How to assign value without assigning value?

[redtex]

Noobie question here. As I understand it, currently, we assign value to something with money, or its "exchange value", right? This is the way capitalists see things. The use value of an object doesn't matter, it's how much I can sell it for.

I was thinking of something I read somewhere, in revolutionary Spain, some farmers ended up feeding their pigs bread which, if looked in terms of exchange value was not the most efficient way to raise swine. Using exchange value you would want to feed the pigs the least expensive food you could get away with and still raise healthy pigs to get them as big as possible in the least amount of time possible. A smart, capitalist farmer is going to think about it that way.

But in a communist society, we still have to be smart and raise pigs in the most efficient manner possible. I'm sure the pigs would love it if we fed them steaks, pizza, and other tasty food (they are pigs, lol) but it wouldn't be best for society as a whole to feed pigs foods that require a lot of work to prepare.

Right now the pig farmers uses exchange values to determine what the most efficient way to raise pigs. How will he know the most efficient way to raise pigs in a communist society without monetary values assigned to different foods?

[Broletariat]

Noobie question here. As I understand it, currently, we assign value to something with money, or its "exchange value", right?


We do not assign a commodity it's value anymore than we assign weather to certain regions.


I was thinking of something I read somewhere, in revolutionary Spain, some farmers ended up feeding their pigs bread which, if looked in terms of exchange value was not the most efficient way to raise swine. Using exchange value you would want to feed the pigs the least expensive food you could get away with and still raise healthy pigs to get them as big as possible in the least amount of time possible. A smart, capitalist farmer is going to think about it that way.

No disagreement here.


But in a communist society, we still have to be smart and raise pigs in the most efficient manner possible. I'm sure the pigs would love it if we fed them steaks, pizza, and other tasty food (they are pigs, lol) but it wouldn't be best for society as a whole to feed pigs foods that require a lot of work to prepare.

Right now the pig farmers uses exchange values to determine what the most efficient way to raise pigs. How will he know the most efficient way to raise pigs in a communist society without monetary values assigned to different foods?

Lets start with the most superficial issue at hand and say that we'd probably treat aforementioned pig better under communism than capitalism.

Secondly, it's really not all that difficult to measure efficiencies and such. You can conduct such research scientifically. So the way the farmer knows the most efficient way to raise a pig would be through the scientific method essentially, which process has the least input with the most output?

[ZeroNowhere]

There is a distinction between efficiency in monetary terms and efficiency in terms of labour and resources. The latter is the only one of actual concern, and can certainly be calculated and compared, and refined over time; nobody would argue, for that matter, that money allows such to be done instantaneously rather than through gradual market processes. Crises, of course, aren't necessarily highly efficient. Sometimes it's argued that a socialist society couldn't know whether it was more efficient to pave roads with diamonds or with stone, which is a bit ludicrous, and at the same time implicitly admits the existence of efficiency as something independent of monetary efficiency, insofar as the argument would be tautological if only monetary efficiency were meant. If anything, it seems to presuppose a capitalistic form of production where various forms of production are carried out independently and without knowledge of each other's affairs, so that a road paving company makes a decision on whether to pave roads with diamonds or stones simply through money cost rather than anything pertaining to the production process of diamonds and stones themselves.

When it comes to decisions on spending money on production goods, things like productivity and so on still have to be taken into account, so that the market still doesn't solve the problem. It could be argued that companies that choose the less successful methods collapse after some time has elapsed (since an instantaneous collapse wouldn't necessarily prove anything as regards the comparative productivities of the two methods), but by that time it could just as well have been noted that one had a greater level of productivity than the other.

[redtex]

Thanks for answering my newbie question.


We do not assign a commodity it's value anymore than we assign weather to certain regions.

I thought we assigned "exchange value" or price when we buy or sell something. The buyer and the seller come to an agreement at which they are both happy with the value assigned and the exchange is made. Correct me if I'm using the wrong terms. "Exchange value" is used when bartering, like exchanging 3 pizzas for a chair. And "price" is used when buying a pizza for $10.

But in a communist society we won't have prices or exchange values, we will only care about use values?


Secondly, it's really not all that difficult to measure efficiencies and such. You can conduct such research scientifically. So the way the farmer knows the most efficient way to raise a pig would be through the scientific method essentially, which process has the least input with the most output?

By input do you mean labour?


There is a distinction between efficiency in monetary terms and efficiency in terms of labour and resources. The latter is the only one of actual concern, and can certainly be calculated and compared, and refined over time; nobody would argue, for that matter, that money allows such to be done instantaneously rather than through gradual market processes. Crises, of course, aren't necessarily highly efficient. Sometimes it's argued that a socialist society couldn't know whether it was more efficient to pave roads with diamonds or with stone, which is a bit ludicrous, and at the same time implicitly admits the existence of efficiency as something independent of monetary efficiency, insofar as the argument would be tautological if only monetary efficiency were meant. If anything, it seems to presuppose a capitalistic form of production where various forms of production are carried out independently and without knowledge of each other's affairs, so that a road paving company makes a decision on whether to pave roads with diamonds or stones simply through money cost rather than anything pertaining to the production process of diamonds and stones themselves.

When it comes to decisions on spending money on production goods, things like productivity and so on still have to be taken into account, so that the market still doesn't solve the problem. It could be argued that companies that choose the less successful methods collapse after some time has elapsed (since an instantaneous collapse wouldn't necessarily prove anything as regards the comparative productivities of the two methods), but by that time it could just as well have been noted that one had a greater level of productivity than the other.

Ok, labour and resources. Thank you. I apologise in advance if I am misunderstanding you. I'm not an academic.

Let's take the road paving example. Let's assume that asphalt and aluminium require the same exact amount of labour to pave a road with, aluminium requires 10 times the amount of electricity to produce. How can we understand the value of resources that don't require labour without using money?

I'm using electricity as an example of a limited resource.

[Broletariat]

I thought we assigned "exchange value" or price when we buy or sell something. The buyer and the seller come to an agreement at which they are both happy with the value assigned and the exchange is made. Correct me if I'm using the wrong terms. "Exchange value" is used when bartering, like exchanging 3 pizzas for a chair. And "price" is used when buying a pizza for $10.

My point is that we do not control prices, prices control us. The market does not do what we want, we do what the market wants.




By input do you mean labour?Or simply materials.




Let's take the road paving example. Let's assume that asphalt and aluminium require the same exact amount of labour to pave a road with, aluminium requires 10 times the amount of electricity to produce. How can we understand the value of resources that don't require labour without using money?...Because more input is required for the same output with aluminum.

[o well this is ok I guess]

I thought we'd all go vegan after the revolution.
You could feed a lot with what you feed a big, bro.

[Dave B]

It was covered by Fred in Ante-Duhring and Karl in volume III of capital.

ie in taking into consideration the amount of labour time (value) that it takes to make something one way or another etc.

But of course if you are one of the blockheads who thinks the existence of value depends on the existence of exchange value rather than exchange value (albeit in eg capitalism) being dependent on the existence of value (labour time) then you are going to have a problem with it.

Or in other words that value, as in labour time is the 'predicate'.



From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average.

Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time.

Just as little as it would occur to chemical science still to express atomic weight in a roundabout way, relatively, by means of the hydrogen atom, if it were able to express them absolutely, in their adequate measure, namely in actual weights, in billionths or quadrillionths of a gramme. Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production.

It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”. *15


15 As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm




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.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm


Not that we are under any kind of divine necessity to produce things with the least possible amount of effort; and therefore have factory farming with animals be it pigs or battery chickens etc



.

[redtex]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm beginning to think this is a bigger question than I thought. I find myself in general agreement with all communist ideas, I'm just trying to figure out the details of how we would produce all the things required by society like food, clothing, roads, cars, whatever.


Not that we are under any kind of divine necessity to produce things with the least possible amount of effort; and therefore have factory farming with animals be it pigs or battery chickens etc.

I don't think it's "divine" or "moral" to do anything. I avoid those types of words. But when we transition to socialism/communism I think that people in general will work fewer hours since we will equally share the "drudge work". I don't know about you, but when I perform drudge work, I will do it as efficiently as possible while still putting out high quality work. That way I finish my job faster and have more time to do things I enjoy.

Also, I think we have a responsibility to future humans to efficiently use limited natural resources and not destroy the environment.

As for factory farming, battery chickens etc, I agree with you. That's efficiency taken too far. We either need to all become vegans or figure out how to raise livestock humanely. Save that discussion for a different thread.

[Dave B]

When it comes to drudge work in itself I don’t think it is as crap as people make out.

What is crap about it is being stuck in it doing the same repetitive thing day in and day out.

I worked once in a really large multi product factory which was run by Cadbury’s who had a progressive and intelligent policy of moving people around from one production line to another.

Even though the work was typical of being at end of and tied to a production line each job was sufficiently different to stop it becoming unbearably boring.

Perhaps I was fortunate to then start working in QC in another factory where the QC manager followed the same policy of moving the staff around.

So you would work on incoming raw material, batch preparation, online QC on product as it went through the production process and then various warehouse and finished product functions etc.

Each on its own was tedious, but moving around ameliorated the drudge and also gave you a self satisfying appreciation of the overall process and almost a pride in what you did.

You could actually see what you had done on the shop shelves and you would buy it sometimes even critically evaluating it.

Boring drudge work only starts to become a drudge after a couple of weeks and at first can be as interesting as painting a fence, as in Tom Sawyer.

There are plenty of people who would love to work down sewers and mines etc and being unable to, go pot holing over the weekend, I actually know one and she would love it.

For a while perhaps.

There are not I believe however many pot holers who work down mines etc.

There is or was a job in “British Rail” that involved stock takes on the position of rolling stock, tedious for those stuck in it but basically train-spotting that you get paid for.

There was also a computer game that is a real life simulation of the scheduling of trains in and out of Manchester Picadilly station.

The computer would randomly generate accidental late arrivals etc and the challenge was to minimise the disruption of missed connections, blocked tracks and platforms blah blah.

People would play it for pleasure but again it was somebody else’s drudge.

I have also dug holes and erected fences etc as part of a holiday for the British conservation trust etc and good fun it was too as compared to working in a noisy factory.

That is to say nothing about basket weaving as therapy, jig saw puzzles and freshwater fishing.

Or somebody else who liked making model aeroplanes as a kid, went to university to do aeronautical engineering, worked for British aerospace in computer design programming stuff and now writes programmes for the finance industry.

In his spare time he has relapsed; and is designing and building model aeroplanes again, using computers, as a hobby.

But sometimes people manage to mix occupation with pleasure, I have rock a climbing friend who has found jobs as a tree surgeon and window cleaning tower blocks.

As to the dangerous jobs give them to the bungy jumpers, hang gliders and white water rafters and what not.

..