Do machines produce surplus value?
- This topic has 86 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Sorry, Robbo, I must to leave it there, Otherl things, as I said yesterday, temporarily claim my attention.The full answer lies in Kliman, who unfortunately is at times mathematical, and so is not always an easy read.I tried to précis him earlier, and replicate his insights above.There are web sites that put his argument that are worth googling.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I think the under studied concept of surplus profit is relevent here: Marx did envisage a competetive advantage to machinery: if there is a predominant method of production in an industry, innovative production methods may allow a firm to produce goods sold at a price above their value, if otehr manufacturers have to sell at a production cost based on the old method. This isn't rent as such, but it is close. Such a new machine would seem to create or add value.YMS, This seems to be somewhat analogous to the concept of "super profits" in Leninist theory which are obtained through imperialist investment in the Third World?On a related theme I am curious about the tradition in neoclassical economics for describing what Marxists would call "profit" , as "interest". Profit accoding to the neoclassical economists is something that is obtained over and above the going market rate and is achieved by outwitting or outguessing your rivals. Any idea of what is the background to this curious distinction which flies in the face of the usual 3 fold marxian typology of proft rent and interest?
Yes, yms refers to relative surplus-value. Relative surplus-value doesn’t arise out of the machine, as such. It arises out of the relative advantage a more productive machine confers upon its owner over its less-productive competitors, who temporarily set the socially necessary benchmark.That this is not absolute surplus-value is demonstrated when the more-productive machine owner loses his relative, or competitive, advantage when his competition catches up.On the other hand, we are considering absolute surplus-value arising out of a machine, which is the miraculous generation of surplus-labour by employing dead labour. Terrific if it worked, as dead labour isn’t unionised, doesn’t go on strike, needs no meal and bathroom breaks, and operates 24/7. You’d really think its supporters, like Keen, would advocate employing dead labour as a universal capitalist panacea.
twc wrote:Forget about Lenin as a serious economist.Oh I do, TWC, I do. His theory of superexploitation and his complementary theory of the labour aristocracy are so full of holes its difficult to know where to start with demolishing them. In that connection there has been some useful material written by a guy called Charlie Post, Here is a sample of his workhttp://www.solidarity-us.org/node/128
robbo203 wrote:At the end of the day I feel the argument boils down to axiomatic point that, by definition, machines dont perform abstract human labour and therefore cannot be said to generate value in these terms. . If you are going to criticise a theory you have to stick with its basic definitions and follow through the logic of the argument to its conclusion. You cannot surreptitiously import another definition of value into your own argument which is what Keen and co are effectively doing,I think this is pretty much it. The examples you give change the meaning of "value" into something different to what it means in Marx's model.
Sorry, but he isn’t surreptitiously doing anything. He is openly identifying physical labour time (with inputs simultaneously evaluated with outputs, over the entire economy) as value.This definition was accepted by virtually all the post-war marxian economists. They turned this definition left-side, right-side, upside-down, and couldn’t fault the definition. This was identical to Marx's, but mathematically improved.And it was evaluated over the entire economy, and so it was clearly socially necessary in the Marxian sense.Everyone also agreed that this definition, in terms of socially necessary physical labour time (with inputs and outputs evaluated simultaneously) revealed that Marxian value was utterly in error. The error was clearly demonstrated to be Marx’s own definition.Please don’t underestimate the seriousness of the resulting charges that Marxian value was an incoherent, unnecessary or redundant, concept.This alone drove most serious academic Marxian economists out of the field. The academic standing of Marx and Marxian economics sank to the level of a misguided standing joke. Only a few dogged diehards remained, and none of them could find the flaws in the argument. There is nothing surreptitious at all. Keen is merely following the rest. You see machines producing surplus-value comes straight out of the definition of value based on identifying it with physical labour time (with inputs evaluated with outputs simultaneously over the entire economy) as value.That’s precisely why I chose to expose Keen above by exposing the problems with evaluation in physical labour time.Clearly that didn't strike home.Please re-read what I wrote, with the above explanation in mind. You may then understand why I tried to demolish physical labour time and stress Marxian socially necessary labour time. My omission was to skip over the simultaneity. But I mistakenly thought that concept would even confuse matters more.Eventually read Kliman.
twc wrote:There is nothing surreptitious at all. Keen is merely following the rest. You see machines producing surplus-value comes straight out of the definition of value based on identifying it with physical labour time …as value.How so? Im not quite clear what you are saying here. Sure I understand the distinction between physical labour time and socially necessary labour time but I dont quite understand how this relates to the question of whether machines produce value or indeed surplus value. I say machines dont and cannot, by definItion, produce value because value is socially necessary abstract labour (SNAL) and machines dont and can't perform SNAL. They are just … er…machines, They dont "labour" (although perhaps in the remote future self aware and emotionally literate androids might be developed that might come to consider themselves to be "labourers" , though what they might think their needs might be other than to top up their battery supply and play endless rounds of chess, I wouldnt know….)That SNAL is different to physical labour is true enough but doesnt seem to have much bearing on the subject. So I would be intrigued to find out what your reasoning is for saying the above
The fallacy in both Adam Smith's and Karl Marx's theories of economics is the product of labor is not the basis of our economy, the product of nature is. Machine can replace labor and Global Resource Bank shareholder income let's everyone enjoy the good life now, i.e., do what they like. – http://www.grb.net
John Pozzi wrote:The fallacy in both Adam Smith's and Karl Marx's theories of economics is the product of labor is not the basis of our economy, the product of nature is. Machine can replace labor and Global Resource Bank shareholder income let's everyone enjoy the good life now, i.e., do what they like. – http://www.grb.netThere's only one problem with what you've written, and that problem is, that your completely wrong. Other than that, it's fine
Marx wrote:Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. the above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Tim Kilgallon wrote:John Pozzi wrote:The fallacy in both Adam Smith's and Karl Marx's theories of economics is the product of labor is not the basis of our economy, the product of nature is. Machine can replace labor and Global Resource Bank shareholder income let's everyone enjoy the good life now, i.e., do what they like. – http://www.grb.netThere's only one problem with what you've written, and that problem is, that your completely wrong. Other than that, it's fine
He has been wrong since he made his first post. It is all capitalist crap
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.