michael perelman wrote: > Are you saying that they were thinking that a swineherd equaled 2.3 > slaves working as field hands? I am just questioning that the people > were reduced to such mathematical equivalents.
Paul Cockshott wrote: >> He added up the different concrete labours to arrive at a total number of >> slaves, Varro is trying to get a general formula for the labour required for >> land, he criticises Cato for not taking into account the fact that there are >> economies of scale in the use of certain types of labour. What he wants is a >> formula for how many slaves a farmer has to buy. In order to do that, he has >> of course to identify the individual tasks, but slaves constitute labour in >> the abstract given the then existing relations of production. A slave, at >> the command of the dominus must perform any task to which he or she is >> allocated.<< let's see. The Ancient slave-owner dehumanizes labor by assigning weights to different kinds of labor (2.3 field hands = 1 swineherd, etc.), valuing different workers according to the relative benefit to the slave-owner (in terms of use-value produced for him or her?) The capitalist, on the other hand, dehumanizes labor by valuing labor according to the amount of revenues collected by selling the commodity each worker produces (i.e., his or her exchange-value). So if it is going to use "values" in planning, how would a socialist economy dehumanize labor? In other words, why should socialism emulate either Ancient Roman slavery or the capitalist mode of production? -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
