[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

[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 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.

[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 

[Dave B]

there is an intersting section on labour vouchers from Karl in nis private musings in grundrisse. In which he stringly implies that he didn't like labour vouchers either and accurately measuring the labour time value in 'communism' would not be possible. But you wouldn't need to for stuff other than for labour vouchers. in science, and I am an analytical chemist in the food industry we have a expression. Fit For Purpose  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch03.htm 

[Dave B]

i 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

[Dave B]

i Chemistry boring for Marxists?  Whether 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 20 coats or = x coats – that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few or many coats, every such statement implies that the linen and coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit, things of the same kind. Linen = coat is the basis of the equation.But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus assumed, do not play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed. And how? By its reference to the coat as its equivalent, as something that can be exchanged for it. In this relation the coat is the mode of existence of value, is value embodied, for only as such is it the same as the linen. On the other hand, the linen’s own value comes to the front, receives independent expression, for it is only as being value that it is comparable with the coat as a thing of equal value, or exchangeable with the coat. To borrow an illustration from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions – namely, C4H8O2. If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place, propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C4H8O2; and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore, by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their different physical forms would be neglected.If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations of human labour, we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to the abstraction, value; but we ascribe to this value no form apart from their bodily form. It is otherwise in the value relation of one commodity to another. Here, the one stands forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the other. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm In chemistry the absolute atomic weights of the various elements are also not known to us. But we know them relatively, inasmuch as we know their reciprocal relations. Hence, just as commodity production and its economics obtain a relative expression for the unknown quantities of labour contained in the various commodities, by comparing these commodities on the basis of their relative labour content, so chemistry obtains a relative expression for the magnitude of the atomic weights unknown to it by comparing the various elements on the basis of their atomic weights, expressing the atomic weight of one element in multiples or fractions of the other (sulphur, oxygen, hydrogen). And just as commodity production elevates gold to the level of the absolute commodity, the general equivalent of all other commodities, the measure of all values, so chemistry promotes hydrogen to the rank of the chemical money commodity, by fixing its atomic weight at 1 and reducing the atomic weights of all other elements to hydrogen, expressing them in multiples of its atomic weight. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm

[Dave B]

i Putin on Christianity, communism and capitalism?  Communist ideology is very similar to Christianity, in fact: freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice – everything is laid out in the Holy Scripture, it’s all there. And the code of the builder of communism? This is sublimation, it’s just such a primitive excerpt from the Bible, nothing new was invented.”  “communists and all the leftist patriotic forces [in Russia] understand that communism is close to Christianity as much as the form of capitalism that exists in our country and our economy today is far from Christianity.”??????????? https://www.rt.com/news/415883-putin-communist-ideology-christianity/

[Dave B]

iiI didn’t mean to suggest that he never mentioned it all. In fact he goes into it in more detail here, along with some interesting quotes from our friend Aristotle.   Karl Marx: Critique of Political Economy c. Coins and Tokens of Value    Aristotle’s conception of money was considerably more complex and profound than that of Plato. In the following passage he describes very well how as a result of barter between different communities the necessity arises of turning a specific commodity, that is a substance which has itself value, into money. “When the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of another, and they imported what they needed, and exported what they had too much of, money necessarily came into use … and hence men agreed to employ in their dealings with each other something which was intrinsically useful and easily applicable to the purposes of life, for example, iron, silver and the like.” (Aristotele, De Republica, L. I, C. 9, loc. cit [p. 14]. [The English translation is from Aristotle, Politica, by Benjamin Jowett, Oxford, 1966, 1257a.]) Michel Chevalier, who has either not read or not understood Aristotle, quotes this passage to show that according to Aristotle the medium of circulation must be a substance which is itself valuable. Aristotle, however, states plainly that money regarded simply as medium of circulation is merely a conventional or legal entity, as even its name indicates, and its use-value as specie is in fact only due to its function and not to any intrinsic use-value. “Others maintain that coined money is a mere sham, a thing not natural, but conventional only, because, if the users substitute another commodity for it, it is worthless, and because it is not useful as a means to any of the necessities of life.” (Aristoteles, De Republica [p. 15]. [The English translation is from Aristotle, Politica, 1257b.])   https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_2c.htm I think describing as tokens and symbols of value is a bit of a dodge.

[Dave B]

I think there is a lot of this class politics versus gender orientation type politics going around elsewhere ie on Leninist revleft and even in soft left circles. I criticised the focus or over emphasis of gender politics on revleft and was also promptly accused of homophobia and fascism etc. I merely pointed out that the UK had one of the best legislative frameworks for that kind of thing etc according to the Wikipedia site on the subject. And that the advanced capitalist class were themselves eg where I work are against gender orientation discrimination. We were all sent on a equality and diversity training courses which was very good, and effective telling us why it was stupid to treat these kind of people differently. It was mostly about workers treating other workers the same irrespective of stuff like ‘race’ gender and sexual orientation as it interferes with us co-operating and working effectively together etc etc. I work in Bernard Manning country as regards prejudice white working class north Manchester. 20 years ago people re racism people could be called things by even management that would lead to instant dismissal now. Not that there were many of ‘them’ there then. Homosexuals etc had to stay underground. It has been quite successful in that I think some of the ex racist and homophobes who are still there, I know who they were, have actually changed rather than just been driven underground themselves. On the soft left like Chris Hedges who is into the ‘black lives matter’ thing and stands above political posturing by engaging with ‘these’ people by giving them lessons on ‘Hamlet’ in prisons etc. He even is getting hacked off with this non class based Hilary Clinton thing about cross dressers being allowed to use women’s toilets. I went to a gay pride festival in Manchester a few years ago with a ‘black’ feminists and ‘she’ didn’t like men in dresses going into the women’s toilets. Incidentally,  just as you feel obliged to defend your integrity etc. I was actually labelled as a homosexual where I work in the 1980’s on the evidence that I looked like Freddie Mecury, I did have the moustache and I am still called Freddie today, had a squeaky voice and declined the advances sexual advances of a pretty woman [she was a trollop]. I bravely roaded it out until I was inned upon discovery I was having sexual relations with a ‘black’ feminists. But I did discover who was gay in the factory as they came out to me.

[Dave B]

i ( 1 ) it follows from the very definition of money that money is not meant to measure the use-value ( worth ) of a commodity ; ( 2 ) we're aware of no reasons for claiming that money can measure the use-value of commodities ; ( 3 ) we're not aware either of any reason to believe that the use-value of a commodity is measurable in money ; ( 4 ) There exists no criterion for measuring the use-value in money. What conclusion would you draw, if you must draw one, from these four points ?  Point one is whole separate discussion re fiat money. Karl and fred actually conspiciously avoided it like the plague even though it was around in their time. I think they had it in Prussia , Russia and China? There is a a load of really interesting stuff on it re eastern seaboard of USA from the 1700’s onwards. 2, 3 and four is part of the marginal utility theory people’s argument that is no longer ‘marginal’ and was invented by Jevons who was an English mathematician and not an idiot. Karl and Fred knew about him as they briefly mentioned him once.  Utility theory works well on people ship wrecked on a desert island were the utilities of any commodities that they have can’t be reproduced. So thus you might want to swap a jar of coffee record for 100oz of gold? Robinson Crusoe did end up making his own stuff and then he could think about whether or not the utility was worth the effort. But he could compare or think the amount of time it took to make one thing with that of another or its value. No exchange, no social relations and no market. The utility argument is not totally without merit. Thus you could say that the anti utility of working overtime for six months is worth the utility of a holiday. Then you could have; Labour time = anti utility = another utility[holiday] = someone else’s labour time. The marginal utility people basically blank both ends of that equation and just see the middle- sort of. I don’t really feel like going into it as it is like unravelling spaghetti.

[Dave B]

 I am assuming we are using utility, use value and worth interchangeablely? Which is fair enough. On the first page of capital we have; …The utility of a thing makes it a use value.But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity…its worth…. is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. ..its value. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm So then the worth of a commodity has got nothing to do with, or is independent of its value or the amount of labour time required to [re]produce its utility. Or if you like; the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. [There is a bit of albeit interesting logical pedantry here early on. Thus one chair which might be as useful as another type of chair so he doesn’t want to lock himself in yet into the idea that the labour time required to produce chair A is  always the same as the labour time required to produce chair B until he has picked up and run with the socially necessary labour time thing.] The general idea with gold money value was that the gold money or money value does measure the labour time value of all commodities. Thus 1oz gold, or the gold money value, of say a tonne of coal does ‘measure’ the labour time value of a tonne of coal. Because it takes the same amount of labour time to produce both. Karl started from the empirical observation of people like Franklin, which in a way produced a ‘law’ which is;  ….A scientific law is a statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some aspect of the universe….. to greek  logic, or put the law on a logical footing.  Whilst Aristotle started with the logic and tried to square it with empirical observation. Actually when you read Aristotle’s full thing rather than Karls synopsis Aristotle was very close to a labour theory of value.  The logic is ancient Greek stuff, it is a mixture Aristotle, Euclid [maths stuff] and the first chemist Democritus;  and you can take it or leave it even if still carries over into modern science and in particular chemistry.   [There is a little bit a complication when it comes to equality and transformation.] The basic idea/logic  is that when two things are ‘equal’, for whatever reason and the reason isn’t important at first. There must be something about them that is the same or identical in the fullest meaning of the term.  Thus from Karl again falling back on this logic; ….., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third. A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear….[Euclid shit]  These Greeks were not stupid they knew the earth was a sphere because you could see further the higher up you went and had calculated its size fairly accurately. They actually speculated that it might be spinning around rather than the sun going around the earth. But that meant that it must be rotating at about 1000 miles an hour which it does ish. They thus dismissed that idea because it would mean that it would be very windy all the time in one direction. Aristotle also dismissed the idea that the earth was moving through space due to the absence of an observable  parallax effect when looking at the stars. The idea that they could be so far away to observe, or as far away as they actually where, never occurred to them, or was unthinkable.they observed the parralax affect with stars using better equipment and stuff and understanding how much the earth was moving around [the sun] around 1800. but it only works even then and now with stars about 10 light years away, ish.Karl did democritus as part of his pHD theisis and he was a great one for the idea that everything is made up from and different arrangements of the 'same'  basic components of some kind of mechano set or lego box.The labour theory of value is that there is only one kind of lego brick re commodities,  human effort or "abstract labour" and everything in the world of commodities are mere superficiallly different arangements of it.us scientist don't like philosopy much, but i have gone back to it as are other theoretical physicist etc in general.But we have found them rather than them us.Went to a lecture and answer and discussion by a proffessor in quantum physics and they also knew about Plato's shadows in the cave thing.you can actually measure the usefullness of a 'commodity' but only with a 'commensurable' usefullness of another.Or like for like.It is basically what early marginal utility people did who were better than than the modern ones.I think Karl thought he laughed it off with his crusoe thing.but that seems to have flown straight over the head of most modern Marxist!i could continue to prattle on about the so called wages of supervision in volume 3 and differentials between the price of concrete labour power re indian peasants, computer programmers and indian peasants becomming computer programmersI

[Dave B]

i The ‘value’ or price of labour power is an interesting subject. Labour power or a particular skill set is a commodity like anything else and its price is subject to its supply and demand in capitalism. In capital for instance Karl talks and provides data about ‘skilled damask weavers’ being ‘paid’ less than intellectually challenged but physically well endowed coal heavers, navies and even ‘porters’ and pushers of trolleys. And elsewhere over supplied multilingual educated German ‘commercial’ workers, as immigrants to the UK, being paid less than machinists. Nothing changes that much eg airline pilots? https://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/ Workers will themselves chase after the highest price for their 10 hour day etc and ‘retrain’ to achieve it. Modifying or correcting the supply and demand of different types of labour power eg plastering? ;until they potentially equilibrate?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-7v4qnHP8 I suppose the idea might be that the price of labour power of the Harry Enfields of this world will eventually equilibrate to a lower level. Whilst the price labour power of the elite intellectuals will or should become that much higher. There maybe a natural range of abilities or inequalities within the human species. But the idea that there might a natural under supply of potential intellectuals necessitating a higher reward for their “more productive” applied labour is a bit tenuous one suspects. Although I don’t doubt applying your intellect to deceive and swindle others can be lucrative.

[Dave B]

iit is uried in here I suspect with porters rather than trolley pushers? Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877Part II: Political EconomyVI. Simple and Compound Labour ………..It is true that, according to Herr Dühring’s theory, only the labour-time expended can measure the value of economic things even in the economic commune; but as a matter of course the labour-time of each individual must be considered absolutely equal to start with, all labour-time is in principle and without exception absolutely equal in value, without any need to take first an average. And now compare with this radical equalitarian socialism Marx’s hazy conception that the labour-time of one person is in itself more valuable than that of another, because more average labour-time is condensed as it were within it—a conception which held Marx captive by reason of the traditional mode of thought of the educated classes, to whom it necessarily appears monstrous that the labour-time of a porter and that of an architect should be recognised as of absolutely equal value from the standpoint of economics!  Unfortunately Marx put a short footnote to the passage in Capital cited above: “The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour-time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour-time is materialised.” Marx, who seems here to have had a presentiment of the coming of his Dühring, therefore safeguards himself against an application of his statements quoted above even to the wages which are paid in existing society for compound labour. And if Herr Dühring, not content with doing this all the same, presents these statements as the principles on which Marx would like to see the distribution of the necessaries of life regulated in society organised socialistically, he is guilty of a shameless imposture, the like of which is only to be found in the gangster press.  But let us look a little more closely at the doctrine of equality in values. All labour-time is entirely equal in value, the porter’s and the architect’s. So labour-time, and therefore labour itself, has a value. But labour is the creator of all values. It alone gives the products found in nature value in the economic sense. Value itself is nothing else than the expression of the socially necessary human labour materialised in an object. Labour can therefore have no value. One might as well speak of the value of value, or try to determine the weight, not of a heavy body, but of heaviness itself, as speak of the value of labour, and try to determine it. Herr Dühring dismisses people like Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier by calling them social alchemists {D. K. G. 237}. His subtilising over the value of labour-time, that is, of labour, shows that he ranks far beneath the real alchemists. And now let the reader fathom Herr Dühring's brazenness in imputing to Marx the assertion that the labour-time of one person is in itself more valuable than that of another {500}, that labour-time, and therefore labour, has a value—to Marx, who first demonstrated that labour can have no value, and why it cannot! For socialism, which wants to emancipate human labour-power from its status of a commodity, the realisation that labour has no value and can have none is of great importance. With this realisation all attempts — inherited by Herr Dühring from primitive workers’ socialism — to regulate the future distribution of the necessaries of life as a kind of higher wages fall to the ground And from it comes the further realisation that distribution, in so far as it is governed by purely economic considerations, will be regulated by the interests of production, and that production is most encouraged by a mode of distribution which allows all members of society to develop, maintain and exercise their capacities with maximum universality. It is true that, to the mode of thought of the educated classes which Herr Dühring has inherited, it must seem monstrous that in time to come there will no longer be any professional porters or architects, and that the man who for half an hour gives instructions as an architect will also act as a porter for a period, until his activity as an architect is once again required. A fine sort of socialism that would be—perpetuating professional porters!  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch18.htm  

[Dave B]

i Discussion of communism in the New York Times  Well if we have decided to drop the baton at least the New York Seems to have picked it up recently? With “all goods should be held in common” and “..private wealth as a form of theft and stored riches as plunder seized from the poor…” WHAT! SundayReview NOV. 4, 2017  ……….. Well into the second century, the pagan satirist Lucian of Samosata reported that Christians viewed possessions with contempt and owned all property communally. And the Christian writers of Lucian’s day largely confirm that picture: Justin Martyr, Tertullian and the anonymous treatise known as the Didache all claim that Christians must own everything in common, renounce private property and give their wealth to the poor. Even Clement of Alexandria, the first significant theologian to argue that the wealthy could be saved if they cultivated “spiritual poverty,” still insisted that ideally all goods should be held in common.As late as the fourth and fifth centuries, bishops and theologians as eminent as Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria felt free to denounce private wealth as a form of theft and stored riches as plunder seized from the poor. The great John Chrysostom frequently issued pronouncements on wealth and poverty that make Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin sound like timid conservatives. According to him, there is but one human estate, belonging to all, and those who keep any more of it for themselves than barest necessity dictates are brigands and apostates from the true Christian enterprise of charity. And he said much of this while installed as Archbishop of Constantinople.    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/opinion/sunday/christianity-communism.html  There does seem to be double standards though. When the Washington Post comes up with the following on the Ju/’hoansi of southern Africa with stuff like; Imagine a life in which you would need to work only 12 to 17 hours per week. Your society would be egalitarian, with respect to both gender and social class, and all resources would be shared and not hoarded. With all of your free time, you could devote yourself to leisure, to spending time with family and to creating a strong community. Is this a communist utopia, the subject of the latest financial self-help book or a sustainable reality? In “Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen,” anthropologist James Suzman asks readers to consider what such a world might be like. And for an answer he presents the example of the Ju/’hoansi of southern Africa, a hunter-gatherer group whose numbers have dwindled radically but that still exists as a living reminder of a lifestyle that all humans embraced until the dawn of agriculture, roughly 12,000 years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/bushmen-who-have-little-have-much-to-teach-us-about-living-well/2017/08/25/d721c53c-7dda-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.0e52b097ef1e  It seems liker safer ground; like they don’t have religious paraphernalia as well.

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