[lbo-talk] Unproductive labor

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 15 13:00:29 PST 2008


CAN WE NOT DISCUSS VALUE IN A FUTURE POSTCAPITALIST SICIRTY? IS THERE ANYONE WHO CANTS TO DISCUSS VALUE AND THE P-U DISTINCTION IN CAPITALISM? IF NOT, I QUIT.

Btw, Marx, the idea I called silly and Marx called worse was a scheme for labor-chit remuneration in a post-capitalist society.

I did not say,a nd do not think, that value theory is silly. I said I reject value theory. I think it is wrong, not helpful, superfluous, useless, possibly inconsistent, bypassible -- but not silly. It was state of the art in 1867. It's just that this is not 1867 anymore.

The passage you quote is Marx talking about value under capitalism, where the concepot belongs.

I WILL NOT GET INTO A DISCUSSION OF THE MERITS OR LACK OF THEM OF VALUE THEORY. I WANT TO FRAME MY DISCUSSION OF THE PU-U DISTINCTION AS IF VALUE THEORY WERE TRUE, OK?

--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:


> an:
>
> 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. 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?
> **********************
> KM's 'silly' notions about labour time
> :
> <The creation of a large quantity of disposable time
> apart from necessary
> labour time for society generally and each of its
> members (i.e. room for the
> development of the individuals’ full productive
> forces, hence those of society
> also), this creation of not-labour time appears in
> the stage of capital, as of
> all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for
> a few. What capital adds
> is that it increases the surplus labour time of the
> mass by all the means of
> art and science, because its wealth consists
> directly in the appropriation of
> surplus labour time; since value directly its
> purpose, not use value. It is
> thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the
> means of social disposable
> time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole
> society to a diminishing
> minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their
> own development. But its
> tendency always, on the one side, to create
> disposable time, on the other, to
> convert it into surplus labour. If it succeeds too
> well at the first, then it
> suffers from surplus production, and then necessary
> labour is interrupted,
> because no surplus labour can be realized by
> capital. The more this
> contradiction develops, the more does it become
> evident that the growth of the
> forces of production can no longer be bound up with
> the appropriation of alien
> labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves
> appropriate their own
> surplus labour. (N.B. get out your blackberrys, cell
> phones and endless hours
> at the office, MB)*Once they have done so – and
> disposable time thereby ceases
> to have an antithetical existence – then, on one
> side, necessary labour time
> will be measured by the needs of the social
> individual, and, on the other, the
> development of the power of social production will
> grow so rapidly that, even
> though production is now calculated for the wealth
> of all, disposable time will
> grow for all. For real wealth is the developed
> productive power of all
> individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any
> longer, in any way, labour
> time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the
> measure of value posits
> wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable
> time as existing in and
> because of the antithesis to surplus labour time;
> or, the positing of an
> individual’s entire time as labour time, and his
> degradation therefore to mere
> worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed
> machinery thus forces the
> worker to work longer than the savage does, or than
> he himself did with the
> simplest, crudest tools.*>
>
>
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm#p708
>
> Mike B)
>
> http://www.iww.org.au/node/10
> "Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe
> Hill
> http://www.iww.org/en/join
>
>
> Get the name you always wanted with the new
> y7mail email address.
> www.yahoo7.com.au/y7mail
>
>
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>
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