Originator of a THESIS on money’s incapacity

[Dave B]

ilooks like prior post didn't go through try again; I probably agree with you Alan and I have done this before in the past with Adam and others. As soon as you suggest measuring the labour time value in moneyless communism you get straw man responses. One will be you are going to use it for exchange; be it labour vouchers or whatever. And the other is that it can’t be done accurately. It doesn’t seem to matter how often you deny the first. On second it doesn’t need to be done accurately for it to be useful. We say on the one hand that there is empirical evidence for the labour theory of value because it can easily be seen that things that take more effort to produce cost more. I suppose we could respond by how do you know that is true if you can’t estimate the comparative labour time values of things? They put nutritional information on food items; but they often can’t, don’t and don’t have to measure that accurately either.  A tolerance or error of about +/-20% is acceptable for most things. I think in order to be a socially responsible producer and consumer it is reasonable to want to know approximately how much labour time it takes to produce something you are considering consuming. And if you planning production or considering a new production methodology you need in part to know whether it is going to take more or less effort to produce it that way rather than another. If you decide not to build a bridge out of platinum rather than steel it is because you have made a labour time calculation. Non scientist seem to have no idea whatsoever of the utility of making estimate calculations. In it was in a book by Prof’s Foreshaw and Brain Cox I have just read; about what can be usefully learned by back of a beer-mat calculations.     Capital Vol. III Part VIIRevenues and their SourcesChapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of Production 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. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm 

[ALB]

Quote:

Capital Vol. III Part VIIRevenues and their SourcesChapter 49. Concerning the Analysis of the Process of ProductionSecondly, 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.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm

Funny you should quote that, Dave, as it was what Ted Grant, later of Militant fame, quoted back at me when I said that socialism would involve the disappearance of money at a meeting of the Labour Party Young Socialists in Newport ages ago. Of course it doesn't refute what we say about money and I know you don't think it does either. But what do you think Marx meant by "the regulation of labour-time" and "the distribution of social labour among the various production groups"? Was he talking about living labour or about dead labour? About the labour-time available for current production or that embodied in past production?Here's another quote from another of Marx's unedited works, the famous Grundrisse:

Quote:

On the basis of communal production, the determination of time remains, of course, essential. The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. Just as in the case of an individual, the multiplicity of its development, its enjoyment and its activity depends on economization of time. Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself. Society likewise has to distribute its time in a purposeful way, in order to achieve a production adequate to its overall needs; just as the individual has to distribute his time correctly in order to achieve knowledge in proper proportions or in order to satisfy the various demands on his activity. Thus, economy of time, along with the planned distribution of labour time among the various branches of production, remains the first economic law on the basis of communal production. It becomes law, there, to an even higher degree. However, this is essentially different from a measurement of exchange values (labour or products) by labour time.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm

[Dave B]

iI would for the sake of simplicity define ‘dead labour time’ as that embodied in the means of production eg machines etc. If we look at capitalism and even communism from the outside what humans are doing, ‘substantive side’  and would be doing in effect is making stuff to be directly consumed and making stuff that enables us to make stuff using less effort. At some point we might think about at what point we would wish to expend effort today to make things easier in the future. Or settle at some 20 hours a day to obtain abundance or work 30 hours a day so that ‘we’ only have to work 10 hours in the future. It might look I suppose that we are now making stuff that we didn’t make before like mobile phones and computers etc. However I think we are just making stuff that does the same stuff as before but for less effort and which performs a lot better. Eg emails versus snailmail.  Karl does it the same chapter although cluttering up the interesting argument at the beginning with making stuff not for direct consumption but for a disaster reserve of stuff in case some goes wrong. Then he goes on, looking from the outside, at surplus labour becoming  machines and capital in capitalism and something we only do to reduce the working day in communism. This is the sole portion of revenue which is neither consumed as such nor serves necessarily as a fund for accumulation. ……….Whether it actually serves as such, or covers merely a loss in reproduction, depends upon chance. …….This is also the only portion of surplus-value and surplus-product, and thus of surplus-labour, which would continue to exist, outside of that portion serving for accumulation, and hence expansion of the process of reproduction, even after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production. This, of course, presupposes that the portion regularly consumed by direct producers does not remain limited to its present minimum. Apart from surplus-labour for those who on account of age are not yet, or no longer, able to take part in production, all labour to support those who do not work would cease. If we think back to the beginnings of society, we find no produced means of production, hence no constant capital, the value of which could pass into the product, and which, in reproduction on the same scale, would have to be replaced in kind out of the product and to a degree measured by its value. But Nature there directly provides the means of subsistence, which need not first be produced. Nature thereby also gives to the savage who has but few wants to satisfy the time, not to use the as yet non-existent means of production in new production, but to transform, alongside the labour required to appropriate naturally existing means of production, other products of Nature into means of production: bows, stone knives, boats, etc. This process among savages, considered merely from the substantive side, corresponds to the reconversion of surplus-labour into new capital. In the process of accumulation, the conversion of such products of excess labour into capital obtains continually; and the circumstance that all new capital arises out of profit, rent, or other forms of revenue, i.e., out of https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch49.htm So savages utilised there spare time making bows and arrows as it would mean it would take less time and effort killing deers than hiding in bushes and clubbing them on the head with a rock or big stick that they found lying around from nature. The deers and bows and arrow thing was used by some classical economists. Something to do with them being a capitalist property and renting them out to hunters and or gaining a share of the kill my possession or ownership of them. Or something like that I think? Yes not only value in communism but surplus value Jim ! but not as we know it now.

[ALB]

Dave B wrote:

Yes not only value in communism but surplus value Jim ! but not as we know it now.

Next you'll be telling us that peasants produce surplus value (one of the trick questions in the questionnaire to stand as a Socialist Party candidate at elections) ! Value and surplus value are categories that apply only when analysing capitalist society. Of course even in socialism there will be a "surplus" over what the producers consume (to maintain those who can't or don't work and to expand the means of production if need be, as you point out) but this won't be surplus "value". The fact that the view you and Alan hold of something like value under capitalism surviving into socialism as "surplus value" is  proof that it is incoherent on he principle of reductio ad absurdum.Having said this, to be honest, I have to admit that Marx probably envisaged some form of general labour-time accounting in socialism but hadn't thought it through properly since, as you pointed out in a previous posting, he didn't think that "socially necessary labour" could be measured in advance of being established by the market even under capitalism, let alone in socialism where no market forces would operate. What would be the point of trying, in socialism, to second guess how to achieve the pattern of production that the market is supposed to bring about under capitalism?

[Alan Kerr]

@ALB"… Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption…"(Marx)The various wants of the community are 1) common wants and 2) individual wants. Labour-time plays a part in the common plan, the proper proportion between 1 and 2 and the different kinds of work to be done.I leave readers to judge.I notice that you don’t mind about counting. You just mind about proper counting that is better than the market. But it is sloppy counting (no better than the market) that leads to scarcity…

[Alan Kerr]

Thanks Dave,Here's a quote for you"… From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average. Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. Just as little as it would occur to chemical science still to express atomic weight in a roundabout way, relatively, by means of the hydrogen atom, if it were able to express them absolutely, in their adequate measure, namely in actual weights, in billionths or quadrillionths of a gramme. Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”. *15"Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877 Part III: Socialism IV. Distribution (Near end of chapter)"*15 As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital."(Engels)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/notes.htm#n*15

[ALB]

I still think these are references to matching living labour, i.e the work resources available to socialist society, to what  needs to be produced in a given period, which will obviously have to happen and will involve calculations (though not just of labour time available but of the availability of other productive resources too). In other words, it's about current production e.g. about the labour-time needed to produce a steam engine from materials already available. But the amount of labour-time spent during the last stage of the production of something (which is what would be involved here) is not the same as the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it (which includes the labour-time spent on producing the raw materials, energy, and wear and tear of the machines). In Marxian terms, it's v + s (as opposed to v + s + c). In conventional economics it's "value added" not total value.Note also the clear statement that "value" won't exist in socialism.

[Dave B]

iI have used that one before Alan. I think what Adam and others are missing is the understanding of the scientific method and the importance of things like the premise or predicate or whatever you might want to call it. From an analysis of capitalist they deduced necessary labour time and surplus labour (time) ……….The necessary labour time is the time (per day or per week) which workers must work (in the average conditions of the industry of their day), to produce the equivalent of their own livelihood (at the socially and historically determined standard of living of their day)……  Or in other words what the amount of work they need to do to keep body and soul together, ….and that extra time they work, over and above the necessary labour time, is called surplus labour time. Actually this was hard work. Because it is all quite complicated in capitalism as the worker does not work from Monday to Wednesday for himself, exactly, and during that time produces what he needs for his own subsistence. And doesn’t works from Thursday to Friday doing extra work for the capitalist making a surplus product that belongs to the capitalist. Because it is all obscured by the smoke and mirrors of the buying and selling of stuff including labour power. Actually what he could have done first or perhaps somebody else before him could have done is to have written something much, much  shorter like Das Feudalherrschaft or something. And then re feudal peasants they could have deduced and defined that when a feudal peasant worked from Monday to Wednesday on ‘their’ own land to produce stuff that they needed for their own subsistance that that was their necessary labour time. And on Thursday to Friday they performed extra surplus labour or  work for the feudal lord. It would have been a lot simpler too as there was no exchange or buying and sellling masking the process. The necessary labour time and surplus labour would clearly or “palpably” de-lineated not only in ‘time’ eg Monday to Wednesday and from Thursday to Friday. But in where the work was performed eg in the Serf’s ‘own’ work ‘space’ or on the Lords ‘space’. ‘separated in space and time’ And actually what was produced with surplus labour time might be different to what was produced during necessary labour time. Thus; ….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. 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…      https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm  And he could then have plugged that premise from an analysis of feudalism into an analysis of capitalism. As there was no book as such Karl retrospectively plugged the predicates he derived from capitalism back into feudalism. Or analyses feudalism using the predicates derived from capitalism to test the universality of them. A bit like falling apples on earth and planets in the heavens. Eg.  ….To what extent the labourer (a self-sustaining serf) can secure in this case a surplus above his indispensable necessities of life, i.e., a surplus above that which we would call wages under the capitalist mode of production,….. He does the same thing with Robinson Crusoe with value. He also carries the predicate forward into a hypothetical moneyless communism although here collectivises or lumps together all the necessary labour of the all the [able bodied] workers. They produce all they need to reproduce their labour power or keep going on a rolling week by week basis. And they work extra time to maintain the young, old and disabled etc as well as to produce labour saving devices for the future so they will in future have to work less. Obviously what Adam and the vulgar Marxist do is what Karl and Fred didn’t do and that is to make the premise derived from capitalism conditional, ie only in capitalism and not universal. That is not to say of course that feudalism, capitalism and communism are the same. The differences in fact can be drawn out, analysed and understood by applying the same premise to each of them. In feudalism and capitalism theoretically for instance the amount of surplus value the workers perform is the maximum that is humanly possible given the technological level and or the potential productivity of the natural resources etc. In communism it can be democratically decided how much extra labour time is performed to increase future productivity. If that is done at all.  This is ignoring in fact the consumption fund of the ruling class that comes out of surplus labour and in capitalism is a portion of the surplus product. In feudalism for instance all the surplus labour and surplus product is used for the consumption fund of the ruling class. Whether they consume it directly or exchange it for bling made by the guild artisans of the towns. In capitalism proper a significant proportion of the surplus labour, surplus product and surplus value goes towards more labour saving ‘capital’ to steal a march on their competitors. Actually the capitalist class could live like misers as with Scrooge and it wouldn’t change much. An analysis of the subjective motivation of the ruling class might change a bit.    

[Dave B]

iI think what Fred and Karl does in the Gotha programme when discussing value in the context of capitalism and communism is the start to put value in italics value or in inverted commas “value”. It is because the ‘content’ in both capitalism and commumism is the same but the form or how or in what way it expresses itself or how we experience it or what it means to us changes.     https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm

[Bijou Drains]

ALB wrote:

I still think these are references to matching living labour, i.e the work resources available to socialist society, to what  needs to be produced in a given period, which will obviously have to happen and will involve calculations (though not just of labour time available but of the availability of other productive resources too). In other words, it's about current production e.g. about the labour-time needed to produce a steam engine from materials already available. But the amount of labour-time spent during the last stage of the production of something (which is what would be involved here) is not the same as the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it (which includes the labour-time spent on producing the raw materials, energy, and wear and tear of the machines). In Marxian terms, it's v + s (as opposed to v + s + c). In conventional economics it's "value added" not total value.Note also the clear statement that "value" won't exist in socialism.

My own view is that it will be in some ways more complicated than that, for example we would need to factor into the development of a nuclear power station things like the time spent educating the nuclear physicists, the training of the building workers, etc. There would also be the need to consider the other options, if we build (a) then we don't use those resources to build (b). for argument's sake a gneral hospital. In addition there would need to be consideration of facts such as environmental impact, etc. etc. etc.In that sense I don't see the problem of accountancy that Mises raises as being particualrly difficult, because the issues go beyong just the numbers and into democratic debate. The problem will be in ensuring that the democratic debate is as well informed as it can be.That is why I think in some ways it will be simpler, because these are the kinds of decisions we all make on a household basis or even on an organisational basis every day. Shall I have coquille saint jacques for my tea, or should I have a fish finger sandwich, doesn't come down purely to cost, have I got fish fingers in the freezer might be a factor, can I be arsed to mess about with the coquilles Saint Jacques, 'cos there's a match on the telly tonight and I'm running late anyway, I really like a fish finger sandwich and I've got some really nice bread in as well as lots of nice butter, may all be factors in choosing the fish finger sandwich. Similarly the party doesn't base all of its decisions about the use of human resources on monetary costs. When we decide a schedule of meetings or how volunteers are going to use their time for the party, we don't carry out a socially useful labour time calculation before we get started. Yet decisions about what we are going to do get made and resources allocated as required.

[ALB]

Bijou, the points you make are covered, in almost the same terms, in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of our pamphlet Socialism As A Practical Alternative, i.e goods and services for individual consumption being a more or less self-regulating way in accordance with what individuals take or use, with major infrastructure decisions made democratically:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-practical-alternative

[Alan Kerr]

ALB I think that you have open mind and want to change your mind as need be. That’s a good start. I agree with Dave's point about raw materials. I want readers easily to follow this.Please excuse repetition"… Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution…"(Marx)ALB you say"I still think these are references to matching living labour, i.e the work resources available to socialist society, to what  needs to be produced in a given period, which will obviously have to happen and will involve calculations (though not just of labour time available but of the availability of other productive resources too). In other words, it's about current production e.g. about the labour-time needed to produce a steam engine from materials already available. But the amount of labour-time spent during the last stage of the production of something (which is what would be involved here) is not the same as the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it (which includes the labour-time spent on producing the raw materials, energy, and wear and tear of the machines). In Marxian terms, it's v + s (as opposed to v + s + c). In conventional economics it's "value added" not total value."(ALB from comment #97)But ALB does your interpretation there stand up at all? Let's test it. Suppose someone wants a wedding ring for their wife. Then a gold ring set with a diamond costs the same, or less, than a cheap metal ring set with a glass bead. That's not counting raw materials. Gold and diamonds are available after all. The community will also want a new house. A full-load of gold bars cost less than a full-load of clay bricks. Again, that's just so long as we are not counting the dead-labour in mining the raw materials. Does the community need 5 beds? Best make the beds from gold. That will cut costs – not counting the raw materials. Best make the steam engine from gold and platinum too. Who cares what platinum costs in human labour? It's just a raw material.But no, your interpretation there will not stand up at all.We must also count the labour-time spent on producing the raw materials, energy, and wear and tear of the machines – in Marxian terms, v + s + c.http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpA8.html#Part III, Chapter 8

[Anonymous]

And then we are complaining that we are losing members and that we do not get the new member, and that we do not have too much participation in this forum, and that we have the same peoples posting in this forum. One of the reason is that we are wasting too much time in intellectual discussion, and we are not addressing issues that are related to the actual interests of the world working class.  This theory about money has already been discussed in many articles written by the Socialist Party, and it is also widely expressed in Marx Capital. The only thing that we must know is that money is a product of the economic exploitation of the working class

[northern light]

I wholeheartedly agree with Marcos. While there must be discourse at all levels, let us not scare off  curious, or even doubtful members of the working class, who take the trouble to find us.

[ALB]

I am not advocating that we only count the labour-time expended at the last stage of the production of something. That would be absurd and lead to the anomalies that you point out. But this is what those who like the idea of labour-time vouchers are committed to as their scheme is based on recording the time spent by "living labour" producing goods and providing services and on fixing the "prices" of goods the vouchers can be used to claim to reflect of this.I am not at all arguing against calculation but just against the need to calculate the labour-time content of everthing, i.e the need for some general unit of account. Of course socialist society will have to count what work resources are available to produce what is needed, but it will also have to count what other resources are required but in specific units. Labour is counted by time (and particular skill), steel in tonnes, electricity in killowatt-hours, and so on.Why try to reduce all producive resources to a laour-time content and to make a point of minimising this — that's what the economic laws of capitalism work to bring about. Even work-time itself need not be minimised when the work is interesting and satisfying. Socialism allows humans precisely to escape from the tyranny of minimising costs that capitalism imposes and allows other thngs to be taken into account such as working conditions and impact on the environment. Labour-time counting and minimising would tend to bring about the same result that capitalism's "law of value" does.

[Author]

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