[Dave B]

iI thought it would be obvious with numbers like that it would be just the last stage ie assembly. There is more highly detailed data and studies etc from the US from around and covering the previous period eg from 1910 -1950 etc. That looked at things like steel and concrete production etc taking just about everything. On a labour time accounting thing. I suspect something to do the war planning production that went on around just before it. There some Gish Galloping in this debate. Could it be done and how easily is different to should it done. Or we shouldn’t do it because we couldn’t.

[Dave B]

i “….The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour-power of society, and  Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone.   18] The distinction between skilled and unskilled labour rests in part on pure illusion, or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to be real, and that survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on the helpless condition of some groups of the working-class, a condition that prevents themfrom exacting equally with the rest the value of their labour-power. Accidental circumstances here play so great a part, that these two forms of labour sometimes change places. Where, for instance, the physique of the working-class has deteriorated, and is, relatively speaking, exhausted, which in the case in all countries with a well developed capitalist production, the lower forms of labour, which demand great expenditure of muscle, are in general considered as skilled, compared with much more delicate forms of labour; the latter sink down to the level of unskilled labour. Take as an example the labour of a bricklayer, which in England occupies a much higher level than that of a damask-weaver. Again, although the labour of a fustian cutter demands great bodily exertion, and is at the same time unhealthy, yet it counts only as unskilled labour. And then, we must not forget, that the so-called skilled labour does not occupy a large space in the field of national labour. Laing estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,300,000 people depends on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the "genteel population," and 1,500,000 for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, &c., and 4,650,000 who compose the middle-class, there remain the above mentioned 11,000,000. But in his middle-class he includes people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, men of letters, artists, schoolmasters and the like, and in order to swell the number he also includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portioti of the factory operatives! The bricklayers, too, figure amongst them. (S. Laing: "National Distress," &c., London, 1844). "The great class who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are the great bulk of the people." (James Mill, in art.:"Colony," Supplement to the Encyclop. Brit., 1831.)  http://www.turksheadreview.com/library/texts/marx-capital-1.html#n20 I found that link fairly recently it is good for doing word searches and finding stuff. I think we some people they have missed the Aristotle and Euclidean Rosseta stone of chapter one. If you are going to set out on a project of examining ‘mathematical’ equivalences of things or exchange values you have to put in on a sound logical footing first. If two things are equal for some reason there must be something about them that is the same. Thus in your analysis you might get so much concrete tailoring time being equal to so much linen weaving time.  You are a little bit further than a coat being equal to so much Linen but you have just pushed it back to just another ‘identical’ logical paradox.  Thus logically you have to find something common to tailoring and linen weaving. It only needs a nudge then as it is time effort doing stuff or ‘abstract’ labour. Karl KautskyThe Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx Part I.COMMODITIES, MONEY, CAPITAL Chapter I. COMMODITIES(1) The Character of Commodity Production  “…….But, as we [???????????]  shall remember from our school days, mathematical operations can only be carried on with equivalent magnitude For instance, we can subtract 2 apples from 10 apples, but not 2 nuts. Thorn must consequently be some common property in wheat and iron which renders it possible to equate them, and it is that which is their value.  Now is this common property a natural attribute of the commodities?….”   https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1903/economic/ch01.htm This isn’t too bad actually although I have problems with it. Might want to go back to MIA and ask them what the thorn theory of value is? Kautsky was still ‘ok’ then But he does address the people who do the natural causes of skilled and unskilled labour? I thought this was better; https://www.marxists.org/archive/deville/1883/peoples-marx/index.htm It was the first Das capital for dummies and had been widely translated into several languages before the English translation was done.  

[Dave B]

i“…..According to Strategic Work Systems Inc., an auto manufacturing consultant, Nissan Motors was the most productive vehicle manufacturer in North America as of 2007, averaging 28.46 labor hours per vehicle. This was followed by Toyota (29.4 hours per vehicle), Honda Motor Co. (32.51 hours per vehicle), and Chrysler Group (33.71 hours per vehicle). Improvements  According to Maintenance Technology Magazine, the "Big Three" U.S. automakers, General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., and Chrysler Group, improved their per-vehicle productivity by 50 percent between 1980 and 2009……”   Spoke to a computer programmer of some talent and experience. Laid out the problem and she said it could be done easily. She wrote the source code for some of the first computer stock control systems used in the UK in the early 1980’s and one of the first programmes to solve the Sunday Times prize winning Sudoku puzzles; just before they stopped giving the prizes out. I actually watched the first one being done at 3Am on a Sunday morning. I asked her how long it would take after she put the numbers in or whatever and she said watch this,  pressed the run button and it filled them in an nano second.

[Dave B]

iThe thing about the potato’s was actually done by Karl, in an analysis of capitalism and value of potato’s therein , in his section on differential ground rent. It is a little bit complicated but really interesting; I think is was one of my favourites bits as an analytical exercise and stress testing the theory. It stood up of course! The same applies to extraction of minerals and oil for that matter. Thus as an example not paying to much attention to the accuracy of the details. It costs about £25 to extract a barrel of oil from some places in Iraq and Saudi. £60 or something like that in Venezuela and a lot of the Russian oil fields. The assumption is that the price connected to some extant to the labour required. Although the data provided can be squewed by fixed capital requirements and interest payments on loaned capital etc etc. Crashing the oil price to below cost of production was probably done to stuff and punish the chavez Venezuelans and Putin’s gang. The labour time value of such things which will be free and not requiring labour vouchers is up for debate really. I don’t think Karl liked the idea of remuneration according to work done etc , it just were the workers were at at the time and they liked that idea to start of with. I think came it comes skill etc in Karl’s analysis who was really talking about a skilled bricklayer being able to build a was twice as fast as an unskilled one etc. And not comparing bricklayers and walls to brain surgeons and brain surgery. So in our day it would be a bit like driving Microsoft word which as a skilled chemist I am crap at. Labour power is commodity in capitalism and its price is highly dependent on supply and demand or how much is available and how much is needed. If it is short supply its price goes up which is reflected in the price of what it produces. As the capitalist insist on an average rate of profit. The price of ‘skilled’ labour like computer programming is crashing as ‘Indian’ learn the game. So people like Price Waterhouse cooper are outsourcing it to places like Calcutta etc. Or bringing them over here on £30K, all this stuff about keeping Johnny foreigners out is a load of bollocks when we are looking at that kind of labour power. Anybody can come into the country if they can land jobs in that bracket. Stick it out for seven years? and you can get a passport. They are less ‘interested’ in pulling in cheap unskilled labour as it has little affect on price of labour time because there is a minimum. And macro economically it only displace indigenous worker back onto the welfare system. Although it has an impact on the general intensity of  labour expected from £7 an hour. The unskilled non racist brexiteers understand that very well even if ‘we’ don’t or don’t mix and talk to these deplorables. The middleclass skilled intellectual left abandoning these people as cryto xenophobes and not listening to them and leaving them to the racists isn’t helpful. I think when Karl was talking about more work more remuneration it was often more about coal miners needing more mars bars and potato’s than office clerks? Adam is quite correct in that things have moved on , in the first world, as many of us aren’t in the sustainability paradigm. We are into the bling now and the Nike underpants.

[Dave B]

iWell there are several points been provided. I have obviously considered the ecology thing but didn’t want to clutter things up to much. Actually people in capitalism are concerned about what goes into producing things and selflessly or socially responsibly want to know about it so they can make socially responsible choices. So you can get stuff like sustainable tuna fishing, free range chickens and eggs and fair trade stuff etc, etc. It is a similar kind of thing. As to skilled and unskilled etc actually the capitalist documents on productivity of labour and labour inputs etc tend to lump skilled and unskilled together in a remarkably ‘Marxist’ fashion. There was some amazing stuff in a standard OECD document that I can try and find later. Thus there is car making data and they have values like 275.357 hours to make a car or whatever and compare it from one car factory to another. And they recommend just homogenising all labour time input. It is true enough that say in car assembly plant there are sort of something like 3000 components being assembled.  So it does mushroom or expand out going back. But equally it after a while it starts to condense and collapse as well. So it starts collapsing back into iron, steel, copper, oil or coal etc. As steam engines were mentioned. In fact in the late 19thcentury you did to some extent have these 20,000 people mega factories were it wasn’t to far away from steel and coal coming in at one end and steam engines coming out of the other. Anybody who uses a google search engine and doesn’t think it is possible to calculate this kind of thing is suffering from confirmation bias, to put it as politely as I can. Producing useful things whilst enjoying it is outside of the ‘realm’ of the discussion, albeit interesting. What is proposed as being measured is time taken out of the Karl’s volume three seminal “realm of freedom”; stuff we have to do because it is ‘necessary’. As an aside; The debate re Karl has shifted in the sense that work was something we had to do to reproduce ourselves or just live in a reasonable condition etc. Karl hardly ever talked about working class leasure time. First world workers obviously work or spend a considerable amount of their time working to improve the quality of their leasure time. Eg going to Disneyland etc. That was something relatively new in the late 19thcentury eg going to Blackpool etc. Many workers, probably the majority internationally, just work to keep themselves together.  The gentleman middleclass scientists were obviously just having fun doing what they did in the 19thcentury as to some extant they do now even though it was useful. I don’t think that counts in my measure of things. There was a quite popular computer game based on organising trains in and out of Manchester Piccadilly railway station. People really enjoyed playing it even though it was precisely based on somebody’s jobs. I think Dick Donnelly who used to work for British Rail  go on about trainspotters basically doing a job that people hated. I know rock climbers who have landed jobs window cleaning high rise buildings and doing tree surgeon stuff; it is work it is enjoying stuff and getting paid for it. There is currently a sub-culture of these kind of people breaking into premises and climbing cranes and buidings etc and trying to avoid arrest. Like flying planes, for which people pay good money to play computer simulation games, isn’t fun. The capitalist class or capitalism catches onto this kind of thing and realises that it is less trouble and should be paid less for. I know personally of people who have deliberately gone from £50K in the finance sector to £30K in the NHS because one is load of shit and the other feels better.   Working down platinum mine might be a bit different; pot-holer’s aside; they are mad as well. Oranges and apples etc? Well then Canadian Ice wine, or £10 a bottle stuff and cheap plonk made from glucose syrups made from wheat starch coloured with anthocyanins from take your pick. As far as I am concerned both taste equally good and the use value of getting me pissed is the same. I am inclined to take a dim view on wine snobbery etc but if some people can tell the difference, and the use-value, well ok then. And we will still have labour intensively produced French wines in money less communism and smoked cured parmesan ham blah blah. But if I go to the communist store and I see all these bottles of wine on the shelves I want to make sure I select the correct one for my unsophisticated needs based on what matters. I think all this ‘working class’ Gordon Ramsey restaurateur shit about fine foods is well shit. It is all on the TV isn’t it. But I am not a fascist about it; I mean having a load of chefs prating about cooking a perfect ‘filet mignon’ , remember that one from the Deleonist Bryon ? And then pouring a load of Hienz tomato ketchup over it to make it taste acceptable. Each to their own. I have biker friends and they want flashy stuff in the sense of £20,000 1200CC Kawasaki shit. Which might look like an indulgence; but they are quite happy living on baked beans on toast, fish and chips as a luxury and bottles of Newcastle Brown which probably costs 20 seconds to produce. In fact returning to the leasure time thing there used to be a culture in the biker community of taking them apart and putting them back together again for fun. My father was an engineer who worked in a factory fixing machines, he spent every other Sunday stripping his car down an putting it back together again; it wasn’t necessary. I suspect that Newcastle Brown must be a cultural icon and part of identity politics and inverse conspicuous consumption as it tastes worse than salmon, raw oysters and caviar in my opinion. The first recorded industrial strike, apprentice boys in London, was in protest at force fed salmon. I know and understand that our Newcastle friends think all this is bourgeois shit but as far as I am concerned I am rooted in my own working class heritage.

[Dave B]

i I have done this with them before Alan They are prejudiced about the subject. I pointed out to them an actual real example of how extremely easy it was to calculate the amount added of labour time in a factory. In my case it something like 7 seconds of labour time was added to the raw materials in the production of a litre of juice. It took less than 15 minutes to do that from the start as the amount of stuff that was produced in a week was available and you just need to divide that by number of employees and time worked etc. To demonstrate it was universally simple I asked someone working in the production of milk came up with a very similar figure. Iteration going back through the supply chain is a straightforward process especially with computers. In fact in software development and big engineering projects people familiar with the components required to produce something will be asked to ‘cost’ it in terms of labour time etc. I was talking to some people about that incidentally just last week. The bean counters will price it later.  The stuff about accurate measurement is also a straw man argument as it is not being suggested will have to be. The stuff about inputs? The only inputs are human effort; as products are labour. The objective or purpose is twofold. To provide objective measurements to reduce labour time and maximise productivity etc. And to give consumers and indication of how much of other peoples labour they are consuming so they can make socially responsible decisions about what to consume. I was taught in childhood to appreciate how much work had gone into something. The Crusoe thing was supposed to be in part a kind of analogy, metaphor or allegory or whatever. So a socialist society would take into consideration the same kind of things as Crusoe did even though Crusoe was no communist. There was an element of sarcasm in it in the sense that if was a favourite example for the classic bourgeois economists.  The Crusoe thing is also one of several inserts into the text to make sure that you have got or understood the core ideas of what went before. If it doesn’t make sense then you haven’t. Two other examples are they sugar and iron thing and the butyric acid and propyl formate. The second one is a bit more clever than it looks like as one ‘tastes’ horrid and other is pleasant.   What do you do by the way and what are you etc

[Dave B]

i I think Adam is throwing smoke and sand into the air here with simple and skilled labour along with SNLT., and labour vouchers. And we are talking about moneyless communism. To clarify the matter I have no choice but to go back to a basic lesson on the scientific method. I think professor Brain Cox has a good point when he says that Marxism is a load of bollocks but mainly because I suspect that he gets it from Marxist that don’t understand the scientific method. I think we can start off with the Galileo's experiment at Leaning Tower of Pisa ‘experiment’. It is just a few seconds youtube and easy enough.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbC4sSEfEqw  The point here is that it was in fact a ‘rigged’ experiment; as the second youtube with Prof Brain Cox illustrates.  Galileo didn’t throw feathers and ‘heavy’ [ high density] balls from the top of the tower of Pisa as the otherwise interesting experiment wouldn’t have worked. As the second youtube makes clear; which is just a repeat of the falcon feather and hammer experiment.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyeF-_QPSbk  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk Ok then, what is the point and what has this got to do with SNLT, simple versus skilled [ and for that matter something not yet mentioned intensity of labour time value ] and the labour time of value etc etc? The scientific method nearly always involves empirically observing interesting and simple relationships in somewhat idealised and narrow circumstances to create a mathematical model. Thus a 1kg lead ball falling to the ground a the same speed and rate etc as a 10KG lead ball is interesting as it is counter intuitive as we are more used to thinking in terms of light feathers and heavy balls. The same is true of the classic gas laws; 1 Boyle's Law2 Charles' law 3 Gay-Lussac's law  They are a pile of bollocks as well and only work under a narrow set of circumstances. The scientific method involves simplifying to an ideal model, developing a theory to explain that. And plugging the theory back into complex situations to see if it still makes some kind of sense and developing new theories as to why it doesn’t ‘work’ in less than ideal situations with a ‘rigged’ dataset of empirical experimental observations etc. So the labour time value of unskilled low intensity labour time does not exchange at equal value to low intensity skilled [ Prof brain Cox] labour anymore than feathers or ping pong balls fall to the ground at the same speed and rate etc as cannon balls. Early scientist had a bit of a handle on this as they developed better vacuum pumps etc. So something like the feathers fell faster in increasing partial vacuums in a glass bottle so they could see it. And they reckoned they could extrapolate that to a total what they could expect in a total vacuum.  Others started dropping lead balls into liquids gooey and not so gooey and realised that the problem was that air was a bit gooey really and that was what was screwing up the hammer and feather thing. But that helped to design planes; those big heavy things that float on the air. The labour time theory of value is likewise a simple/ idealised and thus potentially ‘flawed’ scientific model if you take it too ‘far and literally’. So I think we need to pan back as to what it actually means. As labour time as a measure of  ‘value ’ might not be the best way of thinking about it. Since eve talked to the snake we have had to work so we could loaf about after woods in the realm of freedom. Although in capitalism we work so the ruling class now loaf about in the realm of freedom.  http://biblehub.com/genesis/3-19.htm  If work becomes a pleasure then it is not ‘work’  in my opinion and thus has ‘no value’ as labour time value is predicated on it being shit and something you have to do and time lost in the enjoyment of your lifetime  rather than having a fun time.

[Dave B]

for interest the crusoe thing is also in the first edition or version of capital volume one in a slightly different form.the standard version of volume one is the second version; thus Let us take Robinson Crusoe on his island. Modest as he naturally is, nevertheless he has various needs to satisfy and must therefore perform useful labours of various sorts, make tools, build furniture, tame llamas, fish, hunt etc. We do not refer at this time to praying and other such activities, since our Robinson derives enjoyment from them and regards such activity as recreation. Despite the variety of his productive functions, he knows that they are only various forms of activity of one and the same Robinson, and thus are only different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to divide his time exactly between his various functions. Whether the one takes more space and the other takes less in the totality of his activity depends upon the greater or lesser difficulty which must be overcome for the attainment of the intended useful effect. Experience teaches him that much, and our Robinson who saved watch, diary, ink and pen from the shipwreck begins to keep a set of books about himself like a good Englishman. His inventory contains a list of the objects of use which he possesses, of the various operations which are required for their production, and finally of the labour-time which particular quanta of these various products cost him on the average. All relationships between Robinson and the things which form his self-made wealth are here so simple and transparent that even Mr. Wirth[6] can understand them without particular mental exertion. And nevertheless all essential determinations of value are contained therein.If we now put an organization of free men in Robinson’s place, who work with common means of production and expend their many individual labour-powers consciously as one social labour-power, all the determinations of Robinson’s labour are repeated: but in a social rather than an individual way. Nevertheless, an essential difference emerges. All Robinson’s products were his exclusively personal pro- duct, and were thereby immediately objects of use for him. The total product of the organization is a social product. One part of this product serves again as means of production. It remains social. But another part is used up by the members of the organization as necessities. This part must be divided up among them. The manner of this division will change with the particular manner of the social production-organism itself and the comparable historical level of development of the producers. Only for the sake of the parallel with commodity-production do we presuppose that each producer’s share of necessities of life is determined by his labour-time. In such a case, the labour-time would play a dual role. Its socially planned distribution controls the correct proportion of the various labour-functions to the various needs. On the other hand, the labour-time serves at the same time as the measure of the individual share of the producer in the common labour, and thereby also in the part of the common product which can be used up by individuals. The social relationships of men to their labour and their products of labour remained transparently simple in this case, in production as well as in distribution.Whence comes the puzzling character of the labour-product as soon as it assumes the form of commodity? https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm  this article by Fred from 1844 is quite interesting as it covers alot of ground ie use value versus exchange value etc etc  it also is a good indication of how far ahead of Karl Fred was; and who in fact taught whom. i am guessing it is the same one as Fred referred to in anti duhring that we talked about earlier https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm   

[Dave B]

i I believe terrible people are downloading all sorts of ‘free’ ‘communist’copies of tv viewing from the internet. To avoid pay per view channels. And people are apparently scurrying around with 132 GB memory sticks with 300 hours of tv on it? Just like they took down huge chunks of Karl’s material. As fast as they shut them down they open up elsewhere. It can be quite funny really. Apparently a 9 year old French child had translated a Harry potter book from English to French and put it up on the internet with 48 hours of the book being available in English. It was decent translation apparently. I think you could start getting pay per view ‘The Orville’ in the UK in December. This copyright thing is a pain in the arse for scientists.  Ten year ago or so you could have arrangements with libraries to have copies of scientific literature sent to you at something like 200 papers for a £200 pound subscription. Then they changed it to about £20 each to see the whole thing. Which is crap as only about one in twenty turn out to be useful as often the shits who write them make the abstracts or summaries of the content to look better than they are. The people who write them do it for free mostly, I never got paid for the five I have written but would have to pay £20 to see my own stuff and I am not allowed to circulate it. I suppose it made some capitalist sense when it cost stuff to put it in scientific paper mags but it is crazy these days. People are putting their pHD theses’s online now and some of it is really interesting and useful which would have been totally inaccessible a few years ago. There was an interesting legal case recently in the US about Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech being placed under copyright.  I mentioned it to another leftie friend who is a judge and she couldn’t believe it. Sent her some stuff on it.  There was an article/ review  in the SS recently on a book on the rentier economy that I thought was OK.

[Dave B]

i I think some people do like writing posts about not liking other peoples irrelevant posts- which must be more irrelevant than writing irrelevant posts? I suppose the answer is to write an interesting post oneself. Maybe something on something like this. With the capitalist class don’t like the NHS because it is ideologically linked to socialism and something that is free and provided accorded to need? She is quite correct in her way as the capitalist US neo- liberals have said the same thing in bald terms. A nurse friend of mine who so happens to live less than a mile away got sacked a fewyears ago for saying stuff like that one was saying. For bringing the NHS into disrepute even though she was saying it anomalously in radio interviews and as a shop steward etc. She won her case after a long legal dispute; her union disowned her.  https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/416490-nhs-privatisation-may-session/   On dissenting views re capitalism I have no illusions as to the material in the following however the capitalist class are spooked and they probably have good reason to be. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/thought-police-21st-century/   

[Dave B]

iThat’s ok sympo You were in good company! Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3[Chapter III] Adam Smith The so called volume IV ……..It is Adam Smith’s great merit that it is just in the chapters of Book I (chapters VI, VII, VIII) where he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour, to the consideration of profit and rent in general—in short, to the origin of surplus-value—that he feels some flaw has emerged.  He senses that somehow—whatever the cause may be, and he does not grasp what it is—in the actual result the law is suspended: more labour is exchanged for less labour (from the labourer’s standpoint), less labour is exchanged for more labour (from the capitalist’s standpoint).  His merit is that he emphasises—and it obviously perplexes him—that with the accumulation of capital and the appearance….   https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htm  this was an interesting quotation as the vulgar Marxist like the famous professor Michael Henirich and his zombies said that simple commodity exchange [or simple commodity production- same thing] didn’t exist.

[Dave B]

 "…………If these are correct, then what determines the value of labour? Or does labour have no value?…." We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labour-power. Like all others it has a value. [5] How is that value determined? The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer. Labour-power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored. This increased expenditure demands a larger income. [6] If the owner of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed. [7] In contradistinction therefore to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless, in a given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer is practically known. The owner of labour-power is mortal. If then his appearance in the market is to be continuous, and the continuous conversion of money into capital assumes this, the seller of labour-power must perpetuate himself, “in the way that every living individual perpetuates himself, by procreation.” [8] The labour-power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an equal amount of fresh labour-power. Hence the sum of the means of subsistence necessary for the production of labour-power must include the means necessary for the labourer’s substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this race of peculiar commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the market. [9]In order to modify the human organism, so that it may acquire skill and handiness in a given branch of industry, and become labour-power of a special kind, a special education or training is requisite, and this, on its part, costs an equivalent in commodities of a greater or less amount. This amount varies according to the more or less complicated character of the labour-power. The expenses of this education (excessively small in the case of ordinary labour-power), enter pro tanto into the total value spent in its production.The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requisite for their production.Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are consumed daily, and a fresh supply must be provided daily. Others such as clothes and furniture last for longer periods and require to be replaced only at longer intervals. One article must be bought or paid for daily, another weekly, another quarterly, and so on. But in whatever way the sum total of these outlays may be spread over the year, they must be covered by the average income, taking one day with another. If the total of the commodities required daily for the production of labour-power = A, and those required weekly = B, and those required quarterly = C, and so on, the daily average of these commodities = (365A + 52B + 4C + &c) / 365. Suppose that in this mass of commodities requisite for the average day there are embodied 6 hours of social labour, then there is incorporated daily in labour-power half a day’s average social labour, in other words, half a day’s labour is requisite for the daily production of labour-power. This quantity of labour forms the value of a day’s labour-power or the value of the labour-power daily reproduced. If half a day’s average social labour is incorporated in three shillings, then three shillings is the price corresponding to the value of a day’s labour-power. If its owner therefore offers it for sale at three shillings a day, its selling price is equal to its value, and according to our supposition, our friend Moneybags, who is intent upon converting his three shillings into capital, pays this value.The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is determined by the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the labourer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those means of subsistence that are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a crippled state. But the value of every commodity is determined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be of normal quality. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm

[Dave B]

iWell there was a circular reasoning problem before Karl introduced the idea of labour power being a commodity. The worker sells his ability to do 10 hours of labour for what actually 5 hours work can produce; which he purchases with his wages. And thus what five hours can produce is what is required for him to replenish himself and keep himself going. But he produces 10 hours ‘worth’ of stuff. The additional five hours of stuff is the profit or surplus value of the capitalist. And as much as the capitalist doesn’t consume all of it himself and accumulates it; it is all around us in the form of roads, buidings factories and machines etc.

[Dave B]

one of my commie sci fi friends has been watching it thinks it is fairly good , mildly entertaining funny but a bit simple. has seen about 8 episodes

[Dave B]

i had not heard of it before but will ask. i have plenty of sci fi tv fans who download and watch this kind of non UK terrestial stuff. just found this; https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOrville/comments/73a57k/is_orville_communist/

[Author]

Posts