[lbo-talk] Unproductive Workers = The Best Organized in the USA

tfast tfast at yorku.ca
Thu Jan 19 08:09:08 PST 2006


Woj now just confess your faith in the doctrine of comparative advantage and you will have fulfilled all the requirements for a degree in economics. Who knows maybe you could get a Nobel prize by arguing that people do not always have perfect information but act as though they do. Really your capacity to wax certain on the LTOV would be amazing if only your post did not read like a quote out of "economic polemics for dummies".

Travis

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


>>Point of information:
>>
>>>From Theories of Surplus Value Volume 1 Progress 1969 Moscow:
>>
>>"...the use value of labour-power to the capitalist as a
>>capitalist does not consist in its actual use-value, in the
>>usefulness of this particular concrete labour - that it is
>>spinning labour, weaving labour, and so on. He is as little
>>concerned with this as with the use-value of the product of
>>this labour as such, since for the capitalist the product is
>>a commodity( even before its first metamorphisis), not an
>>article of consumption. What interests him in the commodity
>>is that it has more exchange-value than he paid for it, and
>>therefore the use-value of the labour is, for him, that he
>>gets back a greater quantity of labour-time than he has paid
>>out in the form of wages. Included among these productive
>>workers, of course, are all those who contribute in one way
>>or another to the production of the commodity, from the
>>actual operative to the manager or engineer (as distinct from
>>the capitalist)." (pp 156)
>>
>>
>
>
>Let's be honest, the LTV is a bunch of crock. It was a good rhetorical
>device to rally for a greater power of labor at the turn of the century -
>the common sense wisdom "he who pays the piper, calls the tune" dressed up
>in econo-babble to make it look scientific and important - but as science it
>is a bunch of crock that has zero explanatory power (as most economic
>theories do anyway.) A scientific theory has a value only if it can predict
>novel or unknown fact - hindsight rationalizations won't do, since religion
>does that too (i.e. it is a matter of faith and semantics rather than
>empirical verification.) The LTV fails to explain the behavior of business
>firms - from geographic distribution, to structural forms businesses take,
>to business decision making, to the role of the state in the economy
>(Keynesianism), to product diversification, to the rise of service economy
>at the expense of production.
>
>If the use value does not matter, then why do we have such a diversity of
>products? If the only thing that matters for the capitalist, why does
>he/she take a considerable risk of developing new products i.e. why is
>he/she risking the 'exchange value' for creating new "use value?" And how
>about joint stock companies that separate ownership and business decision
>making. Do "capitalists" (stock holders) also care only about exchange
>value? And if so, how do they make the management who are de facto
>*employees* but who are also the decision makers to care only about exchange
>value which they fork over to the capitalists? And how about employee-owned
>stock corporations, are their owners capitalists who care only about
>exchange value and exploit themselves as workers? And then, there is pesky
>automation. Today, great value is produced by automated production line
>with minimal human involvement and with future technological advances it is
>likely that most material production will be carried by robots controlled by
>a handful of software engineers. That clearly contradicts the basic premise
>of the LTV that only human labor produces value. Moreover, with such
>automated production the profits are made not in manufacturing but
>distribution - a fundamental fact of life in modern economy on which the LTV
>has nothing to say.
>
>Methinks that the LTV should be put to rest in the museum of human thought.
>It was a clever rhetorical device to mobilize support for labor struggle for
>power in labor-intensive industry era where labor had virtually no decision
>making power. It spoke to the common sense that those who make it should
>also have something to say about it, but it had much more gravitas than folk
>wisdom by adopting economic jargon (which is, btw, what economists do all
>the time). It is, in a way, like those charismatic revolutionary leaders
>who do a great job by mobilizing people and making the revolution happen,
>but after the revolution they should retire because they are likely to run
>the economy aground.
>
>Wojtek
>
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>
>
>



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