Is Marx's labor theory of value relevant to socialism or communism?

[ad novum orbem]

Silly question, right? But if the answer is yes, then does it not follow that socialism and communism must be market systems? Not market systems in which the social relations and class divisions of the capitalist organizational form exist, but market systems nontheless.

Value defined as "socially necessary labor time" presupposes a division of labor, and a division of labor presupposes production for exchange; in layman's terms: a market, in one form or another.

The "socially necessary" part infers two things: First, and most obvious, is that social production must occur. If every individual produces every use value they themselves consume, and nothing to be consumed by others, then the whole subject is moot. Second, it infers necessity; demand for the product of any particular process must be expressed within the social group. Labor does not produce value in this context unless another exchanges the product of their labor time for it, somebody has to want or need it. And marginal utility applies, in that a lessening of demand simply translates to a lessened social necessity.

The "labor time" part speaks for itself: simple productivity. How much "stuff" a process (averaged across multiple actors, Marx's simple average labor) can produce with a given amount of time, technology, and technique.

If the labor theory of value matters to anyone, then the idea that production for exchange has to be "abolished" for socialism or communism to exist is misleading. The market can no more be abolished than the space-time continuum can, it's simply the field on which human economy is played. The market never goes away. It can be controlled, even to an extreme (we've been there and done that), but it's always there.

The social relations within production, the social relation to capital--that portion of the social product that must function as the means of social reproduction--is what matters. A division of labor producing for exchange isn't the problem, in fact the gains in productivity resulting from it are absolutely essential for a modern and technologically advanced society to exist at all, the problem is private minority ownership and control of capital. Moving beyond that is what moving beyond capitalism is really all about, isn't it?

[Strannik]

In my opinion this is certainly true for socialism. However what is exchanged on a socialist market is labour time and everyone operates on the same level - no one can demand more labour time from others than they themselves put into social economy.

The communism, however, I understand to be an ideal - the human labour has become so productive and universal (through standardization, technology, etc), that in essence a single individual could provide the commodities for thousands with an insignificant part of their labour and at the same time, every individual is able to produce any given commodity. In such circumstances division of labour and production for exchange become pointless. If you refuse to produce this commodity for me I do it myself. Or if you choose not to be productive while consuming commodities I produce, this practically doesn't affect my quality of life - only yours, since you have to consume my commodities.

[Blake's Baby]

Some of us don't believe in a 'socialist market'. Marx didn't differentiate between a stage of 'socialism' and a stage of 'communism' and neither do a lot of us.

The idea that workers as workers would consume only the labour (or even the same amount of labour) that they produced is ridiculous. It would mean that old people, the sick, and children, would die, because they wouldn't be able to consume, not having worked.

It is therfore totally obvious that workers must produce more than they consume, as some people must consume more than they produce.

However,


...
Value defined as "socially necessary labor time" presupposes a division of labor, and a division of labor presupposes production for exchange; in layman's terms: a market, in one form or another...

Whoa there. Back up.

Your 'presuppositions' are very wide of the mark. Who says anything about 'exchange'?

When I make dinner for my family, do I get them to buy it when I bring it to the table? When I offer my opinions on the internet, do I charge you for the privilege of receiving them? There is no 'market' unless one is established. Production is planned. We work at the collective nurg factory because society needs nurgs, and we can produce them. We don't then withold our nurgs until we get a steady supply of glunts from the glunt-works down the road. We continue to produce nergs while they're needed. The chaps at the glunt-works continue to produce glunts as they're needed. That's not 'exchange', nor is it a market. It's just 'doing things that are necessary'.

These are goods not commodities. There is no market mechanism; they aren't about making a profit, they're entirely there to fulfill needs.

Under a profit system we'd produce loads more nergs than are needed and try to sell them. Under a socialist system, we'd produce the nergs we need and take the rest of the day off.

[Ocean Seal]

Without a doubt the LTV is relevant to capitalism, socialism, and to a lesser degree communism. The LTV is what makes communism not only possible, but also inevitable.

[Strannik]

The question is what is market - is any place where people exchange things a market or only where they exchange things for money in order to make profit?

The way I see it, at least in early socialism the labour time functions similar to money in capitalism. That does not mean that they are one and the same thing! But capitalistic society, in order to survive, has to establish taxes and aim some money into social survival. Similarily a socialist society has to channel some labour into social programs. How much of labour is exchanged and how much is planned (a duty) depends on what situation the society is in - wartime, peacetime, how wealthy we are, what are our collective needs etc.

[ad novum orbem]

The idea that workers as workers would consume only the labour (or even the same amount of labour) that they produced is ridiculous. It would mean that old people, the sick, and children, would die, because they wouldn't be able to consume, not having worked.

It is therfore totally obvious that workers must produce more than they consume, as some people must consume more than they produce.

You're exactly right, it is obvious. But, the method of distributing portions of the social product to children, the sick, and the elderly has more to do with the social contract than with value theories. The value determination has to be made and production has to occur prior to distribution.


Whoa there. Back up.

Your 'presuppositions' are very wide of the mark. Who says anything about 'exchange'?

Marx, for one. The opening chapters of Capital give exchange a rather thorough treatment; why differing goods "exchange" with each other in differing quantities, as a function of the socially necessary labor time required to produce them. It's the "socially" necessary part that makes the presupposition, not me. Like I said, if every individual produces every use-value they consume then there's no point in wasting time on value theories, since the value determination is made solely by the individual based on their own wants and needs, relative to their own capabilities and nobody else's.

Thinking about value only matters when the possibility of exploitation exists among multiple participants in a division of labor, whose combined efforts generate a "social" product which then has to be distributed fairly and rationally. It's the value determination that guides rational and non-exploitative exchange (though please note that I'm not for a second claiming that capitalism gets it right, the power relations almost always make it impossible, right out of the gate with the first exchange between capital and wage labor).


When I make dinner for my family, do I get them to buy it when I bring it to the table?

There's a difference in distributing (in this case sharing) some portion of the social product you already control (have power over) and participating in the social process that makes more of it once it's been consumed.


There is no 'market' unless one is established. The market never goes away. Every biological economy on the planet is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, including humans. Effort (work) must be put into the activity of acquiring the essentials of life, if everyone were completely isolated from one another and depended solely on themselves then I suppose "the market" wouldn't exist, but neither would civilization or society. Even pre-capitalist economies technically existed within "the market", some were extremely exploitative and large scale production for money-based exchange wasn't the norm, but a division of labor producing specialties to be distributed according to whatever social convention is what made civilization possible in the first place. If civilization is anything, it's a group activity, and all of that activity occurs in "the market."


Production is planned.

Production is planned right now. Capitalism is a planned economy. The problem is that a productive property controlling minority class does the planning, and the goal of the planning is personal gain for themselves via exploitation of an unpropertied laboring class.


We work at the collective nurg factory because society needs nurgs, and we can produce them. We don't then withold our nurgs until we get a steady supply of glunts from the glunt-works down the road. We continue to produce nergs while they're needed. The chaps at the glunt-works continue to produce glunts as they're needed. That's not 'exchange', nor is it a market. It's just 'doing things that are necessary'.

But it is exchange, it is a market. In order to survive and live well, everybody (every able body of working age, that is) has to use part of their time laboring in such a way as to either create something to consume or to create something to swap for something to consume. The whole point of a value theory is to make that swap rational, to have an accurate measuring stick. If a bunch of people are working to create a social product, and you use a bad measuring stick to determine value, then some participants are going to end up being exploited.

Assuming nurgs and glunts are in demand (socially necessary), if ten people make a nurg in one hour at some average level of effort, and ten people make 5 glunts in an hour at the same average level of effort, and as long as there's no natural scarcity of material, and cartel or monopoly power to create artificial scarcity is somehow nullified, then nurgs and glunts will come to be exchanged naturally at a ratio of 1:5 (either directly or in abstract money form). If they aren't swapped at that ratio, exploitation is occurring. That's all the LTV means.

Without a division of labor carrying out social production for exchange, the LTV is meaningless. A society can plan the hell out of production and exchange if it wants to, but it's still has to occur, the "market" is still going to be there, what matters is the power relations involved in the process. That's what makes capitalism capitalism; not the division of labor, not production for exchange, but private minority power over capital, over wage labor, over the production process, and over the result of production as well. The entire system and everything in it is at some stage the private property of the capitalist class. Fixing that doesn't have to mean tossing the baby out with the bath water.

[MarxSchmarx]

ano raises actually some interesting questions.

But first, a technical note. The Labor Theory of Value (LTV - marx's or otherwise) has actually been shown time and time again to be formally equivalent to the (classical and neoclassical) Marginal Theory of Value (w/ the unfortunate acronym MTV). As such, much of Marx's (and other leftist's) critiques that are based on the LTV carry over to a Marginalist analysis as well. The question, indeed, has been shown to be one basically of semantics. This is actually why both in essence presuppose, as ANO notes, social production.

It is important for Marxists and other leftists to be nimble in terms of which language to use - but this is a question of strategy. As such, knowledge of, and familiarity with, the LTV is crucial in terms of articulating our position. But we must understand that it is certainly not the case that our critique rises and falls with the labor theory of value.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Like RedBrother wrote, the LTV is essential for truly understanding capitalism and socialism. Without it, there could be no rational analyses of exploitation, alienation, etc. There could be no Law of Value.

A market requires exchange. Money is just another market commodity, which is why it circulates. In a socialist society, I imagine people would hand over something like labor-tokens in order to take from the communal supply of goods. These labor-tokens wouldn't circulate, because they're not commodities. So where would the exchange be? There would be distribution, but not exchange.

On first glance, such a thing might look similar to money transactions today, because a person might hand over pieces of paper or something and then she would take certain items with her. But the systemic character would be different, because no one else would be able to re-use those pieces of paper.

[ad novum orbem]

Sorry about the NillNickson posts, everyone. I reported them as spambot copy/pasting with commercial links in the signature, but they haven't been deleted yet.

[ad novum orbem]

A market requires exchange.

And the LTV is dependent on market exchange.

Most, if not all of the early political economists and moral philosophers gave the LTV consideration in relation to the new and expanding commercial/market activity they were trying to understand. But after Marx hit the nail on the head and used it to show precisely how exploitation occurs within capitalist production, bourgeois economists had to discredit him and shift the conversation away from the LTV in order to maintain the quasi-feudal power relations of capitalism to avoid social upheaval and revolt which could have disrupted production and resulted in famine or general economic decline (the same fear persists today).

At any rate, without some kind of market mechanism that gives all the various participants power to freely exchange the abstract product of their own labor time for another's, the LTV is out the window. It is the free circulation of commodities among multiple producers/consumers that allows value as 'socially necessary labor time' to be naturally expressed in the first place. If an external power makes that value determination for them, then they are little more than slaves producing for a master and receiving in return only that which the master deems 'sufficient', and slavery is the ultimate expression of exploitation.


Money is just another market commodity, which is why it circulates. In a socialist society, I imagine people would hand over something like labor-tokens in order to take from the communal supply of goods. These labor-tokens wouldn't circulate, because they're not commodities. So where would the exchange be? There would be distribution, but not exchange.

Money isn't a commodity. As Marx points out, it's a universal equivalent as well as a means of circulation (of commodities), it's a simple facilitator of exchange. How rational or non-exploitative that exchange is depends on the power relations at play. It is the power relations of capitalism that are at fault, not the existence of money. If a commodity comes to function as money (a money commodity like gold in the past), then it ceases to function with the character of its former commodity self until it is removed from circulation (as money) and its use value (as a commodity) is consumed, which diminishes its exchangeability and its ability to function as money. A hard commodity can be one or the other, but not both simultaneously.

On labor tokens: Who produces them? Who has power over them? What sets their exchange value? What process determines who gets how many? If the answer is the LTV, then surely we're using some kind of market mechanism to determine value so we might as well go ahead and call our tokens money. It's not a dirty word. Likewise, if an external power is making those determinations for everyone, then we might as well go ahead and call that what it is: slavery.

It's the rules of the game that matter, what the laws of society say you can do with money, whether it is allowed to function as privately owned capital (as it is in capitalism), or simply as a means and facilitator of exchange, in that possession of money is merely a half-way point in the process of exchange.

If an economy had a fixed amount of money and no mechanism through which a person could use it as private income-earning capital, I think it would be made obvious that the problem isn't money itself, but how we allow it to be used.

[Blake's Baby]

You're exactly right, it is obvious. But, the method of distributing portions of the social product to children, the sick, and the elderly has more to do with the social contract than with value theories. The value determination has to be made and production has to occur prior to distribution...

No.

You're mixing use-value and exchange value here.

Distribution for use doesn't mean exchange. What do I exchange when I get a book out of the library?



... if every individual produces every use-value they consume then there's no point in wasting time on value theories, since the value determination is made solely by the individual based on their own wants and needs, relative to their own capabilities and nobody else's...

Which isn't what happens, so there's no point wasting time on speculations about 'perfect' producer/consumers.


...Thinking about value only matters ...

... when you decide whether it's use value or exchange value you're talking about. Which are you talking about?





...
There's a difference in distributing (in this case sharing) some portion of the social product you already control (have power over) and participating in the social process that makes more of it once it's been consumed...

Is there? Why?


...The market never goes away. Every biological economy on the planet is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, including humans. Effort (work) must be put into the activity of acquiring the essentials of life, if everyone were completely isolated from one another and depended solely on themselves then I suppose "the market" wouldn't exist, but neither would civilization or society...

This doesn't make sense, it's just a series of non-sequiteurs. Effort must be put into the activity of aquiring the essentials of life yes. Thermodynamics is real, yes. The connection between the two is tangental at best. The comnection between thermodynamics and 'the market' is not even tangental. 'Society' is not equal to 'the market'. Most human activity, even under capitalism, is not 'market orientated'.



... Even pre-capitalist economies technically existed within "the market", some were extremely exploitative and large scale production for money-based exchange wasn't the norm, but a division of labor producing specialties to be distributed according to whatever social convention is what made civilization possible in the first place...

But this isn't a 'market'.



...If civilization is anything, it's a group activity, and all of that activity occurs in "the market."

So, to you, 'the market' means 'other people'? I heard a story about someone who thought the word 'lunch' meant what the rest of us understand by the term 'the sun'. Have you read it?






...
But it is exchange, it is a market. In order to survive and live well, everybody (every able body of working age, that is) has to use part of their time laboring in such a way as to either create something to consume or to create something to swap for something to consume...

This isn't true even under capitalism.



...

Assuming nurgs and glunts are in demand (socially necessary) ...

These aren't necessarily the same thing you know.




... if ten people make a nurg in one hour at some average level of effort, and ten people make 5 glunts in an hour at the same average level of effort, and as long as there's no natural scarcity of material, and cartel or monopoly power to create artificial scarcity is somehow nullified, then nurgs and glunts will come to be exchanged naturally at a ratio of 1:5 (either directly or in abstract money form)...

Or, the places (industries, neighbourhoods) where glunts are needed will get glunts, and the places where nergs are needed will get nergs. How much do 'hospitals' and 'sewerage systems' exchange for? 5:1? 8:1? 7:4?




...
Without a division of labor carrying out social production for exchange, the LTV is meaningless...

Sure, that's why it's applicable to capitalism and not socialism.



...
A society can plan the hell out of production and exchange if it wants to, but it's still has to occur, the "market" is still going to be there, what matters is the power relations involved in the process...

No it isn't, because your definition of 'market is crazy. Yes, 'people' will still be there, but not 'exchange'. There is no 'exchange'. There is production. Things are needed. They are produced. Nothing is 'swapped' for them.


... That's what makes capitalism capitalism; not the division of labor, not production for exchange, but private minority power over capital, over wage labor, over the production process, and over the result of production as well...

No what makes capitalism capitalism is generalised commodity production (production for a market, unlike any previous mode of production) and wage labour.


... The entire system and everything in it is at some stage the private property of the capitalist class. Fixing that doesn't have to mean tossing the baby out with the bath water.

No, the state can hold property too as a 'national capitalist' as Engels outlined in 1880, Wilhelm Leibknecht argued in the 1890s, even Marx argued (against the Utopian Socialists) in the 1840s.

[Paul Cockshott]

Value defined as "socially necessary labor time" presupposes a division of labor, and a division of labor presupposes production for exchange; in layman's terms: a market, in one form or another.
A division of labour certainly does not presume exchange or a market.

On the general point, yes the labour theory of value is absolutely crucial to the economics of socialism since it provides us with an objective measure of the social cost of different products.

[ellipsis]

Sorry about the NillNickson posts, everyone. I reported them as spambot copy/pasting with commercial links in the signature, but they haven't been deleted yet.

Made it so. Thanks for flagging.

[Kotze]

Prices of goods and services correlate with their labour-time inputs. Should that correlation be weaker under socialism? I believe the correlation will be stronger, because patent monopolies won't exist and with good planning there will be less need to move the price of a good or service away from production cost because of a false estimation of demand.

[Marvin the Marxian]

And the LTV is dependent on market exchange.

No it isn't. As Blake's Baby pointed out, products of labor don't have to be exchanged. They're still products of labor though.


Most, if not all of the early political economists and moral philosophers gave the LTV consideration in relation to the new and expanding commercial/market activity they were trying to understand. But after Marx hit the nail on the head and used it to show precisely how exploitation occurs within capitalist production, bourgeois economists had to discredit him and shift the conversation away from the LTV in order to maintain the quasi-feudal power relations of capitalism to avoid social upheaval and revolt which could have disrupted production and resulted in famine or general economic decline (the same fear persists today).

At any rate, without some kind of market mechanism that gives all the various participants power to freely exchange the abstract product of their own labor time for another's, the LTV is out the window. It is the free circulation of commodities among multiple producers/consumers that allows value as 'socially necessary labor time' to be naturally expressed in the first place. If an external power makes that value determination for them, then they are little more than slaves producing for a master and receiving in return only that which the master deems 'sufficient', and slavery is the ultimate expression of exploitation.

There can be distribution without exchange. And the whole point about "socially necessary labor time" is that it's objectively determinable. So it makes no difference whether an external power makes the value determination for producers, as long as it's the correct determination. But in socialism there wouldn't really be any external power, because first the whole proletariat would be ruling and second this dictatorship of the proletariat would evolve into a classless society.


Money isn't a commodity. As Marx points out, it's a universal equivalent as well as a means of circulation (of commodities), it's a simple facilitator of exchange. How rational or non-exploitative that exchange is depends on the power relations at play. It is the power relations of capitalism that are at fault, not the existence of money. If a commodity comes to function as money (a money commodity like gold in the past), then it ceases to function with the character of its former commodity self until it is removed from circulation (as money) and its use value (as a commodity) is consumed, which diminishes its exchangeability and its ability to function as money. A hard commodity can be one or the other, but not both simultaneously.

Marx certainly did see money as a commodity. Here's a relevant quote from Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Sec. 3.C.3:
The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities obtains real consistence and general social validity.

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and, in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular – namely, gold.
On labor tokens: Who produces them? Who has power over them? What sets their exchange value? What process determines who gets how many? If the answer is the LTV, then surely we're using some kind of market mechanism to determine value so we might as well go ahead and call our tokens money. It's not a dirty word. Likewise, if an external power is making those determinations for everyone, then we might as well go ahead and call that what it is: slavery.

I'm sorry, comrade, but I don't have very specific answers to those questions. A rather vague answer is that the organized proletariat would produce them, have power over them, and determine who gets how many. Some kind of planned economy would certainly be needed. But again, labor-tokens wouldn't have any exchange value, because they wouldn't be exchanged. A labor-token would simply signify that its bearer has performed x time-units of socially necessary labor.


It's the rules of the game that matter, what the laws of society say you can do with money, whether it is allowed to function as privately owned capital (as it is in capitalism), or simply as a means and facilitator of exchange, in that possession of money is merely a half-way point in the process of exchange.

If an economy had a fixed amount of money and no mechanism through which a person could use it as private income-earning capital, I think it would be made obvious that the problem isn't money itself, but how we allow it to be used.

What do you think people should be allowed to do with money? More generally, what do you think the laws of society should be? It sounds like you are opposed to private ownership of the means of production, but beyond that I'm not sure.

[ad novum orbem]

No.

You're mixing use-value and exchange value here.

Distribution for use doesn't mean exchange. What do I exchange when I get a book out of the library?

What you are exchanging is a portion of your socially necessary labor time in the form of taxes, not only for temporary use of a largely non-perishable commodity (the book), but all the other items and services offered by the library, as well as the ongoing expense of operating it--initial construction or purchase of the building, repairs, cleaning, electric, heat, air conditioning, water, all the various shelving and furnishings, and the salaries of the people who work there.

Libraries aren't free, a portion of the social product must be expended on them. Unproductive public enterprises can only exist if the productive side of the economy enables them financially. The 'value' (if you will) of a public expense like a library is determined by the people who are made to pay for its use (just like everything else). It's a 'public market' situation. If the social cost is relatively small and insignificant per taxpayer, and enough people enjoy and make use of the service provided, then it will be. But if the cost begins to outweigh the perceived benefit to society, discontentment sets in, public tension builds against it, and the wasteful or unwanted expense can be terminated. Unless, of course, the state has the power to tax and distribute any way it sees fit regardless of input from the taxpaying public, and states with that kind of power tend to get the balance wrong over time (as history has shown) and can end up with an undemocratic economic disaster.


Which isn't what happens, so there's no point wasting time on speculations about 'perfect' producer/consumers.

I was trying to point out the difference in the LTV's relation to social production for exchange, as opposed to isolated individual production for use.


... when you decide whether it's use value or exchange value you're talking about. Which are you talking about?

Both. Economic value in a social context embodies both use value and exchange value, and the LTV defines economic value in a social context, not an individual one.



There's a difference in distributing (in this case sharing) some portion of the social product you already control (have power over) and participating in the social process that makes more of it once it's been consumed...
Is there? Why?

It should be obvious. If you control something (in your example a quantity of food) then you can do with it as you like, it's yours, and feeding your family with it is certainly an appropriate thing to do (parents are generally responsible for their offspring while they are children and not expected to participate in social production). But when it's gone and you need more, if the process that creates it is a social one (a group activity), then the value of the portion of the social product you receive at the end of the day (or week, or month, or whatever) must reflect the value of your contribution to its creation within the group, if not then then someone else is either exploiting you or being exploited by you. Once that process has occurred and everyone is in possession of their rational portion of the result, they can do whatever they want with it because the apportioning has already occurred. But determining what's rational within in the group (per enterprise let's say) is something capitalism flubs right off the bat, and as I'm sure you know, is the main motivation behind democratic workplaces that give the participants a say in the matter.


This doesn't make sense, it's just a series of non-sequiteurs. Effort must be put into the activity of aquiring the essentials of life yes. Thermodynamics is real, yes. The connection between the two is tangental at best. The comnection between thermodynamics and 'the market' is not even tangental. 'Society' is not equal to 'the market'. Most human activity, even under capitalism, is not 'market orientated'.

Sigh. The group activity that produces civilization is ruled by thermodynamics and the market. Everything made in one place for distribution elsewhere not only requires inputs that are physically and materially possible, but must be valued enough by others to make the production viable in the first place (even in a centrally planned economy). If you're producing for exchange (not your own use), and if what you're producing isn't useful to someone else, then you're wasting your time and society's resources making non-value and you won't receive what you need to live in return, and since you've spent all your time not making your own use values, you're in quite a bind. That market relation is always there no matter how hard we try to disguise it with control and "planning", the only difference is where the power lies and who is ultimately responsible for efficiency or squandering.

And human activity is HUGELY market oriented, especially in capitalism. Even the clothes people choose to wear, hair styles, make-up, cologne or perfume, music purchased, etc. are all market oriented in that lots of people use them to gain acceptance in a perceived group. That's technically an exchange, however subconscious. People expend resources on certain things in order to gain certain other things in a social setting every single day.


So, to you, 'the market' means 'other people'?

Economical activity in a group context. You can control that activity, but the market relation remains. Everybody not producing their own use values must spend their labor-time producing use values for others, in order to get use values produced by others, or the system fails. The give and take is always there in a social context, regardless if the activity is governed by free association or authoritative planning.


Or, the places (industries, neighbourhoods) where glunts are needed will get glunts, and the places where nergs are needed will get nergs. How much do 'hospitals' and 'sewerage systems' exchange for? 5:1? 8:1? 7:4?

You need a market mechanism to find out. It doesn't have to be a capitalist market where a portion of society rules the market by means of private minority ownership of all the productive property, but you need a market mechanism nonetheless. Nothing makes itself, it's labor-time expended relative to the product of labor-time consumed that makes a social economy not only function, but possible in the first place.


No what makes capitalism capitalism is generalised commodity production (production for a market, unlike any previous mode of production) and wage labour.

Those things make capitalism different from previous social orders, but they aren't the actual disease. The problem with capitalism is the same problem carried over from previous exploitative social orders: minority power over the productive resources of society giving some the power to exploit others. It's that power which allows them to control the process, control the surplus, and consume extravagantly without actually producing.

Production for market exchange is the only real difference between capitalism and feudalism, the social relations are the same. Power and privilege are won in the marketplace instead of battlegrounds between propertied estates, and the serfs have been replaced by proletarians, but the game is played by the same basic rules: a ruling class dominates and exploits a working class, and the rulers constantly struggle amongst themselves over power and wealth.

Simple production for exchange isn't what makes capitalism the horrible system it is, the class relations inherited directly and carried over from Feudal society do. Exploitation and class stratification. That's what needs fixing.

[Blake's Baby]

No it isn't. As Blake's Baby pointed out, products of labor don't have to be exchanged. They're still products of labor though.
...

Actually, I think this is the only thing ANO gets right - I agree that LTV is dependant on exchange, but don't think that everything is exchange, so without exchange there is no 'value'.

You're right, products of labour don't have to be exchanged, but then I think LTV doesn't apply. No 'profit' is made from them, so there is no 'added value' in that sense. They become entirely use-values, and have no exchange-value.

[Blake's Baby]

...

It should be obvious. If you control something (in your example a quantity of food) then you can do with it as you like, it's yours, and feeding your family with it is certainly an appropriate thing to do (parents are generally responsible for their offspring while they are children and not expected to participate in social production)....

And if society controls everything it can decide how it's distributed.

As I don't 'exchange' with my kids, society as a whole doesn't 'exchange' with.. what, itself?

All you keep doing is pointing out that under capitalism, things are commodities. Yes we know. That's one of the problems with it. Another problem is that sometinmes people not only cannot see what the alternative is, but can't even see that there can be an alternative.

I don't really care any more ANO, you can believe that everything has to be exchanged. After the revolution, I shall take something that you think 'belongs' to you and you won't know how I managed it. But in defernce to your philosophical doubt, I'll sell it back to you.

By the way, if you read that, you owe me $5 mate. Nothing is free, this is capitalism after all.

[u.s.red]

Nothing is free, this is capitalism after all.

Well, actually, the surplus-value created by labor is free for the capitalist.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Actually, I think this is the only thing ANO gets right - I agree that LTV is dependant on exchange, but don't think that everything is exchange, so without exchange there is no 'value'.

You're right, products of labour don't have to be exchanged, but then I think LTV doesn't apply. No 'profit' is made from them, so there is no 'added value' in that sense. They become entirely use-values, and have no exchange-value.

Re-reading Marx, I now realize that he considers a commodity to be the same thing as a product of labor. In other words, exchange has nothing to do with commodities as such. Capitalism involves generalized commodity exchange, meaning just about anything that can be produced is also exchanged on a routine basis.

Marx's Law of Value is what relates the values of commodities to the exchange of commodities. The value of a commodity is objectively measurable at any point in time. It's not intrinsic in the sense of being forever unchanging, because the material conditions of society can and do change over time. The notion that commodities exchange in proportion to their values, which is what Marx means by the Law of Value, presupposes the existence of values for commodities before any exchange.

So I think commodities, being the same thing as products of labor, would still have values in socialism. But they wouldn't exchange in proportion to their values because they wouldn't exchange at all. Commodities would be produced and distributed among society based on needs.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah, the exact definition of 'commodity' at any given point is something that comes up now and again. You're right that Marx does have a formulation that includes 'anything produced for use' but he and Engels then tidy that definition up to say it's only in exchange that 'the commodity form is revealed' in other words commodities are only commodities when they trade (are exchanged) - not when they're produced for use.

So, for me no exchange = no commodites, because commodities are products specifically for exchange.

If they're just products for use (such as the products of subsistence farming communities that consume the majority of their produce, or hunter-gatherer bands that are directly procuring food for the group) they're not 'commodities', they're 'goods'.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Yes you're right. I forgot about this part of Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1:

A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. 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.)[12] Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.
And here's the footnote referenced in the above paragraph:
12. I am inserting the parenthesis because its omission has often given rise to the misunderstanding that every product that is consumed by some one other than its producer is considered in Marx a commodity. [Engels, 4th German Edition] I was temporarily mistaken about what Marx calls commodities. My apologies, comrade.

However, in the same paragraph quoted above, Marx states that any use value that doesn't have value is not a product of labor. He goes on to say that products of labor aren't necessarily commodities. The essence of commodities is that they're produced for exchange. On the other hand, it's clear that products of labor still have values. The Law of Value may only apply to exchange, but the Labor Theory of Value applies to all products of labor.

So I agree that no exchange = no commodities. But value still exists without exchange.

[Paul Cockshott]

So I agree that no exchange = no commodities. But value still exists without exchange.
Yes
It is important to grasp Marx distinction between value = socially necessary labour time, and its capitalist form of appearance as exchange value. Only in societies with a division of labour based on private production does socially necessary labour appear as monetary exchange value.

[Blake's Baby]

Yes you're right...I was temporarily mistaken about what Marx calls commodities. My apologies, comrade...

I think in this case we can blame Marx. He used both definitions. He's really not terribly clear on the point. But as long as we're all speaking the same language, it's OK.


... The essence of commodities is that they're produced for exchange. On the other hand, it's clear that products of labor still have values. The Law of Value may only apply to exchange, but the Labor Theory of Value applies to all products of labor.

So I agree that no exchange = no commodities. But value still exists without exchange.

No, I don't follow. If there is no exchange, there is no exploitation of surplus value. So the LTV doesn't apply. 'Surplus value' is the difference between a wage paid by the capitalist and the price realised by the capitalist (less overheads of course).

The difference between capitalist accounting and 'socialist accounting'.

Capitalist:
raw materials - $2; overheads (power, rent, corporation tax, advertising, wear and tear on machines etc) - $2; wages $1 = total cost - $5
price in market = $10
profit = $5

So the worker has turned $4 of 'stuff' into $6 of income, which in turn costs the capitalist $1 in wages. The worker has, through the application of $1 worth of labour power, derived $5 of profit for the capitalist. The LTV theory is that the capitalist derives profit from unpaid labour - the labourer makes the product and the capitalist derives income from the work.

Socialist (where 'P' refers to 'People's New DollarPounds', a new unit of totally hypothetical and unnecessary 'currency' intened to explain a process):
raw materials - P2; overheads (not the same as above but let's pretend) - P2; wages - none, but for accounting purposes let's assume that the worker makes the same number as they did in the old days and that the theoretical wages would be P1 = total social cost - P5
price in market = none as there is no market
profit = P0

So the worker has turned the equivalent of $4 (=P4) of 'stuff' into P0 income, which in turn costs society the equivalent $1 in 'wages' (ie, the worker has expended the equivalent of $1's worth of labour power in production), which the worker would get (in kind as there is no money) even if she was (or wasn't) producing something else. The worker has, through the application of $1 worth of labour power on $4 of 'stuff', produced a social good. No 'profit' is derived from it as there is no exchange, so no realisable exchange value.

Where does LTV come in? No profit has been made as there is no exchange value, therefore there is no exploitation of surplus labour - unless you consider that the category of 'overheads' is actually about the exploitation of surplus labour by society (through dead capital) but that merely shifts the problem back one stage in the process - a bit like arguing that the turtle is merely standing on another turtle.

LTV is about exchange value, the difference between work paid for and profit realised; without exchange, profit, the market, wages, capitalism in short, LTV doesn't exist. It only applies to exchange values not use values.

[Marvin the Marxian]

No, I don't follow. If there is no exchange, there is no exploitation of surplus value. So the LTV doesn't apply. 'Surplus value' is the difference between a wage paid by the capitalist and the price realised by the capitalist (less overheads of course). [...]

LTV is about exchange value, the difference between work paid for and profit realised; without exchange, profit, the market, wages, capitalism in short, LTV doesn't exist. It only applies to exchange values not use values.

I'm sorry, comrade, but I really don't see how the LTV is about exchange value. Marx clearly says in Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 1 that commodities are products of labor (but, given our earlier exchange, not all products of labor are commodities) and products of labor have value in the form of the average socially necessary labor-time required to produce them:

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.

Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values .
The LTV per se has nothing to do with exchange, surplus value, profit, or exploitation. All it is is a theory about the nature of value in things. Surplus value (and thus profit and exploitation) comes from the uncompensated labor that a worker exerts for a capitalist. In other words, the worker-capitalist relationship is a violation of the economic principle of equal exchange, which capitalism is supposed to uphold. This is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism which must and will be resolved.

[ad novum orbem]

Sorry for the late response.


There can be distribution without exchange.

There can be distribution of the product of labor without exchange, yes. It's sharing. We do it all the time. But before you can share something, it has to exist, and you have to be the possessor of it. If you make it exist yourself, exclusively, then there's nothing to debate about, it's yours to do with as you like. If you have to participate in a group process to make it exist, then all the participants involved have a moral claim to a portion of the result in quantities relative to their contributions to the process. In other words, assuming the process is in fact creating value, then every participant exchanges their labor time for an abstract portion of the result relative to the labor time they expend on it--if the exchange process is rational, that is, unlike capitalism.


And the whole point about "socially necessary labor time" is that it's objectively determinable.

In order for the determination to be correct, it has to be made by the people who actually have to do the work in order to consume the result. When it's not, the possibility of incorrect information and wasteful activity exists, as well as the possibility of exploitation. When the individuals who work in order to consume have the power to decide what they're willing to do and what they want to consume, then value is subjective. Capitalism doesn't have a monopoly on subjective value, it pertains to any socioeconomic system where the participants have freedom of choice and purchasing power at the individual level. If a socialist system allows consumers to go to the distribution centers and choose what they wish to exchange their money for, or their labor vouchers, or whatever, then value is subjective from the perspective of the consumer. Also, consumer choice creates a market relation to production, it's the source of producer information, it tells producers what is value and what is not. If a socialist system doesn't allow consumers to do that, if it forces people to work on A, and forces them to consume B, then it will be the equivalent of a slave economy.


So it makes no difference whether an external power makes the value determination for producers, as long as it's the correct determination.

As long as everyone is OK with a condition of servitude to an external power.


But in socialism there wouldn't really be any external power, because first the whole proletariat would be ruling and second this dictatorship of the proletariat would evolve into a classless society.

For socialism to exist there can be no proletariat, correct? It is the class relationship between those who own and control productive resources and those who do not but must work property they don't control in order to survive that creates a proletariat.

Likewise, if there is a central controlling authority making all the economic decisions for society, then that authority is ipso-facto the 'owner', and the people doing the work remain non-owning proletarians, so can that be socialism? If the planning were decentralized and highly democratic I think it could be, but that basically becomes a market situation, just one in which the exchanges are planned and agreed upon ahead of time.


Marx certainly did see money as a commodity. Here's a relevant quote from Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Sec. 3.C.3:
The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities obtains real consistence and general social validity.

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and, in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular – namely, gold.

That's basically the same thing I said. Marx isn't saying that commodities are money, but that they can assume the role of money--become a money commodity. That if a money form does not yet exist among participants who are exchanging the result of a division of labor, one commodity can crystallize out and function as the universal equivalent, which beats the hell out of item-per-item barter. He's talking about how it could have come to occur historically in primitive economies. Money commodities are completely unnecessary today.

Money itself is intangible. It isn't a physical thing. Currencies and primitive money commodities aren't money, they represent money, and money is but an abstract representation of exchange value. If an economy had no physical currency and used nothing but electronic means to facilitate exchange (like how debit cards are used today), then money still exists, but not as physical things like coins, bills, any particular commodity, or whatever labor tokens are supposed to be.

I'd like to add another thing about labor tokens or labor vouchers. It seems to me that the reasoning behind them (historically) has more to do with replacing existing money forms that are part of the larger exploitative capitalist financial system than replacing money itself; getting out from under the yoke of existing usurious credit systems. The vouchers perform the same basic function as money: a person performs work in exchange for them, and then exchanges them for a relative percentage of the social product, but they can't be used as capital unless a black market exists. At any rate, the point of money is not to have money, but to exchange it for the value that the money is representative of, wherever the particular money form is good. If a new economic experiment were to spring up, and if it used a different money that was only good within its boudaries, then the value created in the new economy stays put, and the capital resources of the new economy can accumulate much faster than they would using credit from the external financial system. There'd be no external creditors to suck surplus value out of the experiment almost as fast as it's produced. The best thing about a labor voucher seems to be the ability to keep value from being leeched away, so that work done can be built upon rapidly, eventually to a point where it becomes preferable to do less work than build upon it any more (which won't happen if you're money is part of the value-vampire capitalist financial system--the harder you work, the richer an investor half-way around the world gets). Being able to build upon past labor rapidly is a very good thing.


What do you think people should be allowed to do with money? More generally, what do you think the laws of society should be? It sounds like you are opposed to private ownership of the means of production, but beyond that I'm not sure.

I am opposed to class society resulting from private minority ownership of productive resources (capital) produced by and appropriated from the non-owning servile remainder of the population. I'm fairly open to differing solutions, but only to ones that aren't hypocritical, like the idea that a centrally planned command economy somehow liberates the proletariat and isn't simply a change of command instead, one master replaced by another.

As far as money, I think it's an extremely useful technology, but it's like fire: if it's used improperly it can burn you. Nobody can see the future, but it's my opinion that the laws should be written in such a way that money can function freely for individuals as a means of circulation in the C-M-C circuit, but when money is to function as capital, the laws are going to have to require that it not be a private endeavor. A public credit system would have to be created that enables social control over financial capital and the allotment of it.

If you remove the means for money to operate in the M-M' circuit for private individuals, and you make wage labor go the way of slave labor (by mandating that businesses controlling a certain amount of capital and above be organized as worker-owned democratic enterprises), and you make full employment possible by giving the state the power to enable new enterprises in needed areas (but not necessarily to operate them itself), then you're well on your way toward a non-exploitative and classless society.

[ad novum orbem]

Sorry for the late response.


And if society controls everything it can decide how it's distributed.

But what is society? It it's not a singular conscious entity, it's any number of individuals with differing abilities and interests, differing wants and needs.


As I don't 'exchange' with my kids, society as a whole doesn't 'exchange' with.. what, itself?

Again, society is not a singular entity. And I'm assuming your kids are not working participants in the economy, are they? Do you take them to work with you and have them perform a portion of your work that represents the portion of your paycheck that they will consume? No. You aren't exchanging with your kids, they're your dependents not fellow workers, but when you go to work to get the things to provide for them (as well as yourself) you ARE exchanging the product of your labor time with other working participants in society for a portion of the result of their labor time, and that would still be true even if the activity was planned in advance (to an large extent it already is, but in an exploitative fashion).


All you keep doing is pointing out that under capitalism, things are commodities. Yes we know. That's one of the problems with it. Another problem is that sometinmes people not only cannot see what the alternative is, but can't even see that there can be an alternative.

I'm all for an alternative, but it has to be viable and clearly understandable. The problem with capitalism isn't simple production of commodities (exchangeable products of human labor - or "viably distributable" products, if that sounds better to your ear), the problem is the power relations involved in their production and how they come to be exchanged for the profit of an owning minority at the expense of the working majority. It's about whether a portion of society can leverage power over another and exploit them by means of highly unbalanced property relations. It's about owners and non-owners, and the fact that the labor of the non-owners produce the very capital that the owners leverage against them.

We can't just describe an alternative as "well, when we need something we just make it" and leave it at that. Who controls the capital? Who controls the process? Who decides what is needed? Who decides the duration of the labor process, and well as the intensity? Who decides who gets what portion of the result? For that matter, who decides what portion of the result is to be consumed and what portion is to be reserved for tomorrows capital, and once that decision is made, we're back at square one with who controls the capital? The answer can't just simply be "society." And if the answer is a central planning body, then how does that equate to a liberation of the proletariat if they still serve a capital controlling minorty in EXCHANGE for their livelihoods? Are the rules going to end up being so restrictive and so micro-managed that the society inevitably becomes a police state?


I don't really care any more ANO, you can believe that everything has to be exchanged. After the revolution, I shall take something that you think 'belongs' to you and you won't know how I managed it. But in defernce to your philosophical doubt, I'll sell it back to you.

By the way, if you read that, you owe me $5 mate. Nothing is free, this is capitalism after all.

I don't think I've said everything is an exchange, but that the economic process of social production requires that exchange occurs in correct quantities among the differing working participants to produce rational and non-exploitative results, and the LTV is a way of understanding how those quantities come to be determined when the participants (who actually do the work) are making the determination themselves, and that requires a market relationship. If you believe that the best alternative to capitalism is a planned economy, then it's going to have to be a democratic one if it's going to get the value determinations right. But be careful, if it's too democratic and the various participants sit around debating who does what and who gets what, it might start to look like a market (even if it is planned). A non-capitalist market, but still a market.

We have got to be able to separate simple market activity from the power relations of capitalism. It is the social relation to capital that allows capitalists to exploit workers, not the fact that different people in different locations with different climates and different resources and different skill sets concentrate on producing different things that then exchange with each other in quantities based on the LTV.

[ad novum orbem]

A division of labour certainly does not presume exchange or a market.

Doesn't it? Unless we're talking about a slave economy. If that's the case, then I guess you're right.

Wouldn't you agree that even if we're talking about a democratically planned economy, then the democratic process itself produces market interactions among the various participants? All we're doing is planning and agreeing on exchanges amongst ourselves before any actual work takes place.

And if we're not doing that, but instead use labor vouchers (or some other "alternative" to money) and allow participants to exchange them for portions of the social product they choose themselves after production occurs, then does that not also produce a market relation between producers and consumers, even if the means of production are publicly owned? Producer information gleaned from free-choice consumption is a market mechanism, is it not?



It is important to grasp Marx distinction between value = socially necessary labour time, and its capitalist form of appearance as exchange value. Only in societies with a division of labour based on private production does socially necessary labour appear as monetary exchange value.

Isn't it equally important to differentiate between simple market relations, and the exploitative market conditions produced by the social relation to capital within captialism?

[Blake's Baby]

I'm sorry, comrade, but I really don't see how the LTV is about exchange value. Marx clearly says in Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 1 that commodities are products of labor (but, given our earlier exchange, not all products of labor are commodities) and products of labor have value in the form of the average socially necessary labor-time required to produce them...

Products of labour under capitalism have value in terms of socially-necessary labour time. This is exchange value, because they are commodities. Use-value is not dependant on socially-necessary labour time. I can eat an apple that falls of a tree at my feet just as easily as one that has been hand-reared on the top of a Tibetan mountain and brought by very fast jet to my local airport, then motorcycle-couriered to my door. The reason one is free and the other costs $80 is the labour-time and resources (another way of saying, other people's labour-time) necessary in procuring it - the use-value of the apple doesn't change (they're both 'an apple' and therefore have exactly the same use-value), only its exchange-value (due to the labour involved).

Products of labour in socialism only have use-values. Nothing is made 'for exchange' it's made for use. If it takes 3 hours to make dinner or it takes 30 minutes to make dinner, it doen't matter. You get 'some dinner' and you eat it. It's not more valuable (or alternatively less valuable) if it takes longer. It has exactly the same value - 'some dinner'. 'Socially necessary labour time' doesn't enter into it (otherwise, we're all eating shit dinner under socialism, chaps).


...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.

Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values ...

The bolded bit is utterly crucial. If we ignore use value (which is the only value that exits in socialism, and is supposed to be the determinant of existence under capitalism too, but I think we'd both agree isn't), all we are left with is labour as the determinant of value - but we don't leave out use value, because under socialism there is only use value, and under capitalism there is supposed to be use value.

So, we agree that commodities are products of labour (even finding natural products to sell is labour) but if you can remove use-value to examine the commodity, what 'value' do you have left? Only exchange value. So again you're talking about 'value' inherent in something that is only exchange value - use value already having been disallowed. So, again, in discussing 'value' in relation to LTV you're really only discussing exchange-value...


...The LTV per se has nothing to do with exchange, surplus value, profit, or exploitation. All it is is a theory about the nature of value in things. Surplus value (and thus profit and exploitation) comes from the uncompensated labor that a worker exerts for a capitalist. In other words, the worker-capitalist relationship is a violation of the economic principle of equal exchange, which capitalism is supposed to uphold. This is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism which must and will be resolved.

So, if I make dinner for myself, I put my labour into making it from some materials in exactly the same way a worker in a food-processing factory makes a ready-meal for sale, and I eat mine, and the worker sends theirs down the line to be sold, tell me, what does LTV say about these two meals?

One makes a profit for a capitalist. It has returned 'value' because it has become a commodity; it's exchange value has netted the capitalist a profit, hence exploitation of surplus labour. Value has been added to materials to derive profit. This is the labour theory of value.

The other makes no profit for anyone. I have not exploited myself, nor been exploited by myself. The labour theory of value doesn't come into it; none of my 'surplus labour' (there is no surplus labour) has rendered any profit to myself (as my own capitalist) or been exploited from myself (as worker) or even been in part derived from the non-existant difference between the wage I didn't get for making it, from myself, that I didn't pay myself from the profits of not selling it to myself (as consumer). LTV is utterly silent on the art of making dinner, because it really has nothing to say about use-values.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Sorry for the late response.

No problem, comrade.


There can be distribution of the product of labor without exchange, yes. It's sharing. We do it all the time. But before you can share something, it has to exist, and you have to be the possessor of it. If you make it exist yourself, exclusively, then there's nothing to debate about, it's yours to do with as you like. If you have to participate in a group process to make it exist, then all the participants involved have a moral claim to a portion of the result in quantities relative to their contributions to the process. In other words, assuming the process is in fact creating value, then every participant exchanges their labor time for an abstract portion of the result relative to the labor time they expend on it--if the exchange process is rational, that is, unlike capitalism.

I'm sorry but I don't see how laboring to produce something is exchanging labor for its product. That's not an exchange in the sense of barter or money transactions. A worker isn't paying or bartering with anyone or anything when producing something. Once expended, labor is gone - it can't be recovered and it doesn't go to anyone else.

In socialism, a product produced by a group of workers wouldn't be the property of those workers. It would be part of a common stock of products distributed based on need. That group of workers wouldn't be making things just to consume them on their own, they'd be making things for the good of the whole society.


In order for the determination to be correct, it has to be made by the people who actually have to do the work in order to consume the result. When it's not, the possibility of incorrect information and wasteful activity exists, as well as the possibility of exploitation. When the individuals who work in order to consume have the power to decide what they're willing to do and what they want to consume, then value is subjective. Capitalism doesn't have a monopoly on subjective value, it pertains to any socioeconomic system where the participants have freedom of choice and purchasing power at the individual level. If a socialist system allows consumers to go to the distribution centers and choose what they wish to exchange their money for, or their labor vouchers, or whatever, then value is subjective from the perspective of the consumer. Also, consumer choice creates a market relation to production, it's the source of producer information, it tells producers what is value and what is not. If a socialist system doesn't allow consumers to do that, if it forces people to work on A, and forces them to consume B, then it will be the equivalent of a slave economy.

Value is not subjective, because value (as defined by Marx) is the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something. That's clearly an objective and thus measurable phenomenon. I think you might be confusing use-value with value, comrade.

On the other hand, people would indicate their needs by redeeming labor-tokens for products and by using social services. Again I wouldn't call this a market because there wouldn't be any exchange of commodities.


As long as everyone is OK with a condition of servitude to an external power.

The "external power" would be the whole people actually. So I guess it wouldn't really be external. And for that to arise in the first place, people would have to be OK with it.


For socialism to exist there can be no proletariat, correct? It is the class relationship between those who own and control productive resources and those who do not but must work property they don't control in order to survive that creates a proletariat.

Of course the proletariat exists because of that class relationship. But some people think that the DotP would still exist in socialism at first.


Likewise, if there is a central controlling authority making all the economic decisions for society, then that authority is ipso-facto the 'owner', and the people doing the work remain non-owning proletarians, so can that be socialism? If the planning were decentralized and highly democratic I think it could be, but that basically becomes a market situation, just one in which the exchanges are planned and agreed upon ahead of time.

Yes, I think provision of socially necessary products and services would be planned beforehand and revised on some periodic basis. But like I said above, I wouldn't call it a market.


That's basically the same thing I said. Marx isn't saying that commodities are money, but that they can assume the role of money--become a money commodity. That if a money form does not yet exist among participants who are exchanging the result of a division of labor, one commodity can crystallize out and function as the universal equivalent, which beats the hell out of item-per-item barter. He's talking about how it could have come to occur historically in primitive economies. Money commodities are completely unnecessary today.

No, Marx clearly refers to money as being a commodity in the passage I listed. Even today money is a commodity, either as paper or simply as digits.


Money itself is intangible. It isn't a physical thing. Currencies and primitive money commodities aren't money, they represent money, and money is but an abstract representation of exchange value. If an economy had no physical currency and used nothing but electronic means to facilitate exchange (like how debit cards are used today), then money still exists, but not as physical things like coins, bills, any particular commodity, or whatever labor tokens are supposed to be.

Marx wrote during the period of capitalism when there was still a gold standard. The fiat-currency stage of capitalism didn't begin until long after he died. I'm not sure if any Marxists have analyzed this stage of capitalism as such. Either way, I think it would be an interesting analysis to embark on.

According to Marx, though, money doesn't represent exchange-value in the abstract. The price of a commodity is its exchange-value in terms of money. So instead of the equation 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, there's the equation 20 yards of linen = $50. Of course we can reverse this equation, giving us $50 = 20 yards of linen. Here we're expressing the exchange-value of money in terms of linen. So money is clearly a commodity, it's just that commodity that the exchange-values of other commodities are expressed in terms of. But since it's a commodity, money therefore has both use-value and value. This is even true when money is nothing more than digits stored in computers.


I'd like to add another thing about labor tokens or labor vouchers. It seems to me that the reasoning behind them (historically) has more to do with replacing existing money forms that are part of the larger exploitative capitalist financial system than replacing money itself; getting out from under the yoke of existing usurious credit systems. The vouchers perform the same basic function as money: a person performs work in exchange for them, and then exchanges them for a relative percentage of the social product, but they can't be used as capital unless a black market exists. At any rate, the point of money is not to have money, but to exchange it for the value that the money is representative of, wherever the particular money form is good. If a new economic experiment were to spring up, and if it used a different money that was only good within its boudaries, then the value created in the new economy stays put, and the capital resources of the new economy can accumulate much faster than they would using credit from the external financial system. There'd be no external creditors to suck surplus value out of the experiment almost as fast as it's produced. The best thing about a labor voucher seems to be the ability to keep value from being leeched away, so that work done can be built upon rapidly, eventually to a point where it becomes preferable to do less work than build upon it any more (which won't happen if you're money is part of the value-vampire capitalist financial system--the harder you work, the richer an investor half-way around the world gets). Being able to build upon past labor rapidly is a very good thing.

Comrade, I certainly agree with the last part about building upon past labor rapidly. I still wouldn't call labor-tokens or labor-vouchers money though, because they wouldn't circulate. If a worker earns a certain amount of labor-tokens and wishes to redeem them for a coat, the person she gives the them to can't then redeem them for anything else. All labor-tokens do is indicate that a worker has worked a certain amount of labor-hours and is thus entitled to a certain amount of the common stock of consumer products.

Let me note though that it might not be so wise for me to call them labor-tokens, as those who are incapable of working would also get them. Maybe it would be better to simply call them tokens or vouchers or credits, although that last term does carry a monetary connotation.


I am opposed to class society resulting from private minority ownership of productive resources (capital) produced by and appropriated from the non-owning servile remainder of the population. I'm fairly open to differing solutions, but only to ones that aren't hypocritical, like the idea that a centrally planned command economy somehow liberates the proletariat and isn't simply a change of command instead, one master replaced by another.

If the planned economy is based on need, then the commands are for the good of all. Also there wouldn't be any exploitation as workers would earn vouchers/tokens/credits that correspond directly to the hours worked.

What differing solutions have you considered, comrade?


As far as money, I think it's an extremely useful technology, but it's like fire: if it's used improperly it can burn you. Nobody can see the future, but it's my opinion that the laws should be written in such a way that money can function freely for individuals as a means of circulation in the C-M-C circuit, but when money is to function as capital, the laws are going to have to require that it not be a private endeavor. A public credit system would have to be created that enables social control over financial capital and the allotment of it.

If you remove the means for money to operate in the M-M' circuit for private individuals, and you make wage labor go the way of slave labor (by mandating that businesses controlling a certain amount of capital and above be organized as worker-owned democratic enterprises), and you make full employment possible by giving the state the power to enable new enterprises in needed areas (but not necessarily to operate them itself), then you're well on your way toward a non-exploitative and classless society.

I think I agree that those are some good steps to take in a transitional society. Ultimately, however, I see the goal as the abolition of commodity exchange, and therefore the abolition of commodities including the money commodity.

What kind of social control do you see taking place over financial capital? That is, how do you see it functioning?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think in this case we can blame Marx. He used both definitions. He's really not terribly clear on the point. But as long as we're all speaking the same language, it's OK.

[...]

Where does LTV come in? No profit has been made as there is no exchange value, therefore there is no exploitation of surplus labour - unless you consider that the category of 'overheads' is actually about the exploitation of surplus labour by society (through dead capital) but that merely shifts the problem back one stage in the process - a bit like arguing that the turtle is merely standing on another turtle.

LTV is about exchange value, the difference between work paid for and profit realised; without exchange, profit, the market, wages, capitalism in short, LTV doesn't exist. It only applies to exchange values not use values.

So would it be more accurate to abbreviate Marx's "LTV" as LTEV, for labour theory of exchange value? :confused:


The LTV per se has nothing to do with exchange, surplus value, profit, or exploitation. All it is is a theory about the nature of value in things. Surplus value (and thus profit and exploitation) comes from the uncompensated labor that a worker exerts for a capitalist. In other words, the worker-capitalist relationship is a violation of the economic principle of equal exchange, which capitalism is supposed to uphold. This is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism which must and will be resolved.

I'm not sure about the "economic principle of equal exchange." Comrade Cockshott said that Marx's LTV was "very generous" in assuming equal exchange all throughout, stating that capitalist exploitation occurred even with equal exchange. "Unequal exchange" is more about the Ricardian LTV, about labour arbitrage flouting real purchasing power parity (paying one real wage in one region and another real wage in another region for the same work), about information asymmetries, and so on.

[commieathighnoon]

Yeah, the exact definition of 'commodity' at any given point is something that comes up now and again. You're right that Marx does have a formulation that includes 'anything produced for use' but he and Engels then tidy that definition up to say it's only in exchange that 'the commodity form is revealed' in other words commodities are only commodities when they trade (are exchanged) - not when they're produced for use.

So, for me no exchange = no commodites, because commodities are products specifically for exchange.

If they're just products for use (such as the products of subsistence farming communities that consume the majority of their produce, or hunter-gatherer bands that are directly procuring food for the group) they're not 'commodities', they're 'goods'.

This begs the question what arms production is, since the nature of the sale is hardly competitive and in a sense can be seen as highly fictitious by normal capitalist standards: the enterprises in question are basically entirely financed by discretionary state expenditures, realized through extremely corrupt R&D and procurement practices in the case of the U.S., and in more honest societies, the arms manufacturers are openly state-owned. Thus the question is begged in material reality to what extent is this different between horizontal or vertical transfers of goods or products within a single bureaucratic apparatus, or within different departments of a single capital. Are those commodities? This question is more aggravated under war economies that we saw develop only in the 20th century. Can it be said US war production 1940-45 was really "for exchange"?

This opens other cans of worms, for instance, the nature of product/good transfers within the Soviet economy and its progeny and imitators.

Also, I think Marx and Engels may have underestimated the extent of commodity production or production for exchange in pre-industrial societies through history. If a simple majority of your production is going toward exchange, that is, sale, than the most archetypal feudal manors in England circa 1100 must be called "capitalist." There's more to it than that.

[Blake's Baby]

So would it be more accurate to abbreviate Marx's "LTV" as LTEV, for labour theory of exchange value? :confused:



It's hardly the Labour Theory of Use Value, is it?

I don't pay for someone else to breathe for me, which I would if someone else's labour would make the air more valuable; and I can eat a windfall apple just as easily as the one flown half-way round the world. A dinner that takes 30 minutes to cook is just as useful as one that takes 3 hours - it's a dinner and has the use-value of 'one dinner'. If LTV applied, the 3-hour dinner would be 6 times more valuable. As it's to eat, not exchange, you'd get 6 times more ... 'eating value' from it. Whatever that might mean. It's only 6 times more valuable if you go to a fancy restaurant as opposed to a fast-food place. In other words, it's the exchange-value that makes it more valuable. So, use value is independent of labour, which influences exchange value.

[Paul Cockshott]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Cockshott
A division of labour certainly does not presume exchange or a market.
Doesn't it? Unless we're talking about a slave economy. If that's the case, then I guess you're right.

Wouldn't you agree that even if we're talking about a democratically planned economy, then the democratic process itself produces market interactions among the various participants? All we're doing is planning and agreeing on exchanges amongst ourselves before any actual work takes place.
No, look at Marx's analysis of the traditional Indian village communities.

[Blake's Baby]

This begs the question what arms production is, since the nature of the sale is hardly competitive and in a sense can be seen as highly fictitious by normal capitalist standards: the enterprises in question are basically entirely financed by discretionary state expenditures, realized through extremely corrupt R&D and procurement practices in the case of the U.S., and in more honest societies, the arms manufacturers are openly state-owned. Thus the question is begged in material reality to what extent is this different between horizontal or vertical transfers of goods or products within a single bureaucratic apparatus, or within different departments of a single capital. Are those commodities? This question is more aggravated under war economies that we saw develop only in the 20th century. Can it be said US war production 1940-45 was really "for exchange"?...

Yes. Commodities were produced, which were exchanged (ANO would tell you this is a market, even if I'd say it's a pretty ordered one rather than a 'free' one), for money (another commodity) which is re-invested in more production of commodities, which in turn are sold to the military for more money... just because the military is primarily interested in use-value (as bombs) and these use-values are consumed (when they are exploded) they were still commodities. If explosives grew on trees, the military would just get soldiers to pick them for half an hour a day, and throw them at the enemy in the morning. Lots of arms manufacturers would go out of business, because these would cease to be commodities as such (unless you cornered the market in explosive orchards).




This opens other cans of worms, for instance, the nature of product/good transfers within the Soviet economy and its progeny and imitators.

Also, I think Marx and Engels may have underestimated the extent of commodity production or production for exchange in pre-industrial societies through history. If a simple majority of your production is going toward exchange, that is, sale, than the most archetypal feudal manors in England circa 1100 must be called "capitalist." There's more to it than that.

There is more to it than that. Capitalism is generalised commodity production and wage labour. It's not 'some commodity production'. There's a difference between 'capitalist behaviour' which can be seen as early as 500BC in Europe - in the trade between different Greek city-states, for instance - and 'capitalism' as a world-historic economy. Just as the existence of gift-giving doesn't prove we exist in communism, so buying and selling in previous epochs doesn't equate to capitalism.

I'm not sure how much production in the High Middle Ages could be called 'capitalist' though, because I would doubt that the majority of production is geared towards expanded reproduction. Most, I'd argue, is geared towards continued reproduction and immediate use.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Products of labour under capitalism have value in terms of socially-necessary labour time. This is exchange value, because they are commodities. Use-value is not dependant on socially-necessary labour time. I can eat an apple that falls of a tree at my feet just as easily as one that has been hand-reared on the top of a Tibetan mountain and brought by very fast jet to my local airport, then motorcycle-couriered to my door. The reason one is free and the other costs $80 is the labour-time and resources (another way of saying, other people's labour-time) necessary in procuring it - the use-value of the apple doesn't change (they're both 'an apple' and therefore have exactly the same use-value), only its exchange-value (due to the labour involved).

Products of labour in socialism only have use-values. Nothing is made 'for exchange' it's made for use. If it takes 3 hours to make dinner or it takes 30 minutes to make dinner, it doen't matter. You get 'some dinner' and you eat it. It's not more valuable (or alternatively less valuable) if it takes longer. It has exactly the same value - 'some dinner'. 'Socially necessary labour time' doesn't enter into it (otherwise, we're all eating shit dinner under socialism, chaps).

I agree with you that use-value is not dependent on socially necessary labor-time. That's exactly what Marx said in the beginning of Capital Vol. I. However, Marx also said that a commodity contains two factors, and these factors are use-value and value. Exchange-value is simply an expression of value:

We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. But if we abstract from their use value, there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form. So I respectfully disagree that products of labor in socialism would only have use-values. Products of labor would obviously contain labor-time; as Marx said, they are congelations or congealments of labor. As the amount of labor-time congealed in something is its value (as defined by Marx), it logically follows that products of labor in socialism would have both use-values and values. What they wouldn't have are exchange-values, because there would be no exchange.

I think the reason why values would still matter in socialism is for rationing purposes. Explicitly marking the values of products would let those products be rationed in a freer way by letting people choose what to redeem their credits for. Use-values factor in when determining demand for various products. If a product isn't fully distributed within a given period, then production of that product should probably be reduced over future periods of the same length, and vice-versa.


The bolded bit is utterly crucial. If we ignore use value (which is the only value that exits in socialism, and is supposed to be the determinant of existence under capitalism too, but I think we'd both agree isn't), all we are left with is labour as the determinant of value - but we don't leave out use value, because under socialism there is only use value, and under capitalism there is supposed to be use value.

So, we agree that commodities are products of labour (even finding natural products to sell is labour) but if you can remove use-value to examine the commodity, what 'value' do you have left? Only exchange value. So again you're talking about 'value' inherent in something that is only exchange value - use value already having been disallowed. So, again, in discussing 'value' in relation to LTV you're really only discussing exchange-value...

No, if we can remove use-value to examine the commodity, then ultimately we're left with the commodity's value, as exchange-value is only an expression of the value of a commodity. Labor doesn't disappear in socialism, so it follows that products of labor are embodiments of labor, and thus still have both use-values and values in socialism.

It's unfortunate that Marx wasn't quite as systematic as maybe he could've been in Capital Vol. I. Maybe someone can help strengthen Marx's analysis by creating a more rigorous version of it.


So, if I make dinner for myself, I put my labour into making it from some materials in exactly the same way a worker in a food-processing factory makes a ready-meal for sale, and I eat mine, and the worker sends theirs down the line to be sold, tell me, what does LTV say about these two meals?

One makes a profit for a capitalist. It has returned 'value' because it has become a commodity; it's exchange value has netted the capitalist a profit, hence exploitation of surplus labour. Value has been added to materials to derive profit. This is the labour theory of value.

The other makes no profit for anyone. I have not exploited myself, nor been exploited by myself. The labour theory of value doesn't come into it; none of my 'surplus labour' (there is no surplus labour) has rendered any profit to myself (as my own capitalist) or been exploited from myself (as worker) or even been in part derived from the non-existant difference between the wage I didn't get for making it, from myself, that I didn't pay myself from the profits of not selling it to myself (as consumer). LTV is utterly silent on the art of making dinner, because it really has nothing to say about use-values.

The LTV says the value of those two meals is the same. The exchange-value of the second dinner is a profit for the capitalist because, in the limit, she only pays the worker the exchange-value of the labor the worker needs to replenish herself on a periodic basis (daily, weekly, monthly, etc), which is less than the labor she expends on behalf of the capitalist. The difference between those two amounts of labor is the surplus value. You don't profit from making your own dinner because there's no exchange involved at all.

[u.s.red]

It's hardly the Labour Theory of Use Value, is it?

If LTV applied, the 3-hour dinner would be 6 times more valuable. As it's to eat, not exchange, you'd get 6 times more ... 'eating value' from it. Whatever that might mean. It's only 6 times more valuable if you go to a fancy restaurant as opposed to a fast-food place. In other words, it's the exchange-value that makes it more valuable. So, use value is independent of labour, which influences exchange value.

It's not just any labor time that determines value, it is the socially necessary time. The 3 hr dinner is not 6x more valuable simply because 6x labor time was used to prepare it. Otherwise a fast food employee could take 6x the time to produce a hamburger and it would be 6x more valuable than one produced in 30 minutes.

The gourmet meal takes far more labor than the 30 minute fast food meal, the chef requires more training, better ingredients, better equipment, etc. Whether the extra labor is actually worth more is decided by competition. If people are not willing to pay 6x more for the gourmet meal than the fast food meal, then the extra labor is being wasted.

The use value of both meals is determined by labor, even though the two meals may have different uses for different people.


In other words, it's the exchange-value that makes it more valuable.

In other words, a diamond is more valuable than a bucket of water because people will pay more for the diamond. Or, men dive for pearls because pearls are valuable. In actuality, diamonds have value because it takes a lot of labor to produce them; and pearls are valuable because a lot of labor is needed to dive for them.

As Marx predicted 150 yrs ago, if diamonds could be made in a factory then the price of diamonds might fall to the level of bricks. And he was right.

It's not exchange (or the market) which creates value, it is labor which produces value.

[Blake's Baby]

I agree with you that use-value is not dependent on socially necessary labor-time. That's exactly what Marx said in the beginning of Capital Vol. I. However, Marx also said that a commodity contains two factors, and these factors are use-value and value. Exchange-value is simply an expression of value:
We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. But if we abstract from their use value, there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form.So I respectfully disagree that products of labor in socialism would only have use-values. Products of labor would obviously contain labor-time; as Marx said, they are congelations or congealments of labor. As the amount of labor-time congealed in something is its value (as defined by Marx), it logically follows that products of labor in socialism would have both use-values and values. What they wouldn't have are exchange-values, because there would be no exchange.

I think the reason why values would still matter in socialism is for rationing purposes. Explicitly marking the values of products would let those products be rationed in a freer way by letting people choose what to redeem their credits for. Use-values factor in when determining demand for various products. If a product isn't fully distributed within a given period, then production of that product should probably be reduced over future periods of the same length, and vice-versa.



No, if we can remove use-value to examine the commodity, then ultimately we're left with the commodity's value, as exchange-value is only an expression of the value of a commodity. Labor doesn't disappear in socialism, so it follows that products of labor are embodiments of labor, and thus still have both use-values and values in socialism.

It's unfortunate that Marx wasn't quite as systematic as maybe he could've been in Capital Vol. I. Maybe someone can help strengthen Marx's analysis by creating a more rigorous version of it.



The LTV says the value of those two meals is the same. The exchange-value of the second dinner is a profit for the capitalist because, in the limit, she only pays the worker the exchange-value of the labor the worker needs to replenish herself on a periodic basis (daily, weekly, monthly, etc), which is less than the labor she expends on behalf of the capitalist. The difference between those two amounts of labor is the surplus value. You don't profit from making your own dinner because there's no exchange involved at all.

You're quoting Marx to say that 'value' is exchange value, which is exactly what I'm saying. The 'value' of a commodity is precisely its exchange value.

From Capital I Chapter I:

"A thing can have a use value without having value..."

What? Surely not!

"...this is when its utility to man is not due to labour..."

Ah, so, use-value and 'value' are not only not identical, but incidental.

Furthermore,

"...a thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity..."

(given that we already thrashed out 'commodity as social good' v 'commodity as exchangeable good' we have to assume that here he means 'exchangeable good' - it's useful and it's a product of labour so that rules out the non-exchangeable definition) - this must mean that a thing can embody human labour, and have use value, without having exchange value.

"... In order to produce the latter [ie commodities] he [the worker] must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values.."

And what these 'social use values' under capitalism if not exchange values?

As Marx says in Wages, Price and Profit - "...and in speaking of value I speak always of exchangeable value..."

There is only use value and exchange value. 'Total value' minus use-value doesn't equal something called 'value' which is merely expressed as exchange value - it is exchange value.



...
It's not exchange (or the market) which creates value, it is labor which produces value.

I don't disagree - if by 'value' you mean 'exchange value'. It doesn't create use-value, or rather, it can, but use-value isn't dependant on labour (or you wouldn't be able to breathe).

This is why LTV relates to capitalism. If the whole point of LTV was 'people make stuff' it would hardly be controversial, would it?

'Value' when used unqualified by Marx refers to exchange value only. Simple as.

[Marvin the Marxian]

I'm not sure about the "economic principle of equal exchange." Comrade Cockshott said that Marx's LTV was "very generous" in assuming equal exchange all throughout, stating that capitalist exploitation occurred even with equal exchange. "Unequal exchange" is more about the Ricardian LTV, about labour arbitrage flouting real purchasing power parity (paying one real wage in one region and another real wage in another region for the same work), about information asymmetries, and so on.

Yes, Marx was very generous about that. I think we both agree that surplus value is the additional expenditure of labor-power over that required to replenish itself for a given future period. On a closer re-reading of Marx, though, it now seems to me that exploitation is simply when people are forced to sell their labor-power rather than the products of their labor. This can only happen when means of production are monopolized by a class, as in capitalism. Does that make sense?

[Marvin the Marxian]

You're quoting Marx to say that 'value' is exchange value, which is exactly what I'm saying. The 'value' of a commodity is precisely its exchange value.

From Capital I Chapter I:

"A thing can have a use value without having value..."

What? Surely not!

"...this is when its utility to man is not due to labour..."

Ah, so, use-value and 'value' are not only not identical, but incidental.

Furthermore,

"...a thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity..."

(given that we already thrashed out 'commodity as social good' v 'commodity as exchangeable good' we have to assume that here he means 'exchangeable good' - it's useful and it's a product of labour so that rules out the non-exchangeable definition) - this must mean that a thing can embody human labour, and have use value, without having exchange value.

"... In order to produce the latter [ie commodities] he [the worker] must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values.."

And what these 'social use values' under capitalism if not exchange values?

As Marx says in Wages, Price and Profit - "...and in speaking of value I speak always of exchangeable value..."

There is only use value and exchange value. 'Total value' minus use-value doesn't equal something called 'value' which is merely expressed as exchange value - it is exchange value.

I agree with you, comrade, and with Marx that use-value and value are incidental with respect to one another. However, I don't think something that's an expression of value is the same thing as value itself. As I've stated repeatedly, if something embodies human labor, then it has value in the Marxian LTV sense. Value is not the same as exchange-value.

Under capitalism, social use-values indeed have exchange values, because capitalism is all about exchange. On the other hand, I think Marx's use of "value" and "exchange value" in Capitalism clearly shows that the two mean different things in that work, regardless of what he says in Wages, Price, and Profit.

I don't think the LTV is controversial at all. It's the implications of it under the capitalist mode of production that are controversial.

[Blake's Baby]

OK; let me see if I can grasp what you're arguing.

Seems to me that what you are saying is:
1 - human labour on resources produces 'value' (as long as there is a use-value embedded at the end);
2 - under socialism there will still be labour on resources (still embedding use values);
3 - therefore under socialism there will still be 'value' (because 'value' is a quality imparted to something by labour, regardless of whether that thing is only a use-value, or has exchange-value as well as use value).

Well, if that is what you're saying, then there's no reason to use the term 'value' at all. 'Value' in your definition is only another way of expressing 'labour time'. Thus the whole so-called 'labour theory of value' boils down to 'some goods are made, and some take longer to make than others'. That's all you need to say, and it's as true under socialism as under capitalism.

'Value' as a concept, unrelated to use value (which exists, in socialism as well as capitalism), only works as a relationship. Otherwise, what does it derive from (no, not 'from embedded labourr', I know you think that, but what is 'value' if not 'use value' or 'exchange value')? How is it expressed? What is the quality that labour imparts to something that, if it already posses use value and may posses exchange value, is a different sort of value to those already mentioned?

Under socialism, I contend that a dinner that takes 60 minutes to make will not embody either more or less value than a dinner that takes 30 minutes to make. Do you think it would? If you do, and you'll have to explain this because I don't know how you think it works, is it twice as valuable, because twice as much time (labour) has gone into it (and labour determines value)? Or will it be half as valuable, because twice as much labour has gone into it (and value is determined by difference between actual labour and socially necessary labour)? I really don't know, because to me it's a use-value (value: one dinner, in either situation).

[u.s.red]

Under socialism, I contend that a dinner that takes 60 minutes to make will not embody either more or less value than a dinner that takes 30 minutes to make. Do you think it would? .

If the 60 minute dinner took twice as much socially necessary labor time
then it would have twice as much value; for example, if a master chef made the 60 minute dinner and a short-order cook tried to make the same dinner in 30 minutes.

Marx never claimed all values would be equal (cf. The Critique of the Gotha Programme. Or that all people would have equal abilities. He did say: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Thus, a master chef will produce more value than a short-order cook, but the child of the less skilled cook will receive the same education and health care as the child of the chef. Why will this work? Because the chef (as appendage of the ruling class) will no longer dominate the cook.

[u.s.red]

This is why LTV relates to capitalism. If the whole point of LTV was 'people make stuff' it would hardly be controversial, would it?

Well, workers make stuff, capitalists appropriate the value of the stuff.

The value of the stuff is expressed in its price. The price is wages + profit/surplus-value. Workers produce the profit-surplus value. Capitalist keeps the profit/surplus-value. i.e., LTV.

Entire generations of bourgeoisie economists have completely rejected the LTV. The average worker doesn't have a clue how the LTV works, after all it is a Marxist idea. I would say it is still pretty controversial.

[Blake's Baby]

It's controversial because it's more than 'people make stuff'.

And I deliberately, twice, said 'people make stuff' not 'workers make stuff' because class disappears under socialism, remember? No 'workers'. 'People'. You know, mankind, fulfilling his species-being, creating as gods and whatnot.

And how do you know that the 60 minute dinner took twice as much socially necessary labour time? How do you know it wasn't exactly the same amount of socially-necessary labour time, and 30 minutes of socially unnecessary labour time?

Look at it this way: if the result is 1 dinner's worth of use value, is 30 minutes or 60 minutes better for producing that? 60 miniutes looks to me like the time you could have produced 2 dinners. And yet, you only produced one. So it's not as good, is it? Twice as valuble by being half as useful? Doesn't compute. That's why LTV can't cope with use-values... because it only applies to exchange values.

If LTV applies to socialism as others have claimed, the all the LTV means is 'people make stuff, and some stuff takes longer to make than other stuff'.

[u.s.red]

You are assuming that all dinners are the same.

A dinner at McDonald's has a different use-value to different people than a dinner at Chez Paris.

But, assume there are two products, say two cars, both made with the same socially necessary amount of labor. However, one appeals to a teenager, another to a 50 yr old. The two cars have different use values but the same exchange value.


If LTV applies to socialism as others have claimed, the all the LTV means is 'people make stuff, and some stuff takes longer to make than other stuff'.

Socialism also means that people decide what stuff gets made and what happens to the value created by those people.

[commieathighnoon]

Yes. Commodities were produced, which were exchanged (ANO would tell you this is a market, even if I'd say it's a pretty ordered one rather than a 'free' one),

ANO?


for money (another commodity) which is re-invested in more production of commodities, which in turn are sold to the military for more money... just because the military is primarily interested in use-value (as bombs) and these use-values are consumed (when they are exploded) they were still commodities.

Okay, so far so good.


If explosives grew on trees...explosive orchards).

I’m following you.


This opens other cans of worms, for instance, the nature of product/good transfers within the Soviet economy and its progeny and imitators.

What about ^ this? The Soviet ruble did not really function as money; it only poorly commanded labor, so the USSR resorted to political and administrative measures (the Law on Parasitism, the laws on truancy and absenteeism mandating forced labor regime, and the law forcing workers to seek approval to change jobs under Stalin) to help appropriate labor. The ruble did not really command subsistence, the endless black market and private household production sector, the resort to barter, blat, and foreign currency. Enterprises did not need to run ruble profits to stay afloat or to expand. They did not need to finance from profit. The enterprise sought to achieve official material product targets as specified from the center. The contradiction was in endemic underproduction of consumer goods, overproduction of capital goods and technologically obsolete and labor-intensive industrial fabric, and abysmally low quality control and labor productivity. That’s at least what a few economic studies I have read suggested. Can you explain how Soviet enterprises were capitalist? Is anything called an ‘enterprise’ capitalist? Is anything with any regime of paid-labor, capitalist? That is why I ask questions about the differences between medieval production and capitalism.


There is more to it than that. Capitalism is generalised commodity production and wage labour. It's not 'some commodity production'. There's a difference between 'capitalist behaviour' which can be seen as early as 500BC in Europe - in the trade between different Greek city-states, for instance - and 'capitalism' as a world-historic economy. Just as the existence of gift-giving doesn't prove we exist in communism, so buying and selling in previous epochs doesn't equate to capitalism.

The first serfdom in Western Europe, with its heyday in the 11th to 13th centuries (classic feudalism) was largely extinct by the 15th to 16th centuries. The most prototypical of feudal manors could export anywhere from 50-80% of the crop. This does not mean capitalist laws of motion prevailed; the manors did not ‘compete’ per se, but rather production-for-export was maximized in order to increase cash-flow to augment aristocratic consumption. The manors could also be significantly internally specialized and organized according to production for different purposes. The logic was one of increasing aristocratic consumption demands, and further enserfment. There is also evidence that the labor-services of the tenants reduced to simple reproduction (not petty household production), that is, true villeins, classic serfs, were demanded highest in those manors most involved in export and monetization. It is plausible that there was also a significant, if not large, ‘village-proletariat’ of hired laborers, seasonal and resident, who added significant manpower to especially harvests. This is at least the picture painted by Jairus Banaji in his History as Theory. The second serfdom, of Eastern Europe (15th to 19th centuries), is often described in the historical literature as ‘export-led’ in fact led to a much more total bondage to the land; there were no supplementary farm laborers for hire. But the Eastern Europe serf manors were involved in lucrative export to the nascently capitalist West.


I'm not sure how much production in the High Middle Ages could be called 'capitalist' though, because I would doubt that the majority of production is geared towards expanded reproduction. Most, I'd argue, is geared towards continued reproduction and immediate use.
Well as I said, the impulse (in 11th-13th c. Western feudalism) was not toward competition, and surplus per se, but rather aristocratic consumption. Augumenting and expanding that consumption meant expansion of export production in order to increase currency-flow. The tendency appears to have been one toward subsistence crises for the peasantry, which would lead to deficit simple reproduction and famines, these would have express themselves in something like a medieval ‘scissors crisis’ over several years. The manors did not respond to any ‘profit’ competition.

Sorry if we're getting off-topic.

[Blake's Baby]

You are assuming that all dinners are the same.

A dinner at McDonald's has a different use-value to different people than a dinner at Chez Paris.

But, assume there are two products, say two cars, both made with the same socially necessary amount of labor. However, one appeals to a teenager, another to a 50 yr old. The two cars have different use values but the same exchange value.



Socialism also means that people decide what stuff gets made and what happens to the value created by those people.

I'm rather assuming that neither MacDonalds nor Chez Paris will exist in socialism. Are you assuming something different? Or are you now talking about capitalism?

Assume there are two dinners, that's what we're working with. People need dinners and they don't 'need' cars (they can use buses bikes hovercraft jet-packs personal teleportation devices... none need to belong to them. 'Dinner' however as a category is pretty unversal and crucially must be consumed by an individual unlike a communal transport-system).

Two dinners in capitalism (a Happy Meal from MacDonalds and a sumptuous supper from Chez Paris) embody different amounts of labour power, and therefore the LTV says they have different values. One takes 6 people 20 minutes each - in total it takes two hours to make, though in effect it only takes 30 minutes to arrive because they're working simultaneously. The other also takes 6 people to make but because they only work on it for 1 minute each it can arrive in 3 minutes, and embodies 6 minutes of labour-power. It's obvious that the meal from Chez Paris embodies more labour-power (and therefore necessarily time) than the Happy Meal; it obviously contains more 'value' (and commands a higher price) even though from one angle, its direct use value ('one dinner') is the same. So far so good. We all understand this is how the LTV works.

In socialism... there are two dinners. Both have a use value of 'one dinner'. One has taken one person an hour to prepare, one has taken one person 30 minutes to prepare. Which is the most 'valuable'? Bear in mind, if you say 'the one-hour dinner' I will ask you if a four-hour dinner is yet more valuable, a ten-hour dinner more valuable yet, and a ten-year dinner the most valuable of all. Because if your answer is "yes, the ten-year dinner is the most 'valuable'", then I insist that after the revolution you come here and I make you a ten-year dinner. What possible grounds would you have have for refusal? Oh, yeah, the fact that the theory is rubbish because LTV only applies to capitalism.

[Blake's Baby]

ANO?

One of the previous posters whose name (I can't get to the previous page so can't check what it is) is something like Anulus Novo Orbit. The one who insists that wearing a particular-coloured shirt means that you're a commodity, or whatever it was. I gave up paying attention when s/he suddenly decided that they didn't owe me $5 because suddenly not everything was about exchange.



... The Soviet ruble did not really function as money; it only poorly commanded labor, so the USSR resorted to political and administrative measures (the Law on Parasitism, the laws on truancy and absenteeism mandating forced labor regime, and the law forcing workers to seek approval to change jobs under Stalin) to help appropriate labor. The ruble did not really command subsistence, the endless black market and private household production sector, the resort to barter, blat, and foreign currency. Enterprises did not need to run ruble profits to stay afloat or to expand. They did not need to finance from profit. The enterprise sought to achieve official material product targets as specified from the center. The contradiction was in endemic underproduction of consumer goods, overproduction of capital goods and technologically obsolete and labor-intensive industrial fabric, and abysmally low quality control and labor productivity. That’s at least what a few economic studies I have read suggested. Can you explain how Soviet enterprises were capitalist? Is anything called an ‘enterprise’ capitalist? Is anything with any regime of paid-labor, capitalist? That is why I ask questions about the differences between medieval production and capitalism...

OK, I'm deliberately going to attack the weakest part of your argumentation first.

"Is anything called an ‘enterprise’ capitalist?"

Yes, that must be it. I must have a fixation with what things are called. That's why I think that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was capitalist, because it's called... no, wait... I see what you did there. You think that if I'm a total chump, I should believe that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was socialist. Because it's called 'socialist'.

Obviously, calling something 'enterprise' is no more a guarantee it's capitalist than calling something 'socialist' is a guarantee it's socialist. Names are not things, though they do refer to things. Not always appropriately.

Capitalism is generalised wage labour and commodity production. Did wage labour exist, generally, in the USSR? Yes. Did commodity production exist in the USSR? Yes. Was it capitalist? Yes.

Engels: Anti-Duhring: "... the transformation, either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces..." (my emphasis there).

Statisation of the economy is not the answer. The USSR still traded on the world stage. It was still a capitalist economy to the external world. It paid its workers wages and they bought things in shops. Just because it was vastly inefficient at generating profits compared to western capitalism doesn't mean it wasn't capitalist. It was just a particularly stupid form of capitalism.



anywhooo...

I don't have a problem with a small 'village proletariat' in the Middle Ages. Capitalism is generalised wage labour and commodity production, not isolated wage labour and commodity production, which existed as least as early as Ancient Greece (which is why I mentioned it in an early post, I think, unless that was another thread about value and commodities, I do lose track).

The capitalisation of the economy started to gather momentum in the 1300s, in my opinion - at least in England; but it didn't become 'capitalist' until it was generalised, I guess in the 1500s.

There were a whole host of factors influencing that development, including (but not confined to) Black Death labour shortages, the Hundred Years War, and the international trade in wool with the Flemish weavers.

[ad novum orbem]

I'm sorry but I don't see how laboring to produce something is exchanging labor for its product. That's not an exchange in the sense of barter or money transactions. A worker isn't paying or bartering with anyone or anything when producing something.

If you are participating in social production, then you are contributing to the creation of a social product. You are not producing everything you will consume yourself, you are producing use values that other people will consume, and the other people are producing use values that you will consume in return for your trouble. You are performing labor time to provide yourself with a livelihood, but in a roundabout and abstract way, because you're labor time isn't producing everything you're going to consume yourself. All the various use values have to trade places with each other, they have to be transfered from the various producers to the various consumers. If you're not doing that then you're not carrying out social production. Getting the quantities correct is the issue.


Once expended, labor is gone - it can't be recovered and it doesn't go to anyone else.

The result of your labor goes to someone else if you give it to them. Of course, if you give away the entire result of your labor time you'll starve, so something has to come back to you in return. The trick is in measuring the value of what you give up, and whether or not you recieve an equivalent amount of value in return (if you are, great, but if you aren't then exploitation is occurring).


In socialism, a product produced by a group of workers wouldn't be the property of those workers. It would be part of a common stock of products distributed based on need.

It is capitalism that forces labor to work with means of production they don't own, not only to make products they don't own, but also to replenish (and even increase) the capital assets they don't own. That is the primary power relation of capitalist exploitation. Labor power is treated like a commodity itself, as something to be purchased by the capitalist for the least expense possible regardless of how productive that labor will ultimately be.

There are a couple of different ways for socialism to alter that relation. One would be for the workers to 'own' the means of production socially as one large public entity, but even in that case the organizational requirements would boil down to matters pertaining to separate individual workplaces. Another way would be for the workers at those separate workplaces to 'own' the means of production they use themselves (but collectively) since their labor is what produces and maintains the capital assets of those workplaces in the first place. At any rate, the workers have to control the capital their own labor produces, the process they themselves carry out, and the result of the process as well. If they don't then they are doing the same thing they did in capitalism, working for an external power who owns their labor power, the process, and the result.

Another point here is the role of the state. If a socialist economy developes a hugely state-based mechanism for planning and coordination, then it is solidifying the role of that mechanism within the economy. Instead of creating circumstances that allow the state to eventually "wither-away", they'd be giving it a large and important economic role that couldn't be done without. For the state to wither away, the players on the field will have to have control of the process, and the result of the process, themselves.

Personally, I think there will always be a role for the state, but only as an arbitor, a referee of activity according to rules agreed upon and laid out as the "common plan", but not as the coordinator charged with directing and commanding the activity itself.


Value is not subjective, because value (as defined by Marx) is the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something. That's clearly an objective and thus measurable phenomenon.

Well, it's both isn't it? Marx defines value as the socially necessary labor time embodied in commodities in motion, in circulation. He's critiquing the political economy of his day, which was a market economy with the power relations of capitalism at play. But what determines social necessity? The individual actors do. Value is subjective from the perspective of the consumer, yet objective from the perspective of the producer. I like green olives, but I have friends who hate them, they have value to me but not to them. I buy them, they don't. As long as enough people like green olives and are willing to exchange an abstract portion of their own labor time (value in money form) with other people who produce green olives, then those producers can make a living producing green olives whether they like them or not, whether they have use value to them personally or not. To the producer, the value of green olives is objective, because the value determination is made by others (consumers), and consumers express subjectivity when they choose to consume them, and on an individual basis. It's the consumers that ultimately make the deterimination, and since they have to perform work and give up some of their own labor time in exchange, how valuable something is, how socially necessary something is, can be measured by consumer demand (especially if we have balanced power relations, but the old 'perfect' market model doesn't really apply to capitalism in which human beings can be treated as commodities themselves).

If we decide that all value is objective, and we give determination power to a planning body that simply doesn't think it has to worry about subjectivity, and because wants and needs change over time (as well as the technology and processes used to satisfy them), then we'd be setting ourselves up for failure. Everyone will end up working to consume not what they actually want, but what someone else tells them value is.


On the other hand, people would indicate their needs by redeeming labor-tokens for products and by using social services. Again I wouldn't call this a market because there wouldn't be any exchange of commodities.

What's being exchanged is socially necessary labor time, value commodified in goods and services. We all contribute to the creation of the social product, and then we all take part in consuming it. If we get the process correct and free from exploitation, then we all consume in quantities commensurate with our own contribution. But, per Marx, it is the process of exchange that determines how much value you contribute, it's only when you put commodified labor into circulation with itself that you find out. And if the power relations are balanced, nobody has power to profit over another, you produce something of value and exchange it for something of equivalent value--no more, no less.

[Blake's Baby]

Knew I'd dig this out sooner or later: Anti-Duhring again (Part III, 'Socialism', Ch 4 'Distribution'):

"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”."

So; 'value' as a concept, and therefore LTV, not applicable in socialism, because 'time' is the measure of labour-power in socialism (as I pointed out in post 41). 'Value' is only of use in capitalism, because, taadaah! - it refers to exchange value (as I pointed out in for example in posts 24 & 29).

[u.s.red]

In socialism... there are two dinners. Both have a use value of 'one dinner'. One has taken one person an hour to prepare, one has taken one person 30 minutes to prepare. Which is the most 'valuable'?

I think you still are assuming all socialist dinners will be the same.

Why not describe in detail the two dinners you have in mind? Here are my suggestions:

1. two oz of ground beef, with happy sauce between two sesame seed buns, served with a Coke. Exactly what a 7 yr old would find delectable

2. filet mignon, rare, with a wine and cream sauce, served with an interesting bourdeaux.

substitute whatever you like if you are a vegetarian or vegan.

meal one takes 5 minutes (including everything from the ground up.)
meal two takes 30 minutes.

both times are socially necessary.

which meal is more valuable?

As Marx says in Capital, the second paragraph, "A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference."

The nature of a use-value, whether a value important to a 7 yr old or a 40 yr old vegan, is immaterial.

I agree that capitalism produces commodities only for sale. In socialism, things useful to humans will still be produced.

On the other hand, you may be saying that in socialism no "value" will be produced by human labor.

[Klaatu]

Under a profit system we'd produce loads more nergs than are needed and try to sell them. Under a socialist system, we'd produce the nergs we need and take the rest of the day off.

Agreed. In the for-profit system, far too much stuff (mostly useless junk) is produced than is necessary. The worst part about it is that we are rapidly using up finite natural resources, especially fossil fuel.

[Paul Cockshott]

So; 'value' as a concept, and therefore LTV, not applicable in socialism, because 'time' is the measure of labour-power in socialism (as I pointed out in post 41). 'Value' is only of use in capitalism, because, taadaah! - it refers to exchange value (as I pointed out in for example in posts 24 & 29).
Value in quotes here denotes exchange value. Time is not the measure of anything but time. Person days is the measure of labour content - ie time multiplied by people.
Labour content (labour value) is the substance expressed in exchange value, and this content remains important to socialism even if the form of expression may change. Instead of people being credited with dollars or euros, what Marx proposes is that they be credited with hours worked. The alienated form of expression of labour as money is removed and labour content of a product becomes just one of a number of things it might be marked with along with calories, sodium content, carbon dioxide emissions etc.

[Blake's Baby]

Yes, 'value' denotes exchange value, thank you.

However, exchange value continuing in socialism, no thank you.

I don't mind if you disagree with Marx and Engels, they're not gods, but don't try and claim you agree with them.

Engels, Anti-Duhring (Part III, 'Socialism', Ch 4 'Distribution'):

"... 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. ... People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”."

So no 'value' (=exchange value) in socialism... according to Marx and Engels.

So Cockshott's LTV is not Marx's LTV.

Thank you and good night.

[Blake's Baby]

I think you still are assuming all socialist dinners will be the same...

I think you're assuming I'm assuming all socialist dinners are the same. I'm trying to get at a bunch of misunderstandings of the Labour Theory of Value.

If there are two dinners, which both have the same use-value of 'one dinner', is a dinner that takes twice as long twice as valuable? Or half as valuable? Please answer that, as I have quite literally no idea how your calculus is supposed to work.

I know how it works in capitalism; 'value' (exchange value) is added, by labour, to use-value, to create a commodity, which sold, rendering profit to the capitalist (in this case the seller) through surplus value derived from the exploitation of the worker's labour power (difference between value added, and wages paid, which are merely the replacement cost of labour, as labour is itself a commodity).




Why not describe in detail the two dinners you have in mind? Here are my suggestions:

1. two oz of ground beef, with happy sauce between two sesame seed buns, served with a Coke. Exactly what a 7 yr old would find delectable

2. filet mignon, rare, with a wine and cream sauce, served with an interesting bourdeaux.

substitute whatever you like if you are a vegetarian or vegan.

meal one takes 5 minutes (including everything from the ground up.)
meal two takes 30 minutes.

both times are socially necessary.

which meal is more valuable?

As Marx says in Capital, the second paragraph, "A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference."

The nature of a use-value, whether a value important to a 7 yr old or a 40 yr old vegan, is immaterial.

I agree that capitalism produces commodities only for sale. In socialism, things useful to humans will still be produced.

On the other hand, you may be saying that in socialism no "value" will be produced by human labor.

I am saying no 'value' will be produced in socialism, because 'value' in this sense is only exchange value.

Use-value is independant of context. People in feudalism need dinners, people in capitalism need dinners, people in socialism need dinners. Seven year olds need dinners, 40 year olds need dinners. The dinners have use values of 'one dinner' - they are generic multi-appeal a-historic contextless dinners, designed to represent consumable use-values. Use-values are use-values. The whole point is to use a social good that is both generic (because the specifics aren't important, it's the 'value' question that seems to be excercising people's minds), and because it has an immediately-appreciable 'consumption'. It's a use-value.

You ask me to describe the dinners.

The dinners, for the purposes of this experiment, are 'different' dinners (in that there are two of them) but, as in the confusion between French and English over 'another', they are 'encore un fois', 'same again', rather than 'un autre', 'of a different type'. Let's now assume, two identical dinners. Identical to me means 'they have a use-value of one dinner'. If you insist that I need to describe the dimensions of that use-value, they have whatever use-value you assign to one dinner, doubled and made into two identical dinners.

Two identical dinners; one takes 30 minutes to prepare, one takes one hour to prepare. Which is more valuable?

Bear in mind if you say 'the second' then I'm going to make you wait ten years for your dinner, because it's better that way. I'm also only going to make one dinner for the first ten years after the revolution as I calculate that way I can make a huge contribution to the new society.

[Paul Cockshott]

I agree with you that socialism should not be a system of commodity production, it should be a system of planned economy but in the process of this planning the labour time required to make things is still important for economic calculation. Labour value is an objective property of all societies with a division of labour. Only in certain societies is this labour content expressed as exchange value. Expression as exchange value involves the quantity of labour in a commodity being measured by how much of another commodity ( ie. gold) that it will exchange for. What Marx proposed was that the labour value be directly expressed as such and that people would be able to take from the communal stores goods that contained as much labour as they themselves had contributed.

[T]he individual producer gets back from society-after the deductions-exactly what he has given to it. What he has given it is his individual quantum of labour. For instance, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work. The individual labour time of the individual producer thus constitutes his contribution to the social working day, his share of it. Society gives him a certificate stating that he has done such and such an amount of work (after the labour done for the comunal fund has been deducted), and with this certificate he can withdraw from the social supply of means of consumption as much as costs an equivalent amount of labour. The same amount of labour he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

[Blake's Baby]

As much as they had contributed, after society had taken its share for the common store, otherwise, the weak, children, old people etc, just die, and incidently there's no investment in repairing equipment etc.

And not all of us think Marx was right to think that in the lower phase of communism there might be labour vouchers; but I'm happy to say where I disagree with Marx and Engels.

[Kotze]

As much as they had contributed, after society had taken its share for the common store, otherwise, the weak, children, old people etc, just die, and incidently there's no investment in repairing equipment etc.No, we think children should die etc.

[Blake's Baby]

Some people think that the labourer should receive the social product 'in relation to his contribution'. Not 'in relation to his contribution minus socially-agreed expenses including keeping the non-working alive and setting aside a surplus against the future'.

Or even 'according to his need'. Though I'll agree that there's an argument here about the lower and higher phase of communism.

Personally, I'm in favour of whatever social power would issue the labour-notes issuing ration-books instead. I'm not so enamoured of distributing social product according to work, I'm in favour of as much communisation as possible as early as possible.

[Paul Cockshott]

As much as they had contributed, after society had taken its share for the common store, otherwise, the weak, children, old people etc, just die, and incidently there's no investment in repairing equipment etc.

And not all of us think Marx was right to think that in the lower phase of communism there might be labour vouchers; but I'm happy to say where I disagree with Marx and Engels.
Yes you will still have to pay social security or tax contributions under communism but these only have to cover unproductive costs - supporting those unable to support themselves due to age and illness. The precise form of such taxes : income tax, poll tax, duty on tobacco marijuana vodka etc would be matter for democratic debate.

The costs of repairing and replacing equipment is covered by the value that the old means of production pass on to the current product and because this is not part of the net value product there need be no deductions from value added to cover it. Nor does there need to be any deduction from value added to cover education since the cost of training the workforce is part of the socially necessary labour embodied in the product and as such part of the value of the product. I see that Blake's baby imagines that for some reason parents would leave their children to starve under communism - I can reassure him that his parents are unlikely to have this attitude.

[Blake's Baby]

I see that Cockshott is trying out new comedy material. My advice is, go for it. You're wasted doing this.

I don't think 'pay' has anything to do with. Social distribution of social goods will be to everyone. No 'worker' will have to 'pay taxes' to the state to redistribute to the needy.

The 'cost of repairing and replacing equipment is covered...' - by the replacement of these machines being part of the 'total social good generated by labour'? Yes, OK, I can see that; but it means that a portion of socially-necessary labour is necessarily 'spent' on replacing and repairing and is therefore equivalent to a tax on labour or socially-sanctioned corvee or whatever. Part of your labour (or at least, part of many people's labour) must go on socially-sanctioned 'replacement' projects. It comes out the same as 'there must be social investment in repair and replacement of the means of production'.

I never mentioned education at all. I assume that under socialism we'll all have a much more creative approach to work and rigid separations between factories, universities, workshops, schools, and sports and social clubs will be both gradually attenuated and deliberately radically burst assunder. Not sure where you're going with the 'value' argument but even so. Society producing use-values not exchange values will regard the social development of kids as one of its most important prorities.

As to 'parents' and 'children', presumably you imagine that there will be no orphans under socialism, indeed that everyone who is unable to look after themself will be in a position to have some kind of protector. Glad to see that the notion of the nuclear family is alive and well and living in your head ready to be carried through into socialism. I was having the argument with... oooh, who was it, Revolution Begins With U I think t'other day that socialism will provide for the needy (including children). He seemed to think it was in some doubt. 'Doesn't have to' he said. I radically disagree. Socialism, as it is the emancipation of the whole of humanity, does have to provide for everyone.

[Kotze]

Some people think that the labourer should receive the social product 'in relation to his contribution'. Not 'in relation to his contribution minus socially-agreed expensesI'm not aware of anybody here actually believing that, people just occasionally drop that part because they don't feel like always repeating the obvious, no? But I admit I haven't read that exchange with that other user you mentioned.
Personally, I'm in favour of whatever social power would issue the labour-notes issuing ration-books instead.If you mean having separate buying points for separate categories, any mediocre econ student should be able to point out that it would
1. for a given output's distribution introduce massive Pareto efficiency failures
and so also
2. contribute to the formation of black markets
and
3. make these buying points unable to suggest change in proportions between the categories in tune with demand.

I do think however, that an argument can be made for having additional specific vouchers (some for kids or some for people who are able to work but don't want to or maybe some type that you get by virtue of being human), despite all the problems mentioned above still applying, and that argument is about ensuring solidarity of those who are giving by restricting the set of stuff and services that can be received to something those who give find more agreeable. Can't say I'm particularly fond of stuff like food stamps in current US society, there is a nasty public shaming aspect to it, but I think with an electronic payment system it would actually be possible to have restrictions on the buying points which are cloaked to anybody else while shopping as long as you don't try to get the forbidden stuff with it.

As for people "proving" their points about what socialist society will be like by quoting Engels: I think he was a bit obscure at times, and sometimes ridiculously so :P

[ad novum orbem]

Labour value is an objective property of all societies with a division of labour.

No, it isn't. An hour of labor isn't the same as an hour of socially necessary labor. I can work all day making something that nobody else wants or needs, and if I do I have not spent that time making value (in a social context anyway). Also, one persons labor-time can be more productive and produce a higher quality result than others. The only way to find out if you're making value is to offer the product up for consumption, and if others in society express demand for it in relation to other existing products, then you know you're producing value. How much value you make is expressed by the level of demand, how bad people want or need it, but only in relation to other things that could be consumed in its stead, how much a particular result of labor-time is wanted in relation to everything else.


What Marx proposed was that the labour value be directly expressed as such and that people would be able to take from the communal stores goods that contained as much labour as they themselves had contributed.

Not just as much labor, but as much value, socially necessary labor time. If I spend 2 hours making X amount of value (the social necessity of which is determined by the demand for my result in relation to the result of the labor-time of others), and another person spends only one hour to make the same amount of value (but not necessarily the same product), then we've made equal amounts of value, but in different amounts of time, and that differential can be expressed as price--the ratio of exchange.

In order to get the calculations right, that process has to be possible in socialism. If, in any particular model, labor vouchers are to take the place of money, then the quantity of vouchers received by a worker for their labor-time must reflect the value of that labor-time, not simply the hours worked. And the value of that labor-time gets determined by others within the society exchanging their labor vouchers for it as they remove it from the communal stores and consume it (in ratios based on value -cost- because the other workers get their vouchers by expending labor-time as well, thus labor-time expended stays relative to labor-time consumed).

Planners can alter the length of the working day in different areas of production, or purposely organize production so that the work is shared equally (even allowing for some inefficiency), but they must be guided by information based on the value produced by that labor-time, not just the amount of time itself. At the very least, the calculation mechanism must mimic a consumer goods and services market, to link up everyone who are simultaneously producing and consuming, so that their activity can provide accurate value determinations for the planners to work with.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not aware of anybody here actually believing that, people just occasionally drop that part because they don't feel like always repeating the obvious, no? But I admit I haven't read that exchange with that other user you mentioned...

Well, the specific exchange was about whether in socialism we'd look after the elderly, inform and children and 'that user' said 'we don't have to'. But then went on to say that probably people will. Personally, unless y'all agree that the elderly and children and other non-working sections of the poulation like the infirm will still be provided for by society, then I'm packing up now and giving up on y'all. Not giving up on the working class obviously, just its self-appointed 'most politically devloped elements'.






If you mean having separate buying points ...

Not talking about 'buying points' at all, unless you mean 'distribution points'.


...
for separate categories, any mediocre econ student should be able to point out that it would
1. for a given output's distribution introduce massive Pareto efficiency failures
and so also
2. contribute to the formation of black markets
and
3. make these buying points unable to suggest change in proportions between the categories in tune with demand.

I do think however, that an argument can be made for having additional specific vouchers (some for kids or some for people who are able to work but don't want to or maybe some type that you get by virtue of being human), despite all the problems mentioned above still applying, and that argument is about ensuring solidarity of those who are giving by restricting the set of stuff and services that can be received to something those who give find more agreeable. Can't say I'm particularly fond of stuff like food stamps in current US society, there is a nasty public shaming aspect to it, but I think with an electronic payment system it would actually be possible to have restrictions on the buying points which are cloaked to anybody else while shopping as long as you don't try to get the forbidden stuff with it...

No, that's not what I'm talking about at all.

EVERYONE gets food stamps.

Without money and with production managed by the workers, who is creating the 'black market'?

As society itself, the organised working class is setting the goals, the same people who are fullfilling them, the whole notion of an 'inability to suggest changes in proportion' is ridiculous.

Consider the scene - Joe McCommunist is sitting in his factory committee meeting thinking 'I know we produce bath taps here but for the life of me I need a new bicycle... why don't I... no, tell you what, I'll just go and collect my allocation of new bath-taps instead'. So off Joe goes after the meeting to the community store (note for US users - the word 'store' in British English means 'place where things are stored'. The word for 'place where you buy things' is 'shop') and he picks up his new bath taps. If he lives in Cockshottograd, he does this because he's a worker and hands over a labour-time-voucher. If he does it in someoneelseograd, he gets more taps for his labour-time-voucher but some babies die. I don't even believe all this is real, because if he were in BBograd he'd have mentioned that really he needed a new bicycle.


...As for people "proving" their points about what socialist society will be like by quoting Engels: I think he was a bit obscure at times, and sometimes ridiculously so :P

Well, as we're discussing the theories of Marx and Engels I think quoting them as opposed to spouting random shit about we think about stuff is quite useful, every now and again.

[Kotze]

Not talking about 'buying points' at all, unless you mean 'distribution points'.By buying points I meant a system where individuals have points and different things are rationed by being tagged with different amounts of points and you have to say bye to the amount of points a thing is tagged with when you want to have that thing, and an individual can't transfer these points to another individual.

By separate categories I meant that a tagged thing is in a category and to get that thing you not only have to say bye to the amount of points it is tagged with, but it has to be points from that category, and there is no institution that allows you to exchange one type of points for another.

Under such a system, the 3 problems I mentioned in post #62 apply.


Without money and with production managed by the workers, who is creating the 'black market'?Under the system I referred to in post #62, since it means Pareto failures up the wazoo, it will be to people's mutual benefit to barter, and this can fester into something much worse than a little bartering here and there. This is not a complicated theory and similar rationing has been tried before.


As society itself, the organised working class is setting the goals, the same people who are fullfilling them, the whole notion of an 'inability to suggest changes in proportion' is ridiculous.Under the system I described, I wrote that separate categories make these points "unable to suggest change in proportions between the categories in tune with demand." This logically follows. It doesn't imply that there can't be other feedback mechanisms for that, I don't find it compelling however to introduce voucher categories which introduces this problem without either justifying the categories despite the mentioned drawbacks or sketching a way to address how to adjust proportions between categories.

[Marvin the Marxian]

OK; let me see if I can grasp what you're arguing.

Seems to me that what you are saying is:
1 - human labour on resources produces 'value' (as long as there is a use-value embedded at the end);
2 - under socialism there will still be labour on resources (still embedding use values);
3 - therefore under socialism there will still be 'value' (because 'value' is a quality imparted to something by labour, regardless of whether that thing is only a use-value, or has exchange-value as well as use value).

Well, if that is what you're saying, then there's no reason to use the term 'value' at all. 'Value' in your definition is only another way of expressing 'labour time'. Thus the whole so-called 'labour theory of value' boils down to 'some goods are made, and some take longer to make than others'. That's all you need to say, and it's as true under socialism as under capitalism.

I think there's a little more to it than just "labor time". It's the average amount of socially necessary labor time. As I see it, "value" is just shorthand for that much wordier expression.


'Value' as a concept, unrelated to use value (which exists, in socialism as well as capitalism), only works as a relationship. Otherwise, what does it derive from (no, not 'from embedded labourr', I know you think that, but what is 'value' if not 'use value' or 'exchange value')? How is it expressed? What is the quality that labour imparts to something that, if it already posses use value and may posses exchange value, is a different sort of value to those already mentioned?

With all due respect comrade, this sounds like you're trying to shoehorn "value" into a dichotomy between "use-value" and "exchange-value". I don't understand why value per se has to fall in with either one or the other. Why can't value derive from embedded labor? Maybe you just don't like that notion because it would mean that value precedes exchange-value?

The value of a commodity can be expressed in various ways, i.e. in terms of various other commodities. It can also be expressed, at least theoretically, in terms of time itself. Under capitalism, it's been more convenient to express it in the former way. The other commodity typically used is the money commodity. Even in socialism, though, the values of different products of labor could be expressed in terms of the values of other products of labor. The difference is that there would be no exchange, which means no commodities, which means no money.

Labor is a transformative process. The materials that labor transforms may already have use-values, but through labor they acquire new use-values. For example, raw steel, rubber tubing, etc. have use-values per se, but those aren't the same as the use-value of a bicycle made from them. The extra quality imparted to the bicycle is simply the additional value - that is, the average socially necessary labor-time needed to produce that kind of bicycle (since not all bicycles are exactly the same) from the raw steel, rubber tubing, etc.


Under socialism, I contend that a dinner that takes 60 minutes to make will not embody either more or less value than a dinner that takes 30 minutes to make. Do you think it would? If you do, and you'll have to explain this because I don't know how you think it works, is it twice as valuable, because twice as much time (labour) has gone into it (and labour determines value)? Or will it be half as valuable, because twice as much labour has gone into it (and value is determined by difference between actual labour and socially necessary labour)? I really don't know, because to me it's a use-value (value: one dinner, in either situation).

The dinner that takes, on average, 60 minutes to make will have twice as much value as the dinner that takes, on average, 30 minutes to make. I'm assuming here that these two dinners are different - that is, each has a different selection of food items and/or preparation methods. If you're talking about two dinners of the same type, and assuming that no other dinners of that type have ever been made before, then I'd say the value of both dinners will be 45 labor-minutes. That's just the average of the actual preparation times for the two dinners.

[Marvin the Marxian]

I'm rather assuming that neither MacDonalds nor Chez Paris will exist in socialism. Are you assuming something different? Or are you now talking about capitalism?

Assume there are two dinners, that's what we're working with. People need dinners and they don't 'need' cars (they can use buses bikes hovercraft jet-packs personal teleportation devices... none need to belong to them. 'Dinner' however as a category is pretty unversal and crucially must be consumed by an individual unlike a communal transport-system).

Two dinners in capitalism (a Happy Meal from MacDonalds and a sumptuous supper from Chez Paris) embody different amounts of labour power, and therefore the LTV says they have different values. One takes 6 people 20 minutes each - in total it takes two hours to make, though in effect it only takes 30 minutes to arrive because they're working simultaneously. The other also takes 6 people to make but because they only work on it for 1 minute each it can arrive in 3 minutes, and embodies 6 minutes of labour-power. It's obvious that the meal from Chez Paris embodies more labour-power (and therefore necessarily time) than the Happy Meal; it obviously contains more 'value' (and commands a higher price) even though from one angle, its direct use value ('one dinner') is the same. So far so good. We all understand this is how the LTV works.

In socialism... there are two dinners. Both have a use value of 'one dinner'. One has taken one person an hour to prepare, one has taken one person 30 minutes to prepare. Which is the most 'valuable'? Bear in mind, if you say 'the one-hour dinner' I will ask you if a four-hour dinner is yet more valuable, a ten-hour dinner more valuable yet, and a ten-year dinner the most valuable of all. Because if your answer is "yes, the ten-year dinner is the most 'valuable'", then I insist that after the revolution you come here and I make you a ten-year dinner. What possible grounds would you have have for refusal? Oh, yeah, the fact that the theory is rubbish because LTV only applies to capitalism.

Comrade, please forgive me here, but I really don't understand why you're insisting on treating all dinners as being the same under socialism. Are you really saying that everyone will always eat the same dinner after the revolution? Even if food quality is equalized, there are many different types of food, and they don't all require the same amount of labor to produce.

After the revolution, you can insist all you want that I come over to your house and you make me a ten-year dinner. But don't expect me to come to your house for that, and don't expect the DotP to consider your ten-year dinner effort to be socially necessary labor.

[ad novum orbem]

Well, the specific exchange was about whether in socialism we'd look after the elderly, inform and children and 'that user' said 'we don't have to'. But then went on to say that probably people will.

I'm curious, what exchange are you referring to here?

[Kotze]

^
I figured Blake's Baby was referring to the thread Work or Starve (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2361667&postcount=65).

[Anon4chan1235]

the labor theory of value isn't either, it's just a theory of value.

[Marvin the Marxian]

If you are participating in social production, then you are contributing to the creation of a social product. You are not producing everything you will consume yourself, you are producing use values that other people will consume, and the other people are producing use values that you will consume in return for your trouble. You are performing labor time to provide yourself with a livelihood, but in a roundabout and abstract way, because you're labor time isn't producing everything you're going to consume yourself. All the various use values have to trade places with each other, they have to be transfered from the various producers to the various consumers. If you're not doing that then you're not carrying out social production. Getting the quantities correct is the issue.

I agree with this, comrade, but I wouldn't call it exchange. What I redeem for products (labor-tokens, credits, whatever you want to call them) isn't a commodity itself and doesn't circulate. Maybe we just have different ideas of what exchange is.


The result of your labor goes to someone else if you give it to them. Of course, if you give away the entire result of your labor time you'll starve, so something has to come back to you in return. The trick is in measuring the value of what you give up, and whether or not you recieve an equivalent amount of value in return (if you are, great, but if you aren't then exploitation is occurring).

I think the social authority, whether it's the DotP or beyond that, would credit me for the amount of socially useful labor I've performed. Otherwise I think I agree with you here too.


It is capitalism that forces labor to work with means of production they don't own, not only to make products they don't own, but also to replenish (and even increase) the capital assets they don't own. That is the primary power relation of capitalist exploitation. Labor power is treated like a commodity itself, as something to be purchased by the capitalist for the least expense possible regardless of how productive that labor will ultimately be.

Yes I also agree with you here. Under socialism, there will be no commodities, so labor-power won't be a commodity.


There are a couple of different ways for socialism to alter that relation. One would be for the workers to 'own' the means of production socially as one large public entity, but even in that case the organizational requirements would boil down to matters pertaining to separate individual workplaces. Another way would be for the workers at those separate workplaces to 'own' the means of production they use themselves (but collectively) since their labor is what produces and maintains the capital assets of those workplaces in the first place. At any rate, the workers have to control the capital their own labor produces, the process they themselves carry out, and the result of the process as well. If they don't then they are doing the same thing they did in capitalism, working for an external power who owns their labor power, the process, and the result.

With the second thing you suggest, wouldn't that just turn the workers into the new capitalist owners of the workplace? There'd have to be a regulation in place for workplaces that stipulates new workers having the same rights as existing workers. I think this would ultimately require social ownership of the means of production.


Another point here is the role of the state. If a socialist economy developes a hugely state-based mechanism for planning and coordination, then it is solidifying the role of that mechanism within the economy. Instead of creating circumstances that allow the state to eventually "wither-away", they'd be giving it a large and important economic role that couldn't be done without. For the state to wither away, the players on the field will have to have control of the process, and the result of the process, themselves.

I think maybe a lot of the economic planning could be done in the form of regulation. This regulation would have to be democratic, of course. But I also think that, in the absence of capitalist competition, some sort of central economic plan would be needed.


Personally, I think there will always be a role for the state, but only as an arbitor, a referee of activity according to rules agreed upon and laid out as the "common plan", but not as the coordinator charged with directing and commanding the activity itself.

Do you see these rules including rules for deciding how much to produce of different things? I personally favor calculation in kind when it comes to coordinating socialist production. Some of it could be distributed among workplaces, but I think it would ultimately lay in the hands of the social authority.


Well, it's both isn't it? Marx defines value as the socially necessary labor time embodied in commodities in motion, in circulation. He's critiquing the political economy of his day, which was a market economy with the power relations of capitalism at play. But what determines social necessity? The individual actors do. Value is subjective from the perspective of the consumer, yet objective from the perspective of the producer. I like green olives, but I have friends who hate them, they have value to me but not to them. I buy them, they don't. As long as enough people like green olives and are willing to exchange an abstract portion of their own labor time (value in money form) with other people who produce green olives, then those producers can make a living producing green olives whether they like them or not, whether they have use value to them personally or not. To the producer, the value of green olives is objective, because the value determination is made by others (consumers), and consumers express subjectivity when they choose to consume them, and on an individual basis. It's the consumers that ultimately make the deterimination, and since they have to perform work and give up some of their own labor time in exchange, how valuable something is, how socially necessary something is, can be measured by consumer demand (especially if we have balanced power relations, but the old 'perfect' market model doesn't really apply to capitalism in which human beings can be treated as commodities themselves).

Use-value is subjective, but value isn't. LTV doesn't stand for "labor theory of use-value", it stands for "labor theory of value". What's socially necessary isn't subjective in the sense of being based on whim, it's determined by material conditions. Under socialism, if fewer people redeem labor-tokens for green olives, then fewer green olives would be produced. That in itself would have no effect on the value of each green olive.


If we decide that all value is objective, and we give determination power to a planning body that simply doesn't think it has to worry about subjectivity, and because wants and needs change over time (as well as the technology and processes used to satisfy them), then we'd be setting ourselves up for failure. Everyone will end up working to consume not what they actually want, but what someone else tells them value is.

But value is just the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something. Which use-values are produced is a matter of needs. So the social authority would have to be responsive to the needs of the people.


What's being exchanged is socially necessary labor time, value commodified in goods and services. We all contribute to the creation of the social product, and then we all take part in consuming it. If we get the process correct and free from exploitation, then we all consume in quantities commensurate with our own contribution. But, per Marx, it is the process of exchange that determines how much value you contribute, it's only when you put commodified labor into circulation with itself that you find out. And if the power relations are balanced, nobody has power to profit over another, you produce something of value and exchange it for something of equivalent value--no more, no less.

The only parts of this I disagree with are the parts about commodities and exchange. I don't think socialism will have either, for reasons I've already mentioned.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Knew I'd dig this out sooner or later: Anti-Duhring again (Part III, 'Socialism', Ch 4 'Distribution'):

"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”."

So; 'value' as a concept, and therefore LTV, not applicable in socialism, because 'time' is the measure of labour-power in socialism (as I pointed out in post 41). 'Value' is only of use in capitalism, because, taadaah! - it refers to exchange value (as I pointed out in for example in posts 24 & 29).

See, I'd say that Engels supports me more, but he definitely seems to use the word "value" to refer to exchange-value. He keeps talking about measuring the average amount of labor-time that goes into producing something useful. Just because he doesn't use the word "value" as an equivalent to that doesn't mean the concept is any less relevant.

[Marvin the Marxian]

As much as they had contributed, after society had taken its share for the common store, otherwise, the weak, children, old people etc, just die, and incidently there's no investment in repairing equipment etc.

And not all of us think Marx was right to think that in the lower phase of communism there might be labour vouchers; but I'm happy to say where I disagree with Marx and Engels.

I completely agree with you, comrade, that there needs to be plenty of contributions for those who are unable to work. That's why I prefer a more general term like "credit" instead of "labor-token", even though the latter seems to be more readily understandable. On the other hand, I think ability to work would be a determination made by society. There are many different kinds of work, and a person unable to work in a factory may still be able to work in a clerical setting. And if a person is able to work but chooses not to, I see no reason why he should receive any support from society.

[Blake's Baby]

By buying points I meant a system where individuals have points and different things are rationed by being tagged with different amounts of points and you have to say bye to the amount of points a thing is tagged with when you want to have that thing, and an individual can't transfer these points to another individual.

By separate categories I meant that a tagged thing is in a category and to get that thing you not only have to say bye to the amount of points it is tagged with, but it has to be points from that category, and there is no institution that allows you to exchange one type of points for another.

Under such a system, the 3 problems I mentioned in post #62 apply.

Under the system I referred to in post #62, since it means Pareto failures up the wazoo, it will be to people's mutual benefit to barter, and this can fester into something much worse than a little bartering here and there. This is not a complicated theory and similar rationing has been tried before.

Under the system I described, I wrote that separate categories make these points "unable to suggest change in proportions between the categories in tune with demand." This logically follows. It doesn't imply that there can't be other feedback mechanisms for that, I don't find it compelling however to introduce voucher categories which introduces this problem without either justifying the categories despite the mentioned drawbacks or sketching a way to address how to adjust proportions between categories.

As that sounds unlike the system I'm proposing, I don't think I need bother with what you think might be wrong with it.


Comrade, please forgive me here, but I really don't understand why you're insisting on treating all dinners as being the same under socialism. Are you really saying that everyone will always eat the same dinner after the revolution? Even if food quality is equalized, there are many different types of food, and they don't all require the same amount of labor to produce.

After the revolution, you can insist all you want that I come over to your house and you make me a ten-year dinner. But don't expect me to come to your house for that, and don't expect the DotP to consider your ten-year dinner effort to be socially necessary labor.

USRed wanted to know what was on the menu; I'm just trying to get at various confusions about LTV. So, in general terms, looking at the dinners as use-values, it doesn't matter what happens to be on the menu, that isn't relevant, for someone they both have the same use value. So we can discount the notion of use-value as being important, and examine what other 'value' might be inherent in them.

It doesn't matter if any two dinners are burgers and chips or fillet steak or tofu and noodles or anything else you might care to think of. The dinners are 'the same' because:
1-they both have a use value of 'one dinner', and
2-because the actual form of either dinner is not relevant to the argument.

So, I 'simplified' matters (like Brian when he says 'Oh all right, their names were Simon and Adrian') - but only because I was asked to. The dinners in and of themselves are not important, the Labour Theory of value does not fall down if someone cooks a burger and someone else cooks steak. So Iwill go back to my original way of looking at the question.

'There are two dinners'... imagine them however you like. They both have the use-value of 'one dinner'.

So, one of these dinners takes 30 minutes to cook (to produce the use-value 'one dinner') and one takes 60 minutes to cook (to produce the use-value of 'one dinner'). Which is the most 'valuable'?


...
The dinner that takes, on average, 60 minutes to make will have twice as much value as the dinner that takes, on average, 30 minutes to make. I'm assuming here that these two dinners are different - that is, each has a different selection of food items and/or preparation methods. If you're talking about two dinners of the same type, and assuming that no other dinners of that type have ever been made before, then I'd say the value of both dinners will be 45 labor-minutes. That's just the average of the actual preparation times for the two dinners.

Right, so we're now setting up 'socially necessary labour time' as a standard. That's fine, just not up until now explicit.

So, is the 60-minute dinner now more or less valuable because it includes more labour thn the determined socially necessary labour time?

And is the 30-minute dinner more or less valuable than the socially necessary labour time?

And, once you start comparing goods (such as dinners) with each other, and with the socially necessary labour time to make those goods... aren't you talking about exchange value? Isn't exchange value precisely the 'value' that labour imparts to something by virtue of that labour doing task A and not task B (eg, spending 45 minutes - more or less - making a dinner, not making a chair)?

[Kotze]

As that sounds unlike the system I'm proposing, I don't think I need bother with what you think might be wrong with it.Nobody knows what you are proposing then. You exhibit that lawyer logic that is so common with left-coms: People can't prove I'm wrong (because they don't know what the heck I'm talking about), therefore I'm right. How about actually trying to win people over for socialism?

[Blake's Baby]

Nobody knows what you are proposing then. You exhibit that lawyer logic that is so common with left-coms: People can't prove I'm wrong (because they don't know what the heck I'm talking about), therefore I'm right. How about actually trying to win people over for socialism?

You are 'everybody' then, are you? That's the sort of megalomaniac substitutionist logic that's so common with... (insert your tendency here) ... if they can't understand it they think no-one can. You do not represent the wole of the working class, Kotze. You do not speak for the whole of the working class. I'll say again; I don't have to argue against your stawmen. I've spent dozens of posts arguing against 'value' in socialism, justifying that both logically, and through reference to Marx and Engels (as we're supposed to be discussing whether Marx's LTV theory applies under socialism). It's not hard to go back through it for anyone interested in being 'won for socialism'.

So; I advocate not a labour-voucher-based systrem of reward during either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the lower phase of communism; if during these two periods there are goods that may be close to running out or if the possibility exists that some people may be able to get a share that would mean other people would suffer actual hardship from being deprived of them, I advocate rationing by need rather than rationing by labour (or by price). For instance, every person is allocated an allowance of a 400 gramme loaf and 500ml of milk per day (as an example). I'm aware that not every single person may want to take up this allowance, and there may be some unofficial trading going on, but equally some people may just not collect their rations. I'm prepared to put up with that because I'm frankly assuming any such distributional shortfalls are likely to be short term, and there's no reason the ration 'chitties' can't 'expire' (so, you get a chitty that you can exchange for a period of one week for example) and this would prevent 'hoarding' of chitties (which would run the risk of them turning into currency).

[Kotze]

For instance, every person is allocated an allowance of a 400 gramme loaf and 500ml of milk per day (as an example).If that's representative it means massive Pareto failures to a bigger extent than I thought (goes up the more rigid and categorized things are) and the other problems mentioned in post #62 similarly apply in a much stronger way.

[Blake's Baby]

Feel free to explain a better system for distributing potentially scarce resources that doesn't rely on wages or prices (because that would be capitalism, and if you think capitalism is the best system, I'd put it to you that you may be a mediocre econ student but you're a pretty poor socialist).

[Marvin the Marxian]

USRed wanted to know what was on the menu; I'm just trying to get at various confusions about LTV. So, in general terms, looking at the dinners as use-values, it doesn't matter what happens to be on the menu, that isn't relevant, for someone they both have the same use value. So we can discount the notion of use-value as being important, and examine what other 'value' might be inherent in them.

How do you know whether two different items on a dinner menu have the same use-value? Is it really true that all dinners equally useful?

I think I've been examining what else might be inherent in things. Labor is obviously inherent in products of labor. To be honest, comrade, at this point I suspect you discount the notion of inherent value under the LTV because you've decided to label everything except use-value as capitalistic.


It doesn't matter if any two dinners are burgers and chips or fillet steak or tofu and noodles or anything else you might care to think of. The dinners are 'the same' because:
1-they both have a use value of 'one dinner', and
2-because the actual form of either dinner is not relevant to the argument.

I have no idea what a use-value of "one dinner" is. That's like saying a bicycle and a jet plane both have a use-value of "transportation". And if you think use-value is irrelevant to the alleged confusions about the LTV, why do you keep bringing it up?

The actual form of either dinner is relevant to the argument, because different forms of dinner may take shorter or longer average times to prepare.


So, I 'simplified' matters (like Brian when he says 'Oh all right, their names were Simon and Adrian') - but only because I was asked to. The dinners in and of themselves are not important, the Labour Theory of value does not fall down if someone cooks a burger and someone else cooks steak. So Iwill go back to my original way of looking at the question.

'There are two dinners'... imagine them however you like. They both have the use-value of 'one dinner'.

So, one of these dinners takes 30 minutes to cook (to produce the use-value 'one dinner') and one takes 60 minutes to cook (to produce the use-value of 'one dinner'). Which is the most 'valuable'?

Again, if you think that use-value doesn't matter when it comes to confusion about the LTV, why do you keep inserting use-value into your arguments?

But anyway, my answer to your question above is that I need more information. I can surmise that, if these two dinners had the same types of food, ingredients, etc. and were the only two dinners of that kind ever made, then they'd each have a value of 45 minutes. If the two dinners were different and each was one-of-a-kind, then they'd have values of 30 and 60 minutes, respectively. Finally, if they were each of a common type of dinner, then their values would be equal to the average time it takes to prepare those common types of dinner.


Right, so we're now setting up 'socially necessary labour time' as a standard. That's fine, just not up until now explicit.

So, is the 60-minute dinner now more or less valuable because it includes more labour thn the determined socially necessary labour time?

And is the 30-minute dinner more or less valuable than the socially necessary labour time?

I'm assuming that you're going with my notion that each of the two dinners has a value of 45 minutes (the average between them). So I'd say that neither dinner is more valuable than the other in that case. But given two kinds of goods, one that takes twice as much socially necessary labor-time on average to produce as the other, the one is then twice as valuable as the other - which is saying the same thing.


And, once you start comparing goods (such as dinners) with each other, and with the socially necessary labour time to make those goods... aren't you talking about exchange value? Isn't exchange value precisely the 'value' that labour imparts to something by virtue of that labour doing task A and not task B (eg, spending 45 minutes - more or less - making a dinner, not making a chair)?

No, and I really don't see how you've argued otherwise. Besides, if you're saying that two dinners have the same use-value, namely that of "one dinner", aren't you also comparing goods?

I see nothing inherently capitalistic in simply comparing the average socially necessary labor-time needed to produce two different kinds of goods. Doing that doesn't necessitate commodity production and exchange.

[Blake's Baby]

Except I'm not the one comparing the dinners. I don't care what the dinners are, you do, and USRed does... to me they're just dinners, it doesn't matter what the dinners are, because the only comparison is that they have the same use-value. If you think a bike and a plane have the same use-value, great, why don't you cycle over here to a different continent across 6,000km of ocean, shouldn't take you more than two hours or so, and we can continue this face to face while I take ten hours to make a 'valuable' dinner?

Oh, no, you don't know what a 'dinner' is - or it 'use-value' you don't understand, I can't really tell? Tell you what, to make sure, after you've cycled 1/4 of the way round the world in 2 hours across an ocean, I'll take ten hours of labour to make a plate of poisonous gravel and you can eat that instead, it won't make any difference if you don't know what one of 'a dinner' and/or'use-value' is.

Why do I keep mentioning use-values?

Use-values are the point of production. They are the only point of production. Even in capitalism, a system so far up its own backside that it thinks 'making money from circulating notes that represent social labour stored in other things' is an end in itself, still produces use values. We all agree that social goods contain use values. I mention this because it's the only part of the theory we all agree on. And I'm working from the known - use-value - to the unknown - whatever the hell your concept of 'socialist value' entails.

Hey what? If each dinner has a socially-necessary labour time of 45 minutes, and one takes 30 minutes and one takes 60 minutes, they're both as valuable as each other? So, it's not actual labour that measures 'value', but average labour?

Isn't this just the same as socially-necessary labour time being the same as exchange value under capitalism?

As to labelling 'anything except use value as capitalistic'... well, apart from exchange value, I don't know what other sorts of 'value' y'all are talking about which is why I keep asking you to explain (which you don't). I know socialism produces use values, that after all is the point of production, but I'm not sure what other 'values' could be embedded in someething. Except, as Engels says, 'labour time' - not average labour time, but actual labour time, for which he rejects the term 'value'.

[u.s.red]

Feel free to explain a better system for distributing potentially scarce resources that doesn't rely on wages or prices (because that would be capitalism, and if you think capitalism is the best system, I'd put it to you that you may be a mediocre econ student but you're a pretty poor socialist).

What do you think about this statement?

"We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production."

[Marvin the Marxian]

Except I'm not the one comparing the dinners. I don't care what the dinners are, you do, and USRed does... to me they're just dinners, it doesn't matter what the dinners are, because the only comparison is that they have the same use-value. If you think a bike and a plane have the same use-value, great, why don't you cycle over here to a different continent across 6,000km of ocean, shouldn't take you more than two hours or so, and we can continue this face to face while I take ten hours to make a 'valuable' dinner?

Oh, no, you don't know what a 'dinner' is - or it 'use-value' you don't understand, I can't really tell? Tell you what, to make sure, after you've cycled 1/4 of the way round the world in 2 hours across an ocean, I'll take ten hours of labour to make a plate of poisonous gravel and you can eat that instead, it won't make any difference if you don't know what one of 'a dinner' and/or'use-value' is.

With all due respect, comrade, whatever point you're trying to make here is hard to discern through all the mockery. I apologize if I somehow made you feel like I was mocking you first.


Why do I keep mentioning use-values?

Use-values are the point of production. They are the only point of production. Even in capitalism, a system so far up its own backside that it thinks 'making money from circulating notes that represent social labour stored in other things' is an end in itself, still produces use values. We all agree that social goods contain use values. I mention this because it's the only part of the theory we all agree on. And I'm working from the known - use-value - to the unknown - whatever the hell your concept of 'socialist value' entails.

I've explained repeatedly what it entails. But maybe I'm not doing a good enough job of explaining it, and for that I am sorry.


Hey what? If each dinner has a socially-necessary labour time of 45 minutes, and one takes 30 minutes and one takes 60 minutes, they're both as valuable as each other? So, it's not actual labour that measures 'value', but average labour?

Isn't this just the same as socially-necessary labour time being the same as exchange value under capitalism?

Exchange-value doesn't have to be strictly equivalent to average socially necessary labor-time. Per the Law of Value, the latter only has to be the "source of gravity" for the former. But even if the two did have to be strictly equivalent, exchange-value still obviously requires exchange to occur, and exchange wouldn't occur in socialism. It doesn't make sense to me to call average socially necessary labor-time "exchange-value" where there's no exchange (like in socialism).


As to labelling 'anything except use value as capitalistic'... well, apart from exchange value, I don't know what other sorts of 'value' y'all are talking about which is why I keep asking you to explain (which you don't). I know socialism produces use values, that after all is the point of production, but I'm not sure what other 'values' could be embedded in someething. Except, as Engels says, 'labour time' - not average labour time, but actual labour time, for which he rejects the term 'value'.

Engels does talk about average (socially necessary) labor-time, in the very quote you provided:

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.
Again, I've explained repeatedly what I mean by "value". I can't help it if you don't accept my explanation, comrade, but I have at least provided one. It seems to me like the debate is boiling down to you insisting that average socially necessary labor-time be called "exchange-value" in spite of the fact that it doesn't require exchange.

[Rodrigo]

THE MARKET UNDER SOCIALISM
W.B.Bland


Is there a Market under Socialism?


It was suggested during the discussion that the term 'market' had relevance only to a capitalist society.

But the dictionary defines the term 'market' as

". . demand (for a commodity)".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 9; Oxford; 1979; p. 305).


and the term 'demand' as

"a call for a commodity on the part of consumers".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 4; Oxford; 1979; p. 430).


But in a socialist society, as in a capitalist society, people possess varying sums of money which they spend in shops on commodities which are on sale. This willingness and ability to expend money on commodities constitutes demand, constitutes a market.

Clearly, both in a capitalist society and in socialist society there is a 'market', for commodities.

Distribution under Socialism

Distribution is

"...the dispersal among consumers of commodities produced."
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 4; Oxford; 19009; p. 8S3).


The principle on which distribution is carried out under socialism is that:

"The right of producers is proportional to the labour they supply".
(K. Marx: 'Critique of the Gotha Programme', in: 'Selected Works', Volume 2; London; 1943; p. 564)


that is, incomes are proportional to -- the distribution of commodities is geared to -- the quantity and quality of work performed.

Marx admits that distribution of commodities according to work performed is not completely fair, is not distribution completely according to need. He points out:

"One man is superior to another physically or mentally, and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time...Further, one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth...


But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society".
(K. Marx: ibid.; p. 654, 565).


Nevertheless, this is the nearest that a socialist society can get to a completely fair system of distribution, the nearest that a socialist society can get to distribution according to need. And it is a much fairer system of distribution than is a capitalist society, where the purchasing power of one whole section of society -- the capitalist class -- depends primarily on the quantity of means of production owned.

According to Stalin:

"...the basic economic law of socialism...(requires) the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society".
(J. V. Stalin: 'Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR'; Moscow; 1952; p. 45).


For the word 'requirements', we may substitute the word 'needs':

"REQUIREMENT: that which is required or needed; a...need".
('Oxford English Dictionary') Volume 13; Oxford; 1989: p. 682).


Since it is not possible under socialism for even the essential needs of society to be fully satisfied, the principle of distribution according to work performed fulfils Stalin's criterion of a socialist society by achieving the maximum possible satisfaction of the needs of society.

Only after socialism has given way to communism can a completely fair principle of distribution be introduced -- the principle

"...to each according to his needs..."
(V. I. Lenin: 'The State and Revolution', in: 'Works', Volume 7; London; 1937; p. 88).


This principle of distribution is possible only when the productive forces have been developed to the point where there is an abundance of the necessaries of life and when people's attitude to work has changed from that which existed under capitalism; that is:

"when people have become so accustomed to observing the

fundamental rules of social life and when their labour is so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability..."
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 88).


Because distribution according to work performed gives a material incentive to workers to maximise production, it advances society as quickly as possible the requirement for communism of 'an abundance of the necessaries of life'.

Of course, distribution according to need under communism can never be absolute. While we may say that communism has been attained when all the necessities of life can be distributed according to need, the productive forces will continue to be developed and new needs will arise which can at first be satisfied only on a rationed basis, e.g., on the socialist principle in accordance with work performed.

Planned Production under Socialism

According to Stalin, as has been said:

"...the basic economic law of socialism...(requires)...securing the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society".
J.V. Stalin: op. cit,.; p. 45).


For the word 'requirements' we may substitute the word "needs":

REQUIREMENT: that which is required or needed; a...need".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 13; Oxford; 1989; p. 682).


It was suggested during the discussion that an essential difference between capitalism and socialism is that under capitalism production is for the market, while under socialism production is for use.

I suggest that this is a false contradiction.

Marx defines a commodity as a useful thing produced, not for the personal use of the producer and his family, as in what he calls 'natural' production, but for exchange (by barter for other commodities or by sale for money). According to Marx:

"...a commodity is...a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants...(and)...is produced directly for exchange".
(Marx: 'Capital', Volume 1; p. 43, 86).


A worker in a clothing factory -- whether under capitalism or under socialism -- does not make garments for the personal use of himself and his family, but for exchange: that is, he produces garments as commodities for the market.

Of course, there are fundamental differences between the production of garments under capitalism and under socialism. Under capitalism, the garment worker is exploited; under socialism he receives, directly in wages or indirectly in social services, the full value of his work. Under capitalism, production is -- as a whole -- anarchic; under socialism production is centrally planned by the socialist state. Under capitalism, the motive and regulator of production is the gaining of profit by capitalists from this exploitation; under socialism, the motive and regulator of production is the provision of the maximum possible satisfaction of the needs of society.

But people expend the money in their possession, within the limits of their purchasing power, on commodities which they believe will yield them maximum satisfaction, will yield maximum satisfaction of their needs.

Thus, production for the market is not, in itself, in contradiction with production for the maximum satisfaction of the needs of society. Indeed, the closer the production of consumer goods is geared to demand, to the market, the closer does it come to yielding maximum satisfaction of the needs of society.

Under competitive capitalism, production is geared to the market automatically, through the profit motive.

When there is a shortage of a certain commodity on the market, the price of this commodity rise, so that the rate of profit on the production of this commodity rises above the average. Spurred by the motive to obtain the highest possible rate of profit, capitalists rush in to increase the production of this commodity. In consequence, production of this commodity rises until prices fall to the point where only the average rate of profit is yielded.

When there is a glut of a certain commodity on the market, the opposite occurs, and production falls to the point where an average rate of profit is yielded.

There are vital differences in a socialist society.

In the first place, means of production do not come on to the market at all.

In the second place, the profit motive has been abolished along with the capitalist class.

In the third place, the price of a commodity is fixed by the state -- in general according to its value, that is, according to the average amount of labour involved in its production.

It is, therefore, impossible for the production of consumer goods to be geared automatically to the market. It must be geared to the market by conscious decisions of the central planning authority.

Fashion

Let us take the matter of women's clothes. -- a subject on which I have... [Ms incomplete]

Under the capitalist system, we know that this is a field in which a great part is played by fashion, defined as:

"...a prevailing custom...spec. with regard to apparel or personal adornment".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 5; Oxford; 1939; p. 682).


It is clearly advantageous to the capitalists involved in the clothing industry that fashion should exert a strong influence on the ideas of people in society, and that fashions should change periodically. In this way, women consumers can be persuaded to purchase new clothes long before the old ones have worn out on the grounds that to wear last year's fashion is a reflection on the wearer's social standing, which is measured by her purchasing power.

It was the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen who pointed out the relation between clothes and social class. He noted that in feudal days, when the common people worked on the land, upper class women in Europe used to cultivate ultra-white skins to make their class position clear. Then, after the industrial revolution drove working class women into factories for ten hours a day, upper class women went in for deeply sun-tanned skins to demonstrate their different class position. And nothing could demonstrate more clearly than the crinoline that the wearer didn't work in a factory.

Under capitalism, a new fashion tends to be introduced at one of the periodical haute couture (high fashion) shows. The original designs are hand-made for a princess or pop-star, and cost several thousand pounds, so that they demonstrate that the wearer belongs to the upper class.

Many of these new designs are then bought at a high fee for mass production. But by the time they have trickled down to Marks and Spencers, a new fashion has been introduced by the haute couturists, and the process begins again.

In a socialist society, of course, the position is quite different.

Nevertheless, clothes designers will still be necessary. Suppose the planning authorities say: "Fashion is a bourgeois deviation", and instruct them to design only jeans as 'the symbol of a classless society'.

There is no great problem about producing enough jeans to meet the requirements of the whole population. But what of the women who don't want to wear jeans? Do they have to go on wearing the same old skirt for all time? Do you make it a criminal offence to wear a skirt? Are skirts really counter-revolutionary? Can such a policy be reconciled with the basic law of socialism -- 'the maximum satisfaction of the requirements of society'?

Of course, it is perfectly legitimate in a socialist society for education to be given on the public media, in schools, etc. on the aesthetic and health aspects of clothing. But the test of the success of such education is still, ultimately, the market.

There can be only one correct position on the planning of production in any field of consumer goods: To undertake "market research", defined as

"...the systematic investigation of the demand for particular...goods".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 9; Oxford; 1989; p. 380).


Such systematic investigation in the field of women's clothing will tell the planners what proportion of women want to wear jeans all the time, occasionally and never. Designers can show new designs in fashion parades held in stores, factories and community centres throughout the country. Those attending can be asked to vote on new designs: 'Would you be interested in purchasing Design 4 if it were put into production and available at a reasonable price?'. The results of such investigations will be incorporated in the production plan for women's clothes.

Finally, what happens if the planners fail, as a result of neglecting market research, so that production of consumer goods is not geared to the market? Some types of clothes goods remain unsold and pile up in warehouses -- not because people do not have sufficient purchasing power to buy them, for in a socialist society this is geared to the total value of consumer goods produced), but because they do not want them.

Further, there will be a shortage in the shops of other types of clothing that people do want to buy, causing time-wasting queues and public dissatisfaction to build up. Crooks and spivs will begin to operate a black market in skirts and costumes in little back-street workshops, and soon distribution in this field falls into the hands of a local mafia.

Lenin said that socialist democracy

"...is a million times more democratic than the most democratic republic".
(V. I. Lenin: 'The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky', in: 'Selected Works', Volume 7; London; 1946; p. 135).


We must see that this is made reality by ensuring that the production of consumer goods is geared to the market, to what what people actually want, and not to what some bureaucrat thinks they ought to want. This requires production to be based on scientific and democratic market research.

[Blake's Baby]

What do you think about this statement?

"We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production."

I think it's a statement that perfectly applies to capitalism, but not socialism. In socialism, the 'value' something will have is its utility, not how long it took to make. That will be measured by ' labourtime', as Engels says, because 'value' is only applicable to exchange value (and therefore capitalism) as Marx says.



With all due respect, comrade, whatever point you're trying to make here is hard to discern through all the mockery. I apologize if I somehow made you feel like I was mocking you first.


My point is here that it seems, contrary to what I had assumed up to this point - that we all inderstood use value and were disagreeing about what other sorts of value there might be - we might not all understand what use-value was either.

I appologise for being unecessarily sarcastic in my previous post. I think the point still stands, but it could have been expressed in a more comradely fashion.

A dinner is a thing that can be consumed and provides sustinence and pleasure. Its use value of 'one dinner' can be broken down into categories of 'this much calorific value, this much vitiman and mineral intake, this much enjoyment - visual, olafactory, textural, 'tastiness' etc'. But it still has the use value of one dinner, a meal that nourishes and pleases. Given that, and that different people require different things and enjoy different things, the exact form (burger, tofu & noodles, tofuburger, sausages, pie, steak, lobster, toasted cheese) isn't important. The important thing is that there is a use-value of 'pleasant nourishment' - ie, 'a dinner'.

One 'pleasant nourishing dinner' can be replaced by another 'pleasant nourishing dinner' and there is no change of use-value, merely a substitution of one thing for another with the same use value - it doesn't matter if one day you have pizza and salad, another day meat pie and vegetables. No fundamental shift has occurred, one day's 'pleasant sustenance' (which is what the use value of 'one dinner' entails) is replaced with another aquisition of pleasant sustenance. So, in my example, it doesn't matter 'what's on the menu'; this has nothing to do with 'all meals in socialism being the same', that isn't what I'm arguing or arguing about - just that the specifics of who eats what in particular are not important to the question, as long as the principle of the 'use value of one dinner (ie pleasant sustenance for someone)' is kept in mind.

So, this is obviously different to a plate of poisonous gravel, which is neither pleasant nor nourishing to eat. It doesn't have the same use-value as 'a dinner'.

Bikes and planes also don't have the same use value, or you could (like 'pizza & salad' v 'pie & veg') substitute one for the other and it would still work. Hence my call for you, if you really believed that they had the same use value (you could substitiute one for the other and everything would still work), to cycle across the Atlantic in a couple of hours to continue this debate in person.

You can see that a bike and a plane are not the same, don't have the same use value, whereas 'pizza & salad' has the same use value as 'pie and veg' (sure, to someone who likes pie, pizza, vegetables and salad, but these are only examples, and are not important, because no matter what the exact menu, 'one dinner' means 'pleasant nourishment')?



I've explained repeatedly what it entails. But maybe I'm not doing a good enough job of explaining it, and for that I am sorry...

Well, it seems mutual incomprehension abounds, we're obviously both having problems explaining what we mean; but thank you for at least making the attempt.




Exchange-value doesn't have to be strictly equivalent to average socially necessary labor-time. Per the Law of Value, the latter only has to be the "source of gravity" for the former...


Right; this seems to be a real disagreement, because I don't think this is correct. In my understanding, exchange value is socially-necessary labour time. It's price that fluctuates around the value of socially-necessary labour time, not exchange value. Exchange-value is the average, around which actual market prices (what any given capitalist is able to make on any given day for any given good) fluctuate.




... But even if the two did have to be strictly equivalent, exchange-value still obviously requires exchange to occur, and exchange wouldn't occur in socialism. It doesn't make sense to me to call average socially necessary labor-time "exchange-value" where there's no exchange (like in socialism)...

Which is why I think you need to get rid of 'exchange value' as a concept. I know you agree in one way; but I can't see what the non-use, non-exchange 'value' that you think is there, and Engels doesn't, and Marx thinks is exchange-value, actually is. Labour time, yes; I understand that. Why express the time it takes to make something as 'value'? Why express the average time it takes to make something as 'value'? Why not express it, as Engels says, as 'labour time'?




Engels does talk about average (socially necessary) labor-time, in the very quote you provided:
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.
Again, I've explained repeatedly what I mean by "value". I can't help it if you don't accept my explanation, comrade, but I have at least provided one. It seems to me like the debate is boiling down to you insisting that average socially necessary labor-time be called "exchange-value" in spite of the fact that it doesn't require exchange.

But it's not that I don't accept it; I don't understand what your explanation is if it isn't 'exchange value'. Engels says that there is no 'value', it's just labour time, and I agree with that. 'Value' only makes sense as a relationship ('valuable/not valuable' or '3 units of value/55 units of value').

It seems to me that you're hanging on to the exchange value of things while insisting there's no exchange. It's a bit like, in socialism, you believe that everything will be priced up but no-one pays the price. 'Here's your 45p tin of beans Comrade Scoggins, that'll be nothing in exchange thanks'.





So, getting back to dinner; whatever one fancies is on the menu, because the point is 'pleasant nourishment' (not poisonous gravel, which unpleasant harm-on-a-plate, or poison pizza, which is pleasant harm-on-a-plate, or vitamin-enriched gravel, which is unpleasant nourishment) not the specifics. It is a use value; someone wants to use it, by eating it and thereby gaining nourishment and pleasure.

In this situation, where 45 minutes of average social-necessary labour is what is required to make dinner, and the dinner has a use-value of 'one dinner' (one consumable use of 'pleasant nourishment'), is a 30 minute dinner more or less valuable than a 60 minute dinner?

[u.s.red]

In socialism, the 'value' something will have is its utility, not how long it took to make. That will be measured by ' labourtime', as Engels says, because 'value' is only applicable to exchange value (and therefore capitalism) as Marx says.

Value is utility, not how long it takes to make something. That [value?] will be measured by labor time. Value is not how long it takes to make something, but, nevertheless, will be measured by labor time. ???



In this situation, where 45 minutes of average social-necessary labour is what is required to make dinner, and the dinner has a use-value of 'one dinner' (one consumable use of 'pleasant nourishment'), is a 30 minute dinner more or less valuable than a 60 minute dinner?

OK. One dinner = one dinner. a 30 minute dinner = a 60 minute dinner. Take transportation. One transportation = one transportation. A 30 minute transportation (a bike) is the same value as a 30 hour transportation (airplane.)??

[Blake's Baby]

Value is utility, not how long it takes to make something. That [value?] will be measured by labor time. Value is not how long it takes to make something, but, nevertheless, will be measured by labor time. ???

No, I'm not being clear again it seems.

Use-value (utility) will still be use-value in socialism. No matter what the system, people need dinner. The use-value of things like 'dinner' doesn't change.

What others think is 'value' in socialism, ie the amount of labour-time that has gone into production, will be measured not as 'value' (exchange-value in capitalism) but directly as labour-time, as Engels says. There is no need for 'value' in socialism. If something takes 100 hours to make it takes 100 hours to make. It doesn't have a 'value' of 100 labour-hours, because that 'value' only makes sense as exchange-value. There's no socialist non-exchange store where products are marked up with a 'value' that nobody 'pays', like a price sticker you just ignore.




OK. One dinner = one dinner. a 30 minute dinner = a 60 minute dinner. Take transportation. One transportation = one transportation. A 30 minute transportation (a bike) is the same value as a 30 hour transportation (airplane.)??

A use-value of 'one dinner' is a use-value of 'one dinner', yes. So my contention is that the 'value' of 'one dinner' is the same as the 'value' of 'one dinner', because I'm only looking at use-value. I don't know what other sort of value I'm supposed to look at, if it isn't exchange-value. So my question remains, to all those who think there's 'value' that isn't use-value in socialism: is a 30-minute dinner more or less valuable than a 60-minute dinner?

On transportation... I don't know whether you're suggesting that a 30-minute transportation by bike is the same as a 30-hour transportation by plane, or whether you think I'm suggesting it.

If you are suggesting it, as I said before, feel free to spend 2 hours or so cycling across the Atlantic and come and discuss this face to face, bring 200 friends on your bike as well. If you think that bikes and planes are the same thing (have the same use-value) then it shouldn't be difficult. Or if you want to travel for 30 hours, and you're somewhere in the continental US, I reckon the only way to do that would be to go to some island in the Indian Ocean. By bike.

If you think that I'm suggesting it... I'm really not. That was me in another post that the use-vale of a bike and the use-value of a plane are not the same. You can subsitute one dinner (eg pizza and salad) for another dinner (eg pie and veg) and still have the same use value, 'one dinner'. You can substitute 'one Jumbo' with 'one Airbus' and you have the same use-value ('one large passenger jet'). You can't substitute 'one bike' for 'one plane' and still have 'one plane' or 'one transportation' or whatever. 'Transportation' is not a use-value.

[Luís Henrique]

Re-reading Marx, I now realize that he considers a commodity to be the same thing as a product of labor. In other words, exchange has nothing to do with commodities as such.

Not so. How do you reach such strange conclusion?

Marx certainly knew that some products of labour aren't produced for exchange, and, as such, are not commodities.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Use-value (utility) will still be use-value in socialism. No matter what the system, people need dinner. The use-value of things like 'dinner' doesn't change.

The use-value of things do change. If you have no cars, you have no use-value for gas.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Value is utility, not how long it takes to make something.

Use-value is utility; value is not. Value is not use-value.


That [value?] will be measured by labor time. Value is not how long it takes to make something, but, nevertheless, will be measured by labor time. ???

Value is how long it takes to make something.


OK. One dinner = one dinner. a 30 minute dinner = a 60 minute dinner. Take transportation. One transportation = one transportation. A 30 minute transportation (a bike) is the same value as a 30 hour transportation (airplane.)??

A 30 minute transportation by byke has no value, since it is not the product of labour (riding a byke is consumption, not production). A 30 hour transportation by plane does have a value, which is the amount of labour required to produce such transportation (the labour of airborne and land crews, plus the depreciation of the means of production used to produce the flight - plane, airports, etc. - plus the value of commodities consumed during flight - kerosene, on board meals, etc.)

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

Not so. How do you reach such strange conclusion?

Marx certainly knew that some products of labour aren't produced for exchange, and, as such, are not commodities.

Luís Henrique

There is a quote from Marx where he says that 'commodities' are products of labour. He then goes on to say that it's only when these commodities are exchanged that their commodity form is revealed. So the formulation is ambiguous. But we've got over this, we're all agreed 'commodites' are really 'commodities' when they exchange.


The use-value of things do change. If you have no cars, you have no use-value for gas.

Luís Henrique

I'm not being clear again. I deliberately chose a use-value that was a biological necessity, so wasn't context-dependant and was also consumed. In the mesolithic, people ate 'dinner' (had pleasant sustenance) - fish and hazel nuts, let's say - and in feudalism, people had 'dinner' - boiled oats, turnip and rabbit for example - and in capitalism people have 'dinner' - perhaps pizza and salad. In socialism people will still have 'dinner', because people need sustinance and prefer that to be pleasant. Thus 'one dinner' is use-value that doesn't change according to context. 'One dinner' refers to the use-value of 'pleasant sustenance for one person', whether that person is a mesolithic tribeswoman, a medieval villein, a capitalist wage-slave or a socialist NuHuman. So the use-value doesn't change according to context.

Conversely the use-values of petrol and cars change immensely. Use-value of cars in the mesolithic? None. No petrol to run them, no metal-working. Use value of cars in the middle ages? A source of metal. Still no petrol to run them. Use value of cars in capitalism? Depends on availability of petrol, but at least you know that petrol is being produced under capitalism. Petrol, of course, can be used as a fuel for other things even if you don't have cars, but it's not in the same class of utility as 'dinner'.



Use-value is utility; value is not. Value is not use-value...

Agreed. But USRed was I think trying to get me to explain unclear formulations on my part, not claiming that value was the same as use-value.


...Value is how long it takes to make something...

Again I don't think you're criticising USRed's position, because I don't think what is there that you've commented on is USRed's position so much as an attempt to get me to explain my position.

I agree that 'value' is how long it takes to make something, under capitalism, and this 'value' is exchange value. I think that as there is no exchange in socialism, and all value that is not use-value is exchange value, there is no value in socialism that is not also use-value.


...A 30 minute transportation by byke has no value, since it is not the product of labour (riding a byke is consumption, not production)...

I completely disagree. You use the bike as a machine to extend your labour-power (of pedalling). If you are delivering a package, for instance, one person pedalling across a city is using labour power to move the package. This is 'work' is it not?

If you are cycling for fun or for excercise, then that's a different matter. That isn't 'transportation' however, you aren't using the cycling to transport anything, it doesn't in this case have the use value of 'transportation'. Even though you are transporting yourself that's incidental, you could get the same excercise on an excercise bike and not move anywhere; and recreational cycling is 'recreation' rather than 'transport' I'd argue...


...
A 30 hour transportation by plane does have a value, which is the amount of labour required to produce such transportation (the labour of airborne and land crews, plus the depreciation of the means of production used to produce the flight - plane, airports, etc. - plus the value of commodities consumed during flight - kerosene, on board meals, etc.)

Luís Henrique

Yes, under capitalism it has all those things. But, of course the point of all this is to determine what 'value' those things have in socialism.

[u.s.red]

Yes, under capitalism it has all those things. But, of course the point of all this is to determine what 'value' those things have in socialism. quote by blakes baby


I think you may need to define exactly what you mean by "value." I think it might be helpful to use the terms "utility," and "price," for use-value and exchange-value, respectively.

You have a "dinner" and a "coat" in socialism. How do you determine the value, not use-value, utility, exchange-value, price, but the "value" of those things.

As I understand what you are saying, in socialism, there will no longer be any exchange-value. That only leaves use-value, or utility. This sounds a lot like "marginal utility," which is where the bourgeois economists are now.

[Luís Henrique]

I completely disagree. You use the bike as a machine to extend your labour-power (of pedalling). If you are delivering a package, for instance, one person pedalling across a city is using labour power to move the package. This is 'work' is it not?

Yes, a service of byke-delivery is work, certainly. The possibility didn't occur to me.


If you are cycling for fun or for excercise, then that's a different matter. That isn't 'transportation' however, you aren't using the cycling to transport anything, it doesn't in this case have the use value of 'transportation'. Even though you are transporting yourself that's incidental, you could get the same excercise on an excercise bike and not move anywhere; and recreational cycling is 'recreation' rather than 'transport' I'd argue...

I was thinking of a person transporting him or herself (to the workplace, or back home, for instance). This would not be labour, even though it is not for fun or exercise.


Yes, under capitalism it has all those things. But, of course the point of all this is to determine what 'value' those things have in socialism.

Well, I think in communism there is no value (as in exchange-value), only use-value. Socialism would be a transition, from a value-based economy into a valueless society. So it would need start with exchange-value, and proceed by eradicating value where possible.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I think you may need to define exactly what you mean by "value." I think it might be helpful to use the terms "utility," and "price," for use-value and exchange-value, respectively.

No.

Price is not exchange-value. Prices fluctuate around value, but the fact that two commodities have the same price at a given moment doesn't mean they necessarily have the save exchange-value (one of them could be overpriced, for instance).

Utility is also not the same as use-value. It is a concept used in marginalist economy to explain exchange-value while rejecting labour theory of value.


You have a "dinner" and a "coat" in socialism. How do you determine the value, not use-value, utility, exchange-value, price, but the "value" of those things.

There is no value aside either use-value and exchange-value (when we say "value" without any other indication, we mean exchange-value). If you are thinking some kind of "market socialism", then value, ie, exchange-value, is determined in the same way as in a capitalist society: it is the amount of labour embodied in the dinner and in the coat respectively. Their prices will still oscillate around their value, as in capitalism.


As I understand what you are saying, in socialism, there will no longer be any exchange-value. That only leaves use-value, or utility. This sounds a lot like "marginal utility," which is where the bourgeois economists are now.

No. Utility theory of value is the idea that exchange-value is a function of marginal utility of commodities, not the inexistence of exchange-value. In a communist economy, exchange-value doesn't exist, because there is no exchange at all. And so both labour theory of value and utility theory of value would be useless, or only useful historically, in explaining how pre-communist societies were organised.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

I think you may need to define exactly what you mean by "value." I think it might be helpful to use the terms "utility," and "price," for use-value and exchange-value, respectively...

It's you and Marvin the Marxian who need to define it, I've already said about 12 times I don't think it exists. Why should I define something that you believe in but I don't?


You have a "dinner" and a "coat" in socialism. How do you determine the value, not use-value, utility, exchange-value, price, but the "value" of those things...

I don't determine their 'value' because as I've already said about 12 times, I don't think that 'value' exists. Why should I propose a method of tring to determine the parameters of something I don't believe in, but you do? Why don't you tell me how their 'value' is determined, since you believe they have a 'value', but I don't? I only believe in use-value in socialism. You and Marvin the Marxian believe in some other sort of 'value' derived from labour, that isn't exchange-value. So what is it?


As I understand what you are saying, in socialism, there will no longer be any exchange-value. That only leaves use-value, or utility. This sounds a lot like "marginal utility," which is where the bourgeois economists are now.

I'm saying in socialism production is for use. Therefore what will be produced is use-value without exchange-value. I know of no bourgeois economists who are thinking about socialism. If they are, good for them, they may be of some use in the future.




Yes, a service of byke-delivery is work, certainly. The possibility didn't occur to me.

I was thinking of a person transporting him or herself (to the workplace, or back home, for instance). This would not be labour, even though it is not for fun or exercise...

It is labour. You're using your own labour power to take yourself to work. You could pay someone else to pedal you to work (like a rickshaw) and then you'd be using their labour-power; or you could pedal yourself and use your own labour-power. It's still labour.



...
Well, I think in communism there is no value (as in exchange-value), only use-value...

Excellent, we're in agreement on that.


... Socialism would be a transition, from a value-based economy into a valueless society. So it would need start with exchange-value, and proceed by eradicating value where possible.

Luís Henrique

No, because if that's what you think 'socialism' is then the 'socialism' I'm referring to is what you refer to as 'communism' just above. I'm not a Leninist, I'm a Marxist, so I don't seperate 'socialism' and 'communism' into two seperate things. If you do, so be it, but be aware when I say 'socialism' I mean what you mean when you say 'communism'.



No.

Price is not exchange-value. Prices fluctuate around value, but the fact that two commodities have the same price at a given moment doesn't mean they necessarily have the save exchange-value (one of them could be overpriced, for instance).

Utility is also not the same as use-value. It is a concept used in marginalist economy to explain exchange-value while rejecting labour theory of value...

I agree that price is not the same as exchange-value. This I think is one of the problems that came up on the previous page. Confusion about whether price, average socially-necessary labour time and exchange value are equal with each other or tend to fluctuate around each other and so on.


There is no value aside either use-value and exchange-value (when we say "value" without any other indication, we mean exchange-value)...

I agree, and so incidently (not really incidently as we're discussing Marx's theory) do Marx and Engels.


... If you are thinking some kind of "market socialism", then value, ie, exchange-value, is determined in the same way as in a capitalist society: it is the amount of labour embodied in the dinner and in the coat respectively. Their prices will still oscillate around their value, as in capitalism...

Which to me means it's capitalism.



...
No. Utility theory of value is the idea that exchange-value is a function of marginal utility of commodities, not the inexistence of exchange-value. In a communist economy, exchange-value doesn't exist, because there is no exchange at all. And so both labour theory of value and utility theory of value would be useless, or only useful historically, in explaining how pre-communist societies were organised.

Luís Henrique

Absolutely agree with you there comrade.

[Marvin the Marxian]

My point is here that it seems, contrary to what I had assumed up to this point - that we all inderstood use value and were disagreeing about what other sorts of value there might be - we might not all understand what use-value was either.

I appologise for being unecessarily sarcastic in my previous post. I think the point still stands, but it could have been expressed in a more comradely fashion.

Apology accepted, comrade. :)


A dinner is a thing that can be consumed and provides sustinence and pleasure. Its use value of 'one dinner' can be broken down into categories of 'this much calorific value, this much vitiman and mineral intake, this much enjoyment - visual, olafactory, textural, 'tastiness' etc'. But it still has the use value of one dinner, a meal that nourishes and pleases. Given that, and that different people require different things and enjoy different things, the exact form (burger, tofu & noodles, tofuburger, sausages, pie, steak, lobster, toasted cheese) isn't important. The important thing is that there is a use-value of 'pleasant nourishment' - ie, 'a dinner'.

One 'pleasant nourishing dinner' can be replaced by another 'pleasant nourishing dinner' and there is no change of use-value, merely a substitution of one thing for another with the same use value - it doesn't matter if one day you have pizza and salad, another day meat pie and vegetables. No fundamental shift has occurred, one day's 'pleasant sustenance' (which is what the use value of 'one dinner' entails) is replaced with another aquisition of pleasant sustenance. So, in my example, it doesn't matter 'what's on the menu'; this has nothing to do with 'all meals in socialism being the same', that isn't what I'm arguing or arguing about - just that the specifics of who eats what in particular are not important to the question, as long as the principle of the 'use value of one dinner (ie pleasant sustenance for someone)' is kept in mind.

So, this is obviously different to a plate of poisonous gravel, which is neither pleasant nor nourishing to eat. It doesn't have the same use-value as 'a dinner'.

My point was that not all foods are equally pleasant or nourishing. I see no reason to gloss over these differences. Saying that all dinners have the same use-value is saying that all dinners are equally pleasant and nourishing. But they aren't. Poisonous gravel may not be pleasant or nourishing at all, but that's rather beside the point.


Bikes and planes also don't have the same use value, or you could (like 'pizza & salad' v 'pie & veg') substitute one for the other and it would still work. Hence my call for you, if you really believed that they had the same use value (you could substitiute one for the other and everything would still work), to cycle across the Atlantic in a couple of hours to continue this debate in person.

You can see that a bike and a plane are not the same, don't have the same use value, whereas 'pizza & salad' has the same use value as 'pie and veg' (sure, to someone who likes pie, pizza, vegetables and salad, but these are only examples, and are not important, because no matter what the exact menu, 'one dinner' means 'pleasant nourishment')?

A bicycle and a plane both provide a form of transportation, just like a pizza and a salad both provide a form of pleasant nourishment. That doesn't mean they both provide the same form.


Well, it seems mutual incomprehension abounds, we're obviously both having problems explaining what we mean; but thank you for at least making the attempt.

You're welcome, comrade, and I will keep attempting if that's okay with you.


Right; this seems to be a real disagreement, because I don't think this is correct. In my understanding, exchange value is socially-necessary labour time. It's price that fluctuates around the value of socially-necessary labour time, not exchange value. Exchange-value is the average, around which actual market prices (what any given capitalist is able to make on any given day for any given good) fluctuate.

Instead of staying hung up over terminology, let me ask you this: do you think that such a thing as average amount of socially necessary labor-time would or would not exist under socialism? Why or why not?


Which is why I think you need to get rid of 'exchange value' as a concept. I know you agree in one way; but I can't see what the non-use, non-exchange 'value' that you think is there, and Engels doesn't, and Marx thinks is exchange-value, actually is. Labour time, yes; I understand that. Why express the time it takes to make something as 'value'? Why express the average time it takes to make something as 'value'? Why not express it, as Engels says, as 'labour time'?

With all due respect, did you not read the quote from Engels where he refers to average labor-time? Are you ignoring that or something?

[quote=Blake's Baby]But it's not that I don't accept it; I don't understand what your explanation is if it isn't 'exchange value'. Engels says that there is no 'value', it's just labour time, and I agree with that. 'Value' only makes sense as a relationship ('valuable/not valuable' or '3 units of value/55 units of value').

It seems to me that you're hanging on to the exchange value of things while insisting there's no exchange. It's a bit like, in socialism, you believe that everything will be priced up but no-one pays the price. 'Here's your 45p tin of beans Comrade Scoggins, that'll be nothing in exchange thanks'.

I think we agree that commodity exchange implies that commodities that aren't destroyed upon being exchanged. Labor-tokens effectively would be destroyed upon being redeemed for products. The person who receives Comrade Scoggins' labor-tokens would not be then able to redeem them for other things. Thinking about labor-tokens in terms of exchange is inaccurate. Labor-tokens represent an entitlement to a certain amount of the social store of goods. When one redeems labor-tokens for goods, she's simply fulfilling that entitlement. But how can one know the amount of any given good that she's entitled to? I think Marx gives us an answer: the average amount of socially necessary labor-time that's required to produce one unit of that good.


So, getting back to dinner; whatever one fancies is on the menu, because the point is 'pleasant nourishment' (not poisonous gravel, which unpleasant harm-on-a-plate, or poison pizza, which is pleasant harm-on-a-plate, or vitamin-enriched gravel, which is unpleasant nourishment) not the specifics. It is a use value; someone wants to use it, by eating it and thereby gaining nourishment and pleasure.

In this situation, where 45 minutes of average social-necessary labour is what is required to make dinner, and the dinner has a use-value of 'one dinner' (one consumable use of 'pleasant nourishment'), is a 30 minute dinner more or less valuable than a 60 minute dinner?

I've already answered that question, comrade. Assuming the dinners are of the same type, then neither will be less valuable than the other. My answer is qualified like that because I honestly think "dinner" is too broad of a product category for socialism, just like it is for capitalism. Different types of dinner have different prices under capitalism, and different types of dinner would have different values (average amounts of socially necessary labor-time) under socialism.

[Blake's Baby]

...
My point was that not all foods are equally pleasant or nourishing. I see no reason to gloss over these differences. Saying that all dinners have the same use-value is saying that all dinners are equally pleasant and nourishing. But they aren't. Poisonous gravel may not be pleasant or nourishing at all, but that's rather beside the point...

My point, that the specifics of the dinner don't matter, is precisely to get away from the notion of what is pleasant and nourishing to one person may not be pleasant (though probably still nourishing) to another. This is why I was very reluctant to say what is 'on the menu'. It really doesn't matter. This doesn't mean 'all meals are the same under socialism'. Nor does it mean 'every food is pleasant to everybody'.

What it's intended to get at is, a dinner that is pleasant to me has the same value to society - the same socialist use-value - as a dinner that is pleasant to you. It provides one member of society with pleasant nourishment. The poisonous gravel is not, I'm afraid, beside the point, because unlike my 'pleasant nourishment', and your 'pleasant nourishment', poisonous gravel is both unpleasant, and harmful (so both the opposite of 'pleasant', and the opposite of 'nourishment').




A bicycle and a plane both provide a form of transportation, just like a pizza and a salad both provide a form of pleasant nourishment. That doesn't mean they both provide the same form...

So do you think they're the same thing? If so, you really are welcome to cycle across the Atlantic, bringing 200 other people on your bike, in the next 2 hours, and we can discuss it face to face. Alternately, I can challenge you to take you plane down to the 24-hour garage and bring back a Curly-Wurly (insert culturally-specific confectionary treat) and be back in less than 10 minutes. If you can't do at least one of those things, your use-value category of 'a (form of) transportation which includes both a bike and a plane' can be seen not to be real.

Unlike the use-value category of 'a dinner' which means 'pleasant nourishment for one person', and can include whatever is nourishing that you think is pleasant, and whatever is nourishing that I think is pleasant, and whatever is nourishing that USRed thinks is pleasant, and whatever is nourishing that Luis Henrique thinks is pleasant; it can include all of those because in social terms, they each have the use of feeding one person pleasantly. Ergo, they have the same use value to society, though not necessarily to the individual.

After all, a 'use-value' is not an eternal thing even to one person, so one doesn't even have to posit 'different people like different things'. I like pizza and salad, but if I've just eaten my pizza and salad dinner (I've had 'pleasant nourishment for one person' and consumed that use-value) giving me another dinner of pizza and salad straight afterwards doesn't mean I can consume that use-value too. I couldn't derive the same benefit from exactly the same dinner - though I might tomorrow. If I get pizza and salad every day however it won't take long before I complain. So even identical use-values can be tricky. But this is why I've been trying to get away rfom specifics of menus, likes and dislikes, and on to the notion of use-value being equal even if specifics aren't.


...
Instead of staying hung up over terminology, let me ask you this: do you think that such a thing as average amount of socially necessary labor-time would or would not exist under socialism? Why or why not?...

Yes, it would exist as a physical property, because for any given range of anything there must be an average. Just like if you measured the heights of all the 40-year-olds in the world, you could determine an average height, because such a property is inherent in the statistics. Equally, you could calculate the average age of all the rocks in Yellowstone Park, the average density of all the shoes in the Phillipines, or the average IQ of all the penguins in Edinburgh Zoo. I don't think doing that would help much, but the averages could be derived from existing properties of things. So to that extent, yes, it exists. Is it relevant? Not really.


Which is why I think you need to get rid of 'exchange value' as a concept. I know you agree in one way; but I can't see what the non-use, non-exchange 'value' that you think is there, and Engels doesn't, and Marx thinks is exchange-value, actually is. Labour time, yes; I understand that. Why express the time it takes to make something as 'value'? Why express the average time it takes to make something as 'value'? Why not express it, as Engels says, as 'labour time'?


With all due respect, did you not read the quote from Engels where he refers to average labor-time? Are you ignoring that or something?

The bit from Anti-Duhrung that I quoted first, where Engels explains that in socialism, there is no 'value', just labour time (which is precisely my argument) you mean? Or another bit? Because if it's something else, I'm not aware of it I'm afraid, I'm not deliberately ignoring it, I must have just missed it. Could you quote it again, perhaps bolding the bits you're referring to in particular?

The reason I still don't know whether you think it's actual labour that's important, or average labour that's important, is because I'd thought we were discussing the notion that it was actual labour, then you raised the notion of average labour, but I haven't yet got a clear understanding of where you stand on the issue.


...
I think we agree that commodity exchange implies that commodities that aren't destroyed upon being exchanged...

No, sorry, I never agreed to that, I think some commodities can be destroyed. Food, for example, is destroyed in consumption.



... Labor-tokens effectively would be destroyed upon being redeemed for products. The person who receives Comrade Scoggins' labor-tokens would not be then able to redeem them for other things. Thinking about labor-tokens in terms of exchange is inaccurate. Labor-tokens represent an entitlement to a certain amount of the social store of goods. When one redeems labor-tokens for goods, she's simply fulfilling that entitlement. But how can one know the amount of any given good that she's entitled to? I think Marx gives us an answer: the average amount of socially necessary labor-time that's required to produce one unit of that good...

Right, you're back to talking about socially-necessary labour time, which again implies to me the average. So value to you is the average. Got it.

'Entitlement'. Hmmm. I fail to see what goods you're thinking will be distributed on the basis of entitlement-through-labour as opposed to entitlement-through-humanity, or under what circumstances, but maybe it's just because we're not being specific.

Labour time vouchers are a form of 'rationing by work'; those who work have a higher entitlement (more, or first pick, or stuff above and beyond; some kind of preferential or priviliged access to goods and services). Capitalism is a form of 'rationing by price'; those who have money have those privileged entitlements. I'm proposing 'rationing by need'; humans by virtue of being human will have necessities assigned to them.

I'm only proposing this under certain circumstances. If we're on the 'food provision committee' of a community and we know that we only have 400 loaves of bread to distribute, and we need to distribute those loaves to 400 people (of whom only 200 are actually working) I don't think the 200 workers should get two each and the non-workers get nothing. I think everyone should get one. Kotze, I'm sure, will explode at this point and say how inefficient that it, but I don't really care.

Now, when the distribution network is successfully sorted and the supply chain comes back on line (currently it's difficult to get supplies to our commune, due to disruption to the transport infrastructiure caused by the recently-ended civil war) we'll get enough bread that we can just let people help themselves. But until that state of abundance arrives, for potentially scarce necessities I'd advocate equal distribution rather than labour vouchers or any other form of privileged entitlement.



...
I've already answered that question, comrade. Assuming the dinners are of the same type, then neither will be less valuable than the other. My answer is qualified like that because I honestly think "dinner" is too broad of a product category for socialism, just like it is for capitalism. Different types of dinner have different prices under capitalism, and different types of dinner would have different values (average amounts of socially necessary labor-time) under socialism.

And this is precisely why I'm not concerned about the nature of the dinner, merely its use-value as 'one dinner'. One dinner is one dinner is one dinner, whether I'm eating, or you're eating, or USRed is eating, or Luis Henrique is eating. It's not the same dinner, we all got what we wanted, but it seems to me that society really isn't that bothered about whether we had pizza and salad, or pie and vegetables, or curry and rice, or spaghetti bolognese, as long as we all had pleasant nourishment. When I originally propsed trying to think about this however, I was asked 'why all dinners are the same under socialism'. They aren't. But if they provide 'pleasant nourishment for one person', their use-value to society is the same as another dinner that provides 'pleasant nourishment for one person'. That's all I was getting at.

However, your answer does make clear that you think it's socially-necessary (average) labour time that is the determining factor in this 'value' that you place on them, not actual labour. So my plan to make a 10-year 'super-value' dinner won't work. If my 10 years' work is only worth 45 minutes' of society's time, then I can see it's a foolish idea.

But it does get us back to my original contention.

If, as you seem to be saying, the 'value' of products of labour under socialism is (use-value + ) 'average, socially necessary labour time'...

...how is this different to capitalism, where the 'value' (which we agree is 'exchange value') of commodities is (use value + ) 'average, socially necessary labour time'?

So, my question of 'what is this value that exists under socialism, that isn't exchange-value, and isn't use-value?' still stands.

[Marvin the Marxian]

My point, that the specifics of the dinner don't matter, is precisely to get away from the notion of what is pleasant and nourishing to one person may not be pleasant (though probably still nourishing) to another. This is why I was very reluctant to say what is 'on the menu'. It really doesn't matter. This doesn't mean 'all meals are the same under socialism'. Nor does it mean 'every food is pleasant to everybody'.

What it's intended to get at is, a dinner that is pleasant to me has the same value to society - the same socialist use-value - as a dinner that is pleasant to you. It provides one member of society with pleasant nourishment. The poisonous gravel is not, I'm afraid, beside the point, because unlike my 'pleasant nourishment', and your 'pleasant nourishment', poisonous gravel is both unpleasant, and harmful (so both the opposite of 'pleasant', and the opposite of 'nourishment').

If you agree that not all foods are equally pleasant or nourishing, then you must agree that the notion of all foods having the same socialist use-value is ridiculous. You're essentially saying that foods with different use-values have the same use-value. That's a complete contradiction, comrade.


So do you think they're the same thing? If so, you really are welcome to cycle across the Atlantic, bringing 200 other people on your bike, in the next 2 hours, and we can discuss it face to face. Alternately, I can challenge you to take you plane down to the 24-hour garage and bring back a Curly-Wurly (insert culturally-specific confectionary treat) and be back in less than 10 minutes. If you can't do at least one of those things, your use-value category of 'a (form of) transportation which includes both a bike and a plane' can be seen not to be real.

I thought it was clear that I don't think they're the same thing. By the same token, pizza and salad aren't the same thing. Yet both bicycles and airplanes provide some form of transportation. Likewise, both pizza and salad provide some form of pleasant nourishment.


Unlike the use-value category of 'a dinner' which means 'pleasant nourishment for one person', and can include whatever is nourishing that you think is pleasant, and whatever is nourishing that I think is pleasant, and whatever is nourishing that USRed thinks is pleasant, and whatever is nourishing that Luis Henrique thinks is pleasant; it can include all of those because in social terms, they each have the use of feeding one person pleasantly. Ergo, they have the same use value to society, though not necessarily to the individual.

Even then, not all forms of nourishment are the same. So I don't see how they'd nevertheless all have the same use-value to society.


After all, a 'use-value' is not an eternal thing even to one person, so one doesn't even have to posit 'different people like different things'. I like pizza and salad, but if I've just eaten my pizza and salad dinner (I've had 'pleasant nourishment for one person' and consumed that use-value) giving me another dinner of pizza and salad straight afterwards doesn't mean I can consume that use-value too. I couldn't derive the same benefit from exactly the same dinner - though I might tomorrow. If I get pizza and salad every day however it won't take long before I complain. So even identical use-values can be tricky. But this is why I've been trying to get away rfom specifics of menus, likes and dislikes, and on to the notion of use-value being equal even if specifics aren't.

I'm sorry, comrade, but I'm going to keep insisting that different use-values be treated as different use-values and not as the same use-value.


Yes, it would exist as a physical property, because for any given range of anything there must be an average. Just like if you measured the heights of all the 40-year-olds in the world, you could determine an average height, because such a property is inherent in the statistics. Equally, you could calculate the average age of all the rocks in Yellowstone Park, the average density of all the shoes in the Phillipines, or the average IQ of all the penguins in Edinburgh Zoo. I don't think doing that would help much, but the averages could be derived from existing properties of things. So to that extent, yes, it exists. Is it relevant? Not really.

Thank you. So if you call the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something its "exchange-value", then it follows that "exchange-value" will still exist under socialism. The reason I don't like using the term "exchange-value" this way is because socialism won't have exchange. It doesn't make sense to me to call the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something, which will still exist under socialism, by a term that includes a smaller term denoting something that won't still exist under socialism.


The bit from Anti-Duhrung that I quoted first, where Engels explains that in socialism, there is no 'value', just labour time (which is precisely my argument) you mean? Or another bit? Because if it's something else, I'm not aware of it I'm afraid, I'm not deliberately ignoring it, I must have just missed it. Could you quote it again, perhaps bolding the bits you're referring to in particular?

I already did, comrade, but I'll be happy to do so again:

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.

The reason I still don't know whether you think it's actual labour that's important, or average labour that's important, is because I'd thought we were discussing the notion that it was actual labour, then you raised the notion of average labour, but I haven't yet got a clear understanding of where you stand on the issue.

I believe I've been talking about average socially necessary labor-time this whole time. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough about that.


No, sorry, I never agreed to that, I think some commodities can be destroyed. Food, for example, is destroyed in consumption.

Yes, commodities can be destroyed because products can be destroyed. But consumption isn't exchange. The food I buy isn't destroyed right then and there, and neither is the money I use to buy it.


Right, you're back to talking about socially-necessary labour time, which again implies to me the average. So value to you is the average. Got it.

'Entitlement'. Hmmm. I fail to see what goods you're thinking will be distributed on the basis of entitlement-through-labour as opposed to entitlement-through-humanity, or under what circumstances, but maybe it's just because we're not being specific.

Labour time vouchers are a form of 'rationing by work'; those who work have a higher entitlement (more, or first pick, or stuff above and beyond; some kind of preferential or priviliged access to goods and services). Capitalism is a form of 'rationing by price'; those who have money have those privileged entitlements. I'm proposing 'rationing by need'; humans by virtue of being human will have necessities assigned to them.

I'm only proposing this under certain circumstances. If we're on the 'food provision committee' of a community and we know that we only have 400 loaves of bread to distribute, and we need to distribute those loaves to 400 people (of whom only 200 are actually working) I don't think the 200 workers should get two each and the non-workers get nothing. I think everyone should get one. Kotze, I'm sure, will explode at this point and say how inefficient that it, but I don't really care.

Now, when the distribution network is successfully sorted and the supply chain comes back on line (currently it's difficult to get supplies to our commune, due to disruption to the transport infrastructiure caused by the recently-ended civil war) we'll get enough bread that we can just let people help themselves. But until that state of abundance arrives, for potentially scarce necessities I'd advocate equal distribution rather than labour vouchers or any other form of privileged entitlement.

I normally use the term "labor-tokens" as a way to better distinguish socialism from capitalism. It's an inaccurate term otherwise, because I agree with you that those unable to work should still be entitled to some amount of the social store of goods. But I also think people who are able to work are only entitled to a part of the social store of goods in proportion to how much they work. So if a person decides not to work at all, even though she's capable of performing some kind of work, I see no reason for her to be entitled to any part of the social product.

On another note, how do you propose distributing products that can't be distributed equally to everyone, because there are too few of them for that? Going with your 400-person example, if there are only 20 cars, who gets them?


And this is precisely why I'm not concerned about the nature of the dinner, merely its use-value as 'one dinner'. One dinner is one dinner is one dinner, whether I'm eating, or you're eating, or USRed is eating, or Luis Henrique is eating. It's not the same dinner, we all got what we wanted, but it seems to me that society really isn't that bothered about whether we had pizza and salad, or pie and vegetables, or curry and rice, or spaghetti bolognese, as long as we all had pleasant nourishment. When I originally propsed trying to think about this however, I was asked 'why all dinners are the same under socialism'. They aren't. But if they provide 'pleasant nourishment for one person', their use-value to society is the same as another dinner that provides 'pleasant nourishment for one person'. That's all I was getting at.

However, your answer does make clear that you think it's socially-necessary (average) labour time that is the determining factor in this 'value' that you place on them, not actual labour. So my plan to make a 10-year 'super-value' dinner won't work. If my 10 years' work is only worth 45 minutes' of society's time, then I can see it's a foolish idea.

But it does get us back to my original contention.

If, as you seem to be saying, the 'value' of products of labour under socialism is (use-value + ) 'average, socially necessary labour time'...

...how is this different to capitalism, where the 'value' (which we agree is 'exchange value') of commodities is (use value + ) 'average, socially necessary labour time'?

So, my question of 'what is this value that exists under socialism, that isn't exchange-value, and isn't use-value?' still stands.

It's different to capitalism in that no exchange occurs. Again, that's why I think it's silly to call average amount of socially necessary labor-time by the term "exchange-value". While average amount of socially necessary labor-time exists under both capitalism and socialism, exchange only exists under capitalism.

To try answering your question again, I don't see any value existing under socialism apart from use-value and what you call exchange-value. I just prefer to call the latter value instead.

[Blake's Baby]

If you agree that not all foods are equally pleasant or nourishing, then you must agree that the notion of all foods having the same socialist use-value is ridiculous. You're essentially saying that foods with different use-values have the same use-value. That's a complete contradiction, comrade...

Well, I never expressed 'the notion of all foods having the same socialist use-value'. What I said was, something that is pleasant nourishment to you, has the same 'socialist use value' as something that is pleasant nourishment to me, in other words, they have the use value of 'pleasantly sustaining one member of society', ie, the use-value of 'one dinner'. You're essentially saying that use-values don't exist because you don't like pizza. That's a complete idiocy, comrade...



...
I thought it was clear that I don't think they're the same thing. By the same token, pizza and salad aren't the same thing. Yet both bicycles and airplanes provide some form of transportation. Likewise, both pizza and salad provide some form of pleasant nourishment...

Can you swap one for the other, use one instead of the other? No. Therefore they don't have the same use-value. Their 'value' is not capable of 'use' for the same thing. You're trying to derive 'use-value' linguistically from the fact that we have a blanket category of 'transport'. I'm trying to derive 'use-value' biologically from the fact that if we don't eat, we die.



...
Even then, not all forms of nourishment are the same. So I don't see how they'd nevertheless all have the same use-value to society...

My dinner is just as useful to society (for feeding me) as your dinner (for feeding you). Why isn't this the same?

I never said 'every food is identical to every other food'. I never even said pizza is the same as salad (which you seem to keep trying to say I did).

I never claimed all forms of nourishment were the same.

What I said was if there is a dinner (collection of foods, not a single food) that is both pleasant and nourishing to a member of society, it has the same use-value as another dinner (collection of foods, not a single food) that is both pleasant and nourishing to a member of society - not that it has to be the same or all foods are the same or every food can be substituted for every other food or everybody likes everything or all foods are the same under socialism or anything else of the kind.

'A meal, that pleasantly and nutriciously sustains a worker, has the same use value to society as a different meal, that pleasantly and nutriciously sustains a different worker, or the same worker on a different day'.

Each of them has the use-value of 'pleasantly and nutriciously sustaining one worker'. They are 'a dinner' in other words. Not gravel; not poison.



...
I'm sorry, comrade, but I'm going to keep insisting that different use-values be treated as different use-values and not as the same use-value...

Good, I'm glad you're not going to drown in a foolish attempt to cross the Atlantic carrying 200 people on your bike (bicycle/plane - different use-values).

However, I have to predict that if you continue to insist that different dinners have different use-values, you'll either:
a) end up eating the same dinner every day for ever (what, pie & veg? Can't have pie & veg, only pizza and salad has the use value of 'one dinner'); or
b) die of starvation; or
c) end up eating poisonous gravel not realising what the 'use value of dinner' entails.


...

Thank you. So if you call the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something its "exchange-value", then it follows that "exchange-value" will still exist under socialism. The reason I don't like using the term "exchange-value" this way is because socialism won't have exchange. It doesn't make sense to me to call the average amount of socially necessary labor-time required to produce something, which will still exist under socialism, by a term that includes a smaller term denoting something that won't still exist under socialism.



I absolutely agree it doesn't make sense.

That's why, given that the 'value' you talk about is identical to exchange-value, and there is no exchange in socialism, there's no reason to retain 'value' either, as all 'value' is, is exchange value without exchange.

All 'price' is, is the amount of money something exchanges for. If you do away with money, you don't say 'this would cost 45p under capitalism, look we priced it with a 45p sticker because that's its exchange value, but you can have it for 0p'.


...I already did, comrade, but I'll be happy to do so again:
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.
I believe I've been talking about average socially necessary labor-time this whole time. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough about that...

It becomes clearer.



...
Yes, commodities can be destroyed because products can be destroyed. But consumption isn't exchange. The food I buy isn't destroyed right then and there, and neither is the money I use to buy it...

Right, not sure what the 'destruction' part has to do with it then. You brought it up, it looked odd, I queried it. So what's the relevance of 'commodities are not destroyed'?



..
I normally use the term "labor-tokens" as a way to better distinguish socialism from capitalism. It's an inaccurate term otherwise, because I agree with you that those unable to work should still be entitled to some amount of the social store of goods. But I also think people who are able to work are only entitled to a part of the social store of goods in proportion to how much they work. So if a person decides not to work at all, even though she's capable of performing some kind of work, I see no reason for her to be entitled to any part of the social product.

On another note, how do you propose distributing products that can't be distributed equally to everyone, because there are too few of them for that? Going with your 400-person example, if there are only 20 cars, who gets them?
...

The socialist taxi collective.


..

It's different to capitalism in that no exchange occurs. Again, that's why I think it's silly to call average amount of socially necessary labor-time by the term "exchange-value". While average amount of socially necessary labor-time exists under both capitalism and socialism, exchange only exists under capitalism.

To try answering your question again, I don't see any value existing under socialism apart from use-value and what you call exchange-value. I just prefer to call the latter value instead.

So, even though you agree your 'value' is identical to exchange value, you don't think it's irrelevant because there's no exchange? See my hypothetical 45p tin of beans above.

[u.s.red]

I only believe in use-value in socialism.



I'm saying in socialism production is for use. Therefore what will be produced is use-value without exchange-value.





Well, exactly how do you determine how use-value is distributed among millions (hundreds of millions, billions) of people?

[Blake's Baby]

Well, exactly how do you determine how use-value is distributed among millions (hundreds of millions, billions) of people?

Do they need it? Yes/No

If yes - they get it

If no - they don't get it



That would be the first stage.

After that, they might still get it if no-one else needed it, but they still wanted it.

[robbo203]

Silly question, right? But if the answer is yes, then does it not follow that socialism and communism must be market systems? Not market systems in which the social relations and class divisions of the capitalist organizational form exist, but market systems nontheless.

Value defined as "socially necessary labor time" presupposes a division of labor, and a division of labor presupposes production for exchange; in layman's terms: a market, in one form or another.

The "socially necessary" part infers two things: First, and most obvious, is that social production must occur. If every individual produces every use value they themselves consume, and nothing to be consumed by others, then the whole subject is moot. Second, it infers necessity; demand for the product of any particular process must be expressed within the social group. Labor does not produce value in this context unless another exchanges the product of their labor time for it, somebody has to want or need it. And marginal utility applies, in that a lessening of demand simply translates to a lessened social necessity.

The "labor time" part speaks for itself: simple productivity. How much "stuff" a process (averaged across multiple actors, Marx's simple average labor) can produce with a given amount of time, technology, and technique.

If the labor theory of value matters to anyone, then the idea that production for exchange has to be "abolished" for socialism or communism to exist is misleading. The market can no more be abolished than the space-time continuum can, it's simply the field on which human economy is played. The market never goes away. It can be controlled, even to an extreme (we've been there and done that), but it's always there.

The social relations within production, the social relation to capital--that portion of the social product that must function as the means of social reproduction--is what matters. A division of labor producing for exchange isn't the problem, in fact the gains in productivity resulting from it are absolutely essential for a modern and technologically advanced society to exist at all, the problem is private minority ownership and control of capital. Moving beyond that is what moving beyond capitalism is really all about, isn't it?

This is very very confusing and confused. And it is based on a quite erroneous idea of what "market exchange" entails. The claim that market exchange is necessarily bound up with the division of labour is quite different from the claim that market exchange arose out of the division of labour. There will be no market exchange in a socialist society because market exchanges are essentially about exchanges of property rights to what is being exchanged which in turn imply private or sectional onewership of the means of producing these things- not common ownership which is what socialism will be based on. But that does not means there will not be a division of labour at least in the social sense of an occupational array in society rather than the technical sense of what happens within a specific enterprise

The labour theory of value will be utterly irrelevant to a socialist society. Time and time again , Marx made the point in Capital that value cannot be directly observed or measured and can only be indirectly inferred from the ratios in which commodities exchange in the market. This was the basis of his critique of the so called market socialists of his day - such as John Gray - who proposed the idea of labour money predicated on the direct measurement of labour inputs in the context of a commodity producing society. Marx argued that this simply was not possible in this context. If you have a commodity producing society you need proper money for this purpose

He did indeed talk about the direct measurement of labour inputs but only in the context of a communist/socialist society based on directly associated producers, not a commodity producing society. Though I am highly skeptical of Marx's proposal one thing seems clear - we are no longer talking here of "value" here since "value" is more than just the amount of socially necessary labour time embodied in a product but denotes also the commodification of that product within a uniquely capitalist setting of production for the market. To put it differently , you can talk about, or even attempt to calculate, "socially necessary labour time" without this implying value as all

[robbo203]

THE MARKET UNDER SOCIALISM
W.B.Bland


Is there a Market under Socialism?


It was suggested during the discussion that the term 'market' had relevance only to a capitalist society.

But the dictionary defines the term 'market' as

". . demand (for a commodity)".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 9; Oxford; 1979; p. 305).


and the term 'demand' as

"a call for a commodity on the part of consumers".
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 4; Oxford; 1979; p. 430).


But in a socialist society, as in a capitalist society, people possess varying sums of money which they spend in shops on commodities which are on sale. This willingness and ability to expend money on commodities constitutes demand, constitutes a market.

Clearly, both in a capitalist society and in socialist society there is a 'market', for commodities.

Distribution under Socialism

Distribution is

"...the dispersal among consumers of commodities produced."
('Oxford English Dictionary', Volume 4; Oxford; 19009; p. 8S3).



What complete hogwash. There is no recognition here of the distinction between what people might actually demand and what they can effectively demand under capitalism.

Socialism or communism (same thing in Marxian terminology) does away with the market completely

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.



Communist Manifesto





The principle on which distribution is carried out under socialism is that:

"The right of producers is proportional to the labour they supply".
(K. Marx: 'Critique of the Gotha Programme', in: 'Selected Works', Volume 2; London; 1943; p. 564)


that is, incomes are proportional to -- the distribution of commodities is geared to -- the quantity and quality of work performed.

Marx admits that distribution of commodities according to work performed is not completely fair,"


Quite untrue. Marx specifically says regarding the first phase of communism

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning

Critique of the Gotha Programme


Because the products of labour are NOT exchanged they cannot consititute commodities



It was suggested during the discussion that an essential difference between capitalism and socialism is that under capitalism production is for the market, while under socialism production is for use.

I suggest that this is a false contradiction.

Marx defines a commodity as a useful thing produced, not for the personal use of the producer and his family, as in what he calls 'natural' production, but for exchange (by barter for other commodities or by sale for money). According to Marx:

"...a commodity is...a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants...(and)...is produced directly for exchange".
(Marx: 'Capital', Volume 1; p. 43, 86)..

Right - so in admitting that a commodity necessarily involves producing directly for exchange how then can it possibly be maintained that in the first phase of communism "the distribution of commodities is geared to -- the quantity and quality of work performed" - when Marx points out that the products are NOT exchanged and therefore CANNOT take the form of commodities


This quite frankly is a load of confused tripe!

[Strannik]

Do I understand this correctly? Marx tries to say that socialism produces for use - meaning that when I'm not using it, it is automatically not mine. For (simplified) example when I use a car to drive to another city, it goes back to social ownership once I arrive there. What society grants me proportionally to my work is not the ownership of different products but right to use them. Ownership is always social. Its wrong to think of products under socialism as "things" to own - they are more like services. Production, upgrades, maintenance, recycling is all part of the "product".

[Blake's Baby]

Hmmm. I'd agree that the car 'returns to social ownership' once you get there (really it never left it). You might of course have further need of it, you might need it while you're there, you might need it to return, that's all fine. It never is really 'your' car, it belongs to all of us but you're the one using it for that day or week or month or whatever and that's absolutely fine. I wouldn't agree that you get access to cars proprtionately to your work though. I think you get access to cars proportionatley to your need.

Production for use doesn't necessarily imply that we don't 'own' things in that we can't derive benefit from them, as the case of food makes clear, in that we consume it and therefore deny its use-value to others. That's pretty direct ownership I think. But personal belongings - clothes and toothbrushes are the classic examples - are also ours. We use them, other people don't - in what sense is this not 'ownership'? They are pretty obviously produced for use, but they are also owned. Just not traded. I really don't want your old toothbrush/underwear, thanks.

[Paul Cockshott]

I dont recall marx saying that socialism produces for use, this is later imposition on him. All societies produce for use. The correct opposition is between production for private good or for social good.

[robbo203]

Do I understand this correctly? Marx tries to say that socialism produces for use - meaning that when I'm not using it, it is automatically not mine. For (simplified) example when I use a car to drive to another city, it goes back to social ownership once I arrive there. What society grants me proportionally to my work is not the ownership of different products but right to use them. Ownership is always social. Its wrong to think of products under socialism as "things" to own - they are more like services. Production, upgrades, maintenance, recycling is all part of the "product".


I think a distinction is usually made between "possessions" and "means of production" as far as common ownership is concerned. I sincerely doubt that anyone is calling for the common ownership of my toothbrush in a socialist society and I would be appalled by the potential health implications of such move if only they knew my casual and somewhat cavalier approach to dental maintenance and upkeep. (I shudder at the thought of that minute morsel of chicken tandoori trapped unbeknown to me between my molars being passed on to any unsuspecting stranger let alone my nearest and dearest)


What rules out economic exchange is the fact of common ownership of the means of production , this despite the fact that the products produced thereby may take the form of private possessions. I guess there may be an intermediate group of products - such as cars possibly - that could be deemed social possessions rather than individual posessions but I dont think we should take a too fixed view on this...

There might also be a form of exchange called gift exchange which might apply, say, to individually produced handicraft items or veggies from you kitchen garden, but this would be very different to market exchange. The purpose of market exchange is atomsing and self interested whereas gift exchanges are motivated by the desire to form friendships and and cement social relationship between people. Needless to say you dont haggle over gifts as you might with a market echange

When socialists argue that socialism will completely eliminate economic exchange they mean production for the market - whether this involves money or barter. Such exchange is logically incompatible with common ownership of the means of producing products

[robbo203]

I dont recall marx saying that socialism produces for use, this is later imposition on him. All societies produce for use. The correct opposition is between production for private good or for social good.


Yes all societies obviously produce for use but the point is that in capitalism the use value of a thing is not what motivates the producer to produce it; it is incidental to that purpose which is to accumulate capital out of surplus value Marx makes this clear in his discussion on the difference between use value and exchange value and the inference can be verty clearly drawn that, with the abolition of exchange value, socialism will produce solely and directly for use

I frankly dont see the point of your "correct opposition". In what way would priducing a tin of baked beans in a socialist society not be for the benefit of the individual who consumed it - a private good - as opposed to society as a whole?

[Blake's Baby]

Yes all societies obviously produce for use but the point is that in capitalism the use value of a thing is not what motivates the producer to produce it; it is incidental to that purpose which is to accumulate capital out of surplus value Marx makes this clear in his discussion on the difference between use value and exchange value and the inference can be verty clearly drawn that, with the abolition of exchange value, socialism will produce solely and directly for use

...

I agree.

The capitalist ensures the production of use-values with exchange-value. All 'the market' is in capitalism is the use-value for which the commodity is produced; so the fact that it has a use-value as a commodity merely means that someone will pay for it (whatever the buyer intends to use it for). That is the purpose for which the capitalist commands production.

At no point did I say 'socialism produces use values and capitalism does not'. Capitalism produces use-values certainly, as have all other systems, but capitalism's 'use-value' from the producer's point of view (by producer I'm here referring to the capitalist who commands production not the worker who actually puts his labour power into production) is to sell the commodity and make a profit, whatever the use-value to the user or consumer might be.

So the 'correct' opposition would be 'socialism produces use-values and capitalism produces use-value and exchange values'.

[u.s.red]

Do they need it? Yes/No

If yes - they get it

If no - they don't get it



That would be the first stage.

After that, they might still get it if no-one else needed it, but they still wanted it.

OK. A comes in and says he needs a bike with 5 gears to get to work. What then?

[Blake's Baby]

OK USRed; what are the circumstances? I'm being asked to judge on the future actions of people under socialism and I have no idea of context.

Are there bikes? Does his 'getting to work' involve a route that could reasonably accomplished by bike? He doesn't have to take 200 people across an ocean in 2 hours does he?

If (let's say) A needs to go maybe 4km to another community for some reason and it's reasonable for him to ride a bike there, then I suspect he'd go to the community bike shed in the community centre in the community (probably in the same building where the rest of the transport is sorted out, hopefully at an easily accessable point for all 400 people in our community, assuming the same community we were discussing in an earlier post). He'd take a bike. He'd cycle to the nearby community (he might have dinner there, if the concept of dinner is ever clarified enough for anyone to eat anything that isn't poisonous gravel). When he's done what he needed to do, he'd cycle back and park the bike in the community bike shed, then go about any other business he might have whether that's socialising, working, eating, sleeping or whatever else he mightbe up to.

That's all 'at a guess'.

[u.s.red]

If (let's say) A needs to go maybe 4km to another community for some reason and it's reasonable for him to ride a bike there, then I suspect he'd go to the community bike shed in the community centre in the community (probably in the same building where the rest of the transport is sorted out, hopefully at an easily accessable point for all 400 people in our community, assuming the same community we were discussing in an earlier post). He'd take a bike.



My first reaction is that there would quickly develop a black market for bikes made with personal styles, colors, etc etc. Going to the community bike sheds in a city of 10,000,000 people sounds vaguely Stalinist. Not that Stalinism is necessarily a bad thing, but why go back to barracks socialism if there is no need to?

What if he wants an airplane to fly across the Atlantic? He goes to the airplane shed? :)

[u.s.red]

I frankly dont see the point of your "correct opposition". In what way would priducing a tin of baked beans in a socialist society not be for the benefit of the individual who consumed it - a private good - as opposed to society as a whole?

A capitalist produces a can of beans to make a profit. The beans must have a use-value, otherwise no one would buy it. However, the production is for the private gain of the capitalist, not the public good of the consumers. Factory workers (or society) produce cans of beans for the consumption of society.

The question is how does a factory producing 5 million cans of beans a year,
effectively distribute those cans among a population of say, 1 million people.

Its not an answer to say that everybody grows their own beans and cans them. Or to say that everybody goes to the community store and gets their community beans off the shelf.

I personally think that in a communist society production, distribution and exchange will be vastly more complex than it currently is. However, with computers, scanners, etc. the complexity will be nothing more than an "admidnistration of things."

[Blake's Baby]

My first reaction is that there would quickly develop a black market for bikes made with personal styles, colors, etc etc. Going to the community bike sheds in a city of 10,000,000 people sounds vaguely Stalinist. Not that Stalinism is necessarily a bad thing, but why go back to barracks socialism if there is no need to?

What if he wants an airplane to fly across the Atlantic? He goes to the airplane shed? :)

Oh, right, so our community of 400 people has now become a city of 10,000,000, has it?

Do you know about the abolition of the distinction of city and countryside? You explain that bit to me, and I'll explain how bikes work in it.

[u.s.red]

Oh, right, so our community of 400 people has now become a city of 10,000,000, has it?

Do you know about the abolition of the distinction of city and countryside? You explain that bit to me, and I'll explain how bikes work in it.

OK. You have a community of 400 people. One of them needs an airplane to fly across the Atlantic. He goes to the airplane shed?

[Paul Cockshott]

Yes all societies obviously produce for use but the point is that in capitalism the use value of a thing is not what motivates the producer to produce it; it is incidental to that purpose which is to accumulate capital out of surplus value Marx makes this clear in his discussion on the difference between use value and exchange value and the inference can be verty clearly drawn that, with the abolition of exchange value, socialism will produce solely and directly for use

I agree that the motive of a firm is to produce things in order to turn a profit, but of course in order to make a profit they have to take considerable care that their product is useful. Althouth the opposition production for use rather than profit is popular nowadays, I really dont think this simple formula comes from Marx.

Direct production for use occurs when the production is entirely private. Suppose Abiola Bello goes out to her garden and harvests some yams and brings them home to eat with her children, then she is directly producing for use. But the production is also private not social.

If the next day she goes out and harvests cocoa beans which she sells to the cocoa producer's alliance, then she is still producing indirectly for use - the use of the consumers who will ultimately buy the chocolate made from the beans - but from her point of view she is producing for exchange. She is now engaging in social production, but the motive is private.

Now consider her brother Ola Tunde who is a worker on the Asejire reservoir which supplies water to domestic use. He too is producing for social use, except in this case there is no exchange involved. The use is indirect, Ola does not use the water himself, the indirect connection is now provided by a network of pipes.

In a socialist economy too, the production will not be directly for use, but indirect via many intermediate steps and mediations with physical connections provided by transport networks and social connections provided by the plan.

But there is still a need to assess how much of societies labour should be devoted to cocoa, how much to yams, how much to meat, to different types of clothing, to beer, to TVsets etc. How is society supposed to decide this?

Either it gives everyone a detailed ration card saying you can have 8 yams a week, 5 bottles of beer, 2 liters of palm wine, one pair of trousers every month etc which would be impossibly restrictive, or it uses labour tokens to perform indirect rationing. It says you have to pay over 10 hours labour tokens to the community to provide free services, but for every additional hour you work you will get one hour of labour tokens which you can chose to spend on whatever communeally produce goods you want. In the acqusition of these goods the labour theory of value applies. If a Yam requires on average 10 mins labour you have to give up 10 mins of labour tokens if the communal store is to provide you with a yam, but you are free to chose what mix of diet and other consumer goods you want.

There is no exchange here since there is no private business exchangeing money for commodities. There is a process of social rationing guided by the labour theory of value.

[Blake's Baby]

OK. You have a community of 400 people. One of them needs an airplane to fly across the Atlantic. He goes to the airplane shed?

The community of 400 people is the hypothetical community we were discussing before. It's the community I specifically referred to when talking about communal bikes. If you want to hypothesise a different community that's fine, but how am I supposed to get what your rules are for how to play the game?

Unless: 1 - the community of 400 is on a small, somewhat remote island or 2 - maybe in the Arctic, it's unlikely to have an aeroplane shed (I think the word is probably 'hanger'). Certainly a community of 400 is unlikely to have many jets capable of trans-oceanic flight on standby, wouldn't you say?

I'd think it's much more likely that they would travel (by bus, train, bike, car, water-taxi, helicopter or other appropriate form of transport) to somewhere with a large airport, don't you?

[u.s.red]

There is no exchange here since there is no private business exchangeing money for commodities. There is a process of social rationing guided by the labour theory of value.

But isn't there still an exchange of labor (work on a reservoir) for labor (growing yams?); but mediated by labor notes? Also, didn't Marx emphasize that production is an entirety of different "moments," i.e. production, exchange, distribution and ultimately consumption; that production is all of these things? I believe he brings this up directly in the Grundrisse.

[u.s.red]

I'd think it's much more likely that they would travel (by bus, train, bike, car, water-taxi, helicopter or other appropriate form of transport) to somewhere with a large airport, don't you?

OK. Comrade Crusoe wants to fly from his remote island home to New York where he is scheduled to give an address to the International Workers Association. He is an eminent communist who has written several revolutionary books on the subject.

He goes to somewhere (a city maybe?) with a large airport. He goes to the hangar to get a jet. What then?

[u.s.red]

In the acqusition of these goods the labour theory of value applies. If a Yam requires on average 10 mins labour you have to give up 10 mins of labour tokens if the communal store is to provide you with a yam,.

I think you are back to square one at the Critique of the Gotha Program.

A worker on a yam farm would grow, on average, one yam in 10 minutes and would receive 10 labor tokens. A computer programmer would produce .001 computer program in 10 minutes and would receive, therefore, .01 labor tokens.

This is NOT to say that computer programmers are more valuable human beings than yam farm workers....that is the capitalist argument.

I think Marx would say that more socially necessary labor is required to produce a computer programmer than a yam worker, which is the main reason farm workers want their kids to grow up to be computer programmers, etc.

Thus the programmer contains 5x more socially necessary labor than the yam worker; the programmer gets 50 labor tokens for 10 minutes work. That is the Gotha Programme argument. Society still takes enough value, in taxes, to make sure the yam worker has equal education, health care, etc as the programmer. I say, why not call labor notes "Federal Reserve Notes" and then set prices and wages the way monopoly firms do now.

After society reaches the state of from each according, etc., then maybe exchange of labor for labor will be left behind.

[Blake's Baby]

OK. Comrade Crusoe wants to fly from his remote island home to New York where he is scheduled to give an address to the International Workers Association. He is an eminent communist who has written several revolutionary books on the subject.

He goes to somewhere (a city maybe?) with a large airport. He goes to the hangar to get a jet. What then?

Don't care if he's an eminent communist who's written books, he could be the guy who fixes the boats and spends the rest of his planting cabbages and talking to elk for all it matters in principle. He's a delegate from his community to a meeting on a different continent, or at least somewhere far away.

Our island community is in BC or Alaska or Washington or somewhere like that, I take it? They have boats and probably choppers, maybe even light aircraft. I'm pretty sure that if he could get to say Anchorage or Vancouver of Portland or somewhere he'd be able to get a flight to New York. Can't imagine why it wouldn't be possible.

A good trick would be telephoning the New York People's Aerostation Information Office (it's in the phonebook under NeYoPeAeInOf, and anyway the conference organisers also gave him the contact details) or even looking on the website in advance, to see where the best place to get a connecting flight would be - no point going to Vancouver, even though it's closer to us, because the next flight from Vancouver gets in after his meeting starts - better to go on to Seattle (a longer journey from our island) but he can get a flight to New York sooner.

So he emails or phones Seattle, tells them he's coming in and is going to New York, and he needs a flight. No, he doesn't need to break his journey overnight in one of Seattle's many fine hostels, thanks, he's left it all a bit late and needs to be on the next New York flight. Yes, it is a shame, but he's coming back in a few days, maybe he could sample some of Seattle's fine wines and cheeses (I dunno what the hell they might make in Seattle) on his way back.

If you like the Chair of the Smallandimprobableislandsoviet can give him an 'official' document but I suspect he doesn't need one. It might be needed, however, on the slight chance that the flight from Seattle is full, his pass might mean that he's given consideration for the seats available as opposed to someone who's going to New York because, well, why not? Not that that's a bad reason to go, but, why not? is just as good tomorrow, when unfortunately the delegation to the New York meeting from Switzerzone will already be on their way back to Genevograd.

Then he finds Maureen who's the best damn pilot on the island, who takes him to Seattle in a Cessna Skyhawk. We also have a de Havilland DHC-6 (seats 19, there's only two of them travelling to Seattle, no point in taking it) and a lovingly restored MBB Bo 105 that we liberated from the Mexican Navy. It's hell to get parts for though, but an enineering collective in Vancouver has offered to help.

He flies on to New York for his meeting. Maureen arranges to pick up some delicious Seattle Wine and Cheese, loads it onto the Cessna and flies it back to our island. Gotta love that Seattle Wine and Cheese.

In a couple of days, Maureen's back in Seattle (luckily we've produced another... what do we produce? Bears? We've produced another bear on our island, and some spare cabbages, so Maureen flies them to Seattle for ... whatever it is you do with bears and cabbages once you've produced them), and our communist-book writing boat-mending cabbage-growing elk-talking delegate guy is back from New York. This time he stays in Seattle, enjoying the wine and cheese, and the balmy evening by the sea-shore. Aaah, innit nice.

Next morning Maureen and the book-boat-cabbage-elk guy fly back in the Cessna, and tell us all about the meeting in New York over some lovely Seattle wine and cheese.

Something like that anyway.

[Paul Cockshott]

But isn't there still an exchange of labor (work on a reservoir) for labor (growing yams?); but mediated by labor notes? Also, didn't Marx emphasize that production is an entirety of different "moments," i.e. production, exchange, distribution and ultimately consumption; that production is all of these things? I believe he brings this up directly in the Grundrisse.

Yes in a sense individuals exchange their work contribution to society for the support that society gives them but from the standpoint of the production process it is not commodity production. Commodity production involves the existence of distinct units of production which have to sell their output in order to survive and reproduce themselves. So long as the labour credits that workers earn are just cancelled out when they obtain consumer goods, and are not recirculated to the factories that made the consumer goods, you dont have commodity production but a sophisticated form of rationing.

[Paul Cockshott]

I think you are back to square one at the Critique of the Gotha Program.

A worker on a yam farm would grow, on average, one yam in 10 minutes and would receive 10 labor tokens. A computer programmer would produce .001 computer program in 10 minutes and would receive, therefore, .01 labor tokens.
why?
if we consider people in different trades, each trade would on average get 1 hours tokens for 1 hours work. Within a trade, if one person was objectively a faster worker than average they might be able to do more than an hours work in an hour, and thus get more than an hours tokens, but this would be compensated for by slower workers within the trade. It would involve some sort of norms as in the soviet system.




I think Marx would say that more socially necessary labor is required to produce a computer programmer than a yam worker, which is the main reason farm workers want their kids to grow up to be computer programmers, etc.

Thus the programmer contains 5x more socially necessary labor than the yam worker; the programmer gets 50 labor tokens for 10 minutes work. That is the Gotha Programme argument. Society still takes enough value, in taxes, to make sure the yam worker has equal education, health care, etc as the programmer. I say, why not call labor notes "Federal Reserve Notes" and then set prices and wages the way monopoly firms do now.

After society reaches the state of from each according, etc., then maybe exchange of labor for labor will be left behind.
The fact that it takes training to produce a programmer does not imply that the programmer as an individual should be paid more. In the social accounts the education cost will count as part of the cost of the products produced indirectly with the programmers labour, but this would not go to the skilled worker themselves, but would go to pay the costs of education and pay for student grants.

Also you wildly overestimate the increase in the labour value due to training.
Suppose that a person spends 3 years as a student and that for each student the education system has to directly and indirectly employ 1/3 of a person Given college staff/student ratios these figures are in the right ballpark. Suppose that their working life after qualifying is 40 years, then it implies that for each person working with a degree, society must have \frac{3}{40}
ths of a student enrolled at college and \frac{1}{40}
th of a person employed in the education system. Thus for every 1 person working with a college degree society has to allocate 1/10 of a person to the higher education system.

This brings out clearly what Marxian value means - it means how much additional direct and indirect employment is required to produce a certain output. This was brought out particularly clearly Morishima at the start of the 1960s when discussing socialist economies (Morishima, Aggregation in Leontief matrices and the labour theory of value - Econometrica: journal of the Econometric Society, 1961.) Looking at it the reverse way round, we could say that the work of a college graduate counted for 10% more value than that of a non graduate. It is important to realise that labour value as an objective measure of social cost is quite distinct from what people get paid. If it were true that a college graduate's labour contributed 10% more value per hour than a non graduate it does not follow that either in a socialist or a capitalist economy they will be paid 10% more.


In a capitalist economy the differential is likely to be much greater

[u.s.red]

If you like the Chair of the Smallandimprobableislandsoviet can give him an 'official' document but I suspect he doesn't need one. It might be needed, however, on the slight chance that the flight from Seattle is full, his pass might mean that he's given consideration for the seats available as opposed to someone who's going to New York because, well, why not? .

I think this is the point Comrade Crusoe arrives at the hangar/boarding gate. There are more people than airplane seats. Overbooking...who knew that would still be a problem? Comrade Crusoe has an official document/pass which gives him superior access to seating. Now the bumped passenger gets angry. Why does C. Crusoe get on the plane? Didn't they both reserve the same seat? Doesn't the bumped passenger have the same "value" as C. Crusoe? What is it about C. Crusoe's official document that gives him a higher right to the seat?

Crusoe's official document is also known as "money," or "labor notes," if you like. He offers, exchanges, more of his labor than the bumped passenger. The current monopoly capitalist airline system is actually fairer than your socialist system. Now, both Crusoe and the bumped passenger are offered a night in Seattle and a free flight the next day.

I think what you describe is use-value (flight to New York) mediated by exchange-value (the official document.)

[u.s.red]

It is important to realise that labour value as an objective measure of social cost is quite distinct from what people get paid. If it were true that a college graduate's labour contributed 10% more value per hour than a non graduate it does not follow that either in a socialist or a capitalist economy they will be paid 10% more.




Certainly in a capitalist system people are paid less than the value they produce. I would think it is fairly well settled that this is how capital appropriates profit.

However, if 10% more socially necessary labor goes into one commodity than another, then the first commodity has a real value, on average, 10% greater. Since both college graduates and non-graduates are commodities (in capitalism) then they both follow the same law. All things being equal, the college graduate will embody 10% more labor than the non college graduate.

This obviously does not mean that some college graduates have less valuable educations than non graduates.

I don't think it is a question of the college graduate being paid 10% more if they produce 10% more. The pay difference depends on the cost (socially necessary) of the education.


This brings out clearly what Marxian value means - it means how much additional direct and indirect employment is required to produce a certain output.

This seems to say that additional (in addition to, say, education, etc) labor is required to produce a certain output. Thus, the labor theory of value?

[Paul Cockshott]

you misunderstand me. By the standards of the labour theory of value college graduates in capitalist countries are overpaid. They should be paid about 10% more in the UK the differential is nearer 80% in favour of graduates.

[Blake's Baby]

I think this is the point Comrade Crusoe arrives at the hangar/boarding gate. There are more people than airplane seats. Overbooking...who knew that would still be a problem? ...


OK; why is this a problem? Comrade Crusoe (sorry, I had forgotten he was called that, it's much shorter than book-boat-cabbage-elk guy) already told the folks at Seattle that he was coming. He phoned them and/or emailed them as I already explained. So the question isn't really 'is a travel document the same as money?' but 'why is the People's Areostation in Seattle incompotent?'

But let's assume that the People's Aerostation in Seattle is incompotent, and just in case Comrade Crusoe got a travel-pass signed/stamped by the Smallandimprobableisland Soviet.



...

Comrade Crusoe has an official document/pass which gives him superior access to seating. Now the bumped passenger gets angry. Why does C. Crusoe get on the plane? Didn't they both reserve the same seat? Doesn't the bumped passenger have the same "value" as C. Crusoe? What is it about C. Crusoe's official document that gives him a higher right to the seat? ...

Good questions. Comes down to 'needs' and 'wants', and the definitions of them. As I said earlier, 'why not go to New York?' ranks further down the list of reasons than 'because I'm supposed to be meeting a bunch of people who are flying in from Genevograd and New York is halfway between where we are and where they are'. 'Why not go to New York?' works just as well on Saturday as on Friday, whereas 'because I'm supposed to be meeting a bunch of people who are flying in from Genevograd and New York is halfway between where we are and where they are' only works on Friday, because the flight on Saturday touches down at the same time as the flight back to Genevograd takes off.

One is time dependant. The other isn't.


...Crusoe's official document is also known as "money," or "labor notes," if you like...

I don't like, it's neither of those things.

1 - money is a medium of exchange. The travel pass is not exchangeable. He can't swap it for wine and cheese in Seattle, for instance. He can't use it to get luxuries on the plane. He can present it to the workers at the People's Aerostation, and the other passenger who has the same reservation number, and say 'look, I have an invitation to this event in New York and a travel document affirming I'm on Soviet business'. He's given it because he's been delegated to go somewhere. It's no more money than a key is money.

2 - he doesn't have to have worked to get it, it's not dependant on labour. It's dependant on his soviet sending him on official business.


... He offers, exchanges, more of his labor than the bumped passenger. The current monopoly capitalist airline system is actually fairer than your socialist system. Now, both Crusoe and the bumped passenger are offered a night in Seattle and a free flight the next day.

I think what you describe is use-value (flight to New York) mediated by exchange-value (the official document.)

I don't follow any of that. His labour and the labour of the other passenger from Seattle aren't compared. Their need to get to New York is. If both passengers need to get to New York (maybe the other passenger is also a delegate to the conference) then the People's Aerostation puts out a general call to passengers on the flight who might be willing to give up their seat. I really think that it's not going to be so difficult to get him there, unless the Seattle Aerostation is so completely incompotent that's it's double booked the entire flight.



In which case your objection to the system is based on 'how can we do without money if all systems are shit?'

Which isn't in my view a valid objection to socialism.

[u.s.red]

you misunderstand me. By the standards of the labour theory of value college graduates in capitalist countries are overpaid. They should be paid about 10% more in the UK the differential is nearer 80% in favour of graduates.

Assume that the daily cost (education, food, housing, clothing, etc) of a college grad worker is $20.

Assume the daily cost of a non-college graduate is $18, the same as the college grad except without the college degree.

According to Marx, isnt the daily wage, on average, of each, $20 and $18, respectively?

[robbo203]

I agree that the motive of a firm is to produce things in order to turn a profit, but of course in order to make a profit they have to take considerable care that their product is useful. Althouth the opposition production for use rather than profit is popular nowadays, I really dont think this simple formula comes from Marx.

Direct production for use occurs when the production is entirely private. Suppose Abiola Bello goes out to her garden and harvests some yams and brings them home to eat with her children, then she is directly producing for use. But the production is also private not social.

If the next day she goes out and harvests cocoa beans which she sells to the cocoa producer's alliance, then she is still producing indirectly for use - the use of the consumers who will ultimately buy the chocolate made from the beans - but from her point of view she is producing for exchange. She is now engaging in social production, but the motive is private.

Now consider her brother Ola Tunde who is a worker on the Asejire reservoir which supplies water to domestic use. He too is producing for social use, except in this case there is no exchange involved. The use is indirect, Ola does not use the water himself, the indirect connection is now provided by a network of pipes.

In a socialist economy too, the production will not be directly for use, but indirect via many intermediate steps and mediations with physical connections provided by transport networks and social connections provided by the plan.

But there is still a need to assess how much of societies labour should be devoted to cocoa, how much to yams, how much to meat, to different types of clothing, to beer, to TVsets etc. How is society supposed to decide this?

Either it gives everyone a detailed ration card saying you can have 8 yams a week, 5 bottles of beer, 2 liters of palm wine, one pair of trousers every month etc which would be impossibly restrictive, or it uses labour tokens to perform indirect rationing. It says you have to pay over 10 hours labour tokens to the community to provide free services, but for every additional hour you work you will get one hour of labour tokens which you can chose to spend on whatever communeally produce goods you want. In the acqusition of these goods the labour theory of value applies. If a Yam requires on average 10 mins labour you have to give up 10 mins of labour tokens if the communal store is to provide you with a yam, but you are free to chose what mix of diet and other consumer goods you want.

There is no exchange here since there is no private business exchangeing money for commodities. There is a process of social rationing guided by the labour theory of value.

Again. I think you are drawing quite wrong inferences here. Producing directly for use does NOT mean producing simply for one's own consumption i.e. self provisioning. It means simply that the sole purpose of producing something is bound up with its use value.

In other words you no longer produce exchange values. You are no longer producing for sale on a market with a view to profit. Though this latter obviously involves the production of use values, this is only indirectly or incidentally the purpose of production. This is what is meant when socialists say socialism will prpoduce directly for use and frankly I never come across before the particular gloss you put on this expression - "producing directly for use". We will produce directly to satisfy needs in a socialist society - those of ourselves and those of others - without some other purpose intervening


I see you are still fixated on this question of labour time accounting

But there is still a need to assess how much of societies labour should be devoted to cocoa, how much to yams, how much to meat, to different types of clothing, to beer, to TVsets etc. How is society supposed to decide this?


Why do you assume there is such a need - to know in advance of producing such things how much labour is needed to produce them? Ive never understood this fixation of yours.

Note what follows from what you are saying. If you need to know in advance how much labour is requirred then you need to know in advance also how much of each of these products - and thousands of others too - is required. By why? Why can you not simply let people take what they need, monitor the uptake of products and respond flexibily to shifts in the pattern of demand? In other words incorporate a feedback mechanism. Once you have incorporated such a mechanism there is simply no need to know in advance how many of such a product is required and therefore how much of such labour is required to produce such a product - a pointless exercise anyway. A self regulating system with a feedback mechanism can determine, and signal to society, whether more labour is needed or less as the situation changes, as the demand for particular products change - much like a moden supermarket does today with the goods it stocks on its shelves


There may well be some goods in a socialist society that would be in short supply and which may therefore have to be rationed - other goods would be freely available - but labour time vouchers is possibly the most cumbersome bureaucratic form of rationing one can possibly think of and it would be plagued by all sorts of difficulties of a theoretical and practical nature as well. There are much better models of rationing available than labour time vouchers. You are flogging a dead horse here

Once last thing - you say:

There is no exchange here since there is no private business exchangeing money for commodities. There is a process of social rationing guided by the labour theory of value

Well, no, the LTV holds that the value of prpducts - the socially necessary labour time required to prpduce them - cannot be known in advance but can opnly become apparent through sale on the market. If you are advocating labour time vouchers then you also going have to price the goods for which these vouchers are exchanged, in terms of their labour content (an additional reason for calling labour time vouchers a bureaucratically cumbersome method). But this too is problematic for the reason hinted by Marx


Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning. (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

What Marx seems to be saying here is precisely that the process of social rationing CANNOT guided by the labour theory of value sincve the labour employed on the products does not express itself as value or socially necessary labour time which can never be measured or directly observed but only inferred via market exchange

[Paul Cockshott]

Well, no, the LTV holds that the value of prpducts - the socially necessary labour time required to prpduce them - cannot be known in advance but can opnly become apparent through sale on the market. If you are advocating labour time vouchers then you also going have to price the goods for which these vouchers are exchanged, in terms of their labour content (an additional reason for calling labour time vouchers a bureaucratically cumbersome method). But this too is problematic for the reason hinted by Marx
You are eternalising the restrictions of private commodity production.
Yes in a commodity producing society socially necessary labour content only becomes apparent by the oscillation of prices around values, but that does not mean that it is impossible to calculate labour values. Given input output tables it is very easy to do it with a modest computer, I and many other marxist economists have done it.
In Marx's day input output tables had not been invented, but after Leontief invented them it has been well known how to compute labour values.




Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning. (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

What Marx seems to be saying here is precisely that the process of social rationing CANNOT guided by the labour theory of value sincve the labour employed on the products does not express itself as value or socially necessary labour time which can never be measured or directly observed but only inferred via market exchange
Give over Robbo, you know well enough that he goes on in that very document to suggest the use of labour certificates and the withdrawal from the communal stores of goods equivalent in labour content to the labour the individual worker does. He also outlines this in Capital.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Well, I never expressed 'the notion of all foods having the same socialist use-value'. What I said was, something that is pleasant nourishment to you, has the same 'socialist use value' as something that is pleasant nourishment to me, in other words, they have the use value of 'pleasantly sustaining one member of society', ie, the use-value of 'one dinner'. You're essentially saying that use-values don't exist because you don't like pizza. That's a complete idiocy, comrade...

No, I'm not saying that, essentially or otherwise. But in the above, you've actually repeated your assertion that all foods have the same socialist use-value. You're continuing to ignore any and all differences among foods in terms of pleasantness and nourishment. It seems clear to me that this is unfortunately quite willful ignorance on your part.


Can you swap one for the other, use one instead of the other? No. Therefore they don't have the same use-value. Their 'value' is not capable of 'use' for the same thing. You're trying to derive 'use-value' linguistically from the fact that we have a blanket category of 'transport'. I'm trying to derive 'use-value' biologically from the fact that if we don't eat, we die.

No, I'm not trying to derive "use-value" in that way. But I don't think pizza and salad, for example, are perfectly swappable.

I really don't understand why this is so hard for you. Both bicycles and airplanes provide a form of transportation, right? Both pizza and salad provide a form of pleasant nourishment, right? Yes or no, comrade?


My dinner is just as useful to society (for feeding me) as your dinner (for feeding you). Why isn't this the same?

Because they may not feed each of us in the same way.


I never said 'every food is identical to every other food'. I never even said pizza is the same as salad (which you seem to keep trying to say I did).

You didn't say so explicitly, but it's an implication of what you have said.


I never claimed all forms of nourishment were the same.

What I said was if there is a dinner (collection of foods, not a single food) that is both pleasant and nourishing to a member of society, it has the same use-value as another dinner (collection of foods, not a single food) that is both pleasant and nourishing to a member of society - not that it has to be the same or all foods are the same or every food can be substituted for every other food or everybody likes everything or all foods are the same under socialism or anything else of the kind.

'A meal, that pleasantly and nutriciously sustains a worker, has the same use value to society as a different meal, that pleasantly and nutriciously sustains a different worker, or the same worker on a different day'.

Each of them has the use-value of 'pleasantly and nutriciously sustaining one worker'. They are 'a dinner' in other words. Not gravel; not poison.

Again, the logical implication of this is that you're arguing that all foods are equally pleasant and nourishing. You don't have to say it outright. It's implied.


Good, I'm glad you're not going to drown in a foolish attempt to cross the Atlantic carrying 200 people on your bike (bicycle/plane - different use-values).

However, I have to predict that if you continue to insist that different dinners have different use-values, you'll either:
a) end up eating the same dinner every day for ever (what, pie & veg? Can't have pie & veg, only pizza and salad has the use value of 'one dinner'); or
b) die of starvation; or
c) end up eating poisonous gravel not realising what the 'use value of dinner' entails.

No, I'll end up doing none of those. How exactly do you figure otherwise?


I absolutely agree it doesn't make sense.

That's why, given that the 'value' you talk about is identical to exchange-value, and there is no exchange in socialism, there's no reason to retain 'value' either, as all 'value' is, is exchange value without exchange.

All 'price' is, is the amount of money something exchanges for. If you do away with money, you don't say 'this would cost 45p under capitalism, look we priced it with a 45p sticker because that's its exchange value, but you can have it for 0p'.

Right, but we could still say, "The value of this product is equal to 0.1 labor-hours. If you currently have at least that amount of labor-hours to redeem, it's yours." Again, that's not exchange because labor-tokens (credits) wouldn't circulate. No one would possess your labor-tokens (credits) after you redeem them for something. That's why I don't see the point in calling average amount of socially necessary labor-time "exchange-value" instead of just "value".


Right, not sure what the 'destruction' part has to do with it then. You brought it up, it looked odd, I queried it. So what's the relevance of 'commodities are not destroyed'?

The fact that commodities aren't destroyed is fundamental to commodity exchange, both direct (barter) and indirect (money purchases). A person who exchanges A for B can then exchange B for C and so on. As I'm sure you'll agree, a person won't be able to do that in a socialist economy.


The socialist taxi collective.

Would this collective exist within the 400-person community?


So, even though you agree your 'value' is identical to exchange value, you don't think it's irrelevant because there's no exchange? See my hypothetical 45p tin of beans above.

See my response to it.

[Blake's Baby]

No, I'm not saying that, essentially or otherwise. But in the above, you've actually repeated your assertion that all foods have the same socialist use-value. You're continuing to ignore any and all differences among foods in terms of pleasantness and nourishment. It seems clear to me that this is unfortunately quite willful ignorance on your part...

Right, I'm continuing with this because I think it's where you're fundamentally misunderstanding my point, and therefore it's up to me to try and explain it better. Honestly, accusations of bad faith aren't helpful. I preferred it when you being reasonable I didn't have to pull my sarcastic face.

So...

All dinners have the same 'socialist use value' for this reason: society as a whole really doesn't care if you have pizza and salad on a Monday, and pie and veg on a Tuesday, and chicken curry and rice on a Wednesday... etc; or if you have pizza and salad on a Wednesday, chicken curry and rice on a Thursday, pie and veg on a Friday... etc; or if you have chicken curry and rice on a Monday, and I have pizza and salad on a Monday, and we both have pie and veg on a Tuesday... etc.

Society is not going to set our menus. It's not going to tell us what to eat when. Different foods are available.

But, conversely, society does care that we have a healthy diet and enough to eat, yes? There will be collective provision of healthy food under socialism. It doesn't matter that different meals will have marginally different calorific values, slightly different vitamin and mineral contents, varying levels of carbohydrate, protein and fat, because on the whole meals can be swapped with each other without any great ill-effect. Someone is not going to develop scurvey overnight because one evening they ate a meal with no tomato in it. Likewise, one meal without spinach will not mean we collapse with anaemia.

Society is not going to micro-manage our lives. We're adults, we can make certain decisions on our own. Like what to have for dinner. I absolutely insist, that there will be no 'communannies' (human or machine) spoon-feeding us nutritionally-exact doses of 'enhanced food product'.

So, as far as society is concerned, chicken curry and rice = pizza and salad. Not because the nutritional value is exactly the same, and not because you, personally, like chicken curry to exactly the same degree as you like pizza and salad. But because 'pizza and salad' is a meal, and 'chicken curry and rice' is a meal, and from the point of view of society, one healthy and nutricious meal can be substituted for another healthy and nutricious meal without anything going wrong.

You don't wannt pizza and salad? Not a problem. Have pie and veg. Have chicken curry and rice. Have a stir-fry with noodles. Have some chilli with tortillas. It doesn't matter. The next person will make a different choice, the person after that a still different one... and the end of the day, 200 workers will have eaten 40 chilli and tortillas, 40 chicken curries, 40 pizza and salads, 40 pie and veg and 40 stir-fry with noodles.

Thus all those meals have the same use-value. They all feed one worker for one evening. The next night... 200 more varied and nutricious dinners will be needed. And you know what? They'll all have the same use-value too - 'one dinner'.



I fear I can only attempt this one paragraph at a time. Your other points, I'm afraid, will have to wait.

[u.s.red]

All dinners have the same 'socialist use value' [...]

It doesn't matter that different meals will have marginally different calorific values, slightly different vitamin and mineral contents, varying levels of carbohydrate, protein and fat, because on the whole meals can be swapped with each other without any great ill-effect.



I think that what you are saying is: socialist use values (as dinners) will have the same use value except for marginal differences. This marginality is the entire basis for the "marginal utility" of the neo-classicists. One person has a marginally higher use for one dinner over another and therefore will pay slightly more for one dinner than another. This slight preference is what they say constitutes value.

Marxist theory is that labor is what creates the value, the labor theory of value. Market exchange of this labor may be eliminated in socialism, but the content of the value, the labor, will still exist. At least to the extent that humans produce the use-value.

In my opinion, at least.

[Blake's Baby]

I think that what you are saying is: socialist use values (as dinners) will have the same use value except for marginal differences. This marginality is the entire basis for the "marginal utility" of the neo-classicists. One person has a marginally higher use for one dinner over another and therefore will pay slightly more for one dinner than another. This slight preference is what they say constitutes value...

Well, I'm not sure how much that relates, but OK. I'm arguing that 'dinner' as in something nutricious and pleasant that sustains a person, is a concept that exists, even though not all things are equally nutricious or pleasant or sustaining to everyone; but if something pleasantly and nutriciously sustains somneone, it's functionally the same as something else that nutriciously and pleasantly sustains someone else.

If this was not the case, you couldn't have one dinner one day and a different dinner the next. Nor could you have one dinner one day and I have a different dinner the same day. So, let's just assume that at the moment, all I'm trying to do is demonstrate that 'dinner' exists.





Marxist theory is that labor is what creates the value, the labor theory of value. Market exchange of this labor may be eliminated in socialism, but the content of the value, the labor, will still exist. At least to the extent that humans produce the use-value.

In my opinion, at least.

People still have to make dinner, yes. They take some raw materials (which have a certain use-value) and prepare and cook those materials, adding to their use value. They extend labour to do so. But what goes into the finished product is not 'value' as an abstract concept, nor 'value' as a synonym for 'exchange value', but precisely, 'labour time' (on that, see Engels on the fact that we'll get on perfectly well without 'value').

However, as I believe Marvin points out, all we really need to know is average labour time not actual labour time (ie, not really the labour that went into it but 'socially necessary labour time') which is what we would in capitalism consider to be 'exchange value'. So we're back to a system of accounting for things that is based on exchange value. Can't put my finger on quite why but this looks an awful lot like capitalism to me.

[u.s.red]

Can't put my finger on quite why but this looks an awful lot like capitalism to me.

From the Gotha Program: "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. "

I think what you are describing with the use-values of dinner is the society of fully developed communism with no trace of exchange-value. Would you not agree that there will have to be a transitional period, with use and exchange value, from capitalism to communism?

[Blake's Baby]

I think that you're mixing up two things. There will a be a transitional phase at the end of capitalism, the dictatorship of the proletariat during the world revolution, where capitalism will be suppressed as the working class takes over more of the planet.

Then after capitalism and the state have been destroyed worldwide, we'll be able to institute socialism, at least in outline, though we won't have fully restored (and surpassed) capitalist production to be able to provide fully for all needs, at least not immediately. This, Marx's 'lower stage of communism', is a society that, if there should be shortages, needs to allocate resources on the basis of need and equality, not work. If you accept what Marx says "...the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it..." then you accept that society as a whole has the right to decide what deductions be made from the workers' social product.

From the Critique: "... equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, ... this equal right is still constantly stigmatised by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labour..."

As a worker, and a communist, please believe that I'm going to be arguing in the soviet that the social product should be administered by the community and not parcelled up and distributed to individual workers. The deductions that Marx refers to are precisely to ensure that those who can't work can still eat. I don't see why the principle of taxation or titheing or call it what you like that the working exacts from itself to distribute to those who don't directly contribute to expanding 'social wealth' shouldn't encompass the whole of society.

And after that, yes, we reach the 'higher stage of communism' where we can dispense with deductions and all such accounting because we will be producing only use-values, capable of sustaining everyone.

[Marvin the Marxian]

Right, I'm continuing with this because I think it's where you're fundamentally misunderstanding my point, and therefore it's up to me to try and explain it better. Honestly, accusations of bad faith aren't helpful. I preferred it when you being reasonable I didn't have to pull my sarcastic face.

I'm sorry if I've offended you, comrade. That wasn't my intention. But the only reasonable conclusion I feel I can draw at this point is that you're willfully ignoring certain facts. Maybe I'm wrong. On the other hand, and with all due respect, I don't see how you ever have to pull your sarcastic face.


So...

All dinners have the same 'socialist use value' for this reason: society as a whole really doesn't care if you have pizza and salad on a Monday, and pie and veg on a Tuesday, and chicken curry and rice on a Wednesday... etc; or if you have pizza and salad on a Wednesday, chicken curry and rice on a Thursday, pie and veg on a Friday... etc; or if you have chicken curry and rice on a Monday, and I have pizza and salad on a Monday, and we both have pie and veg on a Tuesday... etc.

I don't see Marx talking about such a thing as "socialist use value" as opposed to other forms of use-value. He does use the term "social use value" in Capital, but it seems clear to me that what he means by that is use-values produced for others. These others are of course individuals, even if they aren't specific individuals. But an important implication of this is that there are individuals who consider the things in question to be useful.

So the point of this is that use-value only applies to individuals. Whether something is useful "to society" is only meaningful in the sense that "a lot" of individuals in society consider it to be useful. The fact that the means of production are commonly owned under socialism doesn't change the nature of use-value one bit.


Society is not going to set our menus. It's not going to tell us what to eat when. Different foods are available.

But, conversely, society does care that we have a healthy diet and enough to eat, yes? There will be collective provision of healthy food under socialism. It doesn't matter that different meals will have marginally different calorific values, slightly different vitamin and mineral contents, varying levels of carbohydrate, protein and fat, because on the whole meals can be swapped with each other without any great ill-effect. Someone is not going to develop scurvey overnight because one evening they ate a meal with no tomato in it. Likewise, one meal without spinach will not mean we collapse with anaemia.

Marx also wrote that the use-values of different things depend at least in part on their material properties. But maybe we have different ideas of what a meal can be. From what I can gather, your idea of a meal is such that one meal is roughly equivalent to another. Mine isn't. In my case, pizza can be a meal by itself. So can salad. The two in no way have to have similar calorific values, nutrient contents, etc. Yet they both fill the stomach for some period of time after. Basically I think my idea of a meal is broader than yours.

Even with meals that have roughly the same nutritional value, that doesn't mean they have the same use-value to every individual in society. I maintain there's no such thing as what you call "socialist use-value".


Society is not going to micro-manage our lives. We're adults, we can make certain decisions on our own. Like what to have for dinner. I absolutely insist, that there will be no 'communannies' (human or machine) spoon-feeding us nutritionally-exact doses of 'enhanced food product'.

So, as far as society is concerned, chicken curry and rice = pizza and salad. Not because the nutritional value is exactly the same, and not because you, personally, like chicken curry to exactly the same degree as you like pizza and salad. But because 'pizza and salad' is a meal, and 'chicken curry and rice' is a meal, and from the point of view of society, one healthy and nutricious meal can be substituted for another healthy and nutricious meal without anything going wrong.

You don't wannt pizza and salad? Not a problem. Have pie and veg. Have chicken curry and rice. Have a stir-fry with noodles. Have some chilli with tortillas. It doesn't matter. The next person will make a different choice, the person after that a still different one... and the end of the day, 200 workers will have eaten 40 chilli and tortillas, 40 chicken curries, 40 pizza and salads, 40 pie and veg and 40 stir-fry with noodles.

Thus all those meals have the same use-value. They all feed one worker for one evening. The next night... 200 more varied and nutricious dinners will be needed. And you know what? They'll all have the same use-value too - 'one dinner'.

How is this different from saying that all foods have the same "socialist use-value"? Okay, maybe not food per se, but all meals then. That's why I made an accusation of bad faith - because you denied expressing something and then went on to express again the very thing you denied expressing. Like I said above, maybe we have different ideas of what a meal is. But even assuming that all meals are roughly equivalent in nutritional value doesn't mean they all have the same use-value, because different individuals can consider them useful to differing degrees.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm sorry if I've offended you, comrade. That wasn't my intention. But the only reasonable conclusion I feel I can draw at this point is that you're willfully ignoring certain facts. Maybe I'm wrong. On the other hand, and with all due respect, I don't see how you ever have to pull your sarcastic face...

I don't have to pull my sarcastic face, but if I think you're not taking the discussion seriously, then I will probably lose my desire to continue with it reasonably.


...
I don't see Marx talking about such a thing as "socialist use value" as opposed to other forms of use-value...

Neither do I, nor do I believe he did, nor do I imply he did.

I am using 'socialist use-value' not as a description of a type of use-value, but as a description of use-value in a certain situation (ie, in a socialist society). That's all I mean; 'under socialism, the use-value of a thing...'


... He does use the term "social use value" in Capital, but it seems clear to me that what he means by that is use-values produced for others. These others are of course individuals, even if they aren't specific individuals. But an important implication of this is that there are individuals who consider the things in question to be useful...

Sure. But we live in societies. We are very unlikely to be mass-producing things that only have use for one person. As a concept 'dinner' is generally valid, rather than being 'dinner for Blake' as opposed to 'dinner for Marvin' as opposed to 'dinner for USRed' as opposed to ... continue until we have listed dinner for all the 7 billion inhabitants of the planet.


...So the point of this is that use-value only applies to individuals. Whether something is useful "to society" is only meaningful in the sense that "a lot" of individuals in society consider it to be useful. The fact that the means of production are commonly owned under socialism doesn't change the nature of use-value one bit...

But it does determine how production happens. Individual use-values are still individual, and are particularly relevant when the product is consumed, as with dinner - less so with buses, I don't think we'll be getting one each that are all different because our 'use-values' are all different. But certainly with dinner, we consume them and therefore their use-value is pretty personal, yes.


...
Marx also wrote that the use-values of different things depend at least in part on their material properties. But maybe we have different ideas of what a meal can be. From what I can gather, your idea of a meal is such that one meal is roughly equivalent to another. Mine isn't...

Not my fault. Dinner one night can be substituted for dinner another night. I don't have 'Meatloaf Wednesday' when it would be heretical to have stir-fry. You may have a different system. Your meals may be so erratic that you know you have to have certain things at certain times because otherwise you won't get enough of the right nutrients. But I think most people probably don't function like that. If you can't substitute one meal for another without ill-effect, you're right, your dinners don't have the same use-value to you. Most people's do though.

And as an extension of that point, as long as your meals balance out over a period, and you can swap one period for another, the analogy still holds. A month's worth of dinners to you has the same use-value as a months' worth of dinners to me, ie they both keep us alive for a month. The social product necessary to make your dinners for a month has the same use-value under socialism as the social product necessary to keep me alive for a month, ie 'enough food to keep one person alive for a month' = 'a month of dinners'.


...
In my case, pizza can be a meal by itself. So can salad...

But they can't be every meal. Both pizzas and salads can include lots of ingredients but even so if you had different pizzas every day for a month that wouldn't do you any good. Equally if you had different sorts of salad as your main meal every day for a moth. That's why I keep insisting that I'm discussing 'meals' not 'foods'. A meal should be pleasant sustaining nutrition - I thought we'd covered that pages ago. So it needs to have a range of foods in it giving a range of vitamins, minerals etc; it needs protein and fat and vitamin C and carbohydrate and sodium and zinc and potassium etc. Not just bread and cheese.


... The two in no way have to have similar calorific values, nutrient contents, etc. Yet they both fill the stomach for some period of time after. Basically I think my idea of a meal is broader than yours...

Too broad I'd say. My point is that a balanced healthy diet includes meals that can be substituted for each other without ill-effect. If you suffer because you eat pizza every day, then that's by definition not a healthy balanced diet.

You talk about different nutritional values - so how about we try this algebraically?

If we express this as food with a amount of nutrition (say pizza) plus food with b amount of nutrition (say a nice Greek salad) = meal of x amount of nutrition, and also a food with c amount of nutrition and a food of d amount of nutrition = a meal of x amount of nutrition, then you're arguing, it seems to me, that x can't exist because a doesn't equal b, c, or d.

If we put numbers, then let's say pizza is a 1, salad is a 6, pie is 3 and veg is 4.

Mathmatically, you don't think 7 exists because 4 doesn't equal 3, nor does it equal 6 or 1.


...Even with meals that have roughly the same nutritional value, that doesn't mean they have the same use-value to every individual in society. I maintain there's no such thing as what you call "socialist use-value"...

Never claimed every individual in society has the same use for all meals. What I claimed was a meal that pleasantly an nutriciously sustains person A is the same in its social use as a meal that pleasantly and nutriciously sustains person B, ie it pleasantly and nutriciously sustains one member of society (ie, it's a dinner).



...
How is this different from saying that all foods have the same "socialist use-value"? Okay, maybe not food per se, but all meals then. That's why I made an accusation of bad faith - because you denied expressing something and then went on to express again the very thing you denied expressing...

Not at all, 'food' does not equal 'meal'

If you give me a bowl of plain rice for my dinner one day, and a plate of bacon the next day, and a plate of spinach the next day, and a bowl of crushed garlic the next day, and a bowl of olive oil the day after, and a block of cheese the day after, I've have punched you days before that happened. "Food" does not equal "meal". OK?


... Like I said above, maybe we have different ideas of what a meal is. But even assuming that all meals are roughly equivalent in nutritional value doesn't mean they all have the same use-value, because different individuals can consider them useful to differing degrees.

Whether individuals like certain things is really not society's concern. If we're producing bacon for 10,000 people, we don't have to have a conference about re-organising production if one person at the back says 'actually I don't like bacon'. If a thousand peole do, sure; but not one. Much more likely someone else will say 'can I have her share?'