working class and surplus-value

[RedMaterialist]

Can socialism (or the early stages of socialism) develop without the working class coming to understand that they are the ones who produce, over and above their wages, social wealth and that the capitalist class takes that wealth, as profit, without paying for it?

I once saw a documentary from a German BMW plant where workers and a manager were talking about surplus value and they seemed to accept it as fairly unconventional. I don't think I have ever heard union workers in the U.S. discussing surplus-value.

Would it be possible for a socialist to explain surplus-value at union meetings and worker meetings at non-union employers, I mean, without getting arrested? I'm thinking about Marx's address to the International in Wages, Prices and Profit.

For instance, Richard Wolff, the Marxist economist, goes around the country talking to mostly college student and professor, Unitarian, types, but not to union and working class people. I think this is a huge mistake. Most people (I don't) don't have the money to travel around and speak to workers, not that a socialist could even get invited.

After Picketty there might be an opening for Marxist education. Even though he claims he's not a Marxist, nobody believes him. (Marx smiles from the grave.)

[motion denied]

Socialism can't come about without mass action by the workers themselves. The subversion of the way men appropriate nature to reproduce themselves (ie, the relations of property) is the task of many.


However, if such is the case, then it is clear that socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase. It has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force – against property, etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot [...] The whole mass of the people must take part in it. Otherwise, socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals.

I think the workers are fairly aware of who produces and who exploits. I know some union people who talk "freely" about surplus-value and whatnot. Shit must be tough in the US.

It doesn't follow, however, that every worker must be an expert on the relationship between Hegel's Logic and Marx's Capital.

[RedMaterialist]

Socialism can't come about without mass action by the workers themselves. The subversion of the way men appropriate nature to reproduce themselves (ie, the relations of property) is the task of many.



I think the workers are fairly aware of who produces and who exploits. I know some union people who talk "freely" about surplus-value and whatnot. Shit must be tough in the US.

It doesn't follow, however, that every worker must be an expert on the relationship between Hegel's Logic and Marx's Capital.

Mass action by workers doesn't seem very imminent. In the meantime shouldn't socialists be trying to educate workers, not in the sense of a university intellectual talking down to a class, but in the revolutionary sense?

If surplus-value can be discussed in Brazil, then why not the U.S.? You're right, it is tough in the U.S. right now. It's amazing what a few billion dollars in propaganda can do.

Heck, even Marxists can't understand the dialectics of Hegel and Marx.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's something that is often intuitively grasped in the u.s., but lack of left and militant traditions in recent decades means that it's outside of official union discourse (business-unionism, or partnership, strategy is totally counter to the idea of surplus value) and so it gets expressed by workers in scattered, atomized, ways when even that.

But I don't really think education about surplus value is really the main thing at this time. Workers experience exploitation, alienation, etc... But often just feel isolated or hopeless about it and so will defer to the "experts" from unions, liberal politicians, and media and colleges: so typical mainstream views of the economy. Understanding surplus value is more important for countering those mainstream explanations from union leaders or politicians or pundits, it's important for understanding how capitalism works and helps inform strategies for it. This is the context of "value, price, and profit" ... A debate about demanding higher wages in capitalism in the context of existing strike waves and class workplace organizing. Theory doesn't set people in motion IMO, it just helps people already in motion to, if the theory is useful and works, head in the right directions for what they are trying to do.

[RedMaterialist]

Isn't there one socialist economist in the entire U.S. who could talk to a union or workers' group in the same way that Marx spoke to the First International Working Mens Association in 1865?

[Proteus2]

It's something that is often intuitively grasped in the u.s., but lack of left and militant traditions in recent decades means that it's outside of official union discourse (business-unionism, or partnership, strategy is totally counter to the idea of surplus value) and so it gets expressed by workers in scattered, atomized, ways when even that.

But I don't really think education about surplus value is really the main thing at this time. Workers experience exploitation, alienation, etc... But often just feel isolated or hopeless about it and so will defer to the "experts" from unions, liberal politicians, and media and colleges: so typical mainstream views of the economy. Understanding surplus value is more important for countering those mainstream explanations from union leaders or politicians or pundits, it's important for understanding how capitalism works and helps inform strategies for it. This is the context of "value, price, and profit" ... A debate about demanding higher wages in capitalism in the context of existing strike waves and class workplace organizing. Theory doesn't set people in motion IMO, it just helps people already in motion to, if the theory is useful and works, head in the right directions for what they are trying to do.

I agree with this outlook. Its winning fights that empowers workers. Workers know they are being shafted. Confronting power is education in itself.

[RedMaterialist]

Its winning fights that empowers workers. Workers know they are being shafted. Confronting power is education in itself.

Workers haven't won too many fights in the last 30 or so years.

[Proteus2]

Workers haven't won too many fights in the last 30 or so years.

Which paradoxically actually emphasises my point. It comes in cycles and people are educated by common struggle. Engaging in these fights for wages, recognition, safety etc empower workers and give them confidence for greater things.

[audiored]

Would it be possible for a socialist to explain surplus-value at union meetings and worker meetings at non-union employers, I mean, without getting arrested? I'm thinking about Marx's address to the International in Wages, Prices and Profit.

For instance, Richard Wolff, the Marxist economist, goes around the country talking to mostly college student and professor, Unitarian, types, but not to union and working class people. I think this is a huge mistake. Most people (I don't) don't have the money to travel around and speak to workers, not that a socialist could even get invited.


I agree it needs to be front and center. I also agree that is it is at least partially intuitive. But there is a lot of power in naming something you may have experienced but aren't sure about. You then suddenly can talk about it with other people in a common language and recognize you share those common experiences.

I'd be interested to know how much education is being done in the $15 now and the fast food workers' strikes. Hopefully this knowledge being propagated and disseminated.

I agree with your comments on Wolff. He speaks to audiences of professional managerial (basically petty bourgeois) left liberals. I'm not sure why he isn't spending more of that time speaking with workers agitating about worker ownership. Obviously they aren't going to pay to fly him around and wealthy liberals who want to feel "progressive" will.

However, I don't think his message is worth discarding. I've read some of his published academic articles which I find more interesting than some of his presentations.

Unfortunately I haven't really read a good solid principled critique of his more sophisticated proposal from revolutionary leftists. Just hurling slurs and strawmen. Such is the left though..

[Jimmie Higgins]

Isn't there one socialist economist in the entire U.S. who could talk to a union or workers' group in the same way that Marx spoke to the First International Working Mens Association in 1865?is there something equivalent to the first international today in which a socialist theoretician could debate and talk to?

[Lowtech]

i originally, just as anyone reading about marx and marxism for the first time, believed the term surplus value is limited to marixan economics or the LTV etc. etc. although actually surplus value is very much an integral part of economic theory universally. surplus value is simply another term for net income, profit, and ultimately, artificial scarcity. and there is mathematically no other way the few owners of capital can consume so much value while producing none themselves.

and in a sense, if you look back historically, you can sort of see economics diverge or fork with one part leading to the mainstream and the other leading to us leftists. between the two schools of thought surplus value has different cultural connotations. whereas marx explains how we are systematically and mathematically exploited, the mainstream economic "experts" attempt to falsify marx just as a prominent philosopher would falsify another philosopher. because modern economics is more a philosophy or methodology of thought than a legitimate economic system. the "official" theory of value itself is only acceptable in the form of a philosophical logic and cannot be substantiated mathematically. so in reality subjective value is nonsensical, but capitalism was never based on reality anyway, it was based on what the oligarchy wanted. capitalists are social engineers with a very inhumane agenda.

when it comes to surplus value and really the theory of value itself, i feel the physiocrats had it partly right: value is based on production cost. however, the owners of capital are not farmers selling excess grain, rather they are deriving surplus value via selling above production cost and devaluing labor.

[jookyle]

One of the things we should take away from socialism in the 20th century is that it can't be forced. When you try to force socialism you don't get socialism at all but an autocracy or oligarchy. Not only is this plain to see looking at history but Lenin even wrote about it in What Is To Be Done?

Also, I would like to say that is possible to talk to workers but you can't force them to listen and you're certainly not going to be able to do it on company property. Some comrades and I have gone to bars and the like where workers go after work or on weekends and have talked to them. A lot of them don't give a shit about what you're saying and good amount might even get pissed off about it, but there's always a few who are willing to listen and if you can get them to understand they can get others to understand. The workers movement is not going to spawn from intellectuals talking to workers but from workers talking to workers. You can't change a person's mind for them, you can however, introduce them to something.