Automation and Surplus Value

[IBleedRed]

Hi everybody,

As I've been reading through the forums, I've come upon the issue of the automation of labor. It has been repeatedly said that full automation of labor would produce no value because capitalists cannot extract surplus value from robots. This is something that I don't fully grasp.

I understand the idea that capitalists grab their profits at the expense of workers by pocketing surplus value (the difference between the wealth the worker produces and the wealth with which he is compensated), but why would machines prevent this kind of relationship? Wouldn't they be "workers" that are simply paid $0 in wages, so that all wealth produced is surplus value?

If a capitalist can produce a commodity from start to finish without the need of any human labor, and if he can find markets for these commodities, then doesn't it become the case that, far from producing no surplus value, a machine allows him to appropriate all the wealth as surplus value?

Thanks and sorry if I'm not making any sense.

[IBleedRed]

bump

[Sam_b]

Please do not bump your own threads with one-word posts.

[tuwix]

Hi everybody,

As I've been reading through the forums, I've come upon the issue of the automation of labor. It has been repeatedly said that full automation of labor would produce no value because capitalists cannot extract surplus value from robots. This is something that I don't fully grasp.

I don't know who said it, but he or she was just wrong. I find more and more fully automated (in terms of computing) efforts that make profit for owners of them. So-called bots work this way.

Fully automated labor is threat to capitalism due to different reasons than capitalist profit. Let's think what will do people deprived of their jobs? And if all people have secured their living by any social security, then arises a question why there is needed private property at all? Why to maintain a small group of owners, when they don't employ anybody? This is a thread that full automation in capitalist environment for capitalism is.

[Strannik]

I have understood Marx' argument like this: sure, an individual capitalist can and will make profit from automatization - but only for a while. The problem with machines is, that when you build one, your competitor can build another and then only way to make a profit would be to cut the costs. If you had human workers, you could pay them less and they would think of something - get an additional job, grow their own food, etc. But you can't give machines less electricity and fuel - this requires complete redesign, which after while will be copied by all other capitalists as well.
So the surplus value of an automated factory starts to fall as competition picks up. Workers are not machines and find their own means of living outside of the factory relationship.
One can argue, however, that modern management software is less like an automaton and more like a worker in that it can also rearrange resources from outside of factory, so the difference between machine and creative human being is less solid in our age, I think.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think it's because of capitalist competition ultimately and how profits are made. In marxist terms, machines are constant capital - they produce what they produce at the cost that they cost. Crudely: workers are variable capital because they produce what they produce but their "cost" is variable and limited ultimately by what it costs for a worker to reproduce herself and return to work the next day.

I think the value for automation for the capitalists is that they aren't fully eliminating labor, but making labor more productive at less of a cost. So if you have a shipyard with lots of workers not being paid much but they are unloading things by hand and hook, automation allows the capitalists to hire less workers to move the same amount of goods. So even though modern dockworkers are paid much better than back in the day, there are fewer of them moving a shitload more goods and so their rate of exploitation can actually be higher.

If commodities were produced only by constant capital and there was no variable capital, the market would cause their profits to stagnate as their competitors created analogous methods of automation

Automation can exacerbate the "falling rate of profit" tendency, but maybe that's a topic for a different thread

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't know who said it, but he or she was just wrong. I find more and more fully automated (in terms of computing) efforts that make profit for owners of them. So-called bots work this way.

As I understand it, generally the value of commodites are equal to the market value of the (constant capital) materials/facilities/machines and labor. Because of competition, it's unsustainable for capitalists to just try price gouging all the time because someone else would just lower their price to undercut you eventually. So while prices fluxuate, they fluxuate from a general "value" of the commodity and actually do tend to reflect the values used to create the commodity. But the value and production by a machine or a computer program are more or less fixed, so if there is no variable capital involved, then values generated would begin to also be "fixed". Human labor is variable though because we reproduce ourselves... both in the sense of having children who also must go seek wage-labor, but just in going home, resting and coming back refreshed. What automation and technology seems to do is help manage and discipline human labor, not create surplus value on its own.

[tuwix]

I have understood Marx' argument like this: sure, an individual capitalist can and will make profit from automatization - but only for a while. The problem with machines is, that when you build one, your competitor can build another and then only way to make a profit would be to cut the costs.

As I understand it, generally the value of commodites are equal to the market value of the (constant capital) materials/facilities/machines and labor. Because of competition, it's unsustainable for capitalists to just try price gouging all the time because someone else would just lower their price to undercut you eventually.

Firstly, you both assume that competitors can compete mainly by price that means really cutting cost. But it's not true, because they can compete on many different levels like influencing a regulations for its own profits, making quality goods or investing more in advertising. And it works. For example, very expensive products of Microsoft are more popular than free products of other producers.

Secondly, I see (maybe wrongly) in your both expressions an assumption of so-called perfect competition that doesn't exist. As history of capitalism shows, participants of market can and do cooperate for their own profits. This is called oligopoly. And thus, capitalists can easily survive automation from pure economic point of view.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Firstly, you both assume that competitors can compete mainly by price that means really cutting cost. But it's not true, because they can compete on many different levels like influencing a regulations for its own profits, making quality goods or investing more in advertising. And it works. For example, very expensive products of Microsoft are more popular than free products of other producers.

Well I think I was speaking of value, not price. what you describe in terms of capturing more market share is certainly a big way that individual firms can increase their sales and whatnot, but this is shuffling the deck, not the creation of new wealth itself. This is certainly how businesses operate, but not the underlying features of what makes capitalism as a system tic. Firms can cooperate or they can steal from eachother, but this is not a general "law of motion" in capitalism, it does not create new value and new wealth, just how it's divided among parts of the economy. Money is also made on speculation and financial games, but again, this is making money like wining a pool of poker chips from other players is making money... i.e. the firm makes-out while others may loose-out, but it's not how new value is created and is therefore dependent on some level on new wealth being created somewhere.

Secondly, I see (maybe wrongly) in your both expressions an assumption of so-called perfect competition that doesn't exist. As histort of capitalism shows, participant of market can and do cooparate for their won profits. This is called oligopoly. And thusly, captalists can esaily survive automation form purely economic point of view.

As I understand it, Marxist writings on this are speaking of capitalism in generalities such as if someone says that a ball on a hill will generally roll down that hill due to gravity... in real life there are all sorts of mitigating and circumstantial forces at play. But because a ball rolling down a hill may get stuck or take an unexpected course, roll fast or slow, this does not negate gravity.

[Five Year Plan]

Hi everybody,

As I've been reading through the forums, I've come upon the issue of the automation of labor. It has been repeatedly said that full automation of labor would produce no value because capitalists cannot extract surplus value from robots. This is something that I don't fully grasp.

I understand the idea that capitalists grab their profits at the expense of workers by pocketing surplus value (the difference between the wealth the worker produces and the wealth with which he is compensated), but why would machines prevent this kind of relationship? Wouldn't they be "workers" that are simply paid $0 in wages, so that all wealth produced is surplus value?

If a capitalist can produce a commodity from start to finish without the need of any human labor, and if he can find markets for these commodities, then doesn't it become the case that, far from producing no surplus value, a machine allows him to appropriate all the wealth as surplus value?

Thanks and sorry if I'm not making any sense.

Only living labor creates additional value because value is a relationship between people. If you had a hypothetical fully automated capitalist economy without variable capital (living labor), you would just have capitalists selling machines, constant capital, made by their existing stock of constant capital, to other capitalists. No new human labor would be expended, so the process of manufacturing commodities at that point would only allow the capitalist to recoup the replacement value of his constant capital to replace it with newer stock of the same constant capital. This is because capitalists pass the cost of constant capital onto the 'consumer' through raising the price of the commodity the amount, per commodity, that it costs for the constant capital, and not a penny more, lest a competitor undercut his price and push him out of the market.

[ckaihatsu]

I'll add that 'automation' is not a be-all-end-all "destination" for production, as is commonly implicitly assumed.

Let's say some company found a way to manufacture automobiles without the use of human labor at all -- while they might have a leg-up on the competition for awhile, rival companies would undoubtedly copy that approach and become competitive for market share with that pioneering company (as others have already said).

But what happens if *another* company does the same thing, but also adds *wings* to its cars, allowing the driver to also *fly* as well as drive on roads -- ?

This would *also* be 'automation' of production as well, but it would require new investments in fixed capital (ignoring variable capital, for the sake of argument), just to keep pace with the technological leapfrogging going on.

[Dave B]

I think it is a good way to test a theory by presenting ‘whacky’ thought experiments.

So trying to keep with the spirit of the idea I would propose;

A population of 10 billion workers [not all ‘productive’]

10 robot factories producing all of societies use values or wealth or whatever; including replacement of depreciated robots, as with Karl’s spindles.

But just for simplicities sake no expansion or accumulation of further robots.

And for the sake of theoretical analysis one worker in each of the 10 robot factories.
working a 10 hour day.

Thus each day 10 x10 = 100 hours of productive human work would be performed.

Which would be embodied in the consumption fund of 10 billion individuals.

And then presume that this consumption fund is sufficient to maintain the labour power of all the undifferentiated 10 billion workers [including the 10 that are ‘productively’ employed] .

Then the amount of productive labour that each member of the working class would need to receive to per day to reproduce their labour power [including the ‘productive workers’] would be;

100 hours productive work/ 10 billion

Or

100 hours/ 10,000,000,000,000

Or


10 hours/ 1000,000,000,000

10 x 60 x 60 seconds/ 1000,000,000,000

36 seconds/ 1000,000,000

Or 36 nanoseconds

Which is thus ‘v’.

If we still take the cultural working day as 10 hours.

And for the 10 productive daily workers;

S + v = 100 hours

Then;

S = 100 hours – ( 360 nanoseconds)

Thus essentially all the productive labour is surplus value and s/v or the rate of exploitation;

=100 hours/ 360 nanoseconds

[for productive workers] approaches infinity.

And the total surplus value per day is still essentially 100 hours of labour time; even though that can potentially buy the use value of 10 x 10 billion hours of labour power.

For that to be sustainable the owners of the 100 hours of surplus value in a society of 10 billion would have to spend or exchange it by employing it in ‘unproductive’ labour.

Getting one hour of ‘unproductive’ but still abstract labour for each 3.6 nanoseconds of acquired ‘surplus value’.

What the ‘use’ purchasers of unproductive labour power the owners of the robot factories could put it towards is another question.

Today a lot of that kind of thing goes towards finance, banking, advertising and the arms industry etc.

It doesn’t seem to be a great test of ingenuity to find ways of doing unproductive things.

[IBleedRed]

Only living labor creates additional value because value is a relationship between people. If you had a hypothetical fully automated capitalist economy without variable capital (living labor), you would just have capitalists selling machines, constant capital, made by their existing stock of constant capital, to other capitalists. No new human labor would be expended, so the process of manufacturing commodities at that point would only allow the capitalist to recoup the replacement value of his constant capital to replace it with newer stock of the same constant capital. This is because capitalists pass the cost of constant capital onto the 'consumer' through raising the price of the commodity the amount, per commodity, that it costs for the constant capital, and not a penny more, lest a competitor undercut his price and push him out of the market.

I don't understand this.

Let's say a capitalist owns X amount of constant capital.

Let's say the capitalist is using his existing stock, X, to produce additional stock of the same constant capital. And let's say production is fully automated from beginning to end (even from extraction of the ore and materials in the very beginning).

If the capitalist ends up with Y amount of constant capital, where Y is higher than X, hasn't he increased the wealth he possesses, even without workers?

[reb]

Think of it this way. A worker works for a capitalist for free, in that, after they have created the equal value for which they need to reproduce themselves as worker, the capitalist them pockets the rest of the value for himself (even if this is hidden by wage-labor). The surplus value is unpaid labor. There is no surplus value or unpaid labor in a fully automated system. It merely just is, you can't work it harder or longer.

[motion denied]

I think this article by Mandel might be of help.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mand...xx/future.html

Have in mind that it was written in 1985.

I'll leave a quote, because I don't want to just drop a link:

Let us now make the hypothesis that all this will be disproved by experience during the coming decades; that both for economic reasons (robotisation) and political ones which we allegedly ‘underestimate’, wagelabour will decrease considerably between now and the end of the 20th century; that therefore the proletariat has already started to decline objectively (both in numbers and inner cohesion) and that for the same reason its objective capacity to transform society in a socialist sense will also decline more or less steadily. In that case, one should not only say ‘goodbye’ to the proletariat. One would also have to say:

• ‘goodbye’ to socialism and any realistic (materialistically based) project of human emancipation;
• ‘goodbye’ to the market economy and capitalism itself.

[RedMaterialist]

I don't understand this.

Let's say a capitalist owns X amount of constant capital.

Let's say the capitalist is using his existing stock, X, to produce additional stock of the same constant capital. And let's say production is fully automated from beginning to end (even from extraction of the ore and materials in the very beginning).

If the capitalist ends up with Y amount of constant capital, where Y is higher than X, hasn't he increased the wealth he possesses, even without workers?

That would be true only if you assume his new capital is worth more than the
previous capital. Surplus value can only be increased by the labor of a human being. As capitalism becomes more technically advanced, more and more machines replace the work of humans. This is why the rate of profit decreases over time.

If everything was automated, from the building of machines, to the programming of computers, to advertising, to performing surgery, to flying airplanes, whatever, then no surplus value, no profit, no exchange-value could be created; only use-value, say a new bottle of beer, would be created.