Re: On Economic Crisis
Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 2:23 pm
anaxarchos
11-06-2009, 10:42 PM
That transporting commodities adds value confused merchant capital at its infancy. They thought that they bought cheap and sold expensive, without putting their finger on the obvious fact that it was always cheap there and expensive here. If a commodity made in China can be transported halfway around the world and still be cheaper, it is a testimony to either the underlying advantage in cost of production or to the efficiency of transport.
Costs of circulation are those associated with turning commodities into money and then back into commodities ("changes in the forms of commodities"). It includes many of the elements of what is called "cost of sales" today, plus accountants, security guards, a big part of "management" and a good deal of the "unproductive labor" employed by corporations. All of these are deductions from surplus-value.
Look forward a couple of paragraphs from your quote:
Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible alteration of their natural qualities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is rather an unavoidable evil. But the use-value of things is materialised only in their consumption, and their consumption may necessitate a change of location of these things, hence may require an additional process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by adding value through the labour performed in transport. This last-named increment of value consists, as it does in all capitalist production, of a replacement of wages and of surplus-value.
Within each process of production, a great role is played by the change of location of the subject of labour and the required instruments of labour and labour-power — such as cotton trucked from the carding to the spinning room or coal hoisted from the shaft to the surface. The transition of the finished product as finished goods from one independent place of production to another located at a distance shows the same phenomenon, only on a larger scale. The transport of products from one productive establishment to another is furthermore followed by the passage of the finished products from the sphere of production to that of consumption. The product is not ready for consumption until it has completed these movements.
As was shown above, the general law of commodity production holds: The productivity of labour is inversely proportional to the value created by it. This is true of the transport industry as well as of any other. The smaller the amount of dead and living labour required for the transportation of commodities over a certain distance, the greater the productive power of labour, and vice versa.[18]
The absolute magnitude of the value which transportation adds to the commodities stands in inverse proportion to the productive power of the transport industry and in direct proportion to the distance traveled, other conditions remaining the same.
11-06-2009, 10:42 PM
That transporting commodities adds value confused merchant capital at its infancy. They thought that they bought cheap and sold expensive, without putting their finger on the obvious fact that it was always cheap there and expensive here. If a commodity made in China can be transported halfway around the world and still be cheaper, it is a testimony to either the underlying advantage in cost of production or to the efficiency of transport.
Costs of circulation are those associated with turning commodities into money and then back into commodities ("changes in the forms of commodities"). It includes many of the elements of what is called "cost of sales" today, plus accountants, security guards, a big part of "management" and a good deal of the "unproductive labor" employed by corporations. All of these are deductions from surplus-value.
Look forward a couple of paragraphs from your quote:
Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible alteration of their natural qualities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is rather an unavoidable evil. But the use-value of things is materialised only in their consumption, and their consumption may necessitate a change of location of these things, hence may require an additional process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by adding value through the labour performed in transport. This last-named increment of value consists, as it does in all capitalist production, of a replacement of wages and of surplus-value.
Within each process of production, a great role is played by the change of location of the subject of labour and the required instruments of labour and labour-power — such as cotton trucked from the carding to the spinning room or coal hoisted from the shaft to the surface. The transition of the finished product as finished goods from one independent place of production to another located at a distance shows the same phenomenon, only on a larger scale. The transport of products from one productive establishment to another is furthermore followed by the passage of the finished products from the sphere of production to that of consumption. The product is not ready for consumption until it has completed these movements.
As was shown above, the general law of commodity production holds: The productivity of labour is inversely proportional to the value created by it. This is true of the transport industry as well as of any other. The smaller the amount of dead and living labour required for the transportation of commodities over a certain distance, the greater the productive power of labour, and vice versa.[18]
The absolute magnitude of the value which transportation adds to the commodities stands in inverse proportion to the productive power of the transport industry and in direct proportion to the distance traveled, other conditions remaining the same.