temporal single system interpretation

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I don't think these exchanges make it any easier for me to understand Marx, the transformation problem and TSSI. As we have always argued and LBird too, our theory isn't too complicated and all workers should be able to understand it. When they don't it is often the communicators failure.  I wish i never asked the question now

Alan,  DJP gave you the answer in posts #5 and #7 albeit bit short hand. If you already have an understanding 'value' you will understand the difficulty in converting or relating it to 'price'  This does not invalidate Marx's theoryIt seems LBird rejects this material analysis but doesn't have an alternative – apart from we all have a vote to value items – so resorts to obfuscation and becomes frustratedThat is hardly simplifying things for fellow workers, is it?

[LBird]

[quote-Vin]If you already have an understanding 'value' you will understand the difficulty in converting or relating it to 'price'  This does not invalidate Marx's theory[/quote]But this is precisely what is at dispute, Vin.If you believe that 'value' can't be related to 'price', as I do, you are at odds with 'materialists', for whom 'value' is not a social relationship.If 'value' is a relationship, it clearly can't be 'counted', which would be required to give a 'price'.A 'relationship' can only be estimated by a consciousness, and not measured by reference to its 'material reality'.This means that 'value' can only be estimated by workers: if they democratically decide to reject 'price' as a measure of our needs/wants, then the bourgeois academic 'problem' of relating value to price disappears.It makes one wonder why any 'Marxists' think that there is a problem… unless these 'Marxists' regard 'value' as 'material and measureable' and so able to be converted to 'price'.

[DJP]

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/what-transformation-problem/Just remembered this

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

If you believe that 'value' can't be related to 'price', as I do, you are at odds with 'materialists', for whom 'value' is not a social relationship.

 LBird you have either not read Marx and the SPGB on value or you are deliberately misrepresenting them to make yourself an argument. Other posters are aware that you attribute opinions to them then  attack the opinions the do not hold.“capital, like value, is not a thing but a social relation” Marx and the SPGB  – Has been our position since 1904 http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/depth-articles/economics/introduction-marxian-economics-1-labour-theory-value I suggest you read this article and form a criticism of our REAL position, instead of the position you have decided for us.

[moderator1]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

You are missing the point arent you? Its still a matter of counting – even by your own admission – and so therefore involves a quantitative aspect as well.  I mean how can you exercise democracy without such  quantitative "counting"?

Y'know, sometimes I wonder at the childishness of all this.I say 'theory and practice' – the materialists say 'what about practice, LBird'.I say 'subject and object' – the materialists say 'what about object, LBird'.I say 'ideal and material' – the materialists say 'what about material, LBird'.I say 'mind and matter' – the materialists say 'what about matter, LBird'.I say 'consciousness and being' – the materialists say 'what about being, LBird'.I say 'quality and quantity' – the materialists say 'what about quantity, LBird'.I just know that if I said that 'I love cheese and onion crisps', the materialists would complain about my hatred of onion.I have to believe that you're all doing this on purpose, because the alternative is that 'materialists can't read'. It's so circular and depressing – we never take the discussion forward.

1st warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[moderator1]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Please do not try to divert attention yet again from these questions otherwise we will be compelled to conclude that what lies behind your assertions is just a whole lot of hot air signifiying nothing of substance whatsoever

The materialists, including you robbo, have already 'concluded' that there is 'nothing of substance' to 'ideas'.That's the whole point of Engels' 'materialism'.The bourgeoisie removed 'consciousness' from its considerations of 'nature/being', to reflect their removal of 'society' from 'property'.They supposedly 'discover' an 'external static reality', whereas Marx argued for the 'changing' of a 'malleable relationship between consciousness and being'.I'll stick with Marx's dynamic 'hot air'; you stick with Engels' stationary 'cold matter'.

2nd warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[moderator1]

LBird wrote:

gnome wrote:

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Please do not try to divert attention yet again from these questions otherwise we will be compelled to conclude that what lies behind your assertions is just a whole lot of hot air signifiying nothing of substance whatsoever

I'll stick with Marx's dynamic 'hot air'; you stick with Engels' stationary 'cold matter'.

Actually you'll just stick with LBird's 'wind and piss' …

You wouldn't know what I'm saying, gnome, because you've never read Marx or Engels.If you had, the differences between them, and the impossibility of Engels' 'materialism' being the philosophical basis of workers' power, the changing of circumstances to suit the revolutionary proletariat, would be obvious to you.You just continue to add nothing whatsoever to this discussion – 'empty vessels', and all that.

3rd and final warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

[moderator1]

May I remind posters of the action I'm currently taking after issuing a 3rd and final warning are detailed in the Moderation suggestion thread #76&78.  Now I've issued the 3rd and final warning any replies to these posts will automatically end up in the Off-topic section.  If however, a poster persistently responds to the Off-topic discussion in this thread I will issue a warning.The Off-topic section is available for those users who wish to carry on the Off-topic discussion and is not usually moderated to the same extent as the rest of the forum.

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

It seems LBird rejects this material analysis but doesn't have an alternative – apart from we all have a vote to value items – so resorts to obfuscation and becomes frustratedThat is hardly simplifying things for fellow workers, is it?

LOL.That is to put it mildly! But I dont think LBird has the foggiest idea just how daft what he is arguing for actually is. He is a completely lost in his own little fantasy world, bless his little cotton socks.  Apart from anything else, the valuation of goods according to their socially necessary labour content is an abstraction  relevant only to a society in which goods take the form of commodities.  It wont be relevant in the slightest to a communist society in which commodity production has ceased to exist.  End of.

[alanjjohnstone]

The Kapitalism101 is what i was looking for from comrades …something that explains stuff …and places things into perspective and slots them into the real world. Wiki was a bit to dry to digest.I'll think i'll explore this website a bit more when  i have time and the inclination to learn more

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

The Kapitalism101 is what i was looking for from comrades …something that explains stuff …and places things into perspective and slots them into the real world. Wiki was a bit to dry to digest.I'll think i'll explore this website a bit more when  i have time and the inclination to learn more

Great set of videos. Must remember to recommend them.

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, lets start, Marx' value theory depends entirely on this premise:

Charlie wrote:

In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base multiplied by the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity.

Everything else is built of logical extrapolations from this [premise. The only common substance is human labour, etc.  So already we see that the transformation problem isn't a fatal issue, it's a question of building up the logic to link this value to price.  Now, I'd normally tend to argue that value, as conceived by Marx is a form of essence, per Hegel's logic.

Charlie wrote:

. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.

If it is that abstract, then it is never going to manifest in its true form int eh real world, we will only ever get the pale shadow that is price.  To my mind it doesn't matter if we cannot link prices directly to values, all we need is a rough correlation and a matching trend. To return to Marx's geomtrical example, a metre is defined as:

SI wrote:

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second

Now, even if we set up a laser in a vacuum tube, and replicate the experiment that won't be a metre, present in the room, that would be a beam of light, equal to one metre, and, of course, if we replicate the experiement on a space ship, or on Jupiter, relativity tells us that, in fact, the two metres would appear be different to us, liekwise if light were travelling through an atmosphere, but the abstract metre would be behind them all.

[Young Master Smeet]

Actually, I think my analogy is wrong.  It's more like if SI redefined a metre as 1/299,792,457th or 1/299,792,459th of C light would still travel at C, and objects would have the same lengths, rations, etc. what we call a metre would change.  Ultimately, though, all lengths would never be resolvable to all measurements.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Ultimately, though, all lengths would never be resolvable to all measurements.

But for any society to act, there has to be a social and historical (and thus temporary) resolution of 'length' and 'measurement'.And if this resolution is a social act, and the society doing the resolution is a democratic society (as a socialist one would be), then this necessary socio-historical resolution is amenable to a vote.The alternative is that an elite 'tells' us. We have that now.

[Young Master Smeet]

It should be noted, what Marx was arguing against was:

Charlie wrote:

Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort, a relation constantly changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms.

However, as he notes in Capital 3:

Charlie wrote:

the price of things which have in themselves no value, i.e., are not the product of labour, such as land, or which at least cannot be reproduced by labour, such as antiques and works of art by certain masters, etc., may be determined by many fortuitous combinations. In order to sell a thing, nothing more is required than its capacity to be monopolised and alienated.

I'll throw in an extended quote, that may be more or less useful:

Charlie in the Grundrisse wrote:

The value (the real exchange value) of all commodities (labour included) is determined by their cost of production, in other words by the labour time required to produce them. Their price is this exchange value of theirs, expressed in money. The replacement of metal money (and of paper or fiat money denominated in metal money) by labour money denominated in labour time would therefore equate the real value (exchange value) of commodities with their nominal value, price, money value. Equation of real value and nominal value, of value and price. But such is by no means the case. The value of commodities as determined by labour time is only their average value. This average appears as an external abstraction if it is calculated out as the average figure of an epoch, e.g. 1 lb. of coffee = 1s. if the average price of coffee is taken over 25 years; but it is very real if it is at the same time recognized as the driving force and the moving principle of the oscillations which commodity prices run through during a given epoch. This reality is not merely of theoretical importance: it forms the basis of mercantile speculation, whose calculus of probabilities depends both on the median price averages which figure as the centre of oscillation, and on the average peaks and average troughs of oscillation above or below this centre. The market value is always different, is always below or above this average value of a commodity. Market value equates itself with real value by means of its constant oscillations, never by means of an equation with real value as if the latter were a third party, but rather by means of constant non-equation of itself (as Hegel would say, not by way of abstract identity, but by constant negation of the negation, i.e. of itself as negation of real value). [15] In my pamphlet against Proudhon I showed that real value itself – independently of its rule over the oscillations of the market price (seen apart from its role as the law of these oscillations) – in turn negates itself and constantly posits the real value of commodities in contradiction with its own character, that it constantly depreciates or appreciates the real value of already produced commodities; this is not the place to discuss it in greater detail. [16] Price therefore is distinguished from value not only as the nominal from the real; not only by way of the denomination in gold and silver, but because the latter appears as the law of the motions which the former runs through. But the two are constantly different and never balance out, or balance only coincidentally and exceptionally. The price of a commodity constantly stands above or below the value of the commodity, and the value of the commodity itself exists only in this up-and-down movement of commodity prices. Supply and demand constantly determine the prices of commodities; never balance, or only coincidentally; but the cost of production, for its part, determines the oscillations of supply and demand. The gold or silver in which the price of a commodity, its market value, is expressed is itself a certain quantity of accumulated labour, a certain measure of materialized labour time. On the assumption that the production costs of a commodity and the production costs of gold and silver remain constant, the rise or fall of its market price means nothing more than that a commodity, = x labour time, constantly commands > or < x labour time on the market, that it stands above or beneath its average value as determined by labour time. The first basic illusion of the time-chitters consists in this, that by annulling the nominal difference between real value and market value, between exchange value and price – that is, by expressing value in units of labour time itself instead of in a given objectification of labour time, say gold and silver – that in so doing they also remove the real difference and contradiction between price and value. Given this illusory assumption it is self-evident that the mere introduction of the time-chit does away with all crises, all faults of bourgeois production. The money price of commodities = their real value; demand = supply; production = consumption; money is simultaneously abolished and preserved; the labour time of which the commodity is the product, which is materialized in the commodity, would need only to be measured in order to create a corresponding mirror-image in the form of a value-symbol, money, time-chits. In this way every commodity would be directly transformed into money; and gold and silver, for their part, would be demoted to the rank of all other commodities.

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