Money and Communism

[APathToTake]

The idea is that once we've become a communist state, we'd have no need for money anymore and it would be abolished.

My question is: Would this have to be the case?

Is it essential to the communist society that money is abolished?

Certainly, everyone is equal and should be treated as such, but there are certain "unskilled" jobs that would be more desirable than others.

What if job A(more desirable) has no vacancies. So you have to get job B (less desirable). Would there be any sort of compensation for the person who has to work a more maual, strenuous, dangerous ect. job that someone who doesn't?

Excuse my ignorance. Please be patient.

Thanks

[NecroCommie]

Well, the idea is that even economy is democratic in communism. So the local council/soviet/whatevah would make a democratic decision on which wy to occupy vital jobs. There are many ways to fill those places, for example, one might want to circulate workers through those jobs, so that one worker would not have to do that job for too long. It is also possible to use the minority that actually volunteers for these "unwanted" jobs. In the end, the simple necessity would drive some people to volunteer for crucial "unwanted" jobs. Meaning that when the streets start to fill with rubbish, the prestige of becoming a cleaner would increase.

Is it essential to the communist society that money is abolished?

Yes, because money is not a good way of measuring labour or value. When we start seeking values in products that exist only in our heads, problems are bound to occur. Meaning that when we have a house, it only should have value as a house, and not as a means of exploitation.

These are just few solutions.

[ZeroNowhere]

You could have labour credits, as Marx thought would be necessary, but you couldn't have money because money leads to exchange-value, and value and the profit motive sneak back in. In which case all you'd have is capitalism with worker-owned corporations, in which case why the hell this situation would be perpetuated would be something of a mystery.

[robbo203]

The idea is that once we've become a communist state, we'd have no need for money anymore and it would be abolished.

My question is: Would this have to be the case?

Is it essential to the communist society that money is abolished?

Yes, it is absolutely essential to communism that money disappears. Money is a social relationship. It links buyers and sellers in a market and therefore presupposes these things. But communism implies common ownership of the means of production. Where everybody owns the means of production it is not logically possible to have economic exchange. Exchange implies owners and non owners. When I exchange something with you I am exchanging property title to this thing for some other thing. If you own a factory producing widgets you can sell these widgets on because you own them by virtue of owning the factory that produced them. It follows that if everyone in society owned the factory there would be no one to whom these widgets could be sold or exchanged.

If there is no economic exchange then there is no reason to have a means of exchange - money

[APathToTake]

Thanks to each of you for your imput.

Did any of you struggle to get your head around these things at first?
Growing up in a capitalist western society, it's become all I know.
I understand what you guys are saying and I agree with it, it just seems like such a foreign concept, partly because i'm on just starting to think of these things

[ZeroNowhere]

Definitely, at least on my part. Reading Marx helped a lot, but that is quite a bit to get one's head around at first as well (especially due to the first part of Capital, I've heard it lead to quite a few people giving up on it, at least for a while. I suppose that it would perhaps be wiser to just browse through those chapters at first, and then read through them in detail after finishing the rest of the book). But then, "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits."

And yeah, there's a lot to unlearn as well, in my case most things I had learnt on economics, and a large part of high school history.

[NecroCommie]

Sure it was hard for me to understand it at first, but that's completely because there are very few concrete examples when talking this stuff, so alot of the conversation is abstract to the extreme.

I would have to say though that even with the concrete examples, or should I say because of the concrete examples, it was even harder for me to swallow capitalism and nationalism. Let alone social democracy. (which is considered "the rigt theory" over here)

[Dave B]

[FONT=Arial]Although it isn’t my kind of thing at all Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, may be of interest to you as well as to demonstate that this kind of thing has been around for a while.. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]And was probably more widely ‘understood’ than it is now.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]There is also News from Nowhere (1890) by Morris that is more interesting than an entertaining read in my opinion .[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhere[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]From a slightly different perspective from ABC of Communism by the Bolshevik N.I. Bukharin and something I only used a few days ago elsewhere;[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]20 Distribution in the communist system[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. Under communism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. In such conditions, money will no longer be required. 'How[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]can that be?' some of you will ask. 'In that case one person will get too much and another too little.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]What sense is there in such a method of distribution?' The answer is as follows. At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]There will be an ample quantity of all products, our present wounds will long since have been healed, and everyone will be able to get just as much as he needs. 'But will not people find it to their interest to take more than they need?' Certainly not. Today, for example, no one thinks it worth while when he wants one seat in a tram, to take three tickets and keep two places empty. It will be just the same in the case of all products.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value. Our meaning is that at the outset, in the first days of communist society, products will probably be distributed in accordance with the amount of work done by the applicant; at a later stage, however, they will simply be supplied according to the needs of the comrades.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]It has often been contended that in the future society everyone will have the right to the full product of his labour. 'What you have made by your labour, that you will receive.' This is false. It would never be possible to realize it fully. Why not? For this reason, that if everyone were to receive the full product of his labour, there would never be any possibility of developing, expanding, and improving production. Part of the work done must always be devoted to the development and improvement of production.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]If we had to consume and to use up everything we have produced, then we could never produce machines, for these cannot be eaten or worn. But it is obvious that the bettering of life will go hand in hand with the extension and improvement of machinery. It is plain that more and more machines must continually be produced. Now this implies that part of the labour which has been incorporated in the machines will not be returned to the person who has done the work. It implies that no one can ever receive the full product of his labour.[/FONT]




[FONT=Arial]But nothing of the kind is necessary. With the aid of good machinery, production will be so arranged that all needs will be satisfied.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]To sum up, at the outset products will be distributed in proportion to the work done (which does not mean that the worker will receive 'the full product of his labour'); subsequently, products will be distributed according to need, for there will be an abundance of everything.[/FONT]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]§ 21 Administration in the communist system[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]In a communist society there will be no classes. But if there will be no classes, this implies that in communist society there will likewise be no State.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]We have previously seen that the State is a class organization of the rulers. The State is always directed by one class against the other. A bourgeois State is directed against the proletariat, whereas a proletarian State is directed against the bourgeoisie. In the communist social order there are neither landlords, nor capitalists, nor wage workers; there are simply people - comrades.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]If there are no classes, then there is no class war, and there are no class organizations. Consequently the State has ceased to exist. Since there is no class war, the State has become superfluous. There is no one to be held in restraint, and there is no one to impose restraint.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]But how, they will ask us, can this vast organization be set in motion without any administration? Who is going to work out the plans for social production?[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Who will distribute labour power? Who is going to keep account of social income and expenditure? In a word, who is going to supervise the whole affair?[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]It is not difficult to answer these questions. The main direction will be entrusted to various kinds of book-keeping offices or statistical bureaux. There, from day to day, account will be kept of production and all its needs; there also it will be decided whither workers must be sent, whence they must be taken, and how much work there is to be done. And inasmuch as, from childhood onwards, all will have been accustomed to social labour, and since all will understand that this work is necessary and that life goes easier when everything is done according to a prearranged plan and when the social order is like a well-oiled machine, all will work in accordance with the indications of these statistical bureaux.[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]There will be no need for special ministers of State, for police and prisons, for laws and decrees - nothing of the sort. Just as in an orchestra all the performers watch the conductor's baton and act accordingly, so here all will consult the statistical reports and will direct their work accordingly.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The State, therefore, has ceased to exist. There are no groups and there is no class standing above all other classes. Moreover, in these statistical bureaux one person will work today, another tomorrow. The bureaucracy, the permanent officialdom, will disappear. The State will die out.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Manifestly this will only happen in the fully developed and strongly established communist system, after the complete and definitive victory of the proletariat; nor will it follow immediately upon that victory. For a long time yet, the working class will have to fight against, all its enemies, and in especial against the relics of the past, such as sloth, slackness, criminality, pride. All these will have to be stamped out. Two or three generations of persons will have to grow up under the new conditions before the need will pass for laws and punishments and for the use of repressive measures by the workers' State. Not until then will all the vestiges of the capitalist past disappear.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Though in the intervening period the existence of the workers' State is indispensable, subsequently, in the fully developed communist system, when the vestiges of capitalism are extinct, the proletarian State authority will also pass away. The proletariat itself will become mingled with all the other strata of the population, for everyone will by degrees come to participate in the common labour. Within a few decades there will be quite a new world, with new people and new customs.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/03.htm#020[/FONT]



[FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Arial]Where socialism or communism would be introduced ‘gradually’ in a ‘stepping stone’ and ‘evolutionary manner’ from above by a vanguard ,‘educated socialists’ or a special intelligentsia.[/FONT] [/FONT]

[APathToTake]

Dave B - Thank you for that. The ABC explained it in a very clear manner and made it very easy to understand the whole development process.

[robbo203]

[FONT=Arial]Although it isn’t my kind of thing at all Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, may be of interest to you as well as to demonstate that this kind of thing has been around for a while.. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]And was probably more widely ‘understood’ than it is now.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]There is also News from Nowhere (1890) by Morris that is more interesting than an entertaining read in my opinion .[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhere[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]From a slightly different perspective from ABC of Communism by the Bolshevik N.I. Bukharin and something I only used a few days ago elsewhere;[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]20 Distribution in the communist system[/FONT]





[FONT=Arial]§ 21 Administration in the communist system[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/03.htm#020[/FONT]



[FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Arial]Where socialism or communism would be introduced ‘gradually’ in a ‘stepping stone’ and ‘evolutionary manner’ from above by a vanguard ,‘educated socialists’ or a special intelligentsia.[/FONT] [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Dave[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Is there not more than a hint in Bukarin's ABC of that dreaded concept of central planning - meaning here, society wide planning. I refer to this section from the chapter on administration[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Who will distribute labour power? Who is going to keep account of social income and expenditure? In a word, who is going to supervise the whole affair?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]It is not difficult to answer these questions. The main direction will be entrusted to various kinds of book-keeping offices or statistical bureaux. There, from day to day, account will be kept of production and all its needs; there also it will be decided whither workers must be sent, whence they must be taken, and how much work there is to be done. And inasmuch as, from childhood onwards, all will have been accustomed to social labour, and since all will understand that this work is necessary and that life goes easier when everything is done according to a prearranged plan and when the social order is like a well-oiled machine, all will work in accordance with the indications of these statistical bureaux.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]There will be no need for special ministers of State, for police and prisons, for laws and decrees - nothing of the sort. Just as in an orchestra all the performers watch the conductor's baton and act accordingly, so here all will consult the statistical reports and will direct their work accordingly.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The idea that any kind of complex society can be governed by a single "prearranged plan" and that members of society would take their cue from it in much the same way as members of an orchestra take their cue from the conductors baton is a complete absurdity and logisitically out of the question.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Any kind of complex society - capitalist, communist or whatever - has to entail a very large amount of spontaneous or unplanned ordering in the way the different parts relate to each other. There is simply no way you can "pre-arrange" the inputs and outputs of every productive unit in a communist society . A change in the demand for - or the supply of - of any one good (and there are millions of different kinds of goods) will have ripple effects that will throw all the calculations out of sinc and make the whole idea of a single prearranged plan utterly pointless and timewasting[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Communism like capitalism, like any kind of complex society, will be essentially a self regulating or spontaneously ordered society. Its just that the principles by which a communist society will be self regulating will be quite different from those of capitalism. It will not be achieved via the automatic "invisible hand" of the market[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]p.s And what does Bukharin mean by keeping account of social income and expenditure in a non-money based communist economy?[/FONT]

[Dave B]

[FONT=Arial]Hi Robbo[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]I wasn’t endorsing anything, I quoted just to throw them into the pot as regards different ideas that were circulating around at the time. And, as far as Bukharin was concerned, the kind of thinking from the left side of the bolsheviks at the time of 1922.[/FONT]




[FONT=Arial]What was interesting for me as regards that, was that it is yet another example of what ‘communism’ or the final objective was thought to be; ie a money-less society and voluntary labour etc, which seems to be a bit of an outfield or ‘far left’ idea today, apart from ourselves of course.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]I think we are fairly close when it comes to our perspectives on decentralisation and the bottom up way of doing things.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Undoubtedly the bolsheviks in 1922, despite everything else, were transferring their top down notion of organising the party onto the organisation of economic production. And in fact the organisation of political parties is indeed a microcosm and reflection of the organisation of society, should they get into power. So the dictatorship over the proletariat starts at home or in the party with a professional elite (or elitism as a profession) and living off the members.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The ‘orchestra’ thing was I think a lift from Lenin’s, ever popular amongst libertarians; THE IMMEDIATE TASKS OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT, 1918 [/FONT]




[FONT=Arial]

[FONT=Arial]Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class-consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry.[/FONT]

[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/IT18.html[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]I think Bukharin et al had taken Lenin seriously when they read Lenin’s state and revolution and they expected some kind of gotha programme type thing; hence the problem when Lenin called them infantile muppets and that state capitalism was the thing, as a transition stage to socialism/communism. [/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]‘In a sense’ and in the same way as imperialism was a transition stage to socialism.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The Book-keeping thing is more interesting, as it probably refers to a famous passage in volume III. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Bukharin and some of the others had read Volume III.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]I actually think Lenin was out of his depth on Marx’s das capital as well as Trotsky, and there is no evidence that they were really familiar with it, although I suppose there is nothing wrong with that.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]It all hinges around a very common miss-understanding of the meaning of value. Value is a property or almost ‘physical’ characteristic of a ‘thing’.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]The value of something is the amount of (socially necessary) labour that has gone into making it, thus all made things or artefacts according to that definition have a property, called value.[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]Just as other objects have ‘properties’ eg weight or mass.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]In ‘capitalism’ things exchange according to their value, therefore value manifests itself, is expressed, experienced as, reflected as, or means exchange value. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]In communism things will still have (socially necessary) labour that has gone into making them however there will be no exchange or buying and selling. In communism we will still, to some extent, evaluate how much labour has gone into one thing and another by producing it one way rather than another. But only in order to optimise the efficiency of labour time.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]As consumers in free access communism, where there is no buying, selling and wage labour etc, we may still wish to know how much labour has gone into something, or its value. When assessing whether or not the use value that we anticipate getting out of it is balanced by the amount of labour that has gone into it.[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]Thus apart from anything else, we won’t have gold toilet seats or diamonds in communism because you would have to be a socially irresponsible git to consume such a thing for such a marginal benefit to yourself. [/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Remarkably, you even get this kind of ‘understanding’ in ‘capitalism’ re fair trade coffee and even chickens in cages etc. If some twelve year old kid is going to have to slave away so I can have a cup coffee I would rather not bother, perhaps a bit of irrational ‘socialist’ morality creeping into a capitalist context.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]There is something in anti-duhring on this that I can drag it out if required.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]On the Book-keeping thing from Volume III that was much abused and miss-understood by the Moscow based Marxist-Lenninist institute, it is at the end of [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Chapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of Production[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]

[FONT=Arial]Secondly, after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.[/FONT]

[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]And on the passage on value as a sociological/physical property of a thing, where iron weights are ‘analogous’ to ‘gold’ money;[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]One of the measures that we apply to commodities as material substances, as use values, will serve to illustrate this point. A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight: but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifestation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]A certain quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents value alone. [/FONT]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Some of that stuff is my own perspective and not the party position of the SPGB or World Socialist Movement.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]/[/FONT]

[ZeroNowhere]

[FONT=Arial]It all hinges around a very common miss-understanding of the meaning of value. Value is a property or almost ‘physical’ characteristic of a ‘thing’.[/FONT]

"As values, commodities are social magnitudes, that is to say, something absolutely different from their “properties” as “things”. As values, they constitute only relations of men in their productive activity. Value indeed “implies exchanges”, but exchanges are exchanges of things between men, exchanges which in no way affect the things as such. A thing retains the same “properties” whether it be owned by A or by B. In actual fact, the concept “value” presupposes “exchanges” of the products. Where labour is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not manifest themselves as “values” of “things”. Exchange of products as commodities is a method of exchanging labour, [it demonstrates] the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others [and corresponds to] a certain mode of social labour or social production.

"In the first part of my book, I mentioned that it is characteristic of labour based on private exchange that the social character of labour “manifests” itself in a perverted form—as the “property” of things; that a social relation appears as a relation between things (between products, values in use, commodities). This appearance is accepted as something real by our fetish-worshipper, and he actually believes that the exchange-value of things is determined by their properties as things, and is altogether a natural property of things. No scientist to date has yet discovered what natural qualities make definite proportions of snuff tobacco and paintings “equivalents” for one another."

But I can't really be bothered, this has already been gone over, I believe.

[Dave B]

When using ‘property’ I suppose I should have used the full expression from Marx of ‘a non-natural property’

Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expression of
the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural property common
to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coat, in the expression
of value of the linen, represents a non-natural property of both,
something purely social, namely, their value."

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm[/FONT][/FONT]

[ZeroNowhere]

Alright, though you still seem to be presenting value as a transhistorical property, a property of all products of human labour, contra Marx.

[robbo203]

[FONT=Arial]Hi Robbo[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]I wasn’t endorsing anything, I quoted just to throw them into the pot as regards different ideas that were circulating around at the time. And, as far as Bukharin was concerned, the kind of thinking from the left side of the bolsheviks at the time of 1922.[/FONT]




[FONT=Arial]What was interesting for me as regards that, was that it is yet another example of what ‘communism’ or the final objective was thought to be; ie a money-less society and voluntary labour etc, which seems to be a bit of an outfield or ‘far left’ idea today, apart from ourselves of course.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]I think we are fairly close when it comes to our perspectives on decentralisation and the bottom up way of doing things.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Undoubtedly the bolsheviks in 1922, despite everything else, were transferring their top down notion of organising the party onto the organisation of economic production. And in fact the organisation of political parties is indeed a microcosm and reflection of the organisation of society, should they get into power. So the dictatorship over the proletariat starts at home or in the party with a professional elite (or elitism as a profession) and living off the members.[/FONT][FONT=Arial]/[/FONT]

Good point. Particularly bearing in mind Lenin's comments (with shades of 1984) about democracy being compatible with dictatorship of single individuals. However, I think this fetish for central planning arises more from a preococupation with, or as a reaction to, the perception of capitalism operating according to blind economic forces or economic anarchy. What is objectionable is that we live in a society which is not consciously regulated or controlled but driven by these impersonal forces. Its a short step from that to argue that we then need a single conscious will to control society and from this comes the whole batty idea of a "single central plan" - society wide planning. I cant make up my mind whether this idea is merely a metaphor or a literal prescription. Bukharin seesm to be using it in the latter sense. But you dont need the idea of central planning for society to be a in control of its affairs and not at the mercy of capitalism's economic laws

[Dave B]

[FONT=Arial]Hi Zeronowhere [/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]I accept your point in part however when you pursue this issue as I have done before, it just descends into a philosophical argument over the Bishop Berkeley debate, Descartes, and existentialism as I predicted when someone else started it on Libcom a couple of years ago.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]And concerning natural and non-natural phenomenon; ‘if a tree falls down in a wood and there is no one there to hear it does it make a noise’ and did the planet Pluto and a proton have a mass in Ad 1343.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]And if people do not experience value in artefacts or ‘equate them with value’ do they have a value?[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Karl was in a way was challenged on this kind of thing re value in a ‘non social’ society of one on Robinson Crusoe’s island. And responded thus;[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Part I: Commodities and Money[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Chapter One: Commodities[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political economists, let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than another, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. [/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all that is essential to the determination of value.[/FONT]

[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]So even in a ‘society’ of one where there clearly there is no exchange or buying and selling, taking into consideration how long it takes to produce one thing rather than another ie valuing them and attributing values to them has a function and therefore a ‘reality’.[/FONT]




[FONT=Arial]Not just for taking into consideration the use-value versus value or time taken to make the use value. But perhaps the order in which he might rescue reproducible things when his hut catches fire or whatever.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Another example might be an idealised thought experiment type; of an isolated feudal economy with the feudal lord and peasants etc.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Where ideally the feudal peasant works part of the week on his ‘own’ land to produce what he needs and the rest of the week on the lords land to produce what the Lord of the manor ‘needs’.[/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]Here again, when idealised, there is no exchange or buying and selling of commodities and the Lord of the manor, at least, doesn’t value things or care how much labour has gone into one thing or another.[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Whether or not the peasants would appreciate the amount of labour that gone into what they produce irrespective of any ‘exchange’ is a moot point perhaps[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Therefore you could say if you wanted that value doesn’t exist anymore than Pluto did, for the Lord at least. [/FONT]



[FONT=Arial]However that doesn’t prevent us analysing the situation from a perspective of value, perhaps;[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]Capital Vol. III Part VI Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Chapter 47. Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]So much is evident with respect to labour rent, the simplest and most primitive form of rent: Rent is here the primeval form of surplus-labour and coincides with it. But this identity of surplus-value with unpaid labour of others need not be analysed here because it still exists in its visible, palpable form, since the labour of the direct producer for himself is still separated in space and time from his labour for the landlord and the latter appears directly in the brutal form of enforced labour for a third person. [/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]In the same way the "attribute" possessed by the soil to produce rent is here reduced to a tangibly open secret, for the disposition to furnish rent here also includes human labour-power bound to the soil, and the property relation which compels the owner of labour-power to drive it on and activate it beyond such measure as is required to satisfy his own indispensable needs. Rent consists directly in the appropriation of this surplus expenditure of labour-power by the landlord; for the direct producer pays him no additional rent. Here, where surplus-value and rent are not only identical but where surplus-value has the tangible form of surplus-labour, the natural conditions or limits of rent, being those of surplus-value in general, are plainly clear. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm[/FONT]


[FONT=Arial]Although I can appreciate criticism when you are attempting to get across some basic difficult point, perhaps unsuccessfully, sometimes it can clutter things up a bit trying to close off every little loophole to avoid some awkward sod un-forgivingly jumping all over you later.[/FONT]




[FONT=Arial]I was thinking about you and the ‘properties of things’ when I wrote the last but one post. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial]I am most certainly not looking for a debate on trans-historical ‘concepts’ of natural or non-natural abstractions or realities, Hegelian reflexes of the mind and ‘things in themselves’.[/FONT]



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