Exchange with Charles Brown
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Do logical inconsistencies matter? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CB:
... I'd say that at least at the basic level of production of commodities, the basic "input" level, there are definite amounts of time that people work in producing wealth. So, in this sense of labor time, the labor that "goes into" producing wealth is not abstract or fictitious. And we can observe it directly.
... Before capitalism, what was the basis for exchange of goods going back thousands of years ? When people produced things for exchange and not for their own use, roughly speaking, wouldn't people be likely to estimate how long it took them to make something and trade what they had for something else in amounts that roughly took the same time to make it ?...
JN [new]
I think you are correct to say that we can observe what people do (“definite amounts of time that people work in producing wealth”). I think you are wrong to conclude that such observations tell us how much of that “definite” activity becomes value in the commodities they produce.
In a mythical (or real) society, where each product is produced by a single individual, and where individual abilities are more or less the same, it make sense to compare the labor values of a bushel of wheat and the labor value of a ounce of milk.
But when we move to integrated societal reproduction, where workers have vastly different qualitative skills; where production is “joint” (many inputs jointly leading to many outputs); and when the very input/output map is unknown (and I would say, unknowable), the story is rather different. In this case, the issue is not whether labor values are simply unobservable, or whether they deviate from prices, but whether they are logically possible in the first place.
Now, if 98% of humanity were involved in individual production process and only 2% in integrated reproduction, we probably shouldn’t worry about this question. But what should we do if the proportions are reversed? At what point do you decide that logical inconsistencies are important enough to reconsider your theory?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The nature of capitalism ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB
In a sense, you are saying that Marx is wrong, and capitalism is no different than feudalism. The bourgeois ruling class rules as the feudal and slaveholding ruling classes did - by brute force only, with no fictions about exchange of labor time for wages. In other words, there is no wage-labor/capital relationship organizing the capitalist accumulation of wealth.
JN [new]
Capitalism is certainly similar to feudalism and slavery in that the capitalists use force, as well as other forms of power. But there are also some key differences. One is that human relations -- including creative/productive activities, among other -- are commodified. Chief among these commodified relations are power relations -- including the private ownership of machines and the hiring of wage labor, but also many more relations, from war, to patents, to government policies, to sex, to knowledge, to ideology. None of this characterization requires the labor theory of value to be valid.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Distribution and power ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB:
In a certain sense, who cares how the capitalists divide things up among themselves, based on what logic , no? ...
... what does the precise mathematical pattern of how the capitalists divide up among themselves their control of the wealth of society matter to us ? We just want to stop them from controlling the wealth of society, as a class. We don't care if they throw dice and play on monopoly boards.
JN [new]
If you first produce surplus value and then redistribute it among the capitalists, your objection may be valid. But our claim is that differential capitalization is not simply an act of distributing the “spoils.” Rather, it is the architecture of capitalist power; i.e. the way that dominant capital ORGANIZES the world. So we have to care about it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Cosmology ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB:
Anyway, how do changes in cosmology change the exigency of socialist revolution ?
JN[new]
I don’t know about the exigencies of socialist revolution. My reference was to the labor theory of value. Take the hologram (invented by physicist Denis Gabor in the 1940s). If we view society, metaphorically, as a hologram, productivity becomes collective. Marx had passages about societal productivity, but could not reconcile this concept with his quest for the basic “atom” of capitalist society (value). I think that Veblen was the first to (unknowingly) apply the hologram metaphor to social production (before Gabor’s future invention). He rejected the idea of individual “labor inputs” and “factors of production” more generally. Instead, he offered the amorphous notion of “industry,” or human knowledge at large. In this and many other ways, I think cosmology matters for how we understand society.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Whose productivity? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB:
I don't quite get this. If they {MS’s owners] didn't have the labor of
the employees, there wouldn't be any software to have intellectual
property rights over, would there ? The property rights are to maintain
control over the stuff they get from the employees.JN [new]:
You are suggesting that what Microsoft sells is what the employees of Microsoft “created.” This claim is problematic on two counts.
(1) Unless we have an operational labor theory of value to help us, we cannot know what portion of the software I’m using was “created” by employees of Microsoft and what portion was created by others – currently or in the past. Bill Gates basically grabbed DOS from the guy who developed it (for $10,000). He got the idea of Windows from Apple. He got the computer from von Neumann. He got computer languages for free. He got mathematics from the Greeks (and many more before and since), etc. etc. (my earlier point about hologramic productivity). Paradoxically, a good deal of the activity of his analysts and programmers is to make MS’s software “proprietary” – i.e. to prevent others from using it freely.
(2) What MS sells is not the product, but the right to use the product. And since the product itself seems to have been created by “industry at large”, MS owners, insofar as they are able to sell it, in that sense control the productivity/creativity not of their own workers, but of humanity as a whole.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Missing power? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB:
I guess I can say that in confining your understanding of Marxism to _Capital_ , you underestimate the Marxist understanding of power. The concept of class and class struggle is precisely a politicaleconomic concept, power and material, isn't it ? History , including capitalism, is a history of class struggles. Surely, you have heard that famous Marxist dictum from _The Manifesto of the Commuinist Party_ before. Political parties are very much concerned with power. Class struggles are power struggles. Wealth: the workers make it; the bourgeoisie take it. That's a power thing, clearly.
JN [new]:
I think there must be some misunderstanding here, Charles. We do not underestimate Marxist understandings of power. We simply argue that these understandings are not integral to the Marxist analytical concept of capital. In “New Imperialism or New Capitalism?” we write:
“Granted, power remains crucial for the broad understanding of capitalism, and processes related to class, ideology, monopolization, finance, state institutions and imperialism are still central to Marxist analyses. But unless these processes affect depreciation or technology, they are irrelevant for the value of capital itself.”
Jonathan Nitzan http://www.bnarchives.net
