of the added transportation costs. It is clear that B is not adding any value; but I think that is because the added work or costs are not "socially necessary." There is no need to add transportation costs to the costs of the t-shirt. [/QUOTE]

I think you could determine at each stage of production and distribution the costs of each commodity, for example at each hr...Walmart, e.g., probably knows the cost of a loaf of bread when it comes off the delivery truck, at the time it goes onto the shelf and when it passes under the check out bar code reader.

Does the process of distribution (or selling?) create value? I agree Marx would have said no.. but now I am not so sure...the modern economy would collapse without advertising...i'm not even sure the concept "value" has any meaning other than cost.

[citizen of industry]

I think that any kind of wage for human labor would be described as circulating or organic capital.



In that case producer B would be carrying coal to Newcastle. If t-shirt maker A produces a t-shirt for $10, then t-shirt maker B in another country could never compete with A because of the added transportation costs. It is clear that B is not adding any value; but I think that is because the added work or costs are not "socially necessary." There is no need to add transportation costs to the costs of the t-shirt.

I think you could determine at each stage of production and distribution the costs of each commodity, for example at each hr...Walmart, e.g., probably knows the cost of a loaf of bread when it comes off the delivery truck, at the time it goes onto the shelf and when it passes under the check out bar code reader.

Does the process of distribution (or selling?) create value? I agree Marx would have said no.. but now I am not so sure...the modern economy would collapse without advertising...i'm not even sure the concept "value" has any meaning other than cost.[/QUOTE]

I digress. One of the popular misconceptions about advertising is that it works. I think especially in this era, where we are bombarded by advertising through so many outlets, it has become even more inneffective. One of my students is an ad-man who agrees. They are doing some trippy things with ads now, like cameras that analyze the demographics of people passing by (age, sex, etc.) and then digitally portray ads that appeal to that demographic, but ultimately I think it boils down to economics, people can't buy what they can't afford.

I agree there is something to marginalism - people don't always buy according to value, or value is different according to different people. And you can play around with price, two for one deals, value meals, points, etc. but all that is abstraction. Supply and demand being equal, it is labor that determines the value.

Back to the loaf of bread, I would say slicing and packaging add value, but I don't think delivery and stocking do. At my supermarket, there are twenty or so different loaves of bread, all about the same price. The variations in price are based on the quality of the product, not the transportation costs, which very according to the manufacturer. Some of these companies probably use a distributer - it is cheaper to pay a middle-man than to pay for a fleet of trucks, but that is a subtraction from profits, if they could sell to consumers right from the factory they would make more.

The supermarket buys wholesale, gets a discount because the capitalist realizes more surplus value by selling many products at a slightly lower cost that fewer products at value. He still realizes a surplus value, just not the maximum. The supermarket sells at value, or less if they are offering some kind of deal or the bread is getting old, then subtracts wages for cashiers, overhead costs, rent, etc. and pockets the difference, less than maximum, which would be the difference between value and wholesale price. I'd say the only person in the supermarket who actually adds value to any commodity is the people working in the deli, seafood or meat section, because they are producers.

Back to margnalism, the supermarket sprays water on veggies, this actually makes them spoil faster, but consumers like it because they look clean and fresh. Does that add value? Perhaps, because if you go to a small veggie shop they are cheaper.

[Luís Henrique]

I'm a cashier. I don't produce any goods, what is my labor worth?

Do you mean your labour or your labour power?

Luís Henrique

[Dean]

Marx in Volume II (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Capital_Vol_2.pdf) on retail workers:


we shall assume that this buying and selling agent is a man who sells his labour. He expends his labour-power and labour-time in the operations C---M and M---C. And he makes his living that way, just as another does by spinning or making pills. He performs a necessary function, because the process of reproduction itself include unproductive functions. He works as well as the next man, but intrinsically his labour creates neither value nor product. He belongs himself to the faux frais of production. His usefulness does not consist in transforming an unproductive function into a productive one, nor unproductive into productive labour. It would be a miracle if such transformation could be accomplished by the mere transfer of a function. His usefulness consists rather in the fact that a smaller part of society's labour-power and labour-time is tied up in this unproductive function. More. We shall assume that he is a mere wage-labourer, even one of the better paid, for all the difference it makes. Whatever his pay, as a wage-labourer he works part of his time for nothing. He may receive daily the value of the product of eight working-hours, yet functions ten. But the two hours of surplus-labour he performs do not produce value anymore than his eight hours of necessary labour, although by means of the latter a part of the social product is transferred to him.

This is not about retail workers. This is about merchants. Unless the OP is personally buying and selling, he is not a merchant.

How the capitalist directs labor creates inefficiencies like protectionism. The above does apply, however:


Whatever his pay, as a wage-labourer he works part of his time for nothing. He may receive daily the value of the product of eight working-hours, yet functions ten.

You are still exploited.