I give up. No one wants to talk about capitalism, just about hypothetical postcapitalist societies. Wonder why not.
--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> an wrote:
> The passage you quote is Marx talking about value
> under capitalism, where the concept belongs.
> *******************************
>
> 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
>
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