ckaihatsu wrote:Can you address my sample scenario, then -- ? If I happen to be more productive per hour of work, per labor role, producing more widgets. how would my greater rate of productivity be taken into account and rewarded, exactly?
Okay, how?
Okay, thank you for your honesty here -- you're acknowledging that individual varying rates of productivity, per hour, per work role, would be 'externalities' to the social calculation of non-commodified socialized labor value.
I superimposed some quantitative aspects for the categories in my 'Components of Social Production' diagram -- please note that the various fundamental social material interests around social production -- for any given mode of production -- are *inherently* contrasted to each other: Workers want to work less and live more, but to live more means to *consume* more, as consumers (not workers), which requires more social labor time, for social production, from more workers, somewhere.
Likewise, social administration can be had at the cost of depleting the pool of laborers doing actual productive work, presumably for the sake of society enjoying greater scales of coordination and production -- efficiencies that would otherwise not be possible -- but then such administration will be directing *more production*, contrary to the interests of workers as individuals.
The natural world has an interest in *less* production (development of natural resources), for its preservation, and workers likewise have an interest in *less* production so that they can have more free time to enjoy more nature, but less productivity on the whole means less societal / civilizational *progress* and lesser societal material *integration*, worldwide. (Etc.)
210512 PoFo -- A question for our Marxists DIAGRAM
Components of Social Production
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Okay, but there's no guarantee of quantities adding-up, inventory-wise, on the whole -- just *saying* 'rewards-for-labor-[time]' doesn't necessarily mean that quantities produced will properly correspond to materials consumed, because quantities-produced is apples-and-oranges in comparison to quantities-consumed, since workers individually produce at different rates, over different items, than they consume-at.
This, though, is *sloganeering* -- making promises to workers about their own labor time, without addressing how individual *claims* to social production can be adequately handled, given the total amount of *stuff* (goods and services) produced. Relying on time-for-time measurements doesn't address concrete *physical quantities* at all.
More sloganeering -- *how* is labor 'intensity' to be measured and standardized in the political economy, then?
I have to reiterate that this whole *approach* of 'rewards-for-labor', is politically problematic. though, because it effectively *commodifies* labor time, though the labor value is not privately appropriated -- it's basically the political economy of *Stalinism*, which is incrementally better than capitalism's private property relations, but is certainly not full communism or collective workers control since a separatist bureaucratic *administration* is obviously required to institutionally keep track of all of these material quantities, more-or-less in realtime.
To be blunt, I have no answer, my use of those other people's examples is only to infer the sort of direction some people propose answers but I can't say that I've gone beyond them any in considering the issue at length.
So I don't have a proposed solution and am sympathetic to the concerns you raised about how to actually combine a material individual interest with the collective. I also agree that it tends to remain in the view of implying the need for some people being the managers and record keepers.
When I read those summaries I am also concerned with how practical such a description is as it still remains extremely vague as far as I can tell.
I am even skeptical about the effort to still retain labor as a kind of value perhaps and whether it in some sense still retains the law of value.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/value.htmThe "labour theory of value" disappears with value itself, as soon as people stop exchanging commodities. We do not need a new theory of value. We will demonstrate our values when we can decide how to spend our time and the sooner we can decide what to do with our own time, the better. So long as we still want something in exchange, so long are we enslaved. So long as we have to spend out time doing one thing in order to get something else in exchange, so long are we enslaved.
However, It does make me think that is not the same problem existant in capitalist production also. You can directly measure much output an individual worker performs and pay them as such if you want to, but where group work can hide such individual productivity, there can be differences which may or may not be disciplined or pressured in some way. This being a point only at the local level .
But alas, no real response from me, I am at my limits and really I have overextended myself in order to paly on unfamiliar grounds in order to be forced to try and think rather than rely on stereotypical or established knowledge.
Rugoz wrote:Which means the subsistence theory of wages is wrong. Where does that leave Marxism in general?
Along with your earlier point of not considering labour-power a commodity as"it is not produced and sold competitively", might you be seeking to emphasize its distinction along with these:
https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/23317518 To classify wages as prices, labor power must be classified as a commodity. In general the critics agree on this point.
The opinion that considers labor power a commodity is a subject of lively controversy. Marx's opponents say that, if one considers labor power a commodity, one must also concede that it is a commodity that combines a group of very singular qualities:
1. In general, the merchant can divest himself of his commodities relatively easily. Labor power, on the other hand, is linked very intimately and indissolubly to its possessor, who can in no way extract it or separate it from his own person. Moreover, the owner of labor power must not only be present in the act of sale, he is also obliged to be present the whole of the time that his employer wishes to make use of it. The evaluation and utilization of value, and hence the evaluation of his own person, must be left to others. Despite the existence of the labor contract, the worker descends into a state of dependency. This finding discloses to us numerous and important differences between labor power and other commodities.
2. The buyer must go looking for commodities where a seller is to be found. The worker does not have the means to transport his commodities, that is, to transport himself to other places. Nor is he able to find out where his commodities are desired or in demand.
3. Each day a worker does not benefit from selling his labor power is for him a loss, since it cannot accumulate or store his commodity; he cannot wait for a favorable day for selling.
4. As a consequence of his unfavorable economic situation the worker is obliged, regardless of the economic conditions at the time, to sell his labor power in order not to die of hunger. Thus, by dint of circumstances, he finds himself committed to perpetual subjection. By organizing into trade unions, workers are able to change the movement of prices to their own benefit by means of strikes, collective contracts, and the like. On this basis they are able to achieve a higher living standard and cause the costs of production of labor power to increase considerably. The state is also able, through laws protecting labor, to guarantee workers a greater share of the national product.32
5. Finally, the critics point out that other commodities require an advance of funds; commodities are brought to the market by entrepreneurs in the hopes of being compensated by their sale for the capital they have disbursed in the quest of profits. In contrast, the critics demonstrate that labor power has caused no capital to be disbursed and that it is brought to the market to secure the existence of its possessor, who is not a capitalist. This situation is so special that it is truly not warranted to count the commodity "labor power" as another among commodities whose quantity can be augmented and to apply to it the same laws applied to any other commodity for the formation of prices.33
The critics draw the following conclusions from all these points: "It is only through a totally arbitrary and artificial process that labor can be included among the commodities." Marx does a true salto mortale by replacing labor power with the means of subsistence necessary to reproduce labor power.34 Since labor power differs so much from all other commodities, a theory of wages that nonetheless considers labor power a commodity, and wages the price of this commodity, must necessarily oversimplify and synthesize factual phenomena. Such a theory will be forced to disregard not only secondary influences, but also many essential things. Given these flaws, it is inevitable that the theory should depart considerably from reality. So many things must be corrected in moving from theory to practice that in the end not even the skeleton of the theory remains.
The possibility of finding a solution to real problems is all the weaker in that the items left out of account by the theory are major ones and in that this construction is so remote from reality. All these reasons make those who investigate factors determining the level of prices reluctant to qualify labor power as a commodity and consider wage as a price.
- José Manuel García Ábalos, Marx's Theory of Wages.
My concern here is that while labor-power is different in some respects, this lends support to but doesn't go far enough to actually argue that it isn't a commodity as what is left implicit is the issue of what constitutes a commodity.
This is where get into an issue of how one determines what features are crucial to the concept of a thing to which I am skeptical that those who aren't familiar with Marx's method can do as such except sporadically as formal logic can be arbitrary as it focuses on internal consistency but is external in regarding what facts are essential or not.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/abstraction-abstract-labor-and-ilyenkov/Spinoza seeks a criterion of truth inside thought itself. The genuine truth needs not to be collated with a thing, it verifies itself: veritas sui sit norma. If some architect makes an idea of building in due order, his thought is true regardless of the fact, whether the building be raised or not. On the other hand, if someone states, for example, that Peter exists, and nevertheless does not know that Peter exists, that thought is not true, even though Peter really exists [8, p. 31]. Hence, there is something real inside thought itself that differs true ideas from the false ones. That “objective essence” of idea Spinoza calls “certainty”. 2
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For Ilyenkov, though, it was a matter not so much of novelty of fact, as a matter of its theoretical relevance. How a fact could promote the theory that is the main point. Some facts help us to penetrate into the nature of object, other facts just interfere with investigating this nature, drawing our thought away, switching it to particulars and accidentals. Even if a proposition most strictly corresponds with a fact, but the fact itself is “foreign,” inessential to the object of thought, then, within objective logic, the “truth value” of such proposition goes to zero, or rather might be a minus quantity, since it impedes cognizing the object.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/abstraction-abstract-labor-and-ilyenkov/The goal of this abstraction is to eventually identify the essential connections between different abstract aspects, slowly piecing the pieces together to give us a concrete picture of the whole. However this can only happen if we abstract correctly. There are two senses in with Marx talks of abstractions, a good and a bad way of abstracting. When abstraction has gone bad Marx often refers to the abstraction as ‘one-sided’. This means that the abstraction views an aspect of reality in an incomplete, one-sided way. An essential aspect of the nature of the object has been left out. Often Marx critiques bourgeois economists for making one-sided abstractions that make it seem like capitalism is a universal, a-historical system by abstracting away all of the historically specific aspects of capital. For instance, if we say that capital is just tools used to make more tools we have performed a sloppy, 1-sided abstraction. We are viewing capital merely from the abstract general features that capital has of increasing physical quantities of things while abstracting away the historically specific value-relations that give capitalism its essential nature.
This shows that abstraction can be arbitrary. If we are free to select one general feature over another we can radically change the concept of capital. If we choose only the ahistorical features we can make capital seem eternal. If abstraction is just seen as the identification of general features then we have no choice but to be arbitrary in our abstractions. But if abstraction is seen differently, as identifying the essential nature of an object, as identifying the “relation within which this thing is this thing” as Ilenkov puts it, then we can be scientific about our abstractions.
When we make an abstraction we want to select that aspect of the object which identifies its essence. Since the essence of things is in their relation to other things, we want to identify the essential relations which govern the object, abstracting away other non-essential aspects.
The above author follows that summary with the following:
"In calling human labor a commodity," says Strigl, we adopt the following point of view:
The commodity "labor" constitutes one of the parts of national wealth and is used in the process of production just like any other means of production. Entrepreneurs, who control the assessment of its value, use it in their economic calculations. This approach to the facts is, from a purely economic standpoint, the only justifiable approach. Of course, we do not deny that the problem of labor can be considered from other points of view. Likewise, we do not deny that, in practice, motives other than economic motives can play a very important role in social life....
Similarly, we do not accept that such notions, which do not start from the economic order, can exercise a fundamental influence on economic factors and that they are able to modify the latter in any essential way. The following argument justifies considering labor as a commodity and helps to characterize the role of labor in the totality of economic goods and their use—relations that it is incumbent on the discipline of economics to study.36
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As a result of the growing influence of trade unions, a certain repugnance is felt toward accepting theories based on an objective value for labor power. At present, a campaign is underway directed not only against the theory of wages, but also against Marxist theory. In particular, although Marx's theory of wages does not rule out every possibility of wage increases through the efforts of professional organizations of workers, as does the wages fund theory, it nonetheless very narrowly limits these possibilities. This theory does not question the influence of political power, although it accords it only a certain importance within the limits set by economic laws. If labor power has a value, and if the price of a commodity must be adapted to its value, it may be concluded that the organization of workers into trades unions cannot improve working conditions limitlessly.
It seems to me, though I think they do a poor job explaining as much if it is the case, that one can consider non-economic facts about labor and labor-power to distinguish it but what relevance such distinctions have intreating it under a theory of price or value may be emphasizing what may be the less essential features of it. It seems a reasonable point that labour-power is conditioned by similar forces in it's value, even if one rejects value and only speaks of prices, we have talked about supply and demand in determining wages for example as one does about any other commodity.
It seems it may be a point to not consider labour-power a commodity because it isn't traded and produced and owned by a capitalist. But it seems to reflect the same relation of exchange as commodities do in capitalism in being exchanged for money i.e. wage, it just doesn't happen to be a tangible product but many commodities aren't tangible.
I guess I'm concerned what is meant to be the essential mark what a commodity is, as the commodification of labour as labour-power only reflects it's a distinction with that of slavery in production, that one does not own the person but one does own their commitment to work under the conditions of employment to the benefit of the employer in what they produce in exchange for a wage. The worker goes into the labour market to find some exchange for their skills and abilities at some task.
That it is entirely owned by the worker doesn't necessarily distinguish it as a non-commodity, as workers may own commodities also, whether for consumption or some kind of exchange.
And it most certainly is sold competitively because workers do compete for jobs, if someone gets a job, and I don't I lose out on that opportunity to earn that wage for that kind of work. If several hundred people apply for an apprenticeship as a plumber but only a handful are hired, it's hard to think that the workers weren't all competing for the same job.
I have been trying to probe further into what standing subsistence has in Marx's theory of wages, and as far as I can tell it seems to be emphasized as a limiting minimum, which some may fall below but is a logical prerequisite for labor because it secures their very existence and ability to be productive. It also seems his emphasis may be in resistance to those who would frame labor as not subject directly to market/productive forces but being a struggle of power only. As there are those who do emphasize the class struggle to the detriment that there is a limit at which wages can actually achieve. Of course, Marx would argue that the class struggle over wages primarily impacts profit by cutting into the value gained by surplus labor in the working day and doesn't necessarily impact the cost of commodities produced. It again seems to be an effort to go beyond the fluctuations of pricing based on changes in supply and demand and try to emphasize the "anchor" point at which wages maintain some stability. I don't see very tight formulations about scarcity, it seems to be more a kind of logic point and enacted in the balancing act of paying enough to actually entice people to want to work for the employer to meet their needs, because if it's too low they can't use their wage to buy what they need.
Which isn't to be reduced to only physical needs because there are social needs that are necessary in a modern economy to work.
https://sci-hub.se/https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/15/2/199/1735068?redirectedFrom=PDFWages are the price paid to ensure the reproduction of labour-power, but, in Marxian theory, this reproduction must be seen in both a physical and a social sense. The physical sense is simply that a mal-nourished and ill-housed worker will be unable to work for long, let alone effect the reproduction of the next generation (Marx, 1976, p. 275).J In the developed world, however, it is likely to be the institutional and social constraints which determine labour supply, and which, although Marx failed to investigate them fully, underly the 'historical and moral' element. Thus, if for some reason wages were pushed well below the value of labour-power the supply of labour-power would be curtailed—that is, fail to be socially reproduced.
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The interpretation which I have advanced here is that an implicit answer to the problem is provided in Marx's mature works. Both wages and the value of labour-power are the object of conflict, but the powers of the combatants are ultimately subordinate to labour market conditions. The value of labour-power influences labour supply while past wages go to determine the value of labour-power. The solution to a simple dynamic model, embodying this interaction and the reserve army mechanism, appears to be consistent with the spirit of what Marx himself wrote on these matters. The significance of the value of labour-power concept is that it provides a basis along with the reserve army for the relative smoothness of the wages path and its convergence to a slowly dragging anchor point, possibly in the face of substantial changes in the overall economy. Without these concepts, there is nothing to prevent large wage fluctuations or a random wage drift. Marx considered that, as a stylised fact, wages fluctuated relatively little, compared to other variables such as the profit rate, and that what variations they had were around a point that varied hardly at all in the short run but quite substantially between countries and in the long run. His labour market concepts provided for these observations a rationale which, while not excluding long-run population dynamics, did not rely on Malthusian formulations.
The tendency being the scarcity of labor which, among other things, is determined by the size of the capital stock, e.g. "how many machines there are that must be operated by workers", and fertility. Historically the latter couldn't keep up with the former.
The scarcity of labor is an interesting dynamic now that a lot of industrialized nations require a great deal more education and skills, but we also see a lot of industries shift to third world and places where wages are incredibly low relative to the industrialized nations.
Seems that some might give emphasis to the scarcity of labor in production as the determining factor in the scarcity of resources.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/law-of-value-7-production-and-exchange/But how can we actually understand scarcity without understanding the production process? How do we compare the scarcity of coal to wood without an understanding of the fact that wood merely requires the cutting of a tree while coal requires an elaborate mining process? (How do we understand the scarcity of intellectual work without realizing that a Mozart CD can be duplicated an infinite amount of times at the click of a button while a Van Gogh can never be painted again?) Scarcity is only an inversion of production. It is the work of people that produces things in given quantities. Our “choices between scarce resources” are actually choices between different distributions of labor.
Where technological development certainly makes physical output much higher as seen in agricultural production where there seem to even be farms that require only a handful of people among the automated technology to effective farm, apparently causing even greater isolation among farmers.
Interesting you make the point of historically how machines available to be worked couldn't keep up with the number of people to labor, where it seems that we see how superfluous a lot of labor becomes soon as production is radically improved with machinery. There always being the defense that workers will simply find other jobs, but it is of course a progressive part of capitalism that automation takes over the more mundane of tasks. It is just of course a nasty effect that people can be put out of work en masse.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics