> The bottom line is that while the theory of value was a very clever tool
> to de-pychologize and demystify capitalism in the 19th country against
> the claims of its detractors and supporters - that theory is not
> logically necessary to denounce capitalism today. It is possible to
> think of a situation when goods are produced by robots (as it is largely
> the case of auto or computer mfg) - i.e. little or no human labor going
> into the process. So where is the exploitation, if we stick to the
> Ricardian-Marxian notion that only human labor produces value? A much
> powerful critique can be delivered by claiming that such production
> wastes natural resources and thus makes everyone worse off in a long
> run, for example.
>
> Wojtek
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Some quick points:
1)The robots, and all machines are objectified, 'dead' labor and transmuted nature, so even a perfectly automated factory in one sector of the economy doesn't mean that the contribution of human labor in producing the social surplus as a whole could be driven to zero.
2)As Justin, Gil Skillman, and before them, CB MacPherson and many others have pointed out, you don't need a labor theory of value -a term KM never used- to demonstrate that workers are exploited under capitalism's relations of/within production.
3)The ecological critique of capitalism as wasteful is definitely devastating and needs ever greater popularization if we are to use our best individual/collective know-how to transmute the forces and relations of production/composition of effective demand.
[I wish I could remember where KM questions whether machines add value. I want to say Notebooks III & IV of Grundrisse but I'm way too time-poor to find out].
Ian