Julio, thanks for your response. I suspect that we are not all that far apart.
On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 4:40 PM, Julio Huato <[email protected]> wrote: > Michael Perelman wrote: > > In my book, abstract labor is a category confined to commodity > producing societies. But I think I know what you mean. Yes, it is obviously relevant only for commodity producing societies. > > Now, Marx's point is that such "reduction" is implied in market > prices, as well as in any other social outcomes. It takes place one > way or another. To refer to the extreme cases, we either conduct the > "reduction" through a market process, blindly, behind our backs, or we > try and conduct it consciously to make it fit our designs. Julio, you correctly said that abstract labor is relevant only in commodity producing societies. Social relations in socialism will be different -- at least in any socialism that I would endorse. Of course, allocation of labor will be part of socialism, but the social relations of allocation would be quite different. For example, a sport like basketball can be played as a pickup game in which people figure out what each person's role will be or there can be a coach -- as in professional games. Presumably something more systematic than a pick up game and less hierarchical than a coached game. Capitalist > firms do it the latter way, and they hit and miss, as do markets. > Imagine how Sam Walton and Steve Jobs would have reacted to your > telling them that they shouldn't have tried to allocate their > resources among their various internal uses purposefully. "Why try > when you cannot get it all right" may work for you and Carrol, but > there are a people out there who believe the economy should be at > their service. Socialist societies will attempt to do what firms do > at a larger scale. I hope that socialism would not attempt to replicate corporations. >> Even in professional sports, where the owners spend huge amounts of >> money in attempting to evaluate every aspect of the athlete, they do of >> very poor job. > > The fact that they keep trying at such large expense should tell you > that the job done by the hands-off method appears even poorer to them. > If they did consistently a lousy job, they would be crushed by the > competition (and the class struggle)? > >> To think that socialist planners should be expected to develop such a >> scheme in the midst of a capitalist economy seems far-fetched. Marx's >> categories do an excellent job of showing how capitalist economies >> (mis)function. He did very little in attempting to quantify such matters -- >> with good reason. > > That wasn't Marx job. But that will be the job of a socialist society. > > (At some point, Marx's job was to rationally allocate the meager > resources of the IWA, to help migrant worker families and political > exiles, and apparently he did a much better job there than he did in > handling his own personal finances, since Mary Gabriel couldn't find > much fault in it. Also, Engels is famous for having kept the books > of Ermen & Engels in spiffy shape.) > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
