Yes. I am sure. Compensation according to labor a nonmarket system CANNOT be computed according to value. Where there is no labor market or generalized commodity production, THERE IS NO VALUE. If you don't understand that value theory is a theory only for generalized commodity production, you're out of the ballpark, whoever "you" are. This point is not arguable by serious readers of Marx and I am not going to argue it. Anyway, Marx did take apart at the joints some hapless contemporary who proposed a Parecon like scheme of compensation by units of labor time -- not value in Marx's sense, a sense of the term value at the time peculiar to him. I have mislaid the reference. The remark in CGP about remuneration according to labor says nothing about value, and it wouldn't, because unlike the early Bolsheviks, Marx understood his own theory reasonably well. Nor does it involve a labor chit system, unless Marx cahnged his mind after his demolition of the proto Alber-Hahnel, which I doubt. What it means is somewhat opaque, BUT NOT GERMANE HERE, because it is not discussing CAPITALISM but a postcapitalist society. Therefore my theory about what the poassage in CGP means means (I have one, in fact I've published it, citation on request) is irrelevant to my question.
Can we get back to my question?
I agree that there is potential for an insustance on the p-u distinction to be politicatically divisive. But that is not an answer to my question, which is, does it make sense in capitalism?
--- Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
>
>
> >>> andie nachgeborenen
> The failure to understand the point that value has
> no
> meaning outside a generalized commodity economy
> based
> on market exchange led the Soviets to some
> disastrous
> early economic experiments based on attempting to
> plan
> on the basis of value.
>
> ^^^
> CB: Are you sure about this ? What about the famous
> quotes from the
> Critique of the Gotha Programme on the transitional
> stage between
> capitalism and socialism in which the principle is
> still to each
> according to work ( labor)? If people are paid based
> on labor time
> doesn't that imply that there remains a
> transitional concept of value
> which still retains some of the aspects of value as
> under the full
> commodity system ? Wouldn't the Soviet Union
> appropriately have
> "transitional" commodities and "transitional" money
> and " transitional"
> value measured by labor time ?
>
> ^^^
>
> Something like it underlies the
> silly idea to remunerate labor in a nonmarket
> context
> terms or chits for labor time -- Marx actually takes
> this silly notion on somewhere, I used to know, but
> it
> doesn't come to mind, Shane? anyone? -- it's not a
> new
> idea. And it won't go away.
>
> Although not officially accepting value theory,
> Parecon offers a version of this form of
> compensation
> which betrays the misunderstanding of the fact,
> expressed in Marx's value theory, that it is the
> labor
> market as part of a generalized system of commodity
> exchange that enforces an objective meaning on a
> unit
> of labor time as socially necessary.
>
> I don't even believe in value theory, why should I
> have to explain this point to its advocates?
>
> ^^^^
> CB: I'm not sure there isn't a transitional form of
> value in the
> transitional stage.
>
> ^^^^
>
> Anyway, can we PLEASE stick to the question: does
> the
> distinction between productive and unproductive
> labor
> have meaning IN CAPITALISM, especially advanced
> post-industrial finance capitalism like in modern
> America, and if so, what meaning does it have?
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Whatever distinction might be made, the key is
> not to introduce an
> idea that will be the basis for some further
> division of the working
> class (Workers of the World , unite ! wake up
> prince Ian) . You had it
> right when you mentioned the need to answer your
> question in relation to
> practice, class struggle.
>
>
> --- Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
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>
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