I know you are prone to posting entries from the glossary at Marxists.org

I have been reading some of the various entries..too many of their definitions and explanations are hopelessly convoluted, even when they are mainly quoting the Masters.

Any thoughts? I read all of the related entries for "value", "use value" and so on during the other thread and..I couldn't find anything that seemed ripe for reposting here.

You always seem to find better material there than I do, but the other thing is you can't navigate from letter to letter easily as far as I can see..I did it by manually changing the url to the letter I wanted

I am not sure its as simple as "getting it" by the way, because when Marx reintroduces these topics later (the sort of culmination of his dialectical development) its because he is asserting that there is still MORE to say about what has already been covered.

As a student at the most rudimentary level please forgive what might be very obtuse questions?

1. when comparing the amount of labor expended between making a coat and weaving linen, is this based purely on time or on the difficulty of the task as well? quantitative vs. qualitative, I quess? I seem to have a learning disablity here I think.

2. would one be able, in any way, shape, or form to measure the value of a teacher's labor? would it be quantitative or qualitative? This question is closely related to the merit pay issue in education and I could use some ammo here.

edited for clarity (believe me its more clear than it was!)

Abstract labor however is not really a quantity unto itself (how could it be..what IS it in the first place? Unsubstantial reality..)

The idea is that if it takes a person who is trained/competent at a task a certain amount of time to do something, that is commensurate with someone else doing a task they are trained for that takes the same amount of time?

I know it seems like some jobs are easier than others but..how many people do you know who say their job is easy? (Not to mention that the rate of exploitation may be different for different jobs)

The thing about merit pay as I see it: there is no way proponents can "frame" this that denies the underlying reality that it is going to be all about dividing the haves and the havenots. Teachers at underfunded, low performing schools (ie minority) are not going to be getting merit pay. So now the teachers bear the brunt of societal inequality in an even more explicit manner

We're talking about going from a de facto two-tier system to an overt one

EDIT: consider the thought that the total available working hours of everyone make up the reservoir of social labor power. Now every task that consumes the same amount of time also consumes the same % of this reservoir. That is really how "value" as Marx defines it is being measured.

that seems blatently true.

"From each, according to his ability..."

where does the degree of training play a role? For me, actually, I would love to see the cafeteria workers/custodians compensated to the same degree that I am, they work very hard, though I believe the time differential is not the same (any teacher worth his salt does not or is not able to do all the necessary work within the contracted time, a problem, I think. I know that the other workers stay pretty much within their contracted time frame, though I also know the cafeteria workers have a hard time getting all they think needs doing done).

I could tailor a coat, as I learned to sew quite well as a child. I could not weave linen without training, so I can't judge which I think is more difficult, or whether I think that should necessarily demand higher compensation. It seems to be a bit of apples and oranges to me??

"to each according to his need."

This goes without say...

using some scale of proration. That is because, the time and effort invested in training skilled workers can basically be viewed as extra labor that is grafted on to unskilled labor to produce skilled labor. But Marx talks about that at a later point.

Also, don't confuse pay with the "value" of labor. India exemplifies that distinction rather clearly.

How? if I'm being a pain let me know, I am truly ignorant in this regard and reading about value doesn't help when I really don't know the definition (to me its the degree of light or dark!! ;) ) I am beyond being embarrassed about asking...

but the "value" remains the same. Hop onto the other value thread if you like..it is too long as it is, but that might be a helpful primer. If we do it on this thread we are only rehashing yet again and I don't know how much patience people have for that

Embarrassed? Why? its just like any other subject you have to study and grapple with and kick around. Besides you already have an intuitive understanding, we're just working on the formalism and deepening our own understanding with concrete analysis and some good back and forth conversation

The value of labor is to the owner of the means of production/purchaser of the labor. When you speak of quantitative or qualitative it is only as it concerns the owner, not the wage earner. What the owner pays a worker is based upon what the owner needs and the profit the owner can glean from that labor. We tend to to view the worth of labor on some social basis, apart from the profit that accrues to the owner - yet that is the only source of "worth" that can be used. Does this make any sense at all?

is that you sell your labor TIME and not your labor power. So if you sell one days labor you are selling a commodity, the cost of which is equal to the total cost needed to reproduce that commodity. In this case the cost is the total amount required to make sure you get up and come to work tomorrow AND the cost to rear the next generation of wokers.

However, as the means of production become more and more sprawling and sophisticated, it would actually take you less and less of a day's labor to produce your own livelihood if that were possible in isolation.

Therefore more and more of the day is surplus, and this is what the capitalist appropriates. Further, with every speed up and workplace efficiency technique -- be it mechanical or just procedural -- more labor power is extracted from the same working day. This is "absolute surplus".

The trading of equivalents (exchange value) dances around this quantification of value and price dances around exchange value with some necessary alterations. It is very clear how they are different and distinct measures but it is also quite gray how they distinguish themselves in actually.

thanks!

I actually may be be getting the meaning...thanks.

Kid,
Isn't there some concern about how onerous labor is? One typical comparison is between the doctor and the coal miner. Common knowledge tells us that the doctor is smarter, more ambitious, spends years in training and absorbs high amounts of debt, in order to become a doctor. Thus, she should be rewarded at a higher rate of pay.

The coal miner, on the other hand, has a job that is much more difficult/dangerous. Instead of enjoying years in a collegiate learning environment, the miner spends that time below ground.

This where I have questions about duration as the sole determinant of labor value. It seems to me that the miner deserves more compensation than the doctor.

but we're not making judgements about these things, we're trying to classify them. And from that perspective..

Take all of the jobs that are "socially necessary" which mining and health care certainly are. There is a social norm for what a competent worker at each of those jobs can accomplish in a given amount of working hours.

Thats the thing that equates them..there are other ways to try to do it but they become arbitrary and subjective rather quickly.

The idea is, if you trained the coal miner to be a doctor and vice versa, they could more or less seamlessly switch places (we're talking in the abstract of course)

Now there are ancillary questions about how much work it takes to make a worker "competent" at various professions, but the principle stays the same.

(it is from the fifth para, I think)

"Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals."

So "commodities" are only "commodities" in relationship to each other AND if they are created by different KINDS of labor. This is because commodities are the product of labor that can be exchanged for other commodities, which are themselves products of labor, but of a different kind of labor, so that the trade is actually an exchange of labor types more than of the product, itself, which appears almost incidental...

Is that close?

although I suppose it is possible to impute too much into it -- after all the argument is slightly pro forma -- trading the SAME types of labor doesn't really make sense in the first place. Although, how you "type" labor also comes into question

EDIT: the other thing to remember is that "use value" is created not inherent. For instance, if someone gave you all the raw materials used to make up your car, I doubt you would consider it to have much "use value".

This is merely to reemphasize that it is the labor being exchanged far more than it is "the product"

Well done on that edit, crystal clear.

commodities are exchanged, could health care, in essence and theoretically, be a commodity after all??? as its a product of labor?? Do I need to change one of my favorite mantras?

And further, it would do one well to recognize that not only are our own bourgeois ways of appraising such things affecting the perceptions of the relative ease/merits of the work in question but they also affect our view of whether workers are likely to want to do any particular sort of labor.

In a condition of met needs and limited to no coercion, there almost certainly would be people who want to mine rather than treat patients. This is counter-intuitive to us.

Consider though that worker welfare and safety would be entirely different in priority under such a different set of social relations. And, presumably, since labor is only for the necessities, there would be time for a guy to dig coal and - if he so chooses - to pursue medical education too.

Time for personal pursuits, enjoyment of arts, culture and, yes, education and training would under normal conditions be readily available in a world without appropriation of surplus.

It's downright hard to ponder a life where one's needs are met. That however is what all of this is about. And when all needs are met and there is more than a precious few hours a day to pursue the other things of life, well...who knows? I for one am convinced based on my life's experiences that I would prefer to do physical labor for my contribution to society - that sort of one anyway...

And it seems to me that all services in a capitalist economy are commodities. While different services may have different value to society, say a doctor compared to a yoga instructor, it all gets averaged out in the consideration of 'social labor'.


But it is early in the morning...

To health care should not be treated as a commodity...

Of course health care is a product of human labor (although, as we're now discussing it has a two-fold character because Nature, our own body, does most of the work in terms of healing and recuperation)

Whether it is is or is not a commodity hinges on whether it can be sold or "exchanged". Such exchange is measured in money, mostly because any other manner is completely impractical above a certain scale.

For instance, say you have a want that someone else can satisfy. But you have nothing they want in return. It is what Marx calls "the double coincidence of wants"

There was a doctor in this area who often took firearms in exchange for service. Upon his demise his family wanted to sell off this 'collection' of mebbe 400 pieces, much of which consisted of ill-made pocket revolvers of considerable age, 'pepper boxes' and beat to shit shot guns. I was called upon to make an evaluation and offer but a horde of family descended upon me and cherry picked the lot until I quit and left.

As a use-value, the objective of "health care" is to prolong and enhance the quality of life. As a value, the the health-care commodity is the same as any other and subject to exactly the same forces as any other. It is not just that cost cutting and maximization of margins may actually undermine the use value - it is that the two faces of commodities have nothing to do with one another... Health care as a value brings nothing whatever and, in the end, is capable of wreaking everything, for no practical reason whatsoever - except that it is the "social tariff" that is now extracted from most human activity.

But in this, how is the production of health care any different from the production of food... or many other commodities which just happen to be necessities?

food commodities and such myself, I'm just really mentally challenged in regards to this, one day I think I got it, next....gone, riding with a true scholar for a bit tomorrow, maybe I can get it better, reading it doesn't necessarily help...think I'm hopeless...

but I do understand that everybody gotta have what everybody gotta have, and if they don't, well, we gotta get it for em somehow...

shame...

You gotta find a third, maybe a fourth and trade around in a circle...utopian maybe? I wrote a short story once a long, long, time ago about a whole planet that worked like that...the most revered person (if person is a term to use, they were pretty critter like) was the one who would trade house cleaning...

"Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from their different use values, so it is with the labour represented by those values: we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen, are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human labour power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in the creation of the use values, coat and linen, precisely because these two kinds of labour are of different qualities; but only in so far as abstraction is made from their special qualities, only in so far as both possess the same quality of being human labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the values of the same articles.

Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Whence this difference in their values? It is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour power must have been expended during twice the time necessary for the production of the former.

While, therefore, with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How much? How long a time? Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows that all commodities, when taken in certain proportions, must be equal in value."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S2

- I'm hauling off and starting the second thread. I have no doubt Anax can come back and make sense of what we do together in his absence, for him and us.

- It appears that those posting to the value thread have gotten their arms around the constructs of use-value and exchange-value. In this section Marx discusses the concomitant dual nature of the labor that relates to the values/commodities. I do not think, if you have a handle on Section 1, that this is much of a struggle. Of course it was a relatively long time ago that I 'got it' on this and I don't specifically recall what most kicked my ass about the early chapters of Capital. I only remember the generally huge challenge it was and, to imp a comment of Megan's, the sensation of sun shining through parting clouds.

Anyone gotta question or comment about the piece posted above or the several paragraphs preceding it in Section 2 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S2)? I chose to post what I did because I think it is Marx's statement of the thesis of this section.

If (or rather, once?) this makes sense, there remains only the discussion of the last few paragraphs concerning productivity to be had. I think it will be on these paragraphs we may spend more time...

bump

.