You can see the effects of labor theory ideology in AI development. China is developing General AI to replace labor altogether, while the US is training neural nets to trade debt stocks and manage companies
هل من وسيلة ربما رقمية بتقنية البلوك تشين كالعملات الرقمية مثلا لكي توضع كمقياس لقيمة عمل الأفراد كوحدة واضحة كالمتر والغرام والفولت تقيس القيمة بدقة أو بتقريب أو بمؤشر وتوضع في رصيد أممي متفق عليه عوضا عن الأوراق المالية فتجربة ورقة 100 دولار باتت واضحة في فضحها لوهم قيمة الورقة المالية التي ضحكون علينا بها وهي لاشيء الكل قدم خدمات وسلع من عمل بها وعادت لصاحبها
Perhaps at that time,all the value or most of it was due to Labour. Let's take a phone for instance,it's not just Labour which adds the cost. There is development, technology,materials, etc... And the Labour don't take any risks,if the company don't make money, they don't share the liability, so why do they need to share equally the profit?
You have to understand that there is a difference between price and value. Value or exchange value is a commodity's relation to another, and is determined by the quantity of necesarry labour power put into the production of given commidty. Price is determined by the supply and demand. If there's more demand than commidies available, then the price will rise in an effort to meet the demands of those most willing to spend money. If there are more products than demand, then the prices will fall in an effort to get people to buy more, so less value is lost. A capitalist is not necesarry anymore bacause risks and innovations can happen without him, besides, the majority of important innovations happen in the public sector anyway. You can still have mannagers and other justified hiearchies at worker controlled work places. To say that democracy doesn't work on a work place is to say that a country only would function as a dictatorship.
@Krónika How are we supposed to have productive exchanges with such hyperbole? It's like talking to a cynical guy who thinks that dating is a form of exploiting and robbing men when they're expected to pay for dinner while assigning the most sinister motives to the women they date. Many capitalists are just people who want to improve their lives or have a bright idea when starting a business, and most don't even succeed at it since it's very high-risk. Many also work very hard and have enormous stress. As for inequalities, they seem to arise in every system we've ever tried. We see that in the dating market as well: the most successful with the greatest number of options are a small minority compared to those who have a very tough time and might have to settle. I'm doubtful about whether any system can rectify this problem, only cushion the blow.
@@solidarity9336 >> To say that democracy doesn't work on a work place is to say that a country only would function as a dictatorship. If there was a dictator guaranteed to be benevolent and competent, I'd be happy to have him/her govern the country. The difficulty is that a dictator is vastly more powerful than any capitalist. A dictator can destroy the entire nation: causing mass feminine and bloodshed, commit genocide, etc. There's too much at risk here. A capitalist simply goes out of business if he/she is incompetent. If the democratic process elects such great leaders, I'd expect an argument there that most or all politicians who are democratically-elected are far more competent at what they do than the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, James Cameron, Riddley Scott, Gordon Ramsay, etc. I'm guessing you guys had the fortune of electing a great class president and that you love the politicians running your country right now? My school elected a popular airhead instead and I find most politicians to be incredibly incompetent. One of the problems is that democratic processes tend to favor popularity over competence, and also tend to favor the worst-case compromise scenarios that are the worst of all worlds when there's a very diverse range of interests guiding those who vote.
> _development, technology, materials_ Those are all labour. They don't fall from the sky. > _And the labour don't take any risks_ Of course it does. When I move my family to a new city to accept a new job, I am risking a lot. I've no idea if it will be worth it, I've no idea if it will last or the management will run it into the ground, I've no idea if I'll get fired, I've no idea how badly it will affect my health, mental and physical, etc. If my employer makes bad decisions and I end up without a job, that's a loss on my end. I could have chosen a different job and a different employer. So by that reasoning, I should also be rewarded for taking the risk when I accepted the job.
The only thing the capitalist truly risks is becoming a worker just like the rest of their labour force. Value is produced through the labour process, otherwise it is just raw materials/commodities that will lay idle, it takes the work of the labourer (both mind and body so developing technology etc) to create the value. The value therefore comes directly out of the labour process, it requires a labourer to fashion the materials into something useful, therefore its use value is dependant on what the workers do. The very thing you describe is unpacked in Capital to a great extent, and this video talks about specifically the rate of surplus or exploitation depending on how you want to look at it. The labourer is producing all the value by creating something from otherwise 'dead' commodities, the capitalist has nothing to sell, no exchange value to exchange for money unless the worker does something. The worker doesnt reap the full benefit of this value they create however, they are paid a wage of $x which is basically enough for them to survive ie. to afford rent, food etc. So Marx lays out the rate of exploitation by saying that even though the worker creates all the value in a product, they are only paid enough to survive, and the rest of the value they are creating goes to the capitalist as surplus value. The worker creates more value than they benefit from, and that excess is profit for the capitalist. Therefor even though the capitalist might pay for the materials, they are nothing without the work of the labourer who actually creates the product which the capitalist can finally sell and then they take some money to pay for the goods they supplied + profit on top.
Value and surplus value come from work but 1. not directly and 2. not only from human labor - machines and parts of the nature also are used like human labor power. - Value is a social relationship. Such is formed and works between people, the value specifically between exchange partners. You can't produce something like that - it’s not a singularity. - What is produced is the prerequisite for value relationships and thus for values. - The classic interpretation of labor value theory with W = c + v + s is flawed. * If an entrepreneur has 1,000 pieces of type A product manufactured, but only 500 of them can sell with the expected surplus value and the other 500 pieces cannot at all, then only the work spent on the 500 pieces of type A product sold was value-creating. * According to Marx, a work product, i.e. a potential commodity, only becomes a real commodity, if it becomes use value for someone else (who buys it). Only then was the work involved socially useful, since the work product does not remain the property of the entrepreneur, and only then is the work qualified as value creating. * For the 500 unsold A-type products, the work was not socially useful because the work results remain the private property of the manufacturer. The corresponding work was therefore not value creating. * Purchase only takes place on the market. * This makes it clear that the value is not produced directly by the work. Before buying, potential buyers first assess the results of the work and thus the relevance of the work involved. - In a commodity society, only expected values can be calculated or estimated on the production side: W|expected = c|cost factor; replacement expected + v|cost factor; replacement expected + s|expected. - There is only surplus value (!) If the buyer completely replaces c and v and also pays more. This happens on the market, i.e. the value formula must also be adjusted for the market too: W|real = c|replacing + v|replacing + s|real. - Since the decision about value creation and value is only made on the market and there is no one incorporating value into goods, it becomes clear that value is not produced, as Marx it says, but will be assigned. - So it doesn't matter what types of labor powers were involved in the design of products (people, machines, certain parts of nature). - The value as a social relationship must contain an objective component that goes beyond the individual values of buyers and sellers. This objective component is the common value of buyer and seller. This is formed from the initially different individual values of the exchange partners - in the bazaar in dialogue, in the department store by unilaterally adapting the value of the buyer to that of the seller. The objective component of the value is made visible by the sales price. - However, as a social relationship, value must also include subjective elements, because it is linked to people's consciousness processes. The ideal elements are the subjective reflections of the objective value in the exchange partners. More details on how value creation really works can be found there: What is wrong with the LTV - How the value is really formed th-cam.com/video/3GHutT-8blc/w-d-xo.html. Short version: th-cam.com/video/TwJzBOGrE9Y/w-d-xo.html
I think you read Marx too.. rigid, or mechanical, if that's the word. In ch9, vol1 of Capital, Marx argues that although machines cannot create value, they can create surplus-value. Machines are past labour, so will transfer a tiny portion of its own value into every new product. But that's not creating new value. By intensifying the labourproces, machines create an extra surplus value, which is the whole point of purchasing machines. Also, you seem to leave out a crucial element of Marx' value theory. Marx makes a three-fold distinction. A commodity has a use-value, an exchange value and a value. On the market, indeed a buyer can look at the use-value of a commodity and then decide if he wants to pay the exchange value. But the exchange value is nothing but the comparising of two different commodities. One car for six TV-sets for example. But this is not necessarily the price of the commodity in the shop. Prices are based on the exch- and use-value of the commodity but on top of that are influenced by marketforces. A product that has become scarce will undoubtly make any capitalist increase the price, as there are many many people that wants this product all of a sudden. Ofc this has little to do with the actual value. Just think of an art auction for example. And that 'actual value' is the necessary labour-time required. This is what lay behind the immidiate visibility of the exch- and use-values. That in order to get the products on market, there must be a labour proces, that creates value bc workers have to be paid. Marx does indeed point to unsold commodities in Capital vol1. A commodity no one desires, simply loses its value. This is on the part of the capitalist and the merchant as part of their capital advanced, and therefor must take the loss. I don't see how this would contradict the LTV. If, however, you abandon the LTV, one almost immidiatly enters a world of almost market-fetishism and commodity-fetishism quality that makes hardly any sense (ie. marginal theory, subjective theory)
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Thank you for your response! * Value can not be created Neither humans nor machines can create value or surplus value! Value is a social relationship. Such is formed between people and works only between people. The social relationship value is formed concretely between exchange partners. The value that people create as a social relationship is assigned to both the commodity and the value equivalent on the market. One can only produce prerequisites for value relationships and thus for values. * Machines do private work in private properties The value assigned to a machine when it is bought by an entrepreneur is "transferred" to the products in such a way that the entrepreneur must ensure that he is reimbursed for the cost of this machine with the sale of his products. However, this "transfer" has nothing to do with a value relationship - the corresponding value relationship was successfully ended with the purchase of the machine. The fact that the entrepreneur gets reimbursed for the costs of this machine with the sale of his products is not inevitable. If he does not do well overall, for example, he will file for bankruptcy despite this machine. * Machines are work forces like human work forces In addition, it can be said that the machine is used by him as a work force, similar to the human workers that he uses. He has to provide for their means of subsistence - electricity, grease, maintenance, repairs, "living space" - that is, volume of work (workspace), etc. This all takes place in his private area of property. There is no fundamental difference to human workers: the costs of subsistence are proportionally linked to the work products as a claim for replacement, an expected surplus value is added and the sum results in the expected value of a product, which is made visible as an offer price for potential buyers. * Value will be formed in the market The products of labor that are produced there with all kinds of workers are initially also part of his property, so they have nothing to do with value. Only when the products are exchanged for value equivalents (usually money) on the market do the exchange partners (e.g. the entrepreneur and a representative of a retail chain) again form a value relationship and thus values. Previously, only expected values and expected surplus values can be assigned to these work products, as I wrote in my first comment. * Value cannot be derived directly from the work The "Actual value" cannot be based directly on labor time. Example: An entrepreneur produces umbrellas. A classic interpreter of the LTV advises him on how to increase the value of his products. He says he should punch holes in the umbrella fabric because that means more work is materialized in the umbrellas, and with it more value. But he can't sell his umbrellas at the market - but that shouldn't surprise him. The value is not directly determined by the labor input, but by the recognition of the labor results in the market, as I describe with my value formula for the market in the first comment. After all, a clown could buy such an umbrella, i.e. the assessment of the work results can be very different for different people. * There is no difference between exchange value and real / commodity value Exchange value and commodity value / real value are identical. Marx had to make this distinction because he assumed that value was produced. But he also noted that the goods were not exchanged according to his value calculations. What he failed to notice was that there is still no value on the production side of commodity society - I have also shown this with my formulas. There is only one expected value. Thus his distinction between commodity value and exchange value concerns the distinction between expected value and exchange value or real value. However, this thought was not consistent with him. He also formulate that a work product only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange (!). Only then, according to Marx, was the work expended socially useful and thus value-creating. * The value size is the common value size the exchange partners agree on There is only one value in the market, the exchange value. This reflects the social relationship that the bartering partners enter into when exchanging goods for value equivalents. The amount of value that is formed there corresponds to the common value that the bartering partners agree on. At the bazaar they come to an agreement in dialogue, in the department store through the unilateral adaptation of the buyer to the seller's specifications. If they cannot agree on a common value (real value, exchange value), there will be no exchange - the purchase contract / invoice cannot contain a sales price and a different purchase price - both of them must be identical. * The size of the value depends on the assessment of the work results The fact that an entrepreneur must be fully reimbursed for the costs c + v with the sale of his products and an surplus value (W = c + v + s) that he considers sufficient must usually take place if production is to be continued and expanded as far as possible. But it cannot be deduced from this that the value is always formed in this way. It may also be that the value is only formed in the amount of the expenses or even less. * Value is neither installed nor removed and it does not evaporate either You write that a commodity that no one desires loses its value. How is that supposed to happen? There may be no changes to the goods themselves. Does the value evaporate? No, such a work product is simply not assigned any value. No one has ever built in value and no one will ever extract value from this product.
@@rainerlippert to the capitalist, machines and human workers are definitely not the same. "This all takes place in his private area of property" makes no sense unless he is personally fixing the machines with his own personal labor. Most surely he will use other people's labor to do this: workers. who will work for a wage. So even if the human and the machine perform the exact same labor, both in quality and quantity, the only change has been a shift of who needs to get paid. but the heavy duty is done by the machine and its maintenance is more specialized and less laborious individually. behind every machine is another worker (or workers) that provides the value of the commodities produced by the machine. replace them with another a machine, and this machine also need another worker to function... the cycle of automation has no end: the capitalist gains higher profits from higher collective productivity (thanks to the machines they own), and the workers gain lesser wages from less individual labor (because that labor is done by machines now).
@@rainerlippert well, I don't claim perfect wisdom on this topic, but how do commodities lose their value? Well, imagine a storage full of unsold computers from the 1980s that never found a buyer because of new rapid developments in technology. These items once represented a value, but since no one will ever desire these items, they lost their value. The same products are still there, but they are now simply worthless. You would even have to pay someone to get them destroyed. Then when I read Marx and the LTV (which is mostly Smith and Ricardo, not Marx), leaving aside the surplus that is created for the capitalist for a moment, value is created in a labourproces bc workers got paid a salary, and the costs of machines transfer in the product as well. Transport-costs had to be made, so a bit of salary of the transporter, the cost of petrol etc goes into the product. The store in which the product finds a home has workers, so the store-owner accounts for that salary. All these tiny bits add up to form value. What else could be considered the value of something? What the buyer pays is the price. This is the value (ie. all the capital advanced) plus marketforces of supply and demand. This price could even be below value. (in this example, manufacturor and seller are the same company, ofc that's rarely the case) Supply and demand in itself don't explain value. You can't reason the value of the commodity by simply looking at supply and demand forces. These just explain the fluctuations we see. David Harvey once commented; Imagine a piece of unworked land in the middle of Manhattan that is still owned by an ancient tribe. Now this piece of land contains no value. But the rules of supply and demand will undoubtly make the tribe hang a considerable pricetag on it. Now that doesn't refute the idea that value is a social relation. I agree with that. All these steps above are social (work-) relations. You can't see the value by simply looking at the commodity. There are social relations behind all of this.
you're right in that value is a social relationship. but it isn't "formed concretely between exchange partners", like you say. if that were true, then people wouldn't exchange commodities...ever: if we both agree that 20 yards of linen have the same value as 1 coat, then the only reason we would exchange them is if there was an additional and *external* incentive to that agreed upon exchange value. otherwise these are economically the same object, and there's no reason to make a trade. the actual materiality of each object (known as use-value) would definitely be a good guess. but then, where did that materiality come from? two possible sources: (1) nature, in the sense that its materiality has always existed as it is now, or (2) labor, in the sense that humanity interacted with its materiality to make it into what it is now. this is also why Marx never explicitly references a "labor theory of value". he only claimed value comes from the socially necessary labor-time required to bring a commodity to market. because of course, theoretically, not ALL value comes from ALL labor (he cleared up this confusion in the Critique of the Gotha Program). you can see now that the value of a commodity, unless it has been untouched by labor, isn't made concrete by the subjective assessments of each party of an exchange. it was made concrete by the labor its production required.
There is no "surplus value", because if the worker used their own tools and made their own sales, they WOULD keep 100% of the revenue. If you work at McDonalds, you are paying a commission to WORK THERE, and USE THEIR TOOLS. Also Marx doesnt mention who is liable if the business goes under??? Many times businesses go into debt, but the workers got paid tho? Its not like as if the business goes out of business, the workers are now in debt too.....
Why the fuck would you pay a commision ? Is giving your hard work to the owner a privilege given to you by your boss? It is a deal, you're trading your work for exchangeable value, and if it not compensated, that means it was stolen.
But after the tools have been paid off the capital owner would still gain profits though?? It's literally impossible to not produce surplus-value under capitalism because if the rate of surplus-value falls behind what the tools are actually worth, then the company would cease to exist, and secondly the capitalist would starve. When a business goes into debt, a big amount of workers would still be fired off. It's not just when businesses goes into debt, but at literally any other time when the company loses money. If the company generates more profits, the surplus-value increase for the capitalist while they would have the decision on whether to pay their workers more (which happens rarely), but if the company starts losing revenue for some reason, the first people to be laid off would be the workers, not the ceo.
Let me quote Marx himself on this question: “Can the labourer,” he [the capitalist] asks, “merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne’er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?” Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton and spindle into yarn?The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value. And now Marx goes on to explain the specific mechanism of surplus value creation: Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day’s labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day’s labour (6 hours, because back in the time, a full working day was 12 hours) is embodied in that quantity of labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power, cost half a day’s labour. [NOTE: Here Marx is saying that the value of the worker's labour is 3 shillings, or by this assumption, half a day's labour (because half andays labour is required to produce the food, clothing, housing, etc - i.e., means of subsistence - to the worker to reproduce his labour power or the ability to work). So wages are that amount which is required for the worker to maintain himself so that he can come and work again the next day.] But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller. Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not only during six, but during twelve hours. This value that a worker works, over and beyond what is required to sustain themselves, is a surplus. As he put it, the fact that it takes 6 hours of social labour (or a value of 3 shillings) (by assumption) to sustain a worker for one full day, doesn't mean he will work only for 6 hours. He can work beyond 6 hours because there is enough to sustain him for that whole day. And in the rest of the time, the worker works for the capitalist for free, without pay, because what's necessary to sustain him has already been paid. This surplus is the root of profit according to Marx.
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God damn, a simple explanation in 3 mins. Thanks TH-cam University
THATS MY SURPLUS VALUE! I DONT KNOW YOU!
You can see the effects of labor theory ideology in AI development. China is developing General AI to replace labor altogether, while the US is training neural nets to trade debt stocks and manage companies
هل من وسيلة ربما رقمية بتقنية البلوك تشين
كالعملات الرقمية مثلا لكي توضع كمقياس لقيمة عمل الأفراد كوحدة واضحة كالمتر
والغرام والفولت تقيس القيمة بدقة أو بتقريب أو بمؤشر وتوضع في رصيد أممي متفق عليه عوضا عن الأوراق المالية فتجربة ورقة 100 دولار باتت واضحة في فضحها لوهم قيمة الورقة المالية التي ضحكون علينا بها وهي لاشيء الكل قدم خدمات وسلع من عمل بها وعادت لصاحبها
😮
The background music in this sounds like a Nokia ringtone.
3 capitalists disliked this
Perhaps at that time,all the value or most of it was due to Labour.
Let's take a phone for instance,it's not just Labour which adds the cost.
There is development, technology,materials, etc...
And the Labour don't take any risks,if the company don't make money, they don't share the liability, so why do they need to share equally the profit?
You have to understand that there is a difference between price and value. Value or exchange value is a commodity's relation to another, and is determined by the quantity of necesarry labour power put into the production of given commidty. Price is determined by the supply and demand. If there's more demand than commidies available, then the price will rise in an effort to meet the demands of those most willing to spend money. If there are more products than demand, then the prices will fall in an effort to get people to buy more, so less value is lost.
A capitalist is not necesarry anymore bacause risks and innovations can happen without him, besides, the majority of important innovations happen in the public sector anyway. You can still have mannagers and other justified hiearchies at worker controlled work places. To say that democracy doesn't work on a work place is to say that a country only would function as a dictatorship.
@Krónika How are we supposed to have productive exchanges with such hyperbole? It's like talking to a cynical guy who thinks that dating is a form of exploiting and robbing men when they're expected to pay for dinner while assigning the most sinister motives to the women they date. Many capitalists are just people who want to improve their lives or have a bright idea when starting a business, and most don't even succeed at it since it's very high-risk. Many also work very hard and have enormous stress. As for inequalities, they seem to arise in every system we've ever tried. We see that in the dating market as well: the most successful with the greatest number of options are a small minority compared to those who have a very tough time and might have to settle. I'm doubtful about whether any system can rectify this problem, only cushion the blow.
@@solidarity9336 >> To say that democracy doesn't work on a work place is to say that a country only would function as a dictatorship.
If there was a dictator guaranteed to be benevolent and competent, I'd be happy to have him/her govern the country. The difficulty is that a dictator is vastly more powerful than any capitalist. A dictator can destroy the entire nation: causing mass feminine and bloodshed, commit genocide, etc. There's too much at risk here. A capitalist simply goes out of business if he/she is incompetent.
If the democratic process elects such great leaders, I'd expect an argument there that most or all politicians who are democratically-elected are far more competent at what they do than the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, James Cameron, Riddley Scott, Gordon Ramsay, etc. I'm guessing you guys had the fortune of electing a great class president and that you love the politicians running your country right now? My school elected a popular airhead instead and I find most politicians to be incredibly incompetent. One of the problems is that democratic processes tend to favor popularity over competence, and also tend to favor the worst-case compromise scenarios that are the worst of all worlds when there's a very diverse range of interests guiding those who vote.
> _development, technology, materials_
Those are all labour. They don't fall from the sky.
> _And the labour don't take any risks_
Of course it does. When I move my family to a new city to accept a new job, I am risking a lot. I've no idea if it will be worth it, I've no idea if it will last or the management will run it into the ground, I've no idea if I'll get fired, I've no idea how badly it will affect my health, mental and physical, etc. If my employer makes bad decisions and I end up without a job, that's a loss on my end. I could have chosen a different job and a different employer. So by that reasoning, I should also be rewarded for taking the risk when I accepted the job.
The only thing the capitalist truly risks is becoming a worker just like the rest of their labour force. Value is produced through the labour process, otherwise it is just raw materials/commodities that will lay idle, it takes the work of the labourer (both mind and body so developing technology etc) to create the value. The value therefore comes directly out of the labour process, it requires a labourer to fashion the materials into something useful, therefore its use value is dependant on what the workers do. The very thing you describe is unpacked in Capital to a great extent, and this video talks about specifically the rate of surplus or exploitation depending on how you want to look at it. The labourer is producing all the value by creating something from otherwise 'dead' commodities, the capitalist has nothing to sell, no exchange value to exchange for money unless the worker does something. The worker doesnt reap the full benefit of this value they create however, they are paid a wage of $x which is basically enough for them to survive ie. to afford rent, food etc. So Marx lays out the rate of exploitation by saying that even though the worker creates all the value in a product, they are only paid enough to survive, and the rest of the value they are creating goes to the capitalist as surplus value. The worker creates more value than they benefit from, and that excess is profit for the capitalist. Therefor even though the capitalist might pay for the materials, they are nothing without the work of the labourer who actually creates the product which the capitalist can finally sell and then they take some money to pay for the goods they supplied + profit on top.
Value and surplus value come from work but
1. not directly
and
2. not only from human labor - machines and parts of the nature also are used like human labor power.
- Value is a social relationship. Such is formed and works between people, the value specifically between exchange partners. You can't produce something like that - it’s not a singularity.
- What is produced is the prerequisite for value relationships and thus for values.
- The classic interpretation of labor value theory with W = c + v + s is flawed.
* If an entrepreneur has 1,000 pieces of type A product manufactured, but only 500 of them can sell with the expected surplus value and the other 500 pieces cannot at all, then only the work spent on the 500 pieces of type A product sold was value-creating.
* According to Marx, a work product, i.e. a potential commodity, only becomes a real commodity, if it becomes use value for someone else (who buys it). Only then was the work involved socially useful, since the work product does not remain the property of the entrepreneur, and only then is the work qualified as value creating.
* For the 500 unsold A-type products, the work was not socially useful because the work results remain the private property of the manufacturer. The corresponding work was therefore not value creating.
* Purchase only takes place on the market.
* This makes it clear that the value is not produced directly by the work. Before buying, potential buyers first assess the results of the work and thus the relevance of the work involved.
- In a commodity society, only expected values can be calculated or estimated on the production side:
W|expected = c|cost factor; replacement expected + v|cost factor; replacement expected + s|expected.
- There is only surplus value (!) If the buyer completely replaces c and v and also pays more. This happens on the market, i.e. the value formula must also be adjusted for the market too:
W|real = c|replacing + v|replacing + s|real.
- Since the decision about value creation and value is only made on the market and there is no one incorporating value into goods, it becomes clear that value is not produced, as Marx it says, but will be assigned.
- So it doesn't matter what types of labor powers were involved in the design of products (people, machines, certain parts of nature).
- The value as a social relationship must contain an objective component that goes beyond the individual values of buyers and sellers. This objective component is the common value of buyer and seller. This is formed from the initially different individual values of the exchange partners - in the bazaar in dialogue, in the department store by unilaterally adapting the value of the buyer to that of the seller.
The objective component of the value is made visible by the sales price.
- However, as a social relationship, value must also include subjective elements, because it is linked to people's consciousness processes.
The ideal elements are the subjective reflections of the objective value in the exchange partners.
More details on how value creation really works can be found there:
What is wrong with the LTV - How the value is really formed
th-cam.com/video/3GHutT-8blc/w-d-xo.html.
Short version:
th-cam.com/video/TwJzBOGrE9Y/w-d-xo.html
I think you read Marx too.. rigid, or mechanical, if that's the word. In ch9, vol1 of Capital, Marx argues that although machines cannot create value, they can create surplus-value. Machines are past labour, so will transfer a tiny portion of its own value into every new product. But that's not creating new value. By intensifying the labourproces, machines create an extra surplus value, which is the whole point of purchasing machines.
Also, you seem to leave out a crucial element of Marx' value theory.
Marx makes a three-fold distinction. A commodity has a use-value, an exchange value and a value.
On the market, indeed a buyer can look at the use-value of a commodity and then decide if he wants to pay the exchange value. But the exchange value is nothing but the comparising of two different commodities. One car for six TV-sets for example. But this is not necessarily the price of the commodity in the shop. Prices are based on the exch- and use-value of the commodity but on top of that are influenced by marketforces. A product that has become scarce will undoubtly make any capitalist increase the price, as there are many many people that wants this product all of a sudden. Ofc this has little to do with the actual value. Just think of an art auction for example.
And that 'actual value' is the necessary labour-time required. This is what lay behind the immidiate visibility of the exch- and use-values. That in order to get the products on market, there must be a labour proces, that creates value bc workers have to be paid.
Marx does indeed point to unsold commodities in Capital vol1. A commodity no one desires, simply loses its value. This is on the part of the capitalist and the merchant as part of their capital advanced, and therefor must take the loss. I don't see how this would contradict the LTV.
If, however, you abandon the LTV, one almost immidiatly enters a world of almost market-fetishism and commodity-fetishism quality that makes hardly any sense (ie. marginal theory, subjective theory)
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Thank you for your response!
* Value can not be created
Neither humans nor machines can create value or surplus value!
Value is a social relationship. Such is formed between people and works only between people.
The social relationship value is formed concretely between exchange partners.
The value that people create as a social relationship is assigned to both the commodity and the value equivalent on the market.
One can only produce prerequisites for value relationships and thus for values.
* Machines do private work in private properties
The value assigned to a machine when it is bought by an entrepreneur is "transferred" to the products in such a way that the entrepreneur must ensure that he is reimbursed for the cost of this machine with the sale of his products. However, this "transfer" has nothing to do with a value relationship - the corresponding value relationship was successfully ended with the purchase of the machine.
The fact that the entrepreneur gets reimbursed for the costs of this machine with the sale of his products is not inevitable. If he does not do well overall, for example, he will file for bankruptcy despite this machine.
* Machines are work forces like human work forces
In addition, it can be said that the machine is used by him as a work force, similar to the human workers that he uses. He has to provide for their means of subsistence - electricity, grease, maintenance, repairs, "living space" - that is, volume of work (workspace), etc. This all takes place in his private area of property. There is no fundamental difference to human workers: the costs of subsistence are proportionally linked to the work products as a claim for replacement, an expected surplus value is added and the sum results in the expected value of a product, which is made visible as an offer price for potential buyers.
* Value will be formed in the market
The products of labor that are produced there with all kinds of workers are initially also part of his property, so they have nothing to do with value.
Only when the products are exchanged for value equivalents (usually money) on the market do the exchange partners (e.g. the entrepreneur and a representative of a retail chain) again form a value relationship and thus values.
Previously, only expected values and expected surplus values can be assigned to these work products, as I wrote in my first comment.
* Value cannot be derived directly from the work
The "Actual value" cannot be based directly on labor time.
Example: An entrepreneur produces umbrellas. A classic interpreter of the LTV advises him on how to increase the value of his products. He says he should punch holes in the umbrella fabric because that means more work is materialized in the umbrellas, and with it more value.
But he can't sell his umbrellas at the market - but that shouldn't surprise him.
The value is not directly determined by the labor input, but by the recognition of the labor results in the market, as I describe with my value formula for the market in the first comment.
After all, a clown could buy such an umbrella, i.e. the assessment of the work results can be very different for different people.
* There is no difference between exchange value and real / commodity value
Exchange value and commodity value / real value are identical. Marx had to make this distinction because he assumed that value was produced. But he also noted that the goods were not exchanged according to his value calculations.
What he failed to notice was that there is still no value on the production side of commodity society - I have also shown this with my formulas. There is only one expected value.
Thus his distinction between commodity value and exchange value concerns the distinction between expected value and exchange value or real value.
However, this thought was not consistent with him. He also formulate that a work product only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange (!). Only then, according to Marx, was the work expended socially useful and thus value-creating.
* The value size is the common value size the exchange partners agree on
There is only one value in the market, the exchange value.
This reflects the social relationship that the bartering partners enter into when exchanging goods for value equivalents.
The amount of value that is formed there corresponds to the common value that the bartering partners agree on. At the bazaar they come to an agreement in dialogue, in the department store through the unilateral adaptation of the buyer to the seller's specifications.
If they cannot agree on a common value (real value, exchange value), there will be no exchange - the purchase contract / invoice cannot contain a sales price and a different purchase price - both of them must be identical.
* The size of the value depends on the assessment of the work results
The fact that an entrepreneur must be fully reimbursed for the costs c + v with the sale of his products and an surplus value (W = c + v + s) that he considers sufficient must usually take place if production is to be continued and expanded as far as possible. But it cannot be deduced from this that the value is always formed in this way.
It may also be that the value is only formed in the amount of the expenses or even less.
* Value is neither installed nor removed and it does not evaporate either
You write that a commodity that no one desires loses its value.
How is that supposed to happen? There may be no changes to the goods themselves.
Does the value evaporate?
No, such a work product is simply not assigned any value. No one has ever built in value and no one will ever extract value from this product.
@@rainerlippert to the capitalist, machines and human workers are definitely not the same. "This all takes place in his private area of property" makes no sense unless he is personally fixing the machines with his own personal labor. Most surely he will use other people's labor to do this: workers. who will work for a wage. So even if the human and the machine perform the exact same labor, both in quality and quantity, the only change has been a shift of who needs to get paid. but the heavy duty is done by the machine and its maintenance is more specialized and less laborious individually. behind every machine is another worker (or workers) that provides the value of the commodities produced by the machine. replace them with another a machine, and this machine also need another worker to function...
the cycle of automation has no end: the capitalist gains higher profits from higher collective productivity (thanks to the machines they own), and the workers gain lesser wages from less individual labor (because that labor is done by machines now).
@@rainerlippert well, I don't claim perfect wisdom on this topic, but how do commodities lose their value? Well, imagine a storage full of unsold computers from the 1980s that never found a buyer because of new rapid developments in technology. These items once represented a value, but since no one will ever desire these items, they lost their value. The same products are still there, but they are now simply worthless. You would even have to pay someone to get them destroyed.
Then when I read Marx and the LTV (which is mostly Smith and Ricardo, not Marx), leaving aside the surplus that is created for the capitalist for a moment, value is created in a labourproces bc workers got paid a salary, and the costs of machines transfer in the product as well. Transport-costs had to be made, so a bit of salary of the transporter, the cost of petrol etc goes into the product. The store in which the product finds a home has workers, so the store-owner accounts for that salary. All these tiny bits add up to form value. What else could be considered the value of something?
What the buyer pays is the price. This is the value (ie. all the capital advanced) plus marketforces of supply and demand. This price could even be below value.
(in this example, manufacturor and seller are the same company, ofc that's rarely the case)
Supply and demand in itself don't explain value. You can't reason the value of the commodity by simply looking at supply and demand forces. These just explain the fluctuations we see.
David Harvey once commented; Imagine a piece of unworked land in the middle of Manhattan that is still owned by an ancient tribe. Now this piece of land contains no value. But the rules of supply and demand will undoubtly make the tribe hang a considerable pricetag on it.
Now that doesn't refute the idea that value is a social relation. I agree with that. All these steps above are social (work-) relations. You can't see the value by simply looking at the commodity. There are social relations behind all of this.
you're right in that value is a social relationship. but it isn't "formed concretely between exchange partners", like you say. if that were true, then people wouldn't exchange commodities...ever:
if we both agree that 20 yards of linen have the same value as 1 coat, then the only reason we would exchange them is if there was an additional and *external* incentive to that agreed upon exchange value. otherwise these are economically the same object, and there's no reason to make a trade.
the actual materiality of each object (known as use-value) would definitely be a good guess. but then, where did that materiality come from? two possible sources: (1) nature, in the sense that its materiality has always existed as it is now, or (2) labor, in the sense that humanity interacted with its materiality to make it into what it is now. this is also why Marx never explicitly references a "labor theory of value". he only claimed value comes from the socially necessary labor-time required to bring a commodity to market. because of course, theoretically, not ALL value comes from ALL labor (he cleared up this confusion in the Critique of the Gotha Program).
you can see now that the value of a commodity, unless it has been untouched by labor, isn't made concrete by the subjective assessments of each party of an exchange. it was made concrete by the labor its production required.
2022 still living under capitalism🤑💰💸💵💴💷💳💶🥂
There is no "surplus value", because if the worker used their own tools and made their own sales, they WOULD keep 100% of the revenue. If you work at McDonalds, you are paying a commission to WORK THERE, and USE THEIR TOOLS. Also Marx doesnt mention who is liable if the business goes under??? Many times businesses go into debt, but the workers got paid tho? Its not like as if the business goes out of business, the workers are now in debt too.....
Shut up
A company can function perfectly well without a ceo, without its workers, it is nothing
Why the fuck would you pay a commision ? Is giving your hard work to the owner a privilege given to you by your boss?
It is a deal, you're trading your work for exchangeable value, and if it not compensated, that means it was stolen.
But after the tools have been paid off the capital owner would still gain profits though?? It's literally impossible to not produce surplus-value under capitalism because if the rate of surplus-value falls behind what the tools are actually worth, then the company would cease to exist, and secondly the capitalist would starve. When a business goes into debt, a big amount of workers would still be fired off. It's not just when businesses goes into debt, but at literally any other time when the company loses money. If the company generates more profits, the surplus-value increase for the capitalist while they would have the decision on whether to pay their workers more (which happens rarely), but if the company starts losing revenue for some reason, the first people to be laid off would be the workers, not the ceo.
Let me quote Marx himself on this question:
“Can the labourer,” he [the capitalist] asks, “merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne’er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?” Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton and spindle into yarn?The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value.
And now Marx goes on to explain the specific mechanism of surplus value creation:
Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day’s labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day’s labour (6 hours, because back in the time, a full working day was 12 hours) is embodied in that quantity of labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power, cost half a day’s labour.
[NOTE: Here Marx is saying that the value of the worker's labour is 3 shillings, or by this assumption, half a day's labour (because half andays labour is required to produce the food, clothing, housing, etc - i.e., means of subsistence - to the worker to reproduce his labour power or the ability to work).
So wages are that amount which is required for the worker to maintain himself so that he can come and work again the next day.]
But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things.
The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller. Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not only during six, but during twelve hours.
This value that a worker works, over and beyond what is required to sustain themselves, is a surplus. As he put it, the fact that it takes 6 hours of social labour (or a value of 3 shillings) (by assumption) to sustain a worker for one full day, doesn't mean he will work only for 6 hours. He can work beyond 6 hours because there is enough to sustain him for that whole day. And in the rest of the time, the worker works for the capitalist for free, without pay, because what's necessary to sustain him has already been paid. This surplus is the root of profit according to Marx.