Hi Paul,
Paul Cockshott wrote:
>
> Let us first consider as an example a district health authority that runs
>several hospitals under the National Health System, after a changeover to a
l>abour accounting economy.
>
> Do you dispute that such a health authority needs some definite
>allocation of social resources that it can use for the health of the
>population?
>
> How other than in labour time or money are you
> going to measure the allocation of resources that it will be given?
It could be allocated resources: so many personnel, so much supplies of
various types, so many buildings, etc.
It seems that, while you talk about planning in kind (in natura), you have a
hard time conceiving of it. Your question implies that you can't even imagine
it.
You conceive of measurement in either abstract labour time or money. It's
natural that you group these two things together (abstract labour time and
money), because measurement in labour time is basically the same as
measurement via money. When you refer to a budget measured in labour time,
this doesn't refer simply to so many hours of labor by so many people. It
means that material objects too are being measured by labor-time equivalents.
It refers to what Marx calls "abstract labor". It is not a natural
measurement of a product; it is what Marx calls "the fetishism of
commodities" to regard it as such.
> How, other than as quantities of their working year do you propose that
> decisions about overall health provision be made by the citizens?
Measuring via "quantities of their working year" means, in essence, using
money. In the example you give, everything in the health authority, whether
actual work time or supplies, is measured by this financial standard. To make
decisions on this basic implies that these decisions are made according to
some notion of profit, or at least of cost-benefit financial analysis. This
means the reign of the law of value will continue unchecked.
Meanwhile, as far as real material planning goes, it would not give an answer
to such decisions. It simply shows what plans could be carried out with the
current resources.
> You can not ask everyone to vote on how many x-ray machines, how many
>intravenous drips, how many staff nurses, how many paediatricians, how many
>dental assistants etc, are to be provided for the West of Scotland.
Well, actually, at present people do make decisions on different medical
plans, or to vote for politicians who make promises about them. But what you
are saying is that it's absurd for people to vote on every detail of a plan,
rather than general plans themselves. True enough, but it doesn't matter
whether these details are expressed in money, labor-hours, or in material
terms. That is irelevant to the question of how much detail should people
vote on.
> The level of detail in kind is far greater than can possibly be submitted
to democratic decision making. There is thus a need for the people to be able
to decide in a comprehensible way on aggregate levels of resource use, labour
>time taxes are a feasible way to do this.
It's quite possible to vote on different overall plans without reducing them
to simply a financial number.
Moreover, workers' control over economic life should not be restricted to
simply having the entire population vote on the details. Workers at different
levels, such as the workplace, would consider various details which it
wouldn't make sense for the entire population or even the planning agencies
to determine. The working population would use, not just general votes, but
all sorts of organizations -- unions, professional associations, factory
committees, integrating management with the rest of the workforce, etc.
Meanwhile, I don't understand why "labour time taxes are a feasible way to do
this". They might be a way to finance a plan that was decided upon (in a
system that still runs, essentially, on money). But I don't see how they
substitute for the decision on the the plan.
Moreover, whether taxes are "feasible" or not, they make a mockery of the
claim that the society is giving back to the workers, for their private
consumption, all that they created. The workers gets the equivalent for their
labor, and are then relieved of a good part of it. Your implicit answer to
this objection is that the workers will regard the money that goes towards
their taxes as part of their personal compensation because they vote on the
amount. OK, let's assume they do, but if that is so, why bother go through
the facade of allegedly paying a full equivalent of their labor, and then
taxing it?
But perhaps the main point here is that you seem to think that popular
control of the health system is mainly reflected in people deciding on the
overall budget, rather than dealing with what the medical plans aims to do,
integrating health care with workplaces, and so on. If you really think that
the control of the overall budget is the only thing that the population
decides, then this is a very narrow idea of workers' controlling the economy.
> It then allows the Health Authority to decide how to use, let us say
>80,000 person years of effort - how much of this will go in nursing staff,
>how much in doctors, how much in speech therapists, etc, and how much will
>go in indirect labour performed elsewhere in the economy: drugs, medical
>equipment, medical consumables, new buildings etc.
Oh geez. That is exactly what you mean. The population decides only the size
of the financial budget. So the workers really didn't get to decide anything
about what the goals for the medical authority are; whether there has to be a
major change in how the authority operates; and so forth.
Furthermore, it is the unrealistic to think that the Health Authority could
really decide for itself how to allocate its "80,000 person years of effort"
between personnel and material goods as it wishes, except by way of exception
or if the plan didn't differ that much from year to year. That's because, at
any one time, in the economy as a whole, there are only so much personnel,
and so much material goods. Except within narrow limits, the personnel and
the material goods can't usually be substituted for each other. If, say, the
division of the total expected expenditure calls for use of more personnel
than actually can be hired, then it doesn't matter that it might call for the
use of less material goods: the plan is unrealistic.The total amount of
personnel, and the total amount of material goods, have to each balance
separately.
> Since we are talking about a future planned economy, we can assume
>that the long term employment plans for medical staff will be more tightly
>coordinated with the education sector offering places in nurse and doctor
>training degree courses to meet these needs than they are at present. If the
>health board wanted to advertise additional posts for, say, dentists, the
>total number of dental posts being advertised would have to be approved by
>the labour power planning section of the planning authority subject to the
>constraint that the a) total labour usage proposed was within the
>constraints set for the health board and b) the number of dentists requested
>was within the constraints set by the total number of newly trained
>dentists, less those retiring.
Yes, as I said above, it turns out that the Health Authority can't really
make these allocations as it wishes. It doesn't matter that the Health
Authority stays within budget: the plan might be unrealistic. It has to be
vetted by
--the labor power planning section
--the dentist planning section
--the doctor planning section
--the building planning section
--the durable medical equipment planning section
etc.
So apparently the financial budget, whether expressed in dollars or abstract
labor hours, is an artificial construction.
> The scenario you suggest of entire health board going bankrupt could not
>occur in a state run system. What could occur, and what does occur in the
>NHS at present, is that it may be decided to close certain hospitals and
>concentrate treatment in a smaller number of more specialist centres where
>better use of resources could be made.
That's called bankruptcy. You repudiate the name "bankruptcy" but keep the
concept. And it happens all the time here in neo-liberal free-market America
that a firm goes bankrupt, and it gets reorganized on a slimmer, meaner
basis.
Of course, workplaces will be reorganized in a future system too, as needs
and production techniques change. What makes it "bankruptcy" in the system
you describe, Paul, is that it is determined by a budget.
>> > The projects we propose are not able to hold credits,
>> > and have no account into which
>> > credits are transfered when goods are produced.
>
>> Really? Let's see.
> >
> >According to "Towards a New Socialism", the accounting agency checks
> >whether these projects are "cost-effective" ( p. 182) Doesn't it do this
> >by comparing the labor values of the goods and services produced with the
> >amount of labor values expended during production?
> >
> >It uses "a rational system of economic calculation" in which the national
> >budget is balanced in terms of labor values. (p.182) That means that it
> >may decide to subsidize an important project which is losing labor values
> >(using up more labor values than it produces). But overall, the basic
> >criterion is that the total expended labor values should equal the total
> >produced labor values.
> -----------------------
> Paul C:
> Not precisely. Let us take the example I gave above, of a health board. It
>may calculate, for instance, what the labour required per baby delivered in
>the different maternity hospitals, and compare this with the labour that
>would be required were two hospitals to be merged, and on that basis decide
>to merge two hospitals. But I would not use the term 'labour value
>expended', it is not labour value that is being expended, what one is
>measuring is labour performed or expended. One can not meaningfully speak of
>labour value expended versus labour value produced. One can talk of the
>difference between the labour cost of performing a task one way as against
>the labour cost of producing it another way.
>
> Labour value is not produced. It is better to say that products are
>produced and these have a labour cost.
>
If the hospitals made the choice simply on the basis of labor cost, they
would probably be bad hospitals, in the same way as an economy run on the
basis of labor cost would, as you and I agree, be bad environmentally. The
immediate "labor cost" of a medical procedure leaves out a number of crucial
health and social issues.
Also, it's a quibble whether one should talk about "labor value expended" or
"labor expended". The cost accounting in your system, that measures the
"labor cost", does so in terms of value. Moreover, it couldn't simply measure
the "labor cost" of a medical procedure in immediate labor expended, because
it would also have to take account of the "labor cost" of the used-up
materials. It would do so, in your system, by referring to the "labor value"
of these materials.
It seems to me that you have a tendency, when you talk of "labor costs", to
forget that this refers to abstract labor. You seem to keep thinking of it in
terms of concrete labor. This makes it appear that measuring things in labor-
hours is more concrete than measuring things in dollars. But that's just an
appearance. As soon as one remembers that one is dealing with the labor value
of goods as well as the hours of immediate labor (to say nothing of
considering the difference between different kinds of labor), it turns out
that the "labor cost" is an abstract measure; it is not a measurement in
kind.
> One can measure whether too much labour is being devoted to the production
>of one type of privately consumed good versus another if these are being
>sold in state shops to consumers in return to labour credits.
> If people are not willing to give up sufficient credits to purchase all
>the goods on sale, the plan is probably wrong and the scale of production of
>that product should be scaled back.
If things aren't needed, then clearly too many were produced. But there are
many other ways in which the labor cost of a product might be excessive. For
example, it might be produced by an inefficient procedure, and yet every item
produced might be sold. It might be a bad product, and people would buy
something else if only they had the chance, and yet every item is sold.
You are attempting to get a market definition of how much labor should be
devoted to something. This results in the same problems as are faced by
market economies.
> ----------------
> [Joseph]
>
>> What all this works out to is -- the enterprise actually is credited with
> >the labor values of its outputs. It is this which is compared to all the
> >deductions that are made from its budget for the various inputs used in
> >producing the product. This compares the socially-necessary labor content
> >with the actual labor used in the particular enterprise.
>
>> So, in a somewhat indirect way, the projects really are credited with the
> >labor values for what they produce.
>
> >Now, suppose the project uses up its budget and goes into debt. You write
>t>that "Since the project is in no sense an economic subject (i.e. a subject
> >of proeprty right), the issue of bankruptcy cannot arise." But you then go
> >on to describe that the project may be closed down, unless of course the
> >planning agency decides in effect to subsidize it. You don't use the word
> >"bankruptcy", but you describe bankruptcy. You don't use the word
> >"subsidize", but you describe subsidizing the project.
> ---------------------
> Paul
>
> Closing something down is not the same thing as bankruptcy. If the army
>decides that a particular fort is surplus to requirements and closes it
>down, or the navy decommissions a ship, this is not bankruptcy, the soldiers
Yes, not every closure is for financial reasons. Something can be closed down
either for financial reasons, or for other reasons. But when a system of
planning closes something down for failure to meet its budget, then it is a
financial closure.
As for the military, many decisions are made for financial reasons. The
closure of a fort, the cancelling of a weapons program, even the withdrawal
from a military campaign, may well occur for financial reasons.
True, normally the military does not go through an ordinary bankruptcy.
Instead, the military is usually subsidized by the bourgeois state. Thus what
happens is that the military going bankrupt manifests itself as the state
itself going bankrupt.
My argument that enterprises ('projects") could go bankrupt in the system
outlined in "Towards a New Socialism" wasn't based solely on the fact that
various enterprises might be closed or reorganized. It was based on the fact
that that the financial balance would generally determine this.
>and sailors are just redeployed to other duties and the ship is melted
>down, the houses on the base converted to civilian housing. In a socialist
> economy where everyone is employed by the state, the closure of a
> particular plant >would be analogous. If one were to use Bellamy's term,
>those in that section of the 'Labour army' are redeployed to other duties.
In any system whatsoever, including the capitalist one, when a workplace
closes, people go to other workplaces. If you want to make a real comparison
with Bellamy's system, you have to consider more details.
Now, it gives a misleading impression of Bellamy's system to imply that the
workers are moved around like soldiers. In the Bellamly plan, except for the
first three years of basic labor, a worker chooses where to work. Bellamy
believed that incentives could ensure that the supply of people volunteering
(that's his word) to work at any trade would match the need; these
incentives, however, did not include changing the allotment of consumer
goods. Moreover, these incentives are devised by the workers in various field
themselves, and not by the central planners.
> -----------------
> Joseph
>
> >Moreover, "Towards a New Socialism" continually reverts to the usual
> >financial measurements and financial methods. When one uses aggregate
> >financial terms in input-output tables, these are not measurements in
> >kind. Even the late Professor Leontief noted that. These terms are the
> >usual financial way of aggregating together two things that differ in
> >kind, such as wheat and steel, by adding together their financial value.
> >If one adds together their labor values, it's also basically a financial
> >measure.
>
> >The abstract labor hour, which is what the labor values of products is
> >measured in, is not a measure in kind. It combines together qualitatively
> >different things, just as money does, rather than keeping track of them in
> >kind. And the labor theory of value shows that measurement in abstract
> >labor hours and pricing things in dollars are, at bottom, the same. And if
>> anything, you have been arguing that the labor value and ordinary
> >financial prices are even closer than what others say.
>
> ----------------
> Paul C
> I disagree, money performs several functions, it, like labour hours, can
>serve as a measure of value, but when it does so we are using the unit of
>money the £ or Euro as the measure, not an actual sum of money. A sum of
>money is a data structure, largely held in the computers or legers of the
>banks which is a stock of claims to future labour services. It is also a
>means of payment of debt. It is also a general means of purchase. Labour in
>a socialist economy serves the function of measurement, but it is not
>money.
In other words, you concede that the actual numerical measure being used, the
number of labor hours in an accountry entry, would be the same as the money
measure. But you claim that even though the labor hour measurement would
numerically equal the money measure, it really wouldn't be money. It would
look, taste, smell like money (most money is an accounting entry);
accountants would tally it up like money; but it allegedly would be something
else.
> We can illustrate this by looking at the way money functions for private
> agents and for the Crown in today's society.
>
> Consider an account in a bank for say £1,000,000
> this represents a claim on about 50,000 hours of labour.
> It gives rise to the illusion that money can be a store of value, this
>illusion arises specifically from the competition between private agents,
>since money, for the individual bank depositor, does appear to be a claim
> value that endures over time.
>
> The Crown on the other hand, as symbolic personification of society, does
>not suffer from this illusion. When it creates budgets for its departments,
>subdepartements, and other public institutions, these budgets are not
> stocks of money, they are flows : so many £Million per annum. If the
>department has not spent its budget by the end of the year the remainder in
> the account vanishes. Thus for Crown agencies with a budget, money already
> serves as a means of purchase and unit of account but not as a store of
> value.
Really? There is no national debt in the UK? There are no government funds
that continue to exist from year to year? The point of such funds is that
they are a store of value.
Moreover, if the Crown can takeover unspent parts of the budget, then these
money accounts do in fact represent a store of value. If they didn't, the
Crown wouldn't bother taking them over.
[Paul continuing:]
>
> Money originates in the aboriginal claim that the Crown has over the life
>and labour of its subjects. In the past it levied these claims in kind as
>labour services or military service. This right to levy such services
>persists and is invoked in time of war, but more generally the Crown
>commutes labour services into monetary taxes - separating in that way the
>direct performance of labour services by one group of subjects ( public
>servants and soldiers ) and imposing on other subjects the duty of
>supporting those who perform direct labour services. A wheat farmer has to
>pay monetary taxes, in the Crown's currency, which can in the end only be
>obtained by selling food to those who directly serve the Crown.
>
> Money is created by the Crown as a certificate issued to those who perform
> public services, and these certificates can then be used to redeem tax
>debts. In the process this indirect method of taxation gave rise to a
>commodity producing economy and a capitalist division of labour. For the
>Crown, money has always been a form of indirect labour certificate,
>something that it issues to simplify its claims over social labour. But the
Preobrazhensky, in "The New Economics", made a similar claim about the state
sector in Russia during NEP. He claimed that the fact that the state
enterprises used all the capitalist categories -- money, profit, rent,
interest, and so on -- was simply a surface appearance. He was wrong about
NEP Russia, and such a claim is even more wrong about the openly-capitalist
state.
>fact that these certificates can circulate between private agents allowed
>the private delegation of the sovereign power acting as portable and
>transferable patents of nobility to the new class of capitalists. For these
>private agents, the illusion is created that money is a store of value. But
So you end up with the theory that money itself is an illusion, even in
capitalist society.
>value is ultimately labour, the value of money is ultimately the Crown's
>claim over social labour. The illusion that value can be stored is one that
>only makes sense to a private agent. Behind the illusory storage of value,
>is the reality that the Crown will accept a £ issued in 2008 for a tax debt
>in 2011.
It's not just the Crown that will accept money in exchange for something
else. So will merchants and capitalists of all kind. Indeed, they will accept
certain "accounting entries" as payment.
>
> If a socialist society comes to be established the mystified and
>alienated representation of labour duties as money can be discarded, and
>accounting go back to an accounting directly in time. At this point the
"Go back" to accounting directly in time? When was this done before? What
societies did their economic planning by directly measuring buildings, food,
weapons, means of transportation, and the actual duration of labor of
different kinds, in the same time unit -- an hour's (or some other time unit)
of labor of average intensity?
Your argument assumes, over and over, that the labor content of a product is
a natural measure, easily evident to people. In fact, it is a difficult and
abstract measure. Indeed, according to Marx, it is an "unnatural property" of
an object.
The implication of your assertion that a socialist society would "go back to
an accounting directly in time" is that there was an earlier time in which
this was done. In fact, it is precisely capitalist society which has taken
accounting in terms of value (which is approximately the labor content) to
its most extreme form. The dream of accounting directly in labor-time is
basically a repetition of the idea, widespread at various times in the
working class, that if only things were bought and sold at their value, then
exploitation would be eliminated.
Now, for many reasons capitalist society doesn't directly denominate money in
in labor-time. But in fact, it would be hard for any society to do its
overall economic accounting in labor-time except by way of exception. (For
one thing, it would mean that no accounting figures were definite, because
the labor content of a product changes continually. A society that tried to
account directly in labor hours would end up forced, by practical necessity,
to declare a "standard", conventional labor hour, that could be imagined to
maintain a constant economic significance over a period of time. This
"standard" labor-hour would thus deviate from the actual abstract labor-time
embodied in a product or used up in a service. Thus the "labor hour" used in
accounting would differ from the actual labor-time. So it would become simply
another name for money.)
>socialist state as the inheritor of the sovereign power no longer allows
The socialist state "inherits" the "sovereign power" to deploy labor as it
chooses? Incredible. In a truly socialist state, the workers have the power
to "deploy" labor, and make use of various institutions for that purpose. It
is not the "crown" that has soveriegn power, but the working class.
>private circulation of these certificates. It was this private circulation
>that allowed the rise of capitalist social relations, and with the
>elimination of such circulation, capitalist economic relations cease.
This circulation between different enterprises is maintained in the role of
the "accounting entries" used in the state sector in the plan worked out in
"Towards a New Socialism".
>
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Joseph Green
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