Kid of the Black Hole
09-01-2009, 08:41 AM
of course there is a system of fairness and equity. This is more or less a necessary component for exchange in the first place. But as Marx says, this is the internal logic of the capitalist system and so the only way to extricate oneself from that logic is to end capitalism.
Even the selling of labor time is "fair" from that perspective. If this was not true, then our call would not be for revolution but the establisment of fairness in the exchange.
What is Value?
Re: What is Value?
PinkoCommie
09-01-2009, 09:44 AM
Profit is the unpaid labour expropriated from workers by a capitalist and distributed by various means among the capitalist class, measured in proportion to the total capital invested.
The notion of profit is closely related to that of surplus-value.
Surplus value is the unpaid labour expropriated from the working class as a whole. Surplus value is taken in proportion to the value of labour-power. In general, it is difficult to relate the concept of surplus value to single unit of capital, since the necessary labour time which determines the level of wages is socially determined according to the cost of living.
Because of the complexity of the labour process, the individual unit of capital must invest in purchasing means of production, so they are never able to realise the full rate of surplus value as profit. In fact, production becomes more and more socialised, the rate of profit must fall.
The notion of profit pertains to the position of the individual unit of capital, and no capitalist is ever able to retain the full value of the profit they extract from the process of production – the landlord, the tax-collector, the bank, all demand their share. So too does the wholesaler and the retailer, each taking their margin as the goods pass from hand-to-hand through all the middlemen until it reaches the ultimate consumer. The workers have to support all these parasites with their surplus value; and only a small portion is retained by “their own” capitalist in the form of profit.
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#profit
09-01-2009, 09:44 AM
Profit is the unpaid labour expropriated from workers by a capitalist and distributed by various means among the capitalist class, measured in proportion to the total capital invested.
The notion of profit is closely related to that of surplus-value.
Surplus value is the unpaid labour expropriated from the working class as a whole. Surplus value is taken in proportion to the value of labour-power. In general, it is difficult to relate the concept of surplus value to single unit of capital, since the necessary labour time which determines the level of wages is socially determined according to the cost of living.
Because of the complexity of the labour process, the individual unit of capital must invest in purchasing means of production, so they are never able to realise the full rate of surplus value as profit. In fact, production becomes more and more socialised, the rate of profit must fall.
The notion of profit pertains to the position of the individual unit of capital, and no capitalist is ever able to retain the full value of the profit they extract from the process of production – the landlord, the tax-collector, the bank, all demand their share. So too does the wholesaler and the retailer, each taking their margin as the goods pass from hand-to-hand through all the middlemen until it reaches the ultimate consumer. The workers have to support all these parasites with their surplus value; and only a small portion is retained by “their own” capitalist in the form of profit.
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#profit
Re: What is Value?
meganmonkey
09-01-2009, 09:54 AM
"In all societies in which there is a division of labour, there is a social surplus; what is different about bourgeois society is that surplus value takes the form of capital, and surplus value is in fact the essence of production in capitalism.– Only productive work, i.e., work which creates surplus value, is supported. All “unproductive labour” is eliminated."
Why does this continue to bring to mind education and health care - basic and vital social institutions which are failing miserably? Is it impossible for such things to be public institutions (ie available to all) in our capitalist system, and is this because working people are unable to afford them (either by paying for them directly or by tax dollars) because they don't make enough money to do so...particularly not able to afford to pay enough for these services/institutions to be 'productive', that is, create surplus value...so this labor is essentially being eliminated...
I dunno, I can't really formulate it better than that right now. But I tried to say it last night and it made no sense, so I'm trying again now and I still don't know if it makes sense, or if it's at all relevant. But it keeps coming back to my mind. That 'all "unproductive labour" is eliminated' thing is very thought-provoking to me.
Partly because of what it says about what I do for a living. Having to think about it in this context is difficult, because it makes clear the fact that whatever 'value' there is in what I do does NOT lie in actually getting food to hungry people, or in the food itself (which was destined for the dumpster), but rather in the social meaning it provides the donors of the money/food. What has economic 'value' is just the warm fuzzies (or the donors' ability to sleep at night or get a tax break, or whatever). It's twisted.
Am I totally off-base here? I'm sorry I go off on such weird tangents all the time.
Lunch break is over
09-01-2009, 09:54 AM
"In all societies in which there is a division of labour, there is a social surplus; what is different about bourgeois society is that surplus value takes the form of capital, and surplus value is in fact the essence of production in capitalism.– Only productive work, i.e., work which creates surplus value, is supported. All “unproductive labour” is eliminated."
Why does this continue to bring to mind education and health care - basic and vital social institutions which are failing miserably? Is it impossible for such things to be public institutions (ie available to all) in our capitalist system, and is this because working people are unable to afford them (either by paying for them directly or by tax dollars) because they don't make enough money to do so...particularly not able to afford to pay enough for these services/institutions to be 'productive', that is, create surplus value...so this labor is essentially being eliminated...
I dunno, I can't really formulate it better than that right now. But I tried to say it last night and it made no sense, so I'm trying again now and I still don't know if it makes sense, or if it's at all relevant. But it keeps coming back to my mind. That 'all "unproductive labour" is eliminated' thing is very thought-provoking to me.
Partly because of what it says about what I do for a living. Having to think about it in this context is difficult, because it makes clear the fact that whatever 'value' there is in what I do does NOT lie in actually getting food to hungry people, or in the food itself (which was destined for the dumpster), but rather in the social meaning it provides the donors of the money/food. What has economic 'value' is just the warm fuzzies (or the donors' ability to sleep at night or get a tax break, or whatever). It's twisted.
Am I totally off-base here? I'm sorry I go off on such weird tangents all the time.
Lunch break is over
Re: What is Value?
Kid of the Black Hole
09-01-2009, 09:56 AM
c=constant capital (which is to say "fixed" capital)
v=variable capital -- this one is tricky because by this Marx means the labor contribution and not equipment whose value changes or "varies" with fluctuations (like by some definitions real estate is variable)
s=surplus value
Profit rate = s/(c+v)
Surplus value rate = s/v
The difference is really simple although it can also be sublte enough to get lost in the shuffle if you don't it enough attention. Profit also represents a return on your "fixed" costs which is in not just machinery and rents but also things like taxes and legal expenses and 1000 other necessities.
However, Marx says, that is really an illusory component to profit beause you put that money in and at the end you get that same amount of money back in any given cycle. Only the variable component -- ie labor -- actually makes anything above and beyond what you pay for it.
EDIT: to add to this, the cycle starts with c+v but you end up with c+v+s. But the s only accrued from v because c was simply fixed capital and associated costs.
You could write this as
c+v --> c+v'
v'=v+s and v'>v since s>0
EDIT2: changed this to make it explicit that I am talking about rates
EDIT2.5: the reason I focus on rates is because in this very simplifie example, surplus value and net profit are the same thing. Later on Marx shows why profits don't actually equate to surplus value
The reason is that if one industry has less cost in c, then for the same cost v they will generate a higher RATE of profit. But since more money and investment will flow to industries with higher rates of return, eventually a sort of controlled chaos emerges where rates are equlaized in the sense that you can anticipate about the same return across all industries. Its obviously not an exact science, but it does take effect on large enough scales and it more or less functions to redistribute surplus value across the varies industries.
EDIT2.75: an example, I'm just making the numbers up and this is really simplified
you invest $100. $80 goes to fixed costs, $20 goes to labor. Say workers really produce twice what they are paid thus adding $20 extra dollars to the product. So you sell that product at a price of $100+$20=$120 and you've made $20 of profit
but say you instead invest in something else with your $100. This other industry only has $50 in fixed costs. So the other $50 is spent on labor. surplus value is an AVERAGE of the productivity of labor across society so it is the same as above, where we said that workers produce twice what they are paid. This adds $50 extra dollars
So you can sell this product for $100+$50 and you've made $50 in profit.
This reveals why profit rates have to be equalized -- otherwise no one would ever invest in the first industry and make only $20 when they could make $50 instead
09-01-2009, 09:56 AM
c=constant capital (which is to say "fixed" capital)
v=variable capital -- this one is tricky because by this Marx means the labor contribution and not equipment whose value changes or "varies" with fluctuations (like by some definitions real estate is variable)
s=surplus value
Profit rate = s/(c+v)
Surplus value rate = s/v
The difference is really simple although it can also be sublte enough to get lost in the shuffle if you don't it enough attention. Profit also represents a return on your "fixed" costs which is in not just machinery and rents but also things like taxes and legal expenses and 1000 other necessities.
However, Marx says, that is really an illusory component to profit beause you put that money in and at the end you get that same amount of money back in any given cycle. Only the variable component -- ie labor -- actually makes anything above and beyond what you pay for it.
EDIT: to add to this, the cycle starts with c+v but you end up with c+v+s. But the s only accrued from v because c was simply fixed capital and associated costs.
You could write this as
c+v --> c+v'
v'=v+s and v'>v since s>0
EDIT2: changed this to make it explicit that I am talking about rates
EDIT2.5: the reason I focus on rates is because in this very simplifie example, surplus value and net profit are the same thing. Later on Marx shows why profits don't actually equate to surplus value
The reason is that if one industry has less cost in c, then for the same cost v they will generate a higher RATE of profit. But since more money and investment will flow to industries with higher rates of return, eventually a sort of controlled chaos emerges where rates are equlaized in the sense that you can anticipate about the same return across all industries. Its obviously not an exact science, but it does take effect on large enough scales and it more or less functions to redistribute surplus value across the varies industries.
EDIT2.75: an example, I'm just making the numbers up and this is really simplified
you invest $100. $80 goes to fixed costs, $20 goes to labor. Say workers really produce twice what they are paid thus adding $20 extra dollars to the product. So you sell that product at a price of $100+$20=$120 and you've made $20 of profit
but say you instead invest in something else with your $100. This other industry only has $50 in fixed costs. So the other $50 is spent on labor. surplus value is an AVERAGE of the productivity of labor across society so it is the same as above, where we said that workers produce twice what they are paid. This adds $50 extra dollars
So you can sell this product for $100+$50 and you've made $50 in profit.
This reveals why profit rates have to be equalized -- otherwise no one would ever invest in the first industry and make only $20 when they could make $50 instead
Re: What is Value?
anaxarchos
09-01-2009, 11:30 AM
A note on method: We've tried this three or four times on the web and it hasn't worked, even though it spawns interesting chem trails. I'm gonna try to stick to a two-way conversation on the subject matter alone, exhaust each small section, wait for you to say "move on", and then go on to the next. I'll try to address other questions which are not immediately germane, separately. Questions by you or others which are on the exact subject matter, we address in-line. OK?
A note on Marx: Part of the reason he is hard to read is that he is simultaneously compact and exhaustive. If you skip him, to get the "important bits" or to do it "crude and rude", as I have, then what you skipped immediately shows up in the first questions... as it just did. I suggest reading the old man as we go through the points together. The text we are using is here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... h01.htm#S1
1)So, is there a difference between capitalist wealth and that of the King of Kings? That seems implied.
The predominant form of wealth in Feudal times is lands and their populations (and "obligations") - the estates. There are relatively few commodities, even less money, and most of what constitutes wealth cannot be bought and sold. Prior to Feudalism, the most important form of wealth was in slaves.
2)Wants & needs covers a lot of territory.
Human beings have always made things to satisfy their "wants and needs". Here the two terms are co-dependent. They define each other. Thus, we can say with certainty that human beings have always produced "products of labor" (or use-values) to suit themselves. But, human beings have also been social, and for most of their existence, they have skirted bare subsistence. Therefore, we can also say that most products of labor were more generally useful to the herd/tribe/clan of people as a whole - mainly as subsistence - because most labor was expended as socially useful labor.
Commodities were a specific kind of "product of labor". They were produced for exchange, which typically appeared between people and not amongst them. Here the usefulness of the thing is generalized, beyond arbitrary personal and even group "taste" (giant stone heads from the Easter Islands were probably not good candidates for commodities, no matter how personally or socially satisfying they may have been to build).
Trying to find exceptions to #5 but cannot. It seems there would have to be some relationship between use-value and exchange-value, else why would that commodity be exchanged? Why should we leave out consideration of use-value?
The opposite... use-values of the same kind do not exchange for one another. The purpose of exchange is to convert use-values of one type into those of another. The usefulness of a thing is the precondition for any exchange to take place... BUT, once established, there is no recognition of the particular physical form of the product of labor as commodity. There is no restriction of exchange to products which share any concrete traits at all. What is established is a magnitude for exchange: 10 of A, equals 3 of B... where nothing whatever need be in common between A and B. The exchange takes place on a basis totally abstracted away from the use-value that is the object of the exchange, where the physical traits of the commodity as use-value are only a repository of something else: exchange-value. We know it is something other because nothing in what we have already looked at is shared.
BTW, this whole is a logical derivation...
I'm thinking about cowrie shells, used by some NA folks as a medium of exchange. Does their exchange value reflect the minimal labor of gathering them plus the considerable labor of transporting them inland?
What is the price of water in the Sahara Desert? If there is only one seller and you are dying of thirst, it is limitless. But, that is not exchange. The minute there are three sellers of water in the Desert, the price is equal to transporting that water into the Sahara Desert. This was the "secret" of merchant capital whose illusion was of "buying cheap and selling dear". Of course, not everything can be so bought and sold. After all of that cancels out, what is the substance of the value remaining? It was the sweat of the Teamsters...
Still ready to continue?
09-01-2009, 11:30 AM
A note on method: We've tried this three or four times on the web and it hasn't worked, even though it spawns interesting chem trails. I'm gonna try to stick to a two-way conversation on the subject matter alone, exhaust each small section, wait for you to say "move on", and then go on to the next. I'll try to address other questions which are not immediately germane, separately. Questions by you or others which are on the exact subject matter, we address in-line. OK?
A note on Marx: Part of the reason he is hard to read is that he is simultaneously compact and exhaustive. If you skip him, to get the "important bits" or to do it "crude and rude", as I have, then what you skipped immediately shows up in the first questions... as it just did. I suggest reading the old man as we go through the points together. The text we are using is here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... h01.htm#S1
1)So, is there a difference between capitalist wealth and that of the King of Kings? That seems implied.
The predominant form of wealth in Feudal times is lands and their populations (and "obligations") - the estates. There are relatively few commodities, even less money, and most of what constitutes wealth cannot be bought and sold. Prior to Feudalism, the most important form of wealth was in slaves.
2)Wants & needs covers a lot of territory.
Human beings have always made things to satisfy their "wants and needs". Here the two terms are co-dependent. They define each other. Thus, we can say with certainty that human beings have always produced "products of labor" (or use-values) to suit themselves. But, human beings have also been social, and for most of their existence, they have skirted bare subsistence. Therefore, we can also say that most products of labor were more generally useful to the herd/tribe/clan of people as a whole - mainly as subsistence - because most labor was expended as socially useful labor.
Commodities were a specific kind of "product of labor". They were produced for exchange, which typically appeared between people and not amongst them. Here the usefulness of the thing is generalized, beyond arbitrary personal and even group "taste" (giant stone heads from the Easter Islands were probably not good candidates for commodities, no matter how personally or socially satisfying they may have been to build).
Trying to find exceptions to #5 but cannot. It seems there would have to be some relationship between use-value and exchange-value, else why would that commodity be exchanged? Why should we leave out consideration of use-value?
The opposite... use-values of the same kind do not exchange for one another. The purpose of exchange is to convert use-values of one type into those of another. The usefulness of a thing is the precondition for any exchange to take place... BUT, once established, there is no recognition of the particular physical form of the product of labor as commodity. There is no restriction of exchange to products which share any concrete traits at all. What is established is a magnitude for exchange: 10 of A, equals 3 of B... where nothing whatever need be in common between A and B. The exchange takes place on a basis totally abstracted away from the use-value that is the object of the exchange, where the physical traits of the commodity as use-value are only a repository of something else: exchange-value. We know it is something other because nothing in what we have already looked at is shared.
BTW, this whole is a logical derivation...
I'm thinking about cowrie shells, used by some NA folks as a medium of exchange. Does their exchange value reflect the minimal labor of gathering them plus the considerable labor of transporting them inland?
What is the price of water in the Sahara Desert? If there is only one seller and you are dying of thirst, it is limitless. But, that is not exchange. The minute there are three sellers of water in the Desert, the price is equal to transporting that water into the Sahara Desert. This was the "secret" of merchant capital whose illusion was of "buying cheap and selling dear". Of course, not everything can be so bought and sold. After all of that cancels out, what is the substance of the value remaining? It was the sweat of the Teamsters...
Still ready to continue?
Re: What is Value?
anaxarchos
09-01-2009, 11:33 AM
It is Profit plus Interest plus Rent. The form in which the surplus is realized is a function of the type of capital employed and the specific relationship of the capitalist to it.
09-01-2009, 11:33 AM
It is Profit plus Interest plus Rent. The form in which the surplus is realized is a function of the type of capital employed and the specific relationship of the capitalist to it.
Re: What is Value?
Kid of the Black Hole
09-01-2009, 11:47 AM
doesn't he kind of use "profit" as a catchall that subsumes all three at times? That is how it seemed to me at least, even if he didn't explicitly say that.
09-01-2009, 11:47 AM
doesn't he kind of use "profit" as a catchall that subsumes all three at times? That is how it seemed to me at least, even if he didn't explicitly say that.
Re: What is Value?
Kid of the Black Hole
09-01-2009, 11:50 AM
I thought your King of Kings phrase was referring to someone talking about Calvinism..was kind of confusing me. Ha!
09-01-2009, 11:50 AM
I thought your King of Kings phrase was referring to someone talking about Calvinism..was kind of confusing me. Ha!
Re: What is Value?
anaxarchos
09-01-2009, 12:47 PM
...is "Anax". That is not what "Anaxarchos" means but when shortened, it does.
I thought he was talking about me.
09-01-2009, 12:47 PM
...is "Anax". That is not what "Anaxarchos" means but when shortened, it does.
I thought he was talking about me.
Re: What is Value?
anaxarchos
09-01-2009, 01:50 PM
Your link uses Bookchin extensively and each one of Bookchin's books basically repudiates the last... until the last set of articles (which were quoted on PopIndy) repudiates "anarchism", mostly end-to-end. He returns to being some sort of "left communist"... and the all-powerful-hierarchy goes out the window except for those who weren't reading all his books... in the order in which he wrote them... and not going through the same personal evolution... quack.
And the target of his frustration is all the beanie babies who read his other books and believed in some-sort-of transcendent hierarchical "oppression" which had nothing to do with real oppression or actual social conditions, and they were going for some-sort-of-personal-freedom horseshit because they were totally removed from real life and the last thing he says to them is, "Why aren't you working class?"
And then he dies...
09-01-2009, 01:50 PM
Your link uses Bookchin extensively and each one of Bookchin's books basically repudiates the last... until the last set of articles (which were quoted on PopIndy) repudiates "anarchism", mostly end-to-end. He returns to being some sort of "left communist"... and the all-powerful-hierarchy goes out the window except for those who weren't reading all his books... in the order in which he wrote them... and not going through the same personal evolution... quack.
And the target of his frustration is all the beanie babies who read his other books and believed in some-sort-of transcendent hierarchical "oppression" which had nothing to do with real oppression or actual social conditions, and they were going for some-sort-of-personal-freedom horseshit because they were totally removed from real life and the last thing he says to them is, "Why aren't you working class?"
And then he dies...