Value creation of the upper classes

[Dodo]

I have come across this recently. As far as I know, the mode of production is defined by the main extractor and value creator. The exploited and the exploiter. The slave and the master, the lord and the serf, the capitalist and the proleteriat.

But what does Marxism, especially classical writings say on value creation by the ruling classes? Such as their managerial contribution, or their "labor" on managing things...In Marxian terms, they do not directly interact with the nature through tools of production by simply owning the means of production. But their immaterial work is still there. Where does Marxism put that?

[WelcomeToTheParty]

I would imagine the socially necessary labour time they put into managing is added to socially necessary labour time of the workers. Their labour is only different in that they own it's result in its entirety.

[Five Year Plan]

The general view is that management, to the extent that they are only performing the function of the capitalist (supervising and managing for the purposes of extraction), do not produce value at all, but are rather only facilitating the extraction of value from the value producers, the workers.

[RedMaterialist]

Here is Marx, Vol I, Ch. 7, Capital, briefly on the issue of the manager:

"Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: "Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value?" His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles."

The capitalist is trying to say that he added value by doing the managerial work, but it is obvious to the managers that the capitalist adds no value by his "management." This seems to imply that the superintendence of the laborers does add value.

In today's gigantic capitalist monopoly the corporate managers, CEOs, etc., obviously see themselves as capitalists, but does the CEO of General Motors add value to the process of automobile production in the same sense that a worker at a GM plant does?

I think the CEO would say that she (in the case of GM) adds value not by her physical labor but by her mental labor in understanding the "market" and how to extract value from the market. But as Marx (and Smith and Ricardo) have shown, all value is added to a product during the process of production and no value is created by the act of selling the product on the market.

[Dave B]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch23.htm

[Comrade #138672]

They do not create value. Any work performed by capitalists, can be performed by workers as well. The bourgeoisie has been rendered entirely superfluous. Even Engels spoke of this in his own time. Capitalism is dying. It is time for socialism.

[RedMaterialist]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch23.htm

This is a quote from your link:

"The labour of supervision and management, arising as it does out of an antithesis, out of the supremacy of capital over labour, and being therefore common to all modes of production based on class contradictions like the capitalist mode, is directly and inseparably connected, also under the capitalist system, with productive functions which all combined social labour assigns to individuals as their special tasks. The wages of an epitropos, or régisseur, as he was called in feudal France, are entirely divorced from profit and assume the form of wages for skilled labour whenever the business is operated on a sufficiently large scale to warrant paying for such a manager, although, for all that, our industrial capitalists are far from "attending to affairs of state or studying philosophy."

Is Marx saying that supervision and management (which here corresponds pretty closely with modern corporate management) also add value?

[Comrade #138672]

This is a quote from your link:

"The labour of supervision and management, arising as it does out of an antithesis, out of the supremacy of capital over labour, and being therefore common to all modes of production based on class contradictions like the capitalist mode, is directly and inseparably connected, also under the capitalist system, with productive functions which all combined social labour assigns to individuals as their special tasks. The wages of an epitropos, or régisseur, as he was called in feudal France, are entirely divorced from profit and assume the form of wages for skilled labour whenever the business is operated on a sufficiently large scale to warrant paying for such a manager, although, for all that, our industrial capitalists are far from "attending to affairs of state or studying philosophy."

Is Marx saying that supervision and management (which here corresponds pretty closely with modern corporate management) also add value?No. I cannot see that claim being made in your quote. Just because the wages of the manager class assume the form of wages for skilled labor, does not mean that the managers themselves perform value-creating labor.

[Five Year Plan]

RedMaterialist, the distinction that needs to be made is between supervisory and managerial acts that bring together and coordinate producers in a way that would be necessary to the production of the same item in an egalitarian and planned economy, and the supervisory and managerial acts that are geared toward extracting surplus. One can be thought to be a part of value creation, the other not at all. Most upper management slants heavily toward extractive aspect, with many of them superfluous to the production process altogether.

[Dave B]

It’s a while since I read it, but winging it a bit.

Originally in late 19th century capitalism the capitalist were ‘mill owners’ and ‘worked’ in the mills organising production etc etc.

They obviously made ‘profits’ which they claimed were merely wages of supervision rather than the consequence of exploitation etc.

It was an interesting idea in itself as it was an argument against the essentially other ‘moral’ argument that it was in fact exploitation.

Thus accepting the immorality of exploitation.

With the concentration of capital into fewer and fewer hands and the pooling of individual capitals (joint stock companies); which was required due to the increasing advantages of economies of scales.

Capitalists increasingly became shareholders and merely recipients of dividends and were increasingly completely divorced from the productive process itself.

Making it increasingly transparent that the recipients of dividends and the dividends [profits] themselves could not be nor were received as, or for, wages of supervision.

In fact shareholders now might not even know what they own and were it is, never mind what their capital does.

Never mind supervision!

Despite that what still remains to be done is;

The ‘value adding’ technical organisation of production.

And the extraction of surplus value from the workers, and that alone.

In the late 19th century model these two 'social functions' were in-separately fused together in one activity; by the mill owner.

The ‘value adding’ technical organisation of production is now performed by wage workers in most places, as a distinct activity.

We have in ‘our’ factory a production planning department that are about as working class as you can get.

They run the place, orders come in and they work out the best production plan to meet them ie order raw material making sure it arrives on time and scheduling and creating the weekly timetable for the production lines etc.

The shop-floor mangers often called ‘facilitators’ and ‘manufacturing improvement team leaders’; the language itself is interesting, make it happen.

Some of that involves kicking arse and making sure people aren’t skiving in the smoke shed etc.

But most of it involves just the efficient organisation of production.

The whole ‘objective’ and function of almost everybody on site is the efficient production of a quality product.

As it would be in a free access communist society, I can’t imagine it being that much differently in communism.

It ain’t rocket science at the end of the day.

Question; Is what is being done adding value and necessary.

Answer; Would it be done in free access communism

We are all one big happy team encouraged to co-operate in team building exercises to make sure that we are all happy bunnies.

And the production planners, some of whom are shacked up with the production operators and live on the same council estate, make sure product changeovers happen at convenient brew times etc.

The production planners don’t know what stuff costs, much, or what stuff sells for or have anything to do with wage levels or shit about sick days and back to work ‘interviews’ etc.

The function of ensuring or guaranteeing the exploitation of the labour force is left to the bean counters, accountants and strategic management at head office.

But even they are paid wage slaves to an extent ; albeit necessary slaves to the demands of the system and game of the average rate of profit.

As the capitalist system of production develops along this trajectory the capitalist class themselves become and less and less a part of it.

Even then; in free access socialism we will still have “bean counters, accountants and strategic management” I think.

But the purpose or objective won’t be to skim off surplus value for the consumption fund and accumulation of capital and thus economic power of a parasitic class.

But to work out the best way, ie with minimum effort, value, to make stuff.


Thus;


Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value..[ ie the combined toil and trouble in the complicated process of the division of labour in making stuff etc]… continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.



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

That is in itself a bit of a headache problem as regards value; ie as in the application of general human effort and labour, as in even science and technology, and communist bean counting/ ergometics etc in reducing the socially necessary labour time required to make something.

But ‘Value’ in communism will be reduced to all that remains of it ie reducing socially necessary labour time.

Something that capitalism does ‘naturally’, in digging its own grave, and providing the conditions for communism itself, despite itself.

[RedMaterialist]

No. I cannot see that claim being made in your quote. Just because the wages of the manager class assume the form of wages for skilled labor, does not mean that the managers themselves perform value-creating labor.

"The labor of management...is directly connected to...the productive function...The wages of management assume the form of wages of skilled labor."

At some level in the hierarchy of a corporation the productive function ceases and the extraction of surplus labor begins. Although all "managers" certainly see themselves as part of the capitalist "class," but then, so do a lot of workers, at least in the U.S.

[RedMaterialist]

One can be thought to be a part of value creation, the other not at all. Most upper management slants heavily toward extractive aspect, with many of them superfluous to the production process altogether.

No one can argue with that. I wonder if one could find where the dividing line is.

[RedMaterialist]

[SIZE=3] Capitalists increasingly became shareholders and merely recipients of dividends and were increasingly completely divorced from the productive process itself.

Making it increasingly transparent that the recipients of dividends and the dividends [profits] themselves could not be nor were received as, or for, wages of supervision.

Which, I think, is why the bourgeois economists had to come up with new theories of profit: 1. the "risk" of the entrepreneur in buying stock is what led to profit; 2. the marginal cost of production reflected in consumer choice is the source of profit; and finally, the opportunity cost "paid" by an investor when he or she doesn't buy some other stock than the one actually bought.

However it is defined, profit is presented as something earned by the rentier class even though they don't actually produce anything.