On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 1:26 PM, c b <[email protected]> wrote: > > CB: I have heard it said that socialism should retain cost accounting. > > What is ur strategy for overthrowing the current accounting system and > instituting the new one ? >
By all means retain cost accounting. My strategy isn't for "overthrowing the current accounting system" unless that means overthrowing -- or counter-balancing -- its exclusive hegemony. I'll give a very condensed "300-word" summary here. There is a fuller outline in my manuscript. If you find the summary intriguing but "incomplete" please refer first to the more detailed discussion at http://www.scribd.com/doc/41965697/Jobs-Liberty-and-the-Bottom-Line My strategy introduces a framework for the social accounting of individually freely disposable time. By social accounting, I am referring to an accounting framework that aggregates the accounts of two or more accounting units. The key difference with enterprise accounting is that when you aggregate accounts you have to take special care not to double count transactions between constituent parts. Disposable time is time that is at the disposal of the individual AFTER having earned a living and contributed to maintaining the social means of production, in Marx's terms "socially necessary labor time". From the perspective of capital, disposable time is potential surplus value and thus capital's goal is to minimize disposable time and maximize surplus value. Labor's goal, in the new accounting framework, is to maximize disposable time. To move from this generalized goal to specific bargaining objectives requires the adoption of accounting conventions that are alterable as circumstances require or permit. First, is the assumption made explicit by John Maurice Clark that unemployment constitutes a social loss rather than a cost savings. Second, is the observation of a non-linear relationship, theorized by Sydney Chapman, between working time and output, such that extension of individual hours of work beyond an output optimum will result in the immediate-term loss of total output and extension of hours beyond an individual-welfare optimum will result in a lifetime loss of potential wealth to the individual. These optima can be estimated from historical trend data and individualized according to personal characteristics and aspirations. What this disposable time social accounting framework does is make explicit the hitherto unacknowledged "debit" side of the standard cost accounting objective of maximizing return on investment. Thus it enables the negotiation of an equilibrium between a beneficial social surplus and individual free time, presumably eliminating the "necessity" ("question of life or death") for the expenditure of superfluous labor time. -- Sandwichman
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