quote:

Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made.

NNick posted:

They wouldn't be making a watch.

SomeMathGuy posted:

I don't know that fiat currency requires an update, it seemed to me Marx was arguing that money becomes A Thing (TM) because it acquires a perceived position as the final arbiter on relative value. A fiat currency then replaces something with a certain perceived value and a high labor value (like gold mined from the hills) with something with an equivalent perceived value and a lower labor value.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S3d posted:

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and, in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular – namely, gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we get,
D. The Money-Form

quote:

Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold-crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are more delicate res sacrosanctae, extra commercium hominum able to withstand this alchemy.

and i must meme posted:

the main bee sues the human race for exploiting bees and stealing their honey, and wins, the bees are free to use all of their honey, but it's ~upset the balance of nature~ so the bees become lazy and stop pollinating flowers

the happy ending is when the humans go back to exploiting the bees

Electric Owl posted:

Sure, but since NNick says that you can produce 2 Juicero in the time it'd take to produce 1 iPhone then wouldn't a true price that reflected the exchange value be $350 for the Juicero and $700 for the iPhone? Not $700 equally? I understand how in a system where money already exists you could just as well express this value in dollars but this specific example seems divorced from an objective determination of the commodity's value, no?

quote:

The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money.

Electric Owl posted:

Where surplus is generated in the form of currency out of the negative space of what consumers would have been willing to pay for a good and at what price the producer would have been willing to produce it for. So for example, if you would've been willing to pay $10 for a shirt but it was offered on the market for $5, then the economy effectively generates a surplus of $5. This concept is fundamental in the mainstream academic support of Free Trade. The idea being that the lower the costs you can offer consumers, the more economic surplus you generate, and that since Free Trade enables costs to be at their lowest, that everybody therefore wins.

quote:

Let us take the process of circulation in a form under which it presents itself as a simple and direct exchange of commodities. This is always the case when two owners of commodities buy from each other, and on the settling day the amounts mutually owing are equal and cancel each other. The money in this case is money of account and serves to express the value of the commodities by their prices, but is not, itself, in the shape of hard cash, confronted with them. So far as regards use-values, it is clear that both parties may gain some advantage. Both part with goods that, as use-values, are of no service to them, and receive others that they can make use of. And there may also be a further gain. A, who sells wine and buys corn, possibly produces more wine, with given labour-time, than farmer B could, and B on the other hand, more corn than wine-grower A could. A, therefore, may get, for the same exchange-value, more corn, and B more wine, than each would respectively get without any exchange by producing his own corn and wine. With reference, therefore, to use-value, there is good ground for saying that “exchange is a transaction by which both sides gain.” [1] It is otherwise with exchange-value. “A man who has plenty of wine and no corn treats with a man who has plenty of corn and no wine; an exchange takes place between them of corn to the value of 50, for wine of the same value.This act produces no increase of exchange-value either for the one or the other; for each of them already possessed, before the exchange, a value equal to that which he acquired by means of that operation.” [2] The result is not altered by introducing money, as a medium of circulation, between the commodities, and making the sale and the purchase two distinct acts. [3] The value of a commodity is expressed in its price before it goes into circulation, and is therefore a precedent condition of circulation, not its result.

Hence, we see that behind all attempts to represent the circulation of commodities as a source of surplus-value, there lurks a quid pro quo, a mixing up of use-value and exchange-value. For instance, Condillac says: “It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. ... If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versâ. ... It is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for our own consumption. ... We wish to part with a useless thing, in order to get one that we need; we want to give less for more. ... It was natural to think that, in an exchange, value was given for value, whenever each of the articles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity of gold. ... But there is another point to be considered in our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange something superfluous for something necessary.” [8] We see in this passage, how Condillac not only confuses use-value with exchange-value, but in a really childish manner assumes, that in a society, in which the production of commodities is well developed, each producer produces his own means of subsistence, and throws into circulation only the excess over his own requirements. [9] Still, Condillac’s argument is frequently used by modern economists, more especially when the point is to show, that the exchange of commodities in its developed form, commerce, is productive of surplus-value. For instance, “Commerce ... adds value to products, for the same products in the hands of consumers, are worth more than in the hands of producers, and it may strictly be considered an act of production.” [10] But commodities are not paid for twice over, once on account of their use-value, and again on account of their value. And though the use-value of a commodity is more serviceable to the buyer than to the seller, its money-form is more serviceable to the seller. Would he otherwise sell it? We might therefore just as well say that the buyer performs "strictly an act of production,” by converting stockings, for example, into money.

...

A may be clever enough to get the advantage of B or C without their being able to retaliate. A sells wine worth £40 to B, and obtains from him in exchange corn to the value of £50. A has converted his £40 into £50, has made more money out of less, and has converted his commodities into capital. Let us examine this a little more closely. Before the exchange we had £40 worth of wine in the hands of A, and £50 worth of corn in those of B, a total value of £90. After the exchange we have still the same total value of £90. The value in circulation has not increased by one iota, it is only distributed differently between A and B. What is a loss of value to B is surplus-value to A; what is “minus” to one is “plus” to the other. The same change would have taken place, if A, without the formality of an exchange, had directly stolen the £10 from B. The sum of the values in circulation can clearly not be augmented by any change in their distribution, any more than the quantity of the precious metals in a country by a Jew selling a Queen Anne’s farthing for a guinea. The capitalist class, as a whole, in any country, cannot over-reach themselves

quote:

Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the cotton and spindle must concur in the production of a use-value; they must in the present case become yarn. Value is independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne, but it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind. Secondly, the time occupied in the labour of production must not exceed the time really necessary under the given social conditions of the case. Therefore, if no more than 1 lb. of cotton be requisite to spin 1 lb. of yarn, care must be taken that no more than this weight of cotton is consumed in the production of 1 lb. of yarn; and similarly with regard to the spindle. Though the capitalist have a hobby, and use a gold instead of a steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for anything in the value of the yarn is that which would be required to produce a steel spindle, because no more is necessary under the given social conditions.

dk2m posted:

However, this doesn't seem to hold for secondary markets (used cars where things like subjectivity seem to be a prime price determinator).

Electric Owl posted:

dk2m posted:

2) Ruzihm's idea of secondary markets - I brought up the used car market because it's a really fascinating area. Let's take the phenomenon of the "Classic" car. These cars are old, they do not have modern safety equipment, nor are they road-worthy as a modern car is. Yet they can command prices excess of over 30,000+ even in bad condition. Why is this? These prices seem arbitrary and seem relative not to the the process of manufacturing it, but to the price of other cars within the market. An 1965 Mustang was not a very well built car in the first place - it isn't a luxury good like a Ferrari. It was and is a "blue-collar" good, originally priced less than the modern adjusted for inflation value they command. I'm still not sure if you can categorize what the "use value" of something like a classic car even is because it ends up taking some sort of Bentham-esque concept of utility - I am "happy" to send that much, even though I realize the classic car itself is inferior in objective ways to modern cars. Perhaps there is some distinction here between "essential" goods like food/water/shelter and "accessory" goods like a classic car.

Peel posted:

Yeah. I wasn't able to get started when I wanted so I'm running late, but the post will be up tonight.

Chapter 11 posted:

This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus-value than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate terms are as yet wanted,

quote:

A legitimate question. So, within "The Capitalist Papers", Dustbringer accuses Marx of Axiological intrinsicism, meaning he assigned commodities intrinsic values. So, my question is this: How can we prove that either A: Marx is not guilty of this or B. How can we objectively prove intrinsic value?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N8opNE-3Nj5W_7w_2vx6grfvoidmcMsTWli2EBXcZsM/edit

quote:

Marx states that value exists in a commodity only in the context of social production and exchange. So it is in the object, but it is shaped by the society that produced it and/or exchanges it.

The only attempt at a substantive criticism of the LTV I see (at least in the first chapter) is at the very end of "Ending The LTV", where he claims the common misconception that Marx's formulation of value does not allow for the concept of "a good deal", e.g., someone understanding how a market price may fluctuate in the future. Of course, Marx wrote much about how market prices can alter, and how them being equal to their value is not commonplace at all.

Aeolius posted:

Marx posted:

The Yankees have invented a stone-breaking machine. The English do not make use of it, because the “wretch” who does this work gets paid for such a small portion of his labour, that machinery would increase the cost of production to the capitalist.

quote:

But in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine also undergoes, what we may call a moral depreciation. It loses exchange-value, either by machines of the same sort being produced cheaper than it, or by better machines entering into competition with it. [64] In both cases, be the machine ever so young and full of life, its value is no longer determined by the labour actually materialised in it, but by the labour-time requisite to reproduce either it or the better machine. It has, therefore, lost value more or less.

quote:

The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine. [103] In this way, not only are the expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

There isn't a penny of profit to be made employing humans at that point though. Even a starvation wage human is more expensive than a big ol Roomba.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

Yeah but there's way less people involve in maintenance and management than there would be as janitors. Otherwise the roombas would have no point. That's why it's gonna cause unemployment.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

What does that have to do with unemployment.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

You're making some big implications about how welfare, demand and capital would work in an automated economy, and I'd counter them with the fact that a combination of need for aggregate demand and civil unrest would probably get us a UBI or equivalent and it wouldn't hurt capital accumulation all that much.

Oberleutnant posted:

But we've seen it all before - every collapse is worse than the last, but the system recovers. I hate to be a debbie downer but you have to demonstrate why this particular time it will be fundamentally different from the last 50 times. As somebody upthread pointed out, we've been through absolutely devastating crises precipitated by automation and overproduction again and again in the last couple hundred years. Of course we're due for another crisis, we're always due for a crisis.
Marx's predicted final implosion of capital rests essentially on the system exhausting all available fuel (in the form of available workers and consumers) and reaching a point where it cannot grow any more. All automation actually does is push back the hand on the doomsday clock a little bit, by freeing up more cheap labour for capital to expand again - sometimes into new and different areas of production.

Oberleutnant posted:

Comrade this would be the perfect approach if only the bourgeoisie hadn't ruthlessly invented the phenomena of fluid displacement specifically to counteract it.. I must also tell you that they engineered sea-level rises specifically so they could raise rents on the reduced available landmass. The only solution is revolution.

quote:

In relation to the discharged workmen, the £1,500 worth of means of subsistence never was capital. What really confronted them as capital, was the sum of £1,500, afterwards laid out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that this sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the 50 discharged men, which part they received as wages from their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets in the form of money, they bought means of subsistence to the value of £1,500. These means, therefore, were to them, not capital, but commodities, and they, as regards these commodities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers. The circumstance that they were “freed” by the machinery, from the means of purchase, changed them from buyers into non-buyers. Hence a lessened demand for those commodities — voilà tout. If this diminution be not compensated by an increase from some other quarter, the market price of the commodities falls. If this state of things lasts for some time, and extends, there follows a discharge of workmen employed in the production of these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously devoted to production of necessary means of subsistence, has to become reproduced in another form. While prices fall, and capital is being displaced, the labourers employed in the production of necessary means of subsistence are in their turn “freed” from a part of their wages. Instead, therefore, of proving that, when machinery frees the workman from his means of subsistence, it simultaneously converts those means into capital for his further employment, our apologists, with their cut-and-dried law of supply and demand, prove, on the contrary, that machinery throws workmen on the streets, not only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but also in those branches in which it is not introduced.

Chapter 17 posted:

The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase of productiveness, both the labourer and the capitalist may simultaneously be able to appropriate a greater quantity of these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-power or in surplus-value. If the value of labour-power be 3 shillings, and the necessary labour time amount to 6 hours, if the surplus-value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus-labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to surplus-labour, there would be no change of magnitude in surplus-value and price of labour-power. The only result would be that each of them would represent twice as many use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price, it would be above its value. If, however, the price of labour-power had fallen, not to 1s. 6d., the lowest possible point consistent with its new value, but to 2s. 10d. or 2s. 6d., still this lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries. In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corresponding rise of surplus-value, and thus the abyss between the labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep widening.

quote:

In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour time.

quote:

We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the working-day – i.e., 6 hours’ labour-is paid for, appears as the value or price of the whole working-day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.

quote:

From a social point of view, therefore, the working class, even when not directly engaged in the labour process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of production. That process, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious instruments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their product, as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite pole of capital. Individual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for their maintenance and reproduction: on the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries of life, the continued re-appearance of the workman in the labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract.

In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free labourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of mechanics employed in machine making was, in England, forbidden, under grievous pains and penalties.

Modest Mao posted:

It's also cool to see marx repeat the same thing like 20 times about linen and gold and whatever and people, many in this thread, still don't get it because goddamn modern econ has plagued our minds, each and every one of us.

Ruzihm posted:

I could have sworn somewhere in vol 1, marx briefly mentions what seems similar to a worker owned cooperative business operating in a market. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd like to go back and re-read that section but I don't know where that was, or the exact wording he used.

quote:

The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

I genuinely think telling people to go read stuff is one of the biggest weaknesses of the left.