Young Master Smeet
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ALB wrote:The problem with labour-time accounting is that it is not possible to measure the intensity of work (labour) nor to calculate in advance what labour is "social necessary" (nor, I would add, to work out how much more "simple" labour skilled labour is "worth"). Marx pointed this out in his criticism of various schemes for "labour-money" that were put forward in his day. Unfortunately, he didn't apply this to the "labour-time voucher" scheme he gave a sort of blessing to in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. The only way something like this would work is, as you suggest, if you measure "labour" by time spent at work. In other words, actual labour or, actually, hours put in at work. I'm not sure that this would be a useful measure of much.
It would be a useful measure of the total share of the social effort an activity was taking in (and thus could help us balance out between branches of industry), as well as performing a transferable meaure that could allow up-chain transmission to avoid technical choices being made at one end that stretch capacities at another. As with Robinson Crusoe, we know the numbers of humans available, and how much time they have to work, the intensity of that work is, at a certain point, irrelevent (that is a question for wage allocation, not productive co-ordination). As for Zeitgeist, economic efficiency is not the same as technical efficiency, as I demonstrate in my example above, what might be the most technically efficient way of producing X might in turn actually lead to excess drains on resources further down the line.I agree that recording concrete labour types could be useful as well (but would require more effort, and relies on fixing some fairly blurry lines between types of labour).
So, would some sort of labour-time accounting be viable?Firstly, we'd need to be clear that we wouldn't be trying to use the "true value" of products, that only emerges from commoddities in exchange. We'd be measuring the concrete labour employed (so, that would mean, for one thing, we'd be measuring real labour actually used, rather than averagely necessary time — so far as we could accurately record that). Actually market prices work much better than any labour value scheme could (Kautsky's rather neat refutation).Once simple refutation of trying to use true value is Joan Robinson's in her essay on Marx, where she shows that because of relative rent, you can't use labour time as an exchange value (basically, one field might take ten hours to produce a tonne of wheat, whereas another would take twenty, the wheat would then sell at the value of the least productive field that can be brought into operation, under market conditions: subjective/marginal theories of value are similar to this, as they treat all goods, effectively, as a m,onopoly of themselves).If, however, we simply record the total time to collect the aggregate social stock of wheat, then this objection no longer matters. Wheat took a sum of the social effort (which can be expressed in person hours or as a percentage). We would simply record how much time was spent at each prodfuction unit (not the time per unit of oiutput). We needed be hyper accurate about that: if a unit is slated to have 100 hours worked, it doesn't signify much if one person takes an afternoon off, since rough inaccuracies of that sort would balance out.This is not a call for labour voucher exchange, although knowing what the per capita share of the output would be would help socialist citizens to "budget" their consumption. Vouchers are unnecessary, since if there is a roughly agreed working week, then most people will have the same number of vouchers anyway, it becomes an unnecessary burden to distribute them. Whereas the labour burden of time accounting would be relatively light, and could assist in the statistical clearing houses.If we find, in the early days of socialism, an incentive to work is needed, then a simple "I turned up to work this week" voucher system could be used (just as, in revolutionary Spain, for example, a union card was used for bus transport).With aggregate concrete labour time, we could plan at a world and scoiety level, and predict any changes required by any large scale infrastructural project, while regulated stock control would be the experience day to day.
Partly, I was trying to also look at the individual experience, as I don't think it would be a case of just taking what you want off the shelves (and many objectors certainly would stop listening if we say that), so having a money-behavioural replacement.While the law of the minimum does seem to offer some sensible measure, Cox seems to skate round the need to make production decisions. So, we can talk about inventories, and responding to changes, but when it comes to big projects and budgeting for them, it becomes a touch trickier.To take his example of X, and it's two inputs A & B, we can further assume that they have two inputs each C,D & E,F. Further, lets say they have two inputs each G-N. (That is A=C+D+G+H+I+J & B=E+F+K+L+M+N). Say we opt for the production method that spares A, as that is scarcer than B. But on examination of the supply chain, it turns out that N is much scarcer than J. If we want to be even more complex, we can ask what happens (as is not entirely unreasonable) if, say, J and H are the same thing (assuming C=G+H and D=I=J), thus choosing to spare B would mean we'd be committing ourselves to a big hit on H/J.The law of the minimum would indeed mean that at each stage we used the most available resource at each stage. We could apply the logic of flocking birds (each agent only responds to its neighbour, thus producing an overall efficient effect). Our argument then would be not the most efficient use of reousrces, but that at least there would be a workable.If, though, there were some way of communicating cumulative impact, then the problem would be resolved. It would look like oprice, excepting that no exchange of commodity or negotiation would be invovled.
Ozymandias wrote:…was later allowed to chair an impossibly obtuse and highly intellectualised evening talk about Shakespeare which would have sent your average worker in the street fleeing in utter boredom…. that Shakespeare dreck….I believe you mean "abstruse".Summer school, to my mind, is about more detailed and difficult talks than a run of the mill public meeting. A great many workers are interested in Shakespeare and history, and the actual subject of the meeting, ideology and its workings, is sufficently difficult that an approach through something as tangible as a scene in a film is a useful way of introducing it.
well, six and a half thousand out of all the Unison members in Higher Education (some 50,000), so pathetically low turnout and then a wafer thin majority.This demonstrates, incidentally, the power of one of the Tory anti-union laws. They have a rule against 'Unjustifiable discipline' which specifically precludes expelling union members who don't strike (even when a legitimate ballot has been held). So, I could get expelled from the union for striking unofficially, but the minority of rejectionists have just exercised a veto.I'm actually pretty upset about this, we've just voted to have our own throats cut. Management must be laughing.
Adam, yes, I thought the underconsumptionism the lesser evil, I think the myth that Marx didn't write about communism is a greater ill (followed by the "No one is proposing doing away with capitalism").
If anyone wants to write to the BBC with a comment about the programme, the web form is:https://faq.external.bbc.co.uk/templates/bbcfaqs/emailstatic/emailPageYou're limited to about 500 characters.Stephanie Flanders twitter is: @bbcstephanie (for those who wish to tweet).
robbo203 wrote:So just to be clear – you are saying in effect that a socialist administration would take over the running of capitalism until such time as the socialist movement everywhere had captured political power and socialism could be introduced simultaneously on a worldwide basis. Is that right?Actually, my preferred option would be to allow a minority Capitalist Party to govern, with the socialist majority wielding a veto: but I think that would be a hard sell. The lesser option would be to introduce radical democracy: annual elections, abolition of posts of prime minister, cabinet, etc. (the full Pennsylvania 1776 shebang) to precisely avoid substitution but without trying to tinker with capitalism but instead drawing up plans to introduce production for use. That way we could not return to the previous status quo, and can hang on until the world movement has sufficient strength to make the decisive change.
Quote:I’m not quite sure what you are on about here. ” Breaking the link between labour and return outright ” in the sense that there is no quid pro quo set up is precisely what is meant by “generalised reciprocity”.Well, in the sense that work becomes an end in itself rather than a means to a personal end, which it remains if it is in any sense reciprocal.I think the own kill rule contrasts with chiefly feast giving, indeed as precisely a means of preventing that sort of gifting (and ultimately potlatching).
I always supposed the answer is the same as what would happen when (as is much more likely) socialists gain control of local authorities: we democratise administration, use resources available to make concrete plans for how production for use could be administered, and promote socialism generally. Such local adminuistration to go on (under a sort of capitalist basis) until the worldwide movement is ready to make to global change.
I’ve disagreed with Robin before about this ‘extended gift’ trope, so far as I am concerned, we are about breaking the link between labour and return outright. In our workplaces, right now, we don’t treat it as a gift economy. We co-operate (laterally) with our colleagues to get work done: we approach the person whose task is designated or who can achieve an end, and ask them to do things.This is faintly relevant to the main topic under consideration. In hunter gatherer tribes, so I believe, a general rule operates called the Own Kill Rule (or some variations on it).The principle is, if you kill it, you don’t get to eat it. Maybe hunter gatherers are just immoral in completely repudiating Lockean property principles. Of course, this works because you get to eat what others kill (either through a name relationship, or through clan connections). but that’s not a gift, because, you don’t have a choice, that’s just the arrangement, and it works because it’s in everyone’s generalised interest to keep the system going, the first to defect will be the loser.While I’m on this kick, I recall reading an account of, I think it was a polynesian man, who didn’t own a thing. the land he worked was his uncles, his trees belonged to his cousin, his spade was his neighbour’s dog’s, etc. He had full control and use of these things, but if asked, not a tiny bit actually belonged to him.
It was exactly the same argument as before, just with longer words.As regards socialism. I think it would be incompatible with the founding logic:
Quote:we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.I leave you to unpack the connotations of that.
Go on, I’ll have one last crack.What I’ve been trying to get at is that “Self ownership” involves a category error. Being “Property” is an aspect/characteristic of Objects, not Subjects. To claim to own a person is inherently, thus, to objectify them, and deny their subjectivity. To claim “Self ownership” is fundamentally to internalise the objectification, or, alternatively, to alienate your self from your Being. If slavery is civic/symbollic death, self-ownership is suicide (emotive fallacy).
Fabian wrote:Quote:How are you applying the psychologists fallacy here?You are dismissing an idea without adressing the idea itself, but insted appealing to the “sinister motives” of it’s supporters. As I said, if someone has the most ulterior motive possible to claim that 2+2=4, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s rights, or if he would have the purest of motives to claim that 2+2=5, it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he is wrong.
That doesn’t tally with the psychologists fallacy as described on Wikipedia, nor with what I was doing. I no-where referred to “sinister motives” but to logical outcomes of holding a set of ideas, or to the essentially ideational character of certain concepts. If the consequence of a widely held idea that there were an invisible bridge over the English channel was that hundreds of people stepped off the cliffs of Dover, it would not be a pyschologist fallacy to point that out. I think the fallacy you are actually imputing to me is a mix of ad hominem and appealing to the gallery, neither of which I was doing.
Fabian wrote:Young Master Smeet wrote:My cyber example (above) set out what would be required to truly own another person.No, you talked about what would be required to truly control another person. Which is not a prequsit in owning another person, which was (and is) practiced in millions of cases.
And property involves the right and power to dispose of and control an article, exclusively. If I sell myself, and yet retain the capacity to scratch my arse, then I am exercising control over someone else’s property, illegitimately.
Fabian wrote:And this nonsense has what to do with slavery (which, as I said, was, and is, a very real and practicable thing)?The topic of discussion is “self-ownership”. However, my example of ‘owning a peice of the sun’ is apposite to slavery, etc. Formally, it would be possible to buy an unenforceable property rights, legally. that would have very little to do with the reality of substantial ownership.
Quote:I really hope you are not being so presumptuous as to claim that you know the exact nature of every case of debt bondage and selling one self into slavery in history.I hope so too, and I don’t understand why you have raised that irrelevent aspiration, since I made no such claim. But I do note your return to ad hominem argumentation.
Quote:Being “forced” by biology not to be able to fly or breathe under water is not really coersion nor is it limitation of anyone’s freedom. The majority of barters and trades that exist are “forced” by people’s need to eat, drink, be protected from the elements, and can be said to be “coercion by circumstance”, but you’d just end up sounding ridiculous and look like someone just babbling nonsense to promote some ideology, in the lack of rational arguments.Apologies, I wasn’t clear, the circumstances of coercion were a deliberate policy to dominate and control by the slave taker.
Quote:Another demagogical non-argument which is basically a psychologist fallacy.How are you applying the psychologists fallacy here? You’ve just sacrificed thousands of electrons demonstrating that self ownership includes the capacity of selling yourself into slavery, so it seems evident to me that that seriously blunts its emancipatory connotations.Anyway, I think we’ve hit circularity, thanks for the discussion.
