I'll do some interjections from the passage I quoted here with ( MB):
>The more this contradiction develops (THE GROWING CONTRADICTION BETWEEN
PRODUCTIVITY AND WAGE-SLAVE LABOUR TIME SPENT AT THE OFFICE ETC. MB), 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 (TIME MB), but that the mass of workers must themselves
> appropriate their own surplus labour (TIME MB). (N.B. get out your
blackberrys, cell phones and endless hours at the office, MB)*Once they have
done so (ONCE THEY HAVE EXPROPRIATED THE THE RULING CLASS AND INSTITUTED SOCIAL
OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION MB) (and disposable time thereby ceases to
have an antithetical existence (I.E. THAT IT IS USEFUL TO THE CAPITALISTS AND
THAT YOU ARE USED BY THEM TO PRODUCE CHEAPER COMMODITIES--VALUE FORM WITHOUT
THIS INCREASED OUTPUT PER HOUR GOING TO REDUCE YOUR SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOUR
TIME AT THE OFFICE ETC.) 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 (AGAIN,
SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOUR TIME IN THE COMMODITY/VALUE FORM IS REDUCED DUE TO
GREATER PRODUCTIVITY OF LABOUR; BUT THIS DOES NOT TRANSLATE INTO GREATER
DISPOSABLE TIME UNDER THE RULE OF CAPITAL; INSTEAD MORE, CHEAPER COMMODITIES
FOR THE CAPITALIST TO MARKET MB),
>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. (IOW,
PRODUCTIVITY INCREASES FREE-TIME, DISPOSABLE TIME FOR THE PRODUCER AND SOCIALLY
NECESSARY LABOUR TIME DECREASES IN A SOCIALIST SOCIETY, NOT TO CHEAPEN
COMMODITIES; BUT TO INCREASE DISPOSABLE TIME--STAKHONOVISM ASIDE MB) 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
>
Now for the 'labour chit' discussion. Productivity under capitalism is all about producing cheaper commodities for the capitalists. Unproductive labour is labour unproductive of saleable commodities--washing the dishes and personal garden labour. Productive labour is labour used by the capitalists to increase output per hour or some other TIME measurement. In the lower stage of communism, where we're producing goods and services for our own uses and needs, Marx thought that using some measurement of labour time might be a useful way to divide socially necessary time from disposable time. Again, my interjections ( MB):
******************************************** What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it.(UNMEDIATED BY WAGE LABOUR WHICH IS BASED ON WHAT ONE'S LABOUR WILL SELL FOR IN MONEY TERMS IN THE MARKETPLACE AS A COMMODITY) What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. (NB. TIME/ HOURS OF THE DAY MB) For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (TIME MB) (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values (EMBODIED SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOUR TIME MB). Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances (SOCIAL OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION) no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption (THEIR 'CERTIFICATES' MB). But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents (SEE THE FIRST CHAPTER OF CAPITAL VOLUME I. COMMODITY EQUIVALENTS ARE BASED ON SOCIALLY NECESSARY LABOUR TIME MB): a given amount of labor (TIME MB) in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor (TIME MB) in another form.
Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.
In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.
But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view (AS WE ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE 'EQUAL UNDER THE LAW' IN BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACIES), are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. (WORKERS' TIME IS EQUAL MB) Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. (BY MAKING A SINGLE NEUROSURGEON'S TIME AS EQUAL AS A GARBAGE COLLECTOR WITH TEN CHILDREN--OH, YOU HAVE TEN KIDS WITH NEEDS. HERE'S YOUR KID CERTIFICATE ENHANCEMENT TO GET GOODS AND SERVICES FROM THE SOCIAL STORE TO PROVIDE FOR THEM TOO)
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Mike B)
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