Prakash RP
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Wage slaves also deserve to be viewed, and justifiably so, as beasts of burden paid in cash in the light of the fact that they sweat blood to produce all wealth & luxuries and thus keep civiliations moving & advancing but have to survive on welfare alms practically. And if the minimum wages acts were revoked, their wages would, I can assure you, fall in no time below the subsistence level.
There’s No good reason for Not viewing a slave as a wage slave paid in kind.
‘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?’
Well, the capitalist society calculates the number of chairs ‘needed’ on the basis of how many people have got the necessary purchasing power.
Not clear what’s your rationale for considering slave labour and half-slave labour not socially necessary. Both sorts of labour are as much capable of producing useful & salable things, hence value, as wage labour, aren’t they ?
Wages are market-prices (market-value expressed in money) of the commodity which Marx termed labour-power, the use-value of which is the socially necessary labour, the stuff which both the slaves and the half-slaves (prisoners of our times are examples of such people) are, like wage slaves, capable of performing. Slaves were like wage slaves paid subsistence wages in kind, not in cash. It’s true that wages of slaves & half-slaves are not fully determined by the market forces. But then, under welfare capitalism, as the minimum wages acts show, wages are not determined wholly by the market forces either. Have you considered these points?I must thank you cordially for your interest in this debate and spending a lot of your precious time for this. A humble seeker after the Truth, I find great interest in this debate that I expect to lead us to the Truth.
‘… do the two chairs have the same value?’
I think both chairs will have the same value which must equal the SNL of the time. Greater quantity of labour than the SNL doesn’t make the chair made by me more valuable.
In your 2nd example, each of the ‘4000 chairs’ is equally valuable if the SNL per chair is equal. The fact that society doesn’t need them right now doesn’t rob ‘the 3000 extra chairs’ of their value, as I see it.
Nevertheless, I think it’d be wrong to miss an important point in regard to the first example. 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.
I’d like to answer your remaining questions tomorrow.
The SNL means a certain quantity of labour. More labour (e.g. the quantity of labour required to produce a useful thing using backward technology) than the SNL also creates value. In this sense alone, I remarked that value is independent of the SNL. Nevertheless, the amount of value equals the SNL according to the technology of the time. On this ground, you can say that the quantity of labour in excess of the SNL does not create value and claim on this ground that value is not independent of the SNL. Well, I agree it’s a strong point in your favour.
By the law of value, the Marxian labour theory of value is meant. It states that it’s useful labour (defined as the labour that’s performed something useful) that happens to be the source of value (exchange-value).
Thus, both slave labour (i.e. the labour of a human slave) and half-slave labour are capable of producing value too, aren’t they ?
You’ve again made a silly mistake.
Value is an attribute of a commodity defined as a useful product of labour.
Your ‘1000ft sandcastle’ is useless, hence valueless.
I don’t think I ever said anything to the effect that the value (exchange-value) of a commodity is realisable without exchanging it.
The value of a commodity doesn’t depend on its producer’s knowledge of its existence just as there exists the skyful of stars in the space although blind people can never see them.
The idea of becoming a millionaire by building sandcastles is too silly to deserve a response.
So, what you consider ‘homogenous human labour’ is what Marx himself termed human labour in the abstract. It’s OK. I have no objection to your phrase.
I think ‘*socially necessary* labour time’ is the same stuff as average labour time.
‘Labour spent on unsold commodities is not socially necessary labour.’
You’re still unable to grasp the difference between value and the amount of value. Value is independent of the SNL as it’s just human labour that happens to be the source of value. Only the amount of value depends on the quantity of the SNL required to create it.
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.
Just as rain doesn’t depend on your awareness of its source (whether it’s sky or cloud), the value of a product doesn’t depend on the producer’s ‘need (or be able) to calculate [its] ‘value’, the way I see it.
[Reply to the Reply #229957]
You seem to be unaware that value and its amount are different things. The quantity of SNL (which is average labour time essentially) equals the amount of value.
Could you define the ‘homogenous human labour’?
The absence of markets doesn’t make a product valueless because value is Not the product of markets.
OK! I stand corrected. Nevertheless, this mistake by me doesn’t disprove my main point, namely, the fact that Marx’s view of the fundamental distinction between a commodity and a non-commodity is fundamentally flawed.
Every useful product of human labour possesses a certain amount of value, and so it’s exchangeable like commodities. As Marx was aware that the value of a commodity is not created during exchange, he made a serious mistake by leaving out of account this fact and thus regarding things produced to satisfy the producers’ self-need as things without value.
I’d like to re-edit my earlier reply (#229926) and replace it with what follows.
I’ve taken cognisance of Marx’s position on what seems to be the fundamental distinction between a commodity and a non-commodity. Nevertheless, it seems to be flawed fundamentally. Marx, evidently, disregarded the obvious fact that both the ‘use values’ meant for the producers’ self-satisfaction and the ‘social use values’ being products of human labour, both of them essentially share something in common, namely, some value (exchange-value), the stuff every commodity must essentially possess. This constitutes a serious limitation of Marx’s view of commodities, as I see it.
Marx also failed to consider the fact that value cannot originate during exchange. Value is certainly NOT the product of exchange. Truly, value is the cause that makes things exchangeable. It’s the value measured in terms of the socially necessary labour-time (SNL) expended to produce the thing that makes both the ‘use values’ meant for the producers’ self-satisfaction and the ‘social use values’ exchangeable in accordance with the following formula: if x hours of SNL is incorporated in a kilo of rice, and if y hours of SNL is incorporated in a pair of trousers, then xy hours of SNL= y kilos of rice= x pairs of trousers.
I’ve taken cognisance of Narx’s position on what seems to be the fundamental distinction between a commodity and a non-commodity. Nevertheless, it seems to be flawed fundamentally. Marx, evidently, disregarded the obvious fact that both the ‘use values’ meant for the producers’ self-satisfaction and the ‘social use values’ ( being products of human labour, both of them essentially share something in common, namely, some valueexchange-value), the stuff every commodity must essentially possess. This constitutes a serious limitation of Marx’s view of commodities, as I see it.
an addendum:
Marx also failed to consider the fact that it’s the value (measured in terms of the socially necessary labour-time (SNL) expended to produce the thing) that makes both the ‘use values’ meant for the producers’ self-satisfaction and the ‘social use values’ exchangeable in accordance with the following formula. If x hours of SNL is incorporated in a kilo of rice, and if y hours of SNL is incorporated in a pair of trousers, then xy hours of SNL= y kilos of rice= x pairs of trousers.‘But why didn’t you tell us before that you were defining “commodity” as any product of human labour?’
To the best of my knowledge & belief, I was not aware, when I posted this work by me here, that this stuff meant to prove the validity of the law of value may lead to redefining the stuff called commodity.
‘We assumed, because you said that you were setting out to provide an incontrovertible proof of the validity of the Marxian labour theory of value, that you would be using words in the same sense that Marx did.’
I don’t think I don’t have freedom, in order to prove or disprove some stuff, to use terms in senses different from senses in which the author of the stuff at issue used these terms. I think I’m outright free to discover a new sense or devise a new definition of a known term. What matters is whether the new stuff is right or wrong, Not whether it’s new or old, as I see it.
Nevertheless, in the light of our discussion on this topic so far, I don’t think the new simplified definition of a commodity (namely, the commodity is a useful thing with some human labour incorporated in it) clashes with the content of the law of value.
