Spin: Introduction to Socialism

[Tate]

My first post said I agree with most social democratic ideas.

Do you think that social democratic beliefs are synonymous with Marxism?

Not necessarily

 

[JahFocus CS]

I peeped the article, just didn't feel like it was worth addressing but since you asked fukk it.

Whole thing hinges on this dubious distinction between labor and "labor-power". Labor being "the actual process of work itself", and labor power being a chimera that enriches capitalists in ways labor somehow doesn't. What exactly is the difference? If one goes through "the actual process of work itself", they HAVE give up the "capacity to work & create value", which I am interpeting as a worker's time. Right? You can't work without giving up some of your time, can you? How is requiring people to give up time to work exploitative

It isn't a dubious distinction at all.

Labor-power is, as per Marx (see here and here), "[The combination] of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description." More basically, it is the capacity to exert one's mental and physical capabilities in a creative, productive way. That's quite different from labor, the actual process of work itself.

Labor-power =/= a worker's time.

There is a litany of questionable other assertions as well. He simultaneously acknowledges labor as a commodity, which has a price Marx defines as determined by the cost to produce said commodity, but then complains about the disconnect between the actual price of labor and what Marx has defined that it should be.

A commodity is a good or a service produced "for the purpose of exchanging for something else" - it is abundantly clear that labor is a commodity under capitalism, as workers rent themselves to capitalists in order to purchase the things they need to survive (which are also produced by other workers. Workers produce all goods and services). In the original article, Gary Lapon wrote: "CAPITALISTS PURCHASE labor-power on the market. In general, the wage--the price of labor-power--is, like all other commodities, determined by its cost of production, which is in turn regulated by struggles between workers and capitalists over the level of wages and benefits, and by competition between workers for jobs." Lapon did not state that the price of labor-power = the cost of its production. And, in fact, neither did Marx. What both of them are saying is merely that the wage must include the cost of the production of labor-power; it cannot be lower than that because workers would be unable to reproduce themselves daily, much less reproduce more humans by having a family. So in that way, the wage (the price of labor-power) is determined by the cost of production of labor-power. This is also true for other commodities: their prices are determined by the cost of their production; a commodity with a price lower than the cost of its production will not be sold for long in a capitalist system because the firm producing it will go under.

What Marx observed and Lapon pointed to is that the course of the class struggle between workers and capitalists is a major shaper of the cost of the production of labor-power. Quite simply, what standard of living do the workers demand? That standard of living will be a determinant of the wage.

The disconnect is not between the price of labor-power and what Marx defined the price of labor-power to be... because, in fact, Marx defined the price of labor-power to be the wage. So that's not the disconnect.

The disconnect is this: wages do not equal the value produced by workers during the labor process, and are far below the value produced during the labor process. This is exploitation, and the source of profits.

To recap: 1) labor is a commodity under capitalism; 2) the price of labor-power = the wage (two determinants are the class struggle between workers and capitalists and competition between workers); 3) wages < the value produced by workers during the labor process.

The discussion in Lapon's article on "necessary labor" and the length of work time has to do with this: for part of the workday, workers labor to produce enough value to sustain themselves. But they do not get to leave work at that point - they remain working past that point, and the value produced during that time is captured by the capitalist ("surplus value").

Let me ask you this. When you buy something from a retailer, do you ask the workers if they are being paid enough? If they say no, do you pay more for the product to cover that spread, or do you complete the transaction at the price(s) set by the retailer and go along your merry way?

You're faulting me for having to buy goods and services in a system premised upon the exploitation of labor, that was established long before I was even born?

But your question gets at how the commodity obfuscates relations of production and power relations between people (capital is a social relation, i.e., it is a relation between people, mediated through things). Nonetheless, things like "fair trade" mostly serve to make the hearts of liberals feel warm and fuzzy. Does nothing to touch the root problem of exploitation though.

With your clothing operation, have you set prices and redistributed proceeds back down the chain to be at what you feel is a fair level for the workers who make it? Maybe you print the shirts yourself. OK, unless you grow, mill, weave, dye, cut and sew the cotton, someone else is working on your shirts. What's their cut of your profit? So unless Marxists exist completely outside of the capitalist system they feel is a failure, they too are complicit in the exploitation they claim to rail against. So I'm not buying that point.

So an abolitionist in the 1840s would have their position be invalidated if they used any goods or services, or anything touched in any way, by the institution of slavery? Slavery was a ubiquitous element of American capitalism at the time.

Capital is omnipresent now and shapes all of our lives (more negatively for the working-class and much, much more positively for the ruling class). The issue is not with me or any other individual determining at a micro level what is "fair." That is liberal moralizing hogwash. None of us exist outside of the capitalist system. But only workers are compelled, by their material self-interest under capitalist property relations, to abolish it and move to a system that produces for human need instead of profit.

Not to mention the role of automation and the existence of workerless factories

Which is driven by the desire of the bourgeoisie to cut labor costs. Take automation to its logical conclusion. What does it look like? It exacerbates the contradictions of capitalist property relations.

It is a question of, will technology be used to serve society, or will it be used in an anti-social, destructive manner?

There's also this very fundamental lack of understanding of business:

In our example, the capitalist is paying them $100 for the workday, and the worker produced $100 worth of new value in the form of products that belong to the capitalist, which they can sell on the market to recoup what they spent on wages and other costs of production.​

​

The full example was as follows:

"To take a simple example, let's assume that a worker is able to produce in four hours new value that is equivalent to the value of their labor-power for the day--to, say, $100 in wages. Marx called this "necessary labor," because it is the amount of labor required to replace the wages paid by the capitalist, and because if the worker labored independently and not for a capitalist, it would be "necessary" for them to work four hours to maintain their standard of living.

If it was a matter of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work," workers ought to be able to go home after four hours of labor. In our example, the capitalist is paying them $100 for the workday, and the worker produced $100 worth of new value in the form of products that belong to the capitalist, which they can sell on the market to recoup what they spent on wages and other costs of production."
​

In other words: a worker is paid $100 in wages (wages = price of labor-power). The worker produces new value equivalent to $100 (the price of their labor-power) in just 4 hours of working -- but they are made to continue working after that point. The value produced beyond those 4 hours is appropriated by the capitalist. It's not a "fundamental lack of understanding of business," but it encapsulates our fundamental point (!) -- capitalist production ("business") is premised on exploitation.

Again, let's come back to your shirts. If it cost you $20 to make a shirt, what would you gain from selling the shirt at $20? Would you bother selling the shirt at all? In the case of the worker/capitalist, that $100 in wages doesn't at all factor in the costs for all the infrastructure for the worker to work. The building the worker is in, the lights the worker works under, the tools the worker uses, the support staff for the worker like human resources..... who is going to pay for that, if 100% of the money from the sales of products goes back to nothing but worker's wages? So no, for an operation to function even without profit the wages paid to the worker have to be a fraction of the proceeds from the product, unless the worker is creating products with zero raw materials, or facilities, or tools paid for and provided by the owner(s) of the company

Who built the building?
Who made those lights?
Who made those tools?
Who provides the HR services?

All of these are also created and provided by workers. You can focus on exploitation at the firm-level, as you did above, but then you need to multiply that by every capitalist enterprise... that's the foundation of capitalist economy. You yourself are saying it's necessary in this system. I agree!

This speaks to why the working class must move humanity beyond production for profit, and toward production for human need. 95+% of humanity will continue to suffer if not.

Further, why does what you laid out above require a capitalist to appropriate the surplus produced by the workers? Why couldn't the surplus be controlled by those producing it?

 

[CHL]

did you just google "sweden economy problems" and copy pasted what you first saw?

first you said: "they STILL can't get enough domestic growth." and i showed you that they have more than enough growth and are in fact the fastest growing economy in the developed world.

now you bringing up housing and labor issues they face like every other economy. just quit talking about shyt you don't know it's nothing wrong with acknowledging your own ignorance

God....

 

[Shogun]

Not necessarily

Good, because they're not.

That fact remains, all human societies are run by human institution and are, therefore, imperfect. Humanity, in the long run, alway proves selfish and corrupt. I don't see any reason to believe that socialism will solve that.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Good, because they're not.

That fact remains, all human societies are run by human institution and are, therefore, imperfect. Humanity, in the long run, alway proves selfish and corrupt. I don't see any reason to believe that socialism will solve that.

...except that socialism has little to nothing to do with being selfless and morally pure.

 

[Shogun]

...except that socialism has little to nothing to do with being selfless and morally pure.

That was an informative rebuttal. Well done.

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

It isn't a dubious distinction at all.

Labor-power is, as per Marx (see here and here), "[The combination] of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description." More basically, it is the capacity to exert one's mental and physical capabilities in a creative, productive way. That's quite different from labor, the actual process of work itself.

Labor-power =/= a worker's time.

Bruv this hasn't convinced me at all. Just because Marx says something doesn't mean it is true or rational. Again, explain to me how you can have a human complete the process of labor without tapping into their "mental and physical capabilities"? Even the humans who were the batteries in the Matrix had to be physically incapacitated. Labor and labor-power are one in the same; this dubious distinction between the two serves no purpose but to obfuscate. I'm not buying it without a logical explanation.

A commodity is a good or a service produced "for the purpose of exchanging for something else"

- it is abundantly clear that labor is a commodity under capitalism, as workers rent themselves to capitalists in order to purchase the things they need to survive (which are also produced by other workers. Workers produce all goods and services). In the original article, Gary Lapon wrote: "CAPITALISTS PURCHASE labor-power on the market. In general, the wage--the price of labor-power--is, like all other commodities, determined by its cost of production, which is in turn regulated by struggles between workers and capitalists over the level of wages and benefits, and by competition between workers for jobs." Lapon did not state that the price of labor-power = the cost of its production. And, in fact, neither did Marx. What both of them are saying is merely that the wage must include the cost of the production of labor-power; it cannot be lower than that because workers would be unable to reproduce themselves daily, much less reproduce more humans by having a family. So in that way, the wage (the price of labor-power) is determined by the cost of production of labor-power. This is also true for other commodities: their prices are determined by the cost of their production; a commodity with a price lower than the cost of its production will not be sold for long in a capitalist system because the firm producing it will go under.

What Marx observed and Lapon pointed to is that the course of the class struggle between workers and capitalists is a major shaper of the cost of the production of labor-power. Quite simply, what standard of living do the workers demand? That standard of living will be a determinant of the wage.

The disconnect is not between the price of labor-power and what Marx defined the price of labor-power to be... because, in fact, Marx defined the price of labor-power to be the wage. So that's not the disconnect.

The disconnect is this: wages do not equal the value produced by workers during the labor process, and are far below the value produced during the labor process. This is exploitation, and the source of profits.

Again, a fundamental misunderstanding of business. Labor is just one component of the value created when a product is sold. There is the raw material, there is the marketing, there is the physical infrastructure for the manufacturing and distribution of said product etc. The way you are talking it is as though the worker physically produces all the raw materials out of thin air- not just for the products they make, but for the tools, facilities, roads and other infrastructure they use to make the product every single time they make it. That's just not the case. There is a LOT that is needed to make products that has nothing to do with "labor-power", which is all factored into the cost, and would still be factored into the cost even if the workers owned the means of production

To recap: 1) labor is a commodity under capitalism; 2) the price of labor-power = the wage (two determinants are the class struggle between workers and capitalists and competition between workers); 3) wages < the value produced by workers during the labor process.

I agree with 1 and 2 but we are never going to agree on 3.

The discussion in Lapon's article on "necessary labor" and the length of work time has to do with this: for part of the workday, workers labor to produce enough value to sustain themselves. But they do not get to leave work at that point - they remain working past that point, and the value produced during that time is captured by the capitalist ("surplus value").

The value they create is their wage

You're faulting me for having to buy goods and services in a system premised upon the exploitation of labor, that was established long before I was even born?

But your question gets at how the commodity obfuscates relations of production and power relations between people (capital is a social relation, i.e., it is a relation between people, mediated through things). Nonetheless, things like "fair trade" mostly serve to make the hearts of liberals feel warm and fuzzy. Does nothing to touch the root problem of exploitation though.



So an abolitionist in the 1840s would have their position be invalidated if they used any goods or services, or anything touched in any way, by the institution of slavery? Slavery was a ubiquitous element of American capitalism at the time.

Capital is omnipresent now and shapes all of our lives (more negatively for the working-class and much, much more positively for the ruling class). The issue is not with me or any other individual determining at a micro level what is "fair." That is liberal moralizing hogwash. None of us exist outside of the capitalist system. But only workers are compelled, by their material self-interest under capitalist property relations, to abolish it and move to a system that produces for human need instead of profit.

Fair point on me faulting you. But workers aren't "compelled" to do anything. These fatalist commands invalidate your position. Why not tell people why they should subscribe to your ideology rather than try and shame and bully them into feeling like they HAVE to?

Which is driven by the desire of the bourgeoisie to cut labor costs. Take automation to its logical conclusion. What does it look like? It exacerbates the contradictions of capitalist property relations.

It is a question of, will technology be used to serve society, or will it be used in an anti-social, destructive manner?

Automation only affects an already dying sector of the labor market. Most of the developed world does not work in factories, and yet remains mostly employed. As with huge technological jumps in the past, generally speaking new tech enables people to be more productive and find new things to do, with a small sector of the population having their labor temporarily displaced. But in time those folks find new things to do as well. Again this fatalist narrative of a "logical conclusion" is just more attempts to bully and pigeonhole the trajectory of the developed global economy. Not jumping for it.

The full example was as follows:

"To take a simple example, let's assume that a worker is able to produce in four hours new value that is equivalent to the value of their labor-power for the day--to, say, $100 in wages. Marx called this "necessary labor," because it is the amount of labor required to replace the wages paid by the capitalist, and because if the worker labored independently and not for a capitalist, it would be "necessary" for them to work four hours to maintain their standard of living.

If it was a matter of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work," workers ought to be able to go home after four hours of labor. In our example, the capitalist is paying them $100 for the workday, and the worker produced $100 worth of new value in the form of products that belong to the capitalist, which they can sell on the market to recoup what they spent on wages and other costs of production."
​

In other words: a worker is paid $100 in wages (wages = price of labor-power). The worker produces new value equivalent to $100 (the price of their labor-power) in just 4 hours of working -- but they are made to continue working after that point. The value produced beyond those 4 hours is appropriated by the capitalist. It's not a "fundamental lack of understanding of business," but it encapsulates our fundamental point (!) -- capitalist production ("business") is premised on exploitation.

I am just going to copy and paste the point I already made about this:

Again, a fundamental misunderstanding of business. Labor is just one component of the value created when a product is sold. There is the raw material, there is the marketing, there is the physical infrastructure for the manufacturing and distribution of said product etc. The way you are talking it is as though the worker physically produces all the raw materials out of thin air- not just for the products they make, but for the tools, facilities, roads and other infrastructure they use to make the product every single time they make it. That's just not the case. There is a LOT that is needed to make products that has nothing to do with "labor-power", which is all factored into the cost, and would still be factored into the cost even if the workers owned the means of production

Since the worker could not produce (and sell!) that $100 of value without all the equipment and infrastructure they had no part or stake in buying, it's disingenuous and flat out wrong to suggest that the worker and the worker alone created that value. The whole underlying premise of this "example" is wrong and as I said illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what it takes to create and sell a good.

Who built the building?
Who made those lights?
Who made those tools?
Who provides the HR services?

All of these are also created and provided by workers. You can focus on exploitation at the firm-level, as you did above, but then you need to multiply that by every capitalist enterprise... that's the foundation of capitalist economy. You yourself are saying it's necessary in this system. I agree!

This speaks to why the working class must move humanity beyond production for profit, and toward production for human need. 95+% of humanity will continue to suffer if not.

Further, why does what you laid out above require a capitalist to appropriate the surplus produced by the workers? Why couldn't the surplus be controlled by those producing it?

Continue to suffer? Capitalism has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty breh, what are you talking about?

Not to mention almost all socialist/communist countries are impoverished hell holes ripe with corruption and human rights abuses. The avg person in a capitalist country is better off than the avg person in a communist country. THAT is the "logical conclusion" of such systems, because the inevitable massive consolidation of power (the state is the govt and the owner of the means of production) can only lend itself to such abuses. The state is the only entity that can confiscate property en masse as needed for a transition to communism and u have to be stupid AF to think they will ever give that all back to the people. We have seen that play out literally time and time again.

Plus, who bought the materials and property for that building, those lights, those tools? Who paid for the building and the computers for that HR dept to work in? These things aren't free, and the workers who build them are not paying for these things. Maybe workers should have to work until they have created value equivalent to their share in the company before they can earn wages? Or have a piece of their wage be an ownership stake in the company. This is a model that has already been employed in some situations.

So to conclude:

- Labor-power is labor.
- Labor is only a component of the value created when a product is made.
- Humans will continue to find things to do as automation marches on, just as they have for the past 150 years.
- Socialists do their ideology irreparable harm by trying to force all 21st century problems, concepts and worker/owner dynamics through the irrelevant orifice of Marxist theory.
- Socialism sounds great in theory, but human nature and the problems with consolidation of power will keep the full transition from ever completing.

All that said I agree that workers need more power to negotiate for fair wages and the like, but a Marxist revolution is not the only (or best) way to do it. Just taking big money out of govt and enabling workers to have the same representation as owners in govt would go a long way towards worker empowerment and enrichment.

 

[CHL]

Socialism in the Marxian framework of analysis, refers to how production is organized. It means that the workers whose labor generates a surplus (an excess above what the workers themselves get back out of their output for their own consumption) are also identically the collective of persons who receive and distribute that surplus. Socialism is the negation of exploitation where exploitation is defined as an organization of production in which the people
who receive and distribute the surplus are different from those who produce it. Examples of exploitative organizations of production include slavery (masters exploit slaves), feudalism (lords exploit serfs) and capitalism (employers exploit employees). If production were transformed from a capitalist to a socialist form - and exploitation were thereby eliminated from society the way slavery and serfdom were earlier - that would leave open the question of how society would distribute resources among productive enterprises and likewise how society would distribute the outputs of those enterprises. This could be done by markets, state planning, planning by other social institutions, and so on in an endless array of combinations. Markets have co-existed with every other kind of organization of production (e.g. slavery, feudalism, etc.) and the same is true of planning, and have always partly reinforced and partly undermined the organizations of production with which they coexisted. I would expect the same if markets coexisted with socialist organizations of production.

A capitalist industrial corporation (Marx differentiates that from a merchant or financial corporation) is one which gets from its productive employees a value of output that is larger than the total value paid by the corporation for physical inputs (tools, equipment, raw materials) plus the value paid to the workers as wages (payment for what Marx calls their labor power). The difference is the surplus value appropriated by the corporation's board of directors. In the mainstream definition taught in schools (and by me as a professor) there is no such thing as a surplus and hence what I just described is NOT an aspect of the corporation, let alone its central aspect as for Marx. For more information take a look at an extended discussion in S. Resnick and R. Wolff, Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (Univ of Cgicago Press, 1987, chapter 3).

It would certainly be a major social change/transition to move from the traditional, top-down, hierarchical capitalist organization of corporate enterprise to the very different model of workers functioning democratically as their own enterprises' boards of directors. As with all social changes of such magnitude, there would need to be all sorts of adjustments along the way. The same was true of the social transition from monarchy to parliamentary democracy in Europe, from slavery to free labor in the US south, and so on. In this case, there would need to be education and training for workers so they could properly carry out their new duties as directors alongside their traditional duties as hired workers. Nowadays, a tiny minority of citizens are trained in colleges and business schools to become directors of capitalist enterprises. In the new system, a majority would have to be similarly trained. Just as once only a tiny minority of people attended any school - when kings ruled everything - so now we require public education of everyone in what we like to call a democratic political system. Well, the proposed transition to a democratic economic system inside each enterprise can and will require comparable education and preparation for all. Mass public education and preparation were worth it to support political democracy. I have no doubt that the parallel education and preparation will be worth it to support economic democracy.

 

[Gains]

why is an Imperialist , corporate shill like Napoleon in this thread ?

and why is he still allowed to pretend he's an afro militant ?

 

[VegasCAC]

Brehs, I'm gonna need some insight into how the working class can win its freedom when such a large majority of the class is mystified by bourgeois ideas on the economy, racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. The more information becomes available, the dumber people get How could barely literate Russians in the early 1900s come to realize that they were getting royally fukked and tried to fight to establish a different society, yet we have the world's information at our fingertips and a multitude of ways to see all the ways we're getting screwed, but still perpetuate the system?

Ever read Gramsci? Cultural hegemony of the elites is so ingrained, breh

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

So yall dont notice the flaws in socialist theory...Like how does one redistribute wealth without using violence?And if some of the workers are empowered to use said violence to redistribute then have you not created a separate but higher class of enforcers and to keep the economy going you will need planners yet another class...and so on untill you have a heirachy all over again.

Then theres the bad economics like the price problem the collective ownership of the means of production. It calls for the abolition of private ownership of factors of production.... and socialism says the profit slice should be zero how would anyone know what to invest in.
Price is more than just perceived value of a good or service..its also a strong signal to the whole economy about supply,demand ,available substitutes .Ill give yall a little example

My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed that the inefficient Soviet economy did not produce enough shoes, and for that reason, even in the capital, people were forced to line up for hours to buy them. . . . Then I looked up the statistics.

I was wrong. The Soviet Union was the largest producer of shoes in the world. It was turning out 800 million pairs of shoes a year--twice as many as Italy, three times as many as the United States, four times as many as China. Production amounted to more than three pairs of shoes per year for every Soviet man, woman, and child.

The problem with shoes, it turned out, was not an absolute shortage. It was a far more subtle malfunction. The comfort, the fit, the design, and the size mix of Soviet shoes were so out of sync with what people needed and wanted that they were willing to stand in line for hours to buy the occasional pair, usually imported, that they liked.

The soviet state had set Quotas for the shoe manufacturers based on what some central planners thought..but nobody can calculate the foot sizes and whims of 300 million people.
The planners obviously miscalculated so say they assume average foot size for men is 10 but it turns out to be 12

Now in a capitalist society the price for size 12 would go up and any manufacturer who retools and makes the right size would be rewarded with Higher sales,bigger orders,higher prices but in a socialist economy the manufacturer had to keep on producing size 10s that nobody would wear.
Price also signals many other things like what is worth producing and whats obsolete for example when the DVD player first appeared there were high end VCRs that cost $600 dollars two years later they were in the clearance section for $30...VHS tapes used to cost so much it was cheaper to rent them...a bit later Blockbuster was shutting its doors.
Blockbuster went belly up because they didnt respond properly to the price signal...their management didnt want to rearrange the business and disrupt it .

Come to think of it Blockbuster would still be around in a socialist society really grainy porn on sticky tapes

 

[CHL]

@Aelyas en passant you haven't read a single thing in this thread, have you?

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

@Aelyas en passant you haven't read a single thing in this thread, have you?

I tried but im too wasted to go through 8 pages of vicious knob slobbing of Marx....cliff notes

 

[Pitfalls0117]

.Like how does one redistribute wealth without using violence?

As if capitalists came to control the means of production and hoard capital peacefully

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

As if capitalists came to control the means of production and hoard capital peacefully

Youre probably using a computer or android device to post this hyperbole ...Did Microsoft,Google or Apple ever put a gun to your head and say buy this or else??

Nope..they manufactured something you and 4 billion other people found useful ..you bought it and helped make them the richest companies in the world.