I mostly agree with the LTV because it's almost a tautology. A commodity needs labor to be produced and other commodities aswell. As such, any commodity can be broken down and will always be reduccible to its labor-content.
That prices =/= labor-costs can simply be explained by supply/demand granting higher bargaining power to the bourgeois.
However, if this is correct, why can't we solve the transformation problem ? I might be wrong in my understanding of the LTV so this might explain the issue, but it seems that there's no satisfying solution to it.
>If the LTV is correct
Its not.
>>2889207why ?
>>2889197Imo one place to start would be to analyze the claim that the profite rate becomes uniform over thousands of heterogenous goods.
>>2889212if value = price, marginalism is is a better explanation of many phenomena
if value =/= price, who cares about value?
a political program shouldn't really stand or fall on such economic minutiae in any case.
>>2889246>who cares about value?Appeal to function, hence your argument can be rejected. The goal of inquiry isn't to justify teleologic goals, it is to attain truth.
>>2889246Go back to your containment thread, smith anon
>>2889249what if value is an unknowable abstract property? how can one attain truth if value is, in essence, secret?
you implicitly reject the first formulation that value = price or price plus or minus some factor.
>>2889251so far as i understand it, smith was an LTV believer and marginalism wouldn't arise until much later.
>>2889269>what if value is an unknowable abstract property? How can we have a word to designate a fundamentally unknowable thing ? If we posit that humans are beings whose knowledge comes from the external world, recieved phenomenally, we can infer that for any concept to be created, it would have to pass through a phenomenally-recievable format. This is because any concept is abstracted from our phenomenal perception. (
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/psychology/concept-formation)
As such, if the concept of "value" exists, it must have a phenomenal form that is cognizable.
>you implicitly reject the first formulation that value = priceI don't reject that the appearance of value takes the form of a price. What I reject is that its appearance is its content itself.
Price is just something which occurs when labor has already been enacted, and when it's already been subject to commodification. The underlining structure of the price already implies commodification, which itself implies labor-content.
Idk tho if that's what Marx argued or if I'm just going on a tangent but that's why I believed in the LTV in the first place.
>>2889197Reminder:
marx never ever used the words "labor theory of value" anywhere in all 3 volumes of capital to describe his theory of value nor does he put it up against "subjective theory of value." this is a construction of debatebros in the 21st century. marx's theory of value contains both subjective and objective elements. the subjective element is called use value. an object has use value if enough humans want it to justify creating many of them. this is also related to demand. the objective element is called exchange value. an object has exchange value if it requires labor time to bring to market. this includes raw materials and natural resources. even an apple which falls from a tree has to be picked up and carried to a market place. this is also related to supply. if something has both use value (a rate of demand determined by widespread human desires or needs) and exchange value (a rate of supply determined by average labor time), and is created for the purpose of being sold, it is a commodity. If it is lacking one or another, it is not a commodity. This is crucial to know because marx's theory of value is not about random one-of-a-kind things like The Original Mona Lisa, or things which nobody wants like mud pies. It is about commodities. Marx's theory of value isn't meant to describe any random object, nor even every single commodity, but rather the average commodity. Misapplying his theory to domains it was not meant to explain is not a fault with the theory, but the fault of the person over-applying it. Another important thing is price versus value. Price deviates from value according to non-production factors: Currency hegemony, Currency devaluation, Scarcity, monopoly, monopsony, government expropriation, theft, war etc. Value on the other hand is only looking at the factors of production. So the transformation "problem" is about trying to apply a theory of value as if it were a theory of price. Marx's value is not trying to say anything about the final market price. So when Marx says that the value of a commodity is its socially necessary labor time, he is not talking about the price. He is only pointing out the tug of war between profit and wages which occurs in the production process, and how that results in class conflict and class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, since the bourgeoisie own the means of production, and it is in the bourgeoisie's interests to lower wages and increase profit, not just for their own personal consumption of mansions and yachts and so forth, but also so that they have more money with which to expand production, and buy more means of production, and buy more labor power, and buy more raw materials. Capiche?
>>2889342>MetaphysicsOnly if viewed a priori rather than a posteriori.
>>2889246>Value and PriceThis is why it's helpful to view "value" as a particular price (e.g. equilibrium, or natural price), rather than as a thing which exists outside of its manner of expression.
>>2889269Jevons (1871) shows how labour's marginal product is equivalent to its value, the same as Ricardo (1817) says.
>>2889337Engels reconciles with marginalism in the preface to Capital Vol. 3 (1894), by seeing its Marxist compatibility.
>>2889281>Idk tho if that's what Marx arguedWell, Marx gives a subtle answer to certain problems, by admitting to the existence of "imaginary commodities" (Theories of Surplus Value, Ch. 4), such as he writes (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 3), that items without value can still possess a price, and so assume the form of commodity. Here, the form of appearance is only self-referential, but Marx also sees that it may nonetheless disguise value. The basic point is that valueless commodities do exist in Marx's view, which I see this as intenally contradictory.
>>2889197>Transformation ProblemThis "problem" is described in Capital Vol. 3, Ch. 8-12, where the "prices of production" (e.g. wages, rent, profit) are a result of their values. The issue is that their values are supposed to be traced from a general rate of profit, which equalises different rates into an average standard based in competition. This notably differs from theory given in Capital Vol. 1, as noted by Böhm-Bawerk (1896), a work of which I review here:
>>2861492 The assessment of a general rate of profit is not unique to Marx, but has precedence in Massie (1750), Smith (1776) and Ricardo (1817), by way of the natural rate of interest, which has been discussed since Petty (1662) and Locke (1691). The Classical Economists (opposite to the 'mercantilists') viewed interest as a supply-side phenomenon, and so regulating the interest rate is futile. Massie viewed the rate of interest as an extension of the rate of profit (the same as Marx), but viewed this as a regional tendency, and not a global effect. This is why England has a different interest rate than France, say. Part of Marx's conception of capital is as a result of the world market, and so he attempts to generalise the law of value, both for wages (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 22) and for profits (Capital Vol. 3, Ch. 10), dismissing international differences as a distinction between real and nominal prices. Empirical evidence shows otherwise, that the real price of goods is relative to regional markets, else there would be no exchange-rate between currencies. So, rates of profit are particular to the capitals which engage in a selected market - Marx demonstrates this in part, but doesn't formalise it as a necessary distinction. The presumption is that all capitals (k) are integrated into the same network, but if that's the case, why don't all countries have the same rate of interest, or dispense the same real wage? We now come to imperialist theory.
The crux of the imperial theory of "unequal exchange" is not merely the relative surplus value of invention, but the collection of "surplus profit" (e.g. super-profit) according to the general rate. Marx theorises that the average of all prices allow for exploitation of big capitals against smaller capitals, since they transact a larger share of surplus by selling at the same (real) price. Thus, in the world market, values generalise, but only by reducing the surplus of smaller capitals to compensate the larger. So, big capitals (read: imperial hegemons) exploit smaller capitals (read: imperial peripharies). Continued theory imagines that this sale of commodities also applies to labour, and thus the [West] receives a greater share in the real rewards of global participation (this holds for the case of a lack of minimum wages, but minimum wage laws monopolise the supply of labour to increase prices above value - this is the "aristocracy of labour"). Rather than a crude view of monopoly, the idea of uneven development is authentically Marxist, to the chigrin of many people on this website. But is it true?
An empirical Marxist, Paul Cockshott, denies validity for the theory of profit rate equalisation, and so the law of value is not generally applied to the world market, which is also the common sense of the Classical Economists, that rates of profit equalise, but in particular, instead of in general. Further, if Marx's claim of a distribution of the value of labour was true, we would also see rents generalise, like wages and profits supposedly do, but they appear not to. So, the "transformation problem" is not a problem locally, but only globally, where it fails to establish itself. The rational deduction of value and price being equal in the macro is still as yet consented to by Böhm-Bawerk, but only in the same abstract sense as posited by Marx. Böhm-Bawerk equally determines the factors of production as the relative share of their "prices". So, is it true that value ultimately equals price? According to the LTV, absolutely - this is also given by Cockshott. So, the transformation of the value of labour into the prices of production is given, just in particular (specifcally, Cockshott presents statistical means and deviations as incorporated into models of calculation):
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2020/05/11/equalisation-of-rate-of-profit-or-equalisation-of-rate-of-surplus-value/ >>2889613>Only if viewed a priori rather than a posteriori.the point is that commodities don't "embody" labor. you can't measure the labor contained in a commodity. labor isn't "distributed" from inputs to output(s). the notion that it is, is extremely spooky. it is enough to look at ground rent to see why this is not the case
>>2889626>you can't measure the labor contained in a commodityYou're right, but you can still measure real wages, which go on to pay for the reproduction of labourers. So, energy is still accounted for, just in the form of relative prices. Marx writes this (1867):
<Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmSo then, we come to "know" values by their a posteriori format. Prices are a type of knowledge of something"; presumed to be "value".
>>2889246marginalism doesnt explain jackshit
read the book laws of chaos, the authors set up the LTV with statistics and study prices as actual random variables. still they show their distribution follows labor content
>How can we have a word to designate a fundamentally unknowable thing ? If we posit that humans are beings whose knowledge comes from the external world, recieved phenomenally, we can infer that for any concept to be created, it would have to pass through a phenomenally-recievable format. This is because any concept is abstracted from our phenomenal perception.
This is one of those texts that sounds smart at first reading but gets dumber the more you think about it
>>2889657it's literally machism 2.0
>>2889630>So then, we come to "know" values by their a posteriori format. Prices are a type of knowledge of something"; presumed to be "value"lmao
>>2889660Is this a mocking reply?
If so, what would you say "prices" actually are? What do they mean?
>>2889662>Is this a mocking reply?If so, what would you say "prices" actually are? What do they mean
if lack of self awareness was a person, i remember writing about smith anon awhile back, predicting he would go down the neoliberal/austrian path and lol
>>2889665dude has to write walls of text explaining to us he doesnt know shit, its funny
If civilization is correct, what's the solution to soil exhaustion and resource depletion?
>>2889665>>2889666So you can't actually define what prices are?
>>2889630>but you can still measure real wagesthat you can, but that also doesn't tell you anything, because using wages as the basis for the analysis amounts to explaining prices using prices
>So then, we come to "know" values by their a posteriori format. Prices are a type of knowledge of something"; presumed to be "value".you still have to explain where prices "come from". like yes, prices will be somewhere in the vicinity of values. but what determines value?
>>2889630oh and to be clear I don't think it's necessarily wrong to explain prices using prices. the notion that you can't is due to Marx not knowing calculus
>>2889626> commodities don't "embody" laborlook I can do this too. Money doesn't "pay for" anything! It's just a coincidence that whenever I give money I get a commodity in return! You can complain about any abstraction by saying it should be expanded into a full novel about the underlying physical process it is meant to describe.
>>2889678>what's the solution to soil exhaustion compost, fertilizer
>resource depletion?resource production
>>2889626> commodities don't "embody" laborthey simply require labor time to produce
>>2889759>they simply require labor time to producesure, but they require many other things as well. labor is only special in that it is the only thing that is a direct input in
every labor process
>>2889756that's not the point anon. if you read vol III it becomes clear that production is not value preserving. whereas in vol I we may entertain the notion that value is really transferred from the inputs to the output. but this notion is quickly dispelled in joint production, and in industries where marginal production is a thing. this is the source of ground rent in agriculture and superprofits in industry, both of which wreck the notion of value transference laid out in vol I
>>2889753>explaining prices using pricesBut what are prices? Fundamentally, ratios of exchange, and so a sum of supplied goods in a market. If there are 100 of (x) and 100 of (y), each achieves a 1:1 ratio, between supply and demand. This ratio is what Marx called the "form of value", or exchange value [x:y]. Prices are exchange-values expressed by the money commodity, and so money prices develop from the simple form. We can read this (1867):
<The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm>you still have to explain where prices "come from".Following from what is understood, prices emerge from the trade of goods between people. Historically, Marx writes that this occurs by the surplus production of a certain good, and so tribes exchange what is useless to them for what may be useful. Adam Smith (1776) uses the same example, that barter is the basic exchange of one good for another, but each account for "labour" to be the mechanism of price. This is assumed to be based in the logistical limits of production as accounted for by units of time (e.g. SNLT). Marx claims that the sum of value is accounted for automatically, so how can we rationalise it? We can say that if a tribe offers 10(x) for 10(y), there is an equal trade, if this is all are willing to give. The amount of production time is simply assumed to be equal, but this is conjectural. The standard of production time then requires the commodification of the labourer, by means of wages (e.g. the trade of labour-power for other goods). With wage labour, each period of time (e.g. hour, day, week) is recorded and paid accordingly. We see rates of wages set as early as 2,000 BCE in conjunction with other listed prices. If we then assume 10 hours labour to be with 10(y) by relative price, we colloquially say that each are "worth" each other [1:1], and this would be their "value". Here, "prices" are not considered in themselves, but the price of labour in particular is what is called the "real price" of goods (e.g. adjusting for inflation is a division of nominal prices for nominal wages, and so all prices circiulate around the primacy of wages; the wage then counts as the unit of account for production). So then, the "real price" of goods is their "value", by reducing exchange-rates to labour costs. So then, labour is "the first price" which accounts for "value", by reducing other goods to it in the system of wages. This introduces measures of labour-time, which are previously unknown. Returning to Marx (1867):
<Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmThis would then establish an epistemology for the value of goods.
I have thus presented sketches of ancient economies here:
>>2833486>>2834735This I would say is the only empirical basis of reviewing the issue.
>>2889754>oh and to be clear I don't think it's necessarily wrong to explain prices using prices. the notion that you can't is due to Marx not knowing calculusholy fucking shit, the fact such a fraud can write this and not immediately get dunked on, how far leftypol has fallen
>>2889719Define prices for me
>>2889767>volume iii wrecks volume iplease explain like i'm 5
>>2889754>Marx not knowing calculuselaborate
>>2889767>sure, but they require many other things as well. labor is only special in that it is the only thing that is a direct input in every labor processwe got an actual marginalist here, impressive. now explain where value comes from, oh wait
>>2889613>This is why it's helpful to view "value" as a particular price (e.g. equilibrium, or natural price),tautological par excellence
>>2889804Right, but this is Marx's extended judgement, that equally defining "value" as "value" is an "absurd tautology" (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 19):
<But what is the value of a commodity? […] the quantity of the labour contained in it […] which is an absurd tautologyhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch19.htm>>2889790Prices to Marx are the exchange-values of commodities expressed in money. A price is an amount of money a commodity trades for. It is with prices that we come into knowledge of the value of things (e.g. the "measure of value"), since otherwise, there can be no standard:
<Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmIt is not money which "creates" value to Marx, however, but only money which allows us to discover what was always the case in the exchange of commodities. Marx writes on epistemology (1867):
<There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle’s genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htmThus, only with (generalised) wage labour can "value" become known.
>>2889337>>2889342for anons passing by, these two are the only ones that actually answered op's question, smith "i need tooo quoooote" anon you can safely ignore
>>2889811i wish i could filter him
>>2889810i said to "define prices for me", did i ask you to tell me what you think marx meant? did i ask that?
>>2889814Smith (1776) admits of "price" being present without the invention of money, so the only difference could be whether "value in exchange" requires money to be called a "price", but the principle is the same. The price of a thing is its form of value; e.g. its commodity form:
<Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm >>2889615>>2889643I see. So there's not a universal profit rate which can be removed to find the natural price of a good. There's only particular profit-rates which, once substracted, makes the price add-up ~ to the labor-content of a good. Thanks for the answer !
>>2889626>the point is that commodities don't "embody" laborThis is more of an issue with how humans percieve causal relations than anything else imo. Technically, we only see the manifestation of different phenomenons. If I kick a child and cause him to cry, I'm only witnessing 2 different appearances, but I connect both mentally.
This is more or less the same with the LTV. In practice, a good only appears as its price, which presents itself as an opportunity-cost. If I have 1$, I can purchase an apple at the expense of another fruit, or I can buy that other fruit at the expense of an apple. This is form that money takes.
However, that doesn't mean that the underlining structure of commodification and of labor isn't involved. An apple sold on the market still requires someone to produce it. Even in the extreme case of someone simply picking it up, he still has to present his apple as a good to be bought, he still has to commercialize it.
>>2889842Well, just to avoid confusion, the "natural price" of commodities is made up of all "prices of production" together. Adam Smith (1776):
<When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock employed in raising, preparing, and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be called its natural price.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch07.htmThis is the same as what Marx writes:
<The value of every commodity produced in the capitalist way is represented in the formula: C = c + v + s.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch01.htm>not a universal profit rateNot from what can be seen - but if I am mistaken, I would like to know.
>There's only particular profit-rates which, once substracted, makes the price add-up ~ to the labor-content of a good. Well, national rates of profit, like national rates of wages are said to exert themselves in domestic economies, so when I speak of particular rates, this is what I mean; there is no international rate of profit, as far as I know, besides a strict median of all particular rates. In terms of labour content, the total value of a capitalist commodity is made up of c (constant capital) + v (variable capital) + s (surplus), so all of it is labour content, just distributed to different "factors of production"; c (capital), v (wages) and s (rent, interest, profit). All of this is produced.
>>2889792read up on ground rent. it directly contradicts the notion that the value of a thing is the amount of labor "embodied" in that thing. you cannot "add up" labor to arrive at values. the value of wheat is not determined by some kind of "average", but by the
worst field in use. by the most marginal wheat production method in use
>>2889787what "causes" the movement of a simple harmonic oscillator? is it the spring or is it the mass? for reasons similar to this, there is no reason to assume there is a "cause" behind prices. it could for example be an eigenvector. it could be turtles all the way down. Marx didn't like this, but there is no reason at all to take Marx at his word. as good Marxists we must apply the scientific method. we must reject incorrect theories
>>2889795what is there to elaborate? Marx didn't know calculus. Capital would have been much shorter if he did
>>2889797value is marginal in vol III, anon. you'd know this if you'd read it
>>2889787to expand on what I said here
>>2889754 it is important to understand that the value-producing capability of labor power is not uniform, even when adjusted for the MoPs in use. higher-value labor power creates more value than lower value labor power does. for example, slaves produce no value (see vol III). slaves perform zero social labor. what then is social labor? we could cut this Gordian knot by asserting that it is wages
>>2889876Interestingly, Gossen (1852), who is the founder of marginal utility theory, dismissed any justification for private rents, since he thought ir was one-sided gain (rather than the mutual gain of free exchange), so wanted to nationalise land to leasehold it to capitalists for public revenue. The marginal product of land factored into production is said to concern the fertility of the soil, but since today ground-rents have largely lost their agricultural character, productivity must be explained elsewise. We see that richer areas have higher rents, which means that the share of surplus value must be higher. This is correlated by an investment of fixed capital, which by increase, lowers profits. Higher populations also correlate to higher rents by means of monopolies. In any case, rent as a surplus value is shared between profits of capital, and so there is no "natural product" of land outside of labour relations:
<How long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society?https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm>there is no reason to assume there is a "cause" behind pricesYou don't accept supply and demand?
>>2889891>higher-value labor power creates more value than lower value labor power doesBut SNLT is a social average of different capacities. Marx (1875):
<the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm >>2889910>You don't accept supply and demand?that's not really my point. if you look at the simple harmonic oscillator, it exhibits movement without a mover:
>d²x/dt² = -xthe above equation describes a 1kg mass attached to a frictionless spring with spring constant 1 N/m in a vacuum. if at t=0 we have x=1 and dx/dt = 0, then we will see the mass move in a nice sine wave. what explains the movement of the mass? we might be tempted to say that the mass moves due to the action of the spring. this would be a "spring theory of movement". but the reason why the spring stretches is because the mass has, well, mass. it stretches due to the action of the mass. thus a "mass theory of movement". in reality neither is the "cause" of the other. but we can still reason about this system, despite the fact that it lacks any "grounding". for example, it has an eigenfrequency of 1/(2*pi) Hz. a similar situation could exist with prices. prices
could lack any grounding. they
could just be an immanent property, as eigenfrequencies are
>>2889910>But SNLT is a social average of different capacitiesthe SNLT or labor power itself varies by location and across time. british and indian labor power are not worth the same. neither do they produce the same amount of value. a hairdresser in delhi produces less value than a hairdresser in london, because the former can reproduce themselves with less income than the latter, because of a the cost of living is lower in delhi. what's more, this could be the same hairdresser, who has moved to london. in doing so they produce more value, partly because the cost of living is higher in london. in moving, the indian "becomes" a br*t
>>2889922>harmonic oscillatorMass is energetic, so is self-moved by inertia. That would explain the origin of motion, which itself is also relative, according to different masses of bodies, which then have relative temporality. We could say that the value of commodities is the centre of mass, which is then related to other bodies by gravitation, or "action at a distance". Marx's theory of value is one of self-relating values by commodification:
<What appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money, in consequence of all other commodities expressing their values in it, but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally express their values in gold, because it is money. The intermediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave no trace behind. Commodities find their own value already completely represented, without any initiative on their part, in another commodity existing in company with them. These objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human labour. Hence the magic of money.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htmMarx also compares equilibrium prices to gravitation:
<The assumption that the commodities of the various spheres of production are sold at their value merely implies, of course, that their value is the centre of gravity around which their prices fluctuate, and their continual rises and drops tend to equalise.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htmNow, the metaphysics of the theory in Smith and Marx is that value is the cause of price, and not its effect, which you perhaps disagree with. I embrace the a posteriori view of value as a coincidence of market price, but not any "law" which prices are necessitated by. We can read Smith's and Marx's strange apocalypticism on this point:
<Ninety years is time sufficient to reduce any commodity, of which there is no monopoly, to its natural price, or to the lowest price at which, while it pays a particular tax, it can continue to be sold for any considerable time together.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch11c.htmHere, value is conserved absolutely, rather than experiencing friction. It is a mechanical view of input and output in a formal system, with drag only slowing down its inevitable result of long-term equilibrium. Like all prophecies, they are never wrong, just later than expected.
>the SNLT or labor power itself varies by location and across time.Yes, which is why "cheap labour" countries exist for competition. My apology is to infer that SNLT is never "individual" in its consideration.
How does SNLT explain negative prices? (As seen, for example, in electricity generation)
>>2889948it doesn't. socially necessary labor time required to produce a commodity explains value in the production process. the price is explained by a combination of the production process and the market factors. the market factors are ignored when explaining value because Marx is talking about the sphere of production, where capitalists and workers struggle over wages vs. profits. The price is effected by supply and demand because it is taking into account factors outside the sphere of production.
When the market locally oversupplies a commodity so much that it becomes negatively priced all that really means is that the cost of holding onto it (paying for refrigeration for example, if you have a bunch of meat) is greater than the cost that it would sell for. But storage and maintenance are also labor costs anyway. Storage units themselves are the products of past labor.
>>2889987>please make a complicated topic simple I'm a braindead animefagread uygha read
>>2889197There are a few ways around it.
Basically not equalization of profit rates and/or no equalization of input & output proces for the same good.
In both cases simple simple reproduction is a specific special case of a broader theory.
>>2889987which anon are you even replying to? which post do you want dumbed down more? why do you want a book if a post is too long for you?
>>2889947>Now, the metaphysics of the theory in Smith and Marx is that value is the cause of price, and not its effect, which you perhaps disagree withno. what I disagree with is the notion of labor being embodied in commodities. the story Marx tells in vol I doesn't actually work except in very constrained cases, as pointed out by Morishima and others. it's a pretty story that only works when every workplaces produces exactly one commodity. in that case we can claim that value == labor, and that value really does flow from the inputs to the (singular) output. we can permit ourselves to consider labor to be "embodied" in the commodities because it corresponds neatly to the mathematics. but this breaks down as soon as you have either joint production or marginal production
>My apology is to infer that SNLT is never "individual" in its considerationyes of course. also keep in mind the word "social" can do a lot of heavy lifting. see below
>>2889957negative value can and does happen. the most obvious case is waste. there is no way you can "hold on to" waste in the hopes that its price becomes positive. it has negative labor "embodied" in it because you have to pay people to come take it away
>>2890152You know when you eat an apple, the value is destroyed right? Same thing when something is discarded/destroyed.
Moreover, the value of fixed capital & inventory can decrease or increase over time.
For marginal production, like say on land with differential productivity, you get redistribution of value (usually in the form of rent, although it depends on the sale price at the time of sale).
The key is temporalism & treating price & value as a single system. Drop the equilibrium assumption, and look at the whole economy rather than single sector or producer and things are fine.
https://files.libcom.org/files/Kliman_Reclaiming-Marxs-Capital.pdf >>2890152>negative value can and does happen. the most obvious case is waste. there is no way you can "hold on to" waste in the hopes that its price becomes positive. it has negative labor "embodied" in it because you have to pay people to come take it awayanon asked us to explain negative prices not "negative value". The difference between price and value was already explained. No, a product of past labor does have "negative labor" "embodied" in it because you have to pay people to take it away. If a person grows a fruit and they let that fruit go bad, it does not mean the labor used to grow the fruit was bad, it means the fruit didn't get used in time. That's why this is related to rate of supply and crises of overproduction. It does in fact cost money to hold onto things. Storage is commodified after all. Refrigeration requires electrcitity. Anon was asking about electricity having negative prices even though it doesn't go bad. Oil barrels have historically had negative prices at certain points despite being useful. In the case of the rotten fruit, its use value as an edible is gone. But even so it can still be used as compost or for some applications in science. But for most people who just wanted to eat it, it has lost its use value. Some farms pick up rotten produce from the grocery store and recycle it into compost, to replenish soil fertility. For them it has a useful value, even though the grocery store would like to be rid of it. I have heard such arrangements are free. The farmer gets the compost for free, and the grocery store does not pay the farmer to take the rotten produce away. With the oil/electricity it's different. Storage facilities become full and they pay people to take it away. Countries also have strategic reserves for future emergencies that are state funded because they are not profitable.
been thru it before
<labor theory of VALUE
>but wuddabout PRICES
<it's not meant to explain PRICES, it's meant to explain VALUE
>value isnt REAL
<it's just a term for what gets added by abstract labor in the production process, before it ends up in a market, this is what capitalists and workers compete over the distribution of
>i dont care about that, explain mona lisa, mud pies, rare instance of negative pricse. explain why my dad left. explain why my ex got a restraining order. marx's theory of value must explain everything or it's bullshit
>>2889615>The assessment of a general rate of profit is not unique to Marx, but has precedence in Massie (1750), Smith (1776) and Ricardo (1817), by way of the natural rate of interest, which has been discussed since Petty (1662) and Locke (1691).the hunt for the natural rate of interest is an ideological humbug. there is no natural rate of interest. if you make a loan and expect the same money back, it is a loan. if you expect the same money back + interest, it's just exploitation. You expect to get money for having money. If everyone who has money expects to get even more money by loaning it, and contributing no labor, then that polarizes society between creditors and debtors. a rate of interest can only be non-exploitative if it matches the rate of inflation over the period of repayment. Since the
purchasing power received back by the lender is the same as before, even if the currency amount is "greater". but since the rate of inflation over the period of repayment cannot be predicted by either the creditor or the debtor, it is impossible to peg the loan to the rate of inflation except retroactively. if interest were outlawed, nobody would lend except people who don't expect a profit from lending. But even these people might not lend if the 0% interest repayment is worth less than before because of inflation. So that is the real problem of loans: how to incentivize lending without interest. The use value of money isn't in the lending, it's in the purchasing. Really lending is just a situation where a person needs money but doesn't have it, and can't labor for it for some reason, so they borrow it from someone who already has it. Eliminate those situations and you eliminate the need for lending entirely.
>>2890278better question: what empirical proof is there that this is what capitalists and workers compete over the distribution of, rather than capitalists and workers simply competing over who gets more money.
e.g. it's not like a union has
never demanded an unprofitable firm pay them more, even though they're already being paid the full value of what they're adding, or even more than that full value.
(it is, equally, not unknown for a company to
destroy value by producing something nobody wants or needs, wasting resources and labor power which could've been better used. if a worker is producing such negative value, they are almost tautologically
overpaid compared to the "full value" of their labor.)
>>2890270>Moreover, the value of fixed capital & inventory can decrease or increase over time.indeed. but that also has little to do with my point
>For marginal production, like say on land with differential productivity, you get redistribution of value (usually in the form of rent, although it depends on the sale price at the time of sale).you have to be really careful here, because "value" refers to different things in Marx. if you take value to be social labor then this is not the case. but if you posit a conversion factor between social labor and value then yes, I believe this is what ends up happening
>TSSII am skeptical of Kliman based on what I've heard of his work, but I admit I haven't read it yet. downlooooded
>>2890275>If a person grows a fruit and they let that fruit go bad, it does not mean the labor used to grow the fruit was bad, it means the fruit didn't get used in timethere is functionally no distinction between these two things. you produced too much output, now you have to pay to get rid of some of it rather than getting paid for it. what was a positive price (fresh apples that people pay for) is now a negative price (rotten apples you as the producer have to pay to get rid of)
>In the case of the rotten fruit, its use value as an edible is gone. But even so it can still be used as compost or for some applications in science. But for most people who just wanted to eat it, it has lost its use value. Some farms pick up rotten produce from the grocery store and recycle it into compost, to replenish soil fertility. For them it has a useful value, even though the grocery store would like to be rid of itthen those apples are not really waste now are they? compost is a social good rather than a social bad. better examples would be CO2 emissions or PFAS. currently these are just dumped, because actually dealing with them implies the use of labor. no capitalist wishes to pay for sequestering their CO2 emissions when they can just doomp instead
>It does in fact cost money to hold onto thingsyes this is also true. but a thing can have inherently negative value
>>2890321doesn't Wright's "super-integrated values" just count bourgeois consumption as "socially necessary"? it kind of just reduces to a just-so story if I remember correctly
Marxism would benefit from microfoundations. It is the most annoying thing in the world to accept, and in my own Keynesian phase I coped and seethed infinitely until I came to accept this. It is quite natural to cope and try to duck and dodge the boring old individual to focus on the macro phenomena at play, but there's no reason you can't have all the macro phenomena as emergent properties of individual behaviour. (including coordinated-yet-"uncoordinated" actions in the service of class interest and all the rest of it. If the internet has done one thing, it's make phenomena like this clearly legible! Even down to stuff like: a journalist can post nothing but bourgeois propaganda without ever being told to do so, simply because - as a rational individual - they know it's the best way to maximise their career prospects. Microfoundations!)
>>2890308Value as social labour is also the case in the rent scenario, but its the social labour of the whole economy. That's a lot of what is behind the theory of the MELT in the TSSI.
There is also this (but unlike RMC, I haven't read it yet; Too many other things.
>>2890361As you might be aware, the main problem with microfoundations in neoclassical is that fallacy of composition is replete throughout.
Actually formulating an economy with social relations between people under given yet also evolving circumstances is mathematically difficult. Sometimes it also leads to intractability/unpredictability or divergent outcomes (eg. in physics: The three body problem)
>>2890345Since capital is an analysis of internal, immanent logic of capitalism, wouldn't the reproduction of bourgeois class be socially necesarry for the reproduction of capitalism itself?
It's like, inefficiency and waste are "necessary" under capitalism because orienting society towards surplus value production, including existence of capitalists *is* the waste.
>>2890499Not necessarily if you think of the bourgeoisie as singular human beings.
Its at least theoretically possible to imagine a kid nd of economy where all property is nationalized & the state receives dividends, but that the enterprises all still compete for profit, market share & share of assets of the whole economy.
In this case abstract & possible but very unlikely case the bourgeois class becomes the state owned firms themselves, with zero consumption & profits either reinvested & paid or paid in dividends.
Now obviously such it would be irrational for a state with such ownership to deliberately run its firms in that antagonistic fashion if it is seeling relatively economic growth & stability. The point is just to illustrate an edge case.
Its likely in such a case either the state moves towards unitary planning or (more likely) the top managers of the firms become capitalists but that have to pay some portion of their profits as dividends.
In Russia for example, most non-privatized assets that remained operate in this latter manner to dome degree.
>>2890499Still, I want to commend this comment. Its a productive question to ask, unlike so much of posting on leftypol that might as well be trolling or bait.
>>2890494It's a real difficulty, but an overstated problem in my view. Most of the obvious examples of compositional fallacies are the kind of thing you could easily imagine solving or fudging if you were programming. (e.g. if you create a model with 100 agents who can choose to save or consume at different ratios, any half-worthwhile model will have the paradox of thrift as an emergent property, rather than a lazily assembled "IF saving THEN richer" that eschews it.)
You can progressively get things
closer to the actual outcome. Like, Kerbal Space Program makes the laughable assumption that a spaceship is only impacted by the orbital mechanics of one body at a time and that orbital bodies don't impact one another, which means you lose certain properties like Lagrange points, but it's nevertheless very useful for illustrating and clarifying the generalities of rocket-physics to the layman in a way that a purely macro description (overly focused on just how weird things get when you pause in space because your spaceship can't decide what it's falling towards) isn't. A lot of the simplifying assumptions (infinitely restartable rocket engines, no orbital decay/suddenly stopping atmosphere, etc) can be modded out and in the last resort, there's even a mod to introduce n-body physics. (with their own simplifying assumptions.)
The downsides of this need to simplify or fudge from time to time are more than offset by the enforcement of fairly rigorous thinking about the impact of each change. You can't just throw something in casually (especially not in response to someone identifying a flaw in your thinking) and assume the model as a whole continues to function. (e.g. when they put n-body physics in KSP the solar system, designed for a simpler model, immediately spun itself apart.) You may not be able to predict the actual outcome 1:1 because of all the fundamental uncertainties, but you can get a good idea of the underlying system dynamics that's nevertheless rooted in a thousand little chaotic choices.
Or maybe I'm just too enamoured by the idea of how, if you simulate all this with agents, you could illustrate all these things in a visually interesting way. (Perhaps you could even make a game of class warfare…)
>>2890298>e.g. it's not like a union has never demanded an unprofitable firm pay them more, even though they're already being paid the full value of what they're adding, or even more than that full value. such a firm would collapse so it's irrelevant
>(it is, equally, not unknown for a company to destroy value by producing something nobody wants or needs, wasting resources and labor power which could've been better used. read rajani palme dutt fascism and social revolution chapter 3, section titled the destruction of the productive forces. this observation is not incompatible with marx.
>if a worker is producing such negative value, they are almost tautologically overpaid compared to the "full value" of their labor.)labor doesn't have value. my god. read marx. like actually understand marx's argument.
>>2890918there's no guarantee such a firm would collapse. it could well be cross-subsidised by other parts of the same firm for prestige reasons, for example.
>labor doesn't have valueread "full value" in the context of being a reply to
>>2890278>what gets added by abstract labor in the production processe.g. if labor is
removing value, then what is "added" by abstract labor in the production process is a
negative, yet the workers come out of the competition for distribution with a positive. ""full value" of their labor" amounts to the entirety of the addition or subtraction, as opposed to the value of labor itself. (insofar as this matters.)
>>2890298You are correct that workers can be overpaid according to the value of their labour, which is why it's a universal opinion of political economy that minimum wage laws are detrimental, but maximum hours laws are beneficial. Marx (1867), Jevons (1871) and Keynes (1921) all saw that higher wages are only a result of lower hours, and not the other way round. The USSR (1928) also resolved differential wages on the basis of the working day. With minimum wages, the working day is actually increased. So, it would be lawful to abolish minimum wages and its vulgar "trade union consciousness" to allow real pricing.
>>2890361>>2890494>there's no reason you can't have all the macro phenomena as emergent properties of individual behaviour. But Marx already does base his analysis in exchange, which is an individual unit of the economy, or as he puts it, the "economic cell-form" of a larger body. Everything hinges upon the constitutive act of exchange (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 2), which requires an effective demand of the parties involved, elsewise "value" cannot not manifest (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Sct. 1). Effective demand is the determinate factor of the value of commodities being realised (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 3, Sct. 2A), and so value is a function of subjective utility, but not identical with it. This is because natural objects may provide utility, but may still lack a value in exchange (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Sct. 1). This is also what Carl Menger (founder of the Austrian School) writes, that the utility of a good is not necessarily identical with it having value, since valueless things can still be useful. Trade to Marx begins by barter (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 2), which then develops into the simple form of commodities, which finally develops into money (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 1, Sct. 3). In all of this, the "value form" is isolated to the individual act of exchange, but expanded to many exchanges. The economic germ thus grows into a value body, or "world of commodities". So, we begin with the singular, to expand to the general. To Marx, markets are networks.
>>2890282>Really lending is just a situation where a person needs money but doesn't have it, and can't labor for it for some reason, so they borrow it from someone who already has it. We can say that borrowing money is the cost of present goods cut against future goods, since interest acts as a tax on high time-preference. We immediately summon mythical examples of selling one's soul for possessions. Here, the gains are immediate, at a later expense. Debt is then the creation of the debtor, who steals his own time - the creditor simply allows vice to commence. The ethical question concerns economic responsibility in general. For example, it would be seen as unethical to offer children a loan, since they lack economic reason. Another term for this would be a "credit score". A person who is known to be in debt due to economic irrationality is then a victim of themselves, by legal permission. We saw in the 2008 crisis, that "sub-prime" mortgages were given out, which means banks loaning to people with low credit scores, causing accumulations of social debt. The global economy has not yet recovered from this inclusive policy. Equally, we see young people exploited by student loans, which we may call "sub-prime", since evidently, these people have no economic qualifications, and so "know not what they do", by lack of foresight. We could otherwise say that the legal permission of student loans is the industrialisation of bad social investment, which bases an economy on debt slavery. This has been common in all histories, and never ends well for society. In any case, we prove that the creditor is not a villain, it is only the state's complicity which permits such evils (e.g. the same way drug dealers are just businessmen). This is why in ancient Athens, Solon displaced Draco's laws by a forgiveness of debts, and so the power of the creditors is in the responsibility of the state to decide who is eligible for loans. For these reasons, I would end all student loan schemes and replace it with scholarship for selected students. All the rest can pay their way out of pocket. In the UK, student loans are dispensed from the government, so this would be an easy policy reform. To conclude, debtors are victims of themselves, and so should be restricted from self-harm, like any drug addict. The drug dealer is innocent, since they provide service. This is also how Satan is theologically understood, like a vampire. Man is "tempted", but The Devil never forces any evil.
>>2889922>prices could lack any grounding. they could just be an immanent property, as eigenfrequencies<yeah dude prices are actually natural characteristics like the color yellow or the smell of rosesSometimes I wonder if you guys actually understand what you are saying
>>2890996UK student loans are an odd case because their aim isn't really to be repaid in full. They are for practical purposes a graduate tax (nobody has their TV repossessed to pay their student loans, for example), but a graduate tax would have some downsides that an infinite loan avoids (Most obviously that you could avoid paying by emigrating.) at the cost of being slightly regressive (since a rich person can pay it off quickly and, possibly, save on their net tax bill, while a poor person cannot.) and engaging in a touch of accounting fraud (at one point they had it rigged up so that the spending to give students a loan wasn't recorded as debt the government took on because you were just swapping some cash for the "asset" of a future loan payment, but the repayments were recorded as revenue. (e.g. the government was double dipping.))
Personally, I would bite the bullet and hike general taxation to fund free university education for anyone who wants it (For basically instrumental reasons: it shifts people left/liberal. Not because people are propagandised by left/liberal lecturers - people are rarely so easy to propagandise, and nobody pays attention in class anyway - but because the university environment itself has this effect on people.), I'd even allow people to do multiple degrees and all sorts of other shenanigans. Rather than merely avoiding evil, I would have the state try to cultivate goodness - but indirectly.
>>2891243you tell me anon, how can the following both be true?
>the value of labor power depends on its productivity>the productivity of labor power depends on its valueso where does the value "come from" in the first place? for example, it is entirely possible that value isn't actually created, but merely transferred from worker to product via depreciation, same as any other MoP
>>2891243>>2891302 (me)
for example, we can posit that new value comes from a growth in the productivity of the MoPs, and that value is otherwise recycled
>>2891302>the productivity of labor power depends on its valueno it doesn't. the value of labor power is the subsistence of the worker. a highly productive and highly unproductive worker will both on average require roughly the same amount of food, water, shelter.
>>2890949>read "full value" in the context of being a reply to doesn't change anything. i was aware of the context
>>2891474Rich non graduates should pay for poor (and rich!) graduates just as rich healthy people with private insurance nevertheless pay taxes for public healthcare, the childless pay for schools, motorists pay for railway subsidies, and so on. Insofar as it's class warfare, it's a war of the uneducated rich against the educated poor (which is the basic dynamic of voting behaviour in most developed countries), and in that battle I know where I'd have the state subsidize reinforcements.
The alternative is to go full libertarian: if justice requires we get only what we pay for, go all the way. This is not entirely a bad faith suggestion: the uneducated rich often congregate in uncompetitive industries protected by the state. (Here I mean things like US car dealerships and most "privatised" British gifts, rather than say, useful factories or whatever aesthetic image the term usually conjures up.)
If overproducing elites skews society leftwards (a theory I'm skeptical of since even older, comfortably off graduates skew left in polling, meaning causation probably lies elsewhere) I am all for it.
>>2891480>no it doesn'tslaves produce no value. see vol III
>a highly productive and highly unproductive worker will both on average require roughly the same amount of food, water, shelter.again, see vol III
>>2891496>Rich non graduates should pay for all graduates, the same way they pay for public services in genralWell, this gets to the crux of the matter; I don't believe that higher education ought to be a public service, since admission should depend on sound social investment, and/or academic credit (e.g. UCAS Points), lest we see university act as an extension of Secondary School, as it already tends towards. We have existing colleges for BTEC and A-Level courses which are rightfully free for public use and unlimited in application - the market also allows cheaper university courses in less prestigious institutions, so anyone can save up and go to these. But if you literally cannot save up for university, you already fail the test of personal responsibility, wouldn't you agree? Let's say that we revise UCAS Points to be at a total possible score of 400 (e.g. 4 D*). If you receive 400, you get a free interview with any university, and subsidised admission in selected universities. If you get 350 Points, you get a tax deduction for certain courses, and if you get less than 350, you have to pay your own way. As I say, the benefit of free college is that you can always re-apply to get a better score. So, there is an unlimited right of opportunity, but the right of admission is dependent on personal talent, which if is absent, can be paid for.
>if justice requires we get only what we pay for, go all the wayJustice is getting what we deserve. We may lack certain means, but possess others, so as to acquire what we are owed. This is why money is not the only standard, but also credit - in the form of recorded talents. A poor person lacks money, but are eligible by other means. So, the libertarian is only half-right in his assessment.
>>2891581which part of the posthumously published volume 3? marx clearly says in volume 1, the only volume to come out when he was still alive, the only volume he actually finished, that the value of labor power is equal to the value of the subsistence of the worker.
>>2892156This is a bad characterisation of Engels' editorialisation, since you can actually read the original manuscript for Capital Vol. 3 (1864-5) here:
https://libcom.org/article/capital-volume-3-unedited-engels >>2892158so the value of labor power isn't equal to the value of the subsistence of the worker?
>>2892164Sorry, I forgot to add that I'm not the arrogant anon you're responding to. Your comments are easily verified by primary sources. Marx (1867):
<The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requisite for their production.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htmSo yes, the value of labour-power is its cost of (re-)production. But do please keep pressing the other anon to present his supposed sources.
>>2891941Why not embrace the development of university as a de-facto post secondary school? We once let people leave school at 10 years old, then 15, then 16. (Which I assume is in your gut the correct figure, even if England now has some weirdness making it 16 only if you get a job or further education, while Scotland keeps the old system.) Universities already filter their offers by academic ability (allowing people to pay to bypass this is certainly a novel idea, not necessarily one I'd oppose since it probably reduces the incentives to just cheat as well as raising revenue) so I don't see too much benefit of adjusting funding in that way.
I think everyone deserves the chance to cultivate the best possible version of themselves. Even if we grant for argument's sake that university is basically just 4 years of state funded dossing around, I think the evidence suggests that on the whole this is beneficial to them, and a society of such people is beneficial in general. (Both of which you can read off from voting behaviour, which proxies underlying personality biases and prejudices.) It is entirely possible that the causal mechanism isn't he educational component - perhaps it's simply the effect of choosing to move somewhere new, away from home, for example. (I think this can only be a partial explanation, since there are a lot of stay-at-home students) Perhaps it's simply thinking of oneself as
someone who likes to think, or as an academic, or a degree-holder, or such, which renders one impervious to the more base appeals to stupid prejudices of right-wing parties. (Contra historical norms. e.g. I am not just making the vulgar argument that the state should buy Labour and Green voters, but that the state should craft the
sort of people who incidentally happen to vote Green and to a lesser extent Labour.
Although I think it is utter madness that Labour doesn't agree…)
Universities as an institution should probably be fundamentally re-thought, and the whole approach to research needs to be upended, but that's another story.
>>2892218>Why not embrace the development of university as a de-facto post secondary school? Because it is expensive, infantilising and diminishes marginal returns; hence an issue of elite overproduction where university graduates fail to find employment. The more graduates, the less valuable that qualifications become - you cannot work around this, except by trying to re-invent the wheel with even more higher education. The Academy is exclusive by its nature; it was created by Plato, the same way Aristotle had the Lyceum. Later we had Monastic institutions for Scholastics. General education itself was only promoted in the 19th century, with thinkers like Robert Owen, who insisted upon the requirement for Nursey/Kindergarten. As you say, time goes on and school gets longer, but less useful as well. That's why we need vocational training, like traditional education, which based learning on apprenticeship. The discussion we're having is larger than economic policy of course, so cannot all be resolved with swiftness.
>I think everyone deserves the chance to cultivate the best possible version of themselvesRight, and that opportunity then requires responsibility. If you are a clever-cloggs, you will be rewarded, and if not, you can pay your own way. I see no controversy.
>this is beneficial to themSure, but what exactly is beneficial is not university in particular, it is the social experience. Surely there are more appropriate means to make connections. I am not against the principle, say, of a year's break after school is finished to allow young people to flourish, rather than to be suddenly implanted into a hostile labour market.
>Universities as an institution should probably be fundamentally re-thought, and the whole approach to research needs to be upended, but that's another story.Yes, I agree. As a basic idea, I think that schools should account fot students' behaviours and create a credit account for them which is redeemable after their period, so that good behaviour is rewarded by incentive. In primary school we used to have lottery using tokens for good behaviour - good parents also operate by fairness in these things, like a swear jar that punishes parents themselves, rather than the typical authoritarian ethic. But this concerns a larger conversation of youth justice.
>>2892267>Because it is expensive, infantilising and diminishes marginal returnsHey skin that's retarded. There's nothing about university education per se that is or results in any of those things. You might as well oppose education itself.
>>2892156>the value of labor power is equal to the value of the subsistence of the workermhm. and what determines the subsistence level of the worker? society does. the value of labor power varies with location and across time. if you tried to only give workers the absolute bare minimum for survival, such as water and potatoes and literally nothing else, they would swiftly revolt
the value of labor power is a question of political struggle, and it tends to shake out at around 50% of the value produced. you will find that you cannot reproduce say a French worker without supplying not just food and water, but also diapers, toys, education, healthcare, PCs, internet, gaming consoles, cookies, cheese, wine etc etc. many of these things are
not necessary to reproduce say Ivorian workers. therefore the value of French labor power is higher than Ivorian labor power
>>2889197the transformation problem isnt a problem OP
read this and this (pdf and then blog)
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2024/12/17/reply-to-carchedi/ >>2892728Oh well, school isn't for everyone, they'll just get jobs instead of going to uni.. Hardly worth fucking crying over is it.
Friedrich Engels on the general rate of profit (1895):
<the individual capitalists, each on his own, chase after the biggest profit. Bourgeois economy discovers that this race in which every one chases after the bigger profit results in the general and equal rate of profit, the approximately equal ratio of profit for each one. Neither the capitalists nor the bourgeois economists, however, realise that the goal of this race is the uniform proportional distribution of the total surplus value calculated on the total capital. But how has the equalisation been brought about in reality? This is a very interesting point, about which Marx himself does not say much. But his way of viewing things is not a doctrine but a method. It does not provide ready-made dogmas, but criteria for further research and the method for this research. Here therefore a certain amount of work has to be carried out, since Marx did not elaborate it himself in his first draft.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/letters/95_03_11.htmSo, even Engels displays indeterminacy as to the problem.
>>2892745How are you supposed to do any job in the 21st century if you can’t read?
>>2889842>>2889756Commodities don't embody labor. Value is a relationship of society to a commodity and not an embodiment of labor. The idea that a commodity embodies labor becomes nonsensical in the light of changing productive technologies causing changes in the values of
extant commodities. You'd have to argue that the labor embodied within a commodity can simply vanish. Value is
relative but not
subjective.
>>2892366This is why labour value is understood as the competitive rate of wages. Things like minimum wage laws, border restrictions and so on overprice labour according to its value. You are then confusing the market price of labour (e.g. wages) with its natural price. If countries were maximally competitive, the price of labour would decrease, no?
>>2892807>You'd have to argue that the labor embodied within a commodity can simply vanish.To Marx, value only exists where it has been produced, distributed and consumed. So value is not an inert property, but a syllogism of labour.
>>2892267Primary and secondary schooling are another discussion entirely. My gut position is that we basically need a year zero on them, absolutely irredeemable timewasting prisons that can and
do put millions off the very concept of education and learning by structuring it in the most miserable way possible. Barely functional as a means of ensuring basic literacy for all, useless on teaching mathematics, and actively harmful beyond that. It is my sincere belief that if kids are all using their phones in class nowadays they're probably better off for it - those who go to Wikipedia certainly are, but even those on fandom pages have a leg up. One can be a teacher or a prison guard, but not both. It is criminal what we subject children to when they really could be learning.
>>2892840>If countries were maximally competitive, the price of labour would decrease, no?the free movement of labor power should cause the value of labor power to be levelled over time, I think
>>2893314>Right, but this would mean reducing wages in the West to an average found across the worldindeed. but it is historically progressive, so of course the social fascist would oppose it
beyond keeping wages unequal, this also leads to unequal development. it makes no sense to invest in MoPs when labor power is cheap
>>2893319>Historically progressiveI mean, that's a loaded judgement. It is what it is - it can either be good or bad for whichever context you're discussing it in. I am just describing the facts; border regulations raise national wages by monopolising domestic labour markets over international ones.
>>2893320yeah. but it also wastes labor power and holds back the development of the MoPs
>>2893322Well, it all depends. We see that in the struggle of labour versus capital, that pushing for higher wages leads to the development of machines which subsequently replace workers. So, technology is not just created by competition between capitalists, but also of workers versus capital as well. Now, for the struggles of labour regulations, Marx gives an account of its history in Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 10, and it concludes that the real struggle is the fight for a lesser working day, which in turn, leads to higher wages, rather than the other way round. Minimum wage laws were never pushed by socialists, but only liberals. Even trade unions had opposition to minimum wages, but only because it levelled wages in different industries. So, simply letting capital take the reins is not the sole path to productivity, and it cannot bring increased prosperity without regulations in place, either.
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