DJP
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I’m not sure why you chose to highlight this Jacobin piece, giving how many guides to Marx are already out there. The piece isn’t entirely bad but it does spread the misconception that The Critique of the Gotha Programme makes a distinction between “socialism” and “communism”
“From above, it clearly follows that the state of a wage slave is Not in essence significantly different from that of a slave.”
There’s a technical term for this kind of statement. “Over egging the pudding”
“And if the minimum wages acts were revoked, their wages would, I can assure you, fall in no time below the subsistence level.”
So you think that, for example before 1998 when the minimum wage was introduced in the UK, the trend there was for wages to be below subsistence? And that wages are now above that level only because of this legislation?
I can understand why you might say that wage labour is like slavery since for the time the wage worker is selling their labour power they are in the dominion of the employer. But this is just an analogy, made to bring out how wage labour is a relationship of domination rather than “free contract”.
To put it the other way around, to say that slaves are like wage labourers but they receive payment in kind and not payment in wages misses the essential thing about the condition of being a slave. Slaves are bought and sold outright, not paid a wage of any kind.
“Slaves were like wage slaves paid subsistence wages in kind, not in cash”
I don’t think it makes much sense to think of slaves as receiving wages of any kind. The slavery system treats slaves more like beasts of burden. Yes if you want your animals to remain productive you have to supply them with food and shelter, but this is not like a wage.
“Supposing the technique I used, which is backward today, was the most advanced technique once in the past when the ‘four’ hours was the SNL of that time, the chair I made should be twice as valuable, in that past era, as that made by you.”
Yes this is right, this is why as production techniques improve commodities get cheaper – it takes less labour to make them. So in our example, the move from 4 to 2 hours would mean that each new chair made now contains half as much value as it did in the past.
“More labour (e.g. the quantity of labour required to produce a useful thing using backward technology) than the SNL also creates value.”
Are you sure about that?
Lets presume that the socially necessary average labour time it takes to make a chair is two hours.
I make my chair in two hours, but you make yours in four. Does your chair contain any more value than mine? Or do the two chairs have the same value?
Another way to think about it is this:
Suppose society needs 1000 chairs but 4000 chairs are produced. Has the labour gone into producing the 3000 surplus chairs produced anything of use? Was the labour that made the 3000 extra chairs socially necessary?
But now we have another question.
How does society establish both how many chairs are needed and what the socially necessary average amount of time taken to produce each chair is?
What do you think the answer is?
“Value is an attribute of a commodity defined as a useful product of labour.”
Good. Now you see how this is different from what you said earlier; “Value is independent of the SNL”. Labour spent on making useless things is not socially necessary, hence not value creating. So value and socially necessary labour are linked.
But, in an exchange economy, how does society determine what is socially necessary?
I suggest you read the first two chapters of Capital to find out.
“The idea of becoming a millionaire by building sandcastles is too silly to deserve a response.”
Well, if as you say “Value is independent of the SNL as it’s just human labour that happens to be the source of value” then it’s not a silly idea at all.
If you do think it’s a silly idea then it must be because you do think value and social necessity are linked after all.
“They were, but the law of value is not applicable to those societies”
Good. We both agree on this then.
There was a typo in my previous comment. I meant to write “B. And one about the law of value *not* being fully operational in pre-capitalist societies.”
Anyhow, regardless of what you call them, do you really think that in pre-capitalist society there were no goods produced solely for the purpose of exchanging them?
“The whole mess was created by Engels, Marx never considered that commodity was produced in a pre capitalist society. Marx clearly indicated that the law of value is only applicable to a capitalist society”
Feels like we are going in circles now..
These are two separate claims. A. One about goods not being produced for the sole purpose of exchange in pre-capitalism. B. And one about the law of value not being fully operational in pre-capitalist societies.
A is false, B is correct I think.
Or do you think that (some) goods were produced solely for exchange in pre-capitalism but we should call them something other than “commodities”?
“Before being sold, each commodity is an unsold commodity. So, if the unsold commodity is valueless, the sold commodity must have gained value during the act of being sold, which, if true, means that value is the product of exchange.”
That’s one way to understand it, but that is not how it is understood in Marx as I have patiently been trying to explain to you.
Value is *produced* by labour but *realised* in exchange. The producers do not know if what they are producing has value until *after* it is sold. This is a very important part of Marx’s analysis. Think about it. If everything produced by labour has value, regardless of being exchanged, then I can become a millionaire by building a 1000ft sandcastle in my backyard.
Can you see the difference?
“I wasn’t meaning to suggest that “commodity” was a mistranslation of Ware”
Sorry, that comment was directed to the earlier ones about “commodities” not being produced in pre-capitalist time.
“In any event, there is no such English word as a merchandise.”
I mainly hear that word in English to refer to branded goods, like the T-shirts bands sell at their gigs. “Commodity” is a much better choice for the English translation we both agree on that.
