I am an economics student who also has a huge background in history, and especially in philosophy, and I've read most of Marx's philosophical and historical writings but now I'm digging into Capital, and I've found something quite strange and rattling. Marx equates the value of a commodity to the socially necessary labour time required to produce it, meaning that the more time it takes to produce something (or lesser productivity) the more valuable it is. Now, I'm not sure how prices work exactly for Marx, but I'm assuming that for him, the price set in the marketplace should reflect the amount of labour time it took to produce that, and that a higher price means that the thing has more labour in it.
Now, this comes completely as a shock to anyone who has training in Economics; since day one, I've been taught that prices are determined by "Supply and Demand" i.e. a producer sets a price, the price is either to high or low, and thus a surplus or shortage exists, and the producer adjusts the price until an equilibrium is set which matches what consumers want (demand). I've rarely heard value discussed in an Economics course (which is a shame), and it seems like a producer sets a price based off of considerations of both production costs and with making a profit, and that this further adjusts itself until consumers are willing to purchase it. Is the initial price set by the producer determined by the amount of labour in the commodity? Or is the labour theory of value completely dismissed by neoclassical economics?
At the base value, my question is is why does Marx think that supply and demand is an inadequate representation of value and prices?
Ludwig Von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist commonwealth, chapter 1-
> If one adopts the standpoint of the labor theory of value, the problem freely admits of a simple solution. The comrade is then marked up for every hour’s work put in, and this entitles him to receive the product of one hour’s labor, less the amount deducted for meeting such obliga- tions of the community as a whole as maintenance of the unfit, education, etc. Taking the amount deducted for covering communal expenses as one half of the labor product, each worker who had worked a full hour would be entitled only to obtain such amount of the product as really answered to half an hour’s work. Accordingly, anybody who is in a position to offer twice the labor time taken in manufacturing an ar- ticle, could take it from the market and transfer to his own use or consumption. For the clarification of our problem it will be better to assume that the State does not in fact deduct anything from the workers towards meeting its ob- ligations, but instead imposes an income tax on its work- ing members. In that way every hour of work put in would carry with it the right of taking for oneself such amount of goods as entailed an hour’s work.
> Yet such a manner of regulating distribution would be unworkable, since labor is not a uniform and homo- geneous quantity. Between various types of labor there is necessarily a qualitative difference, which leads to a differ- ent valuation according to the difference in the conditions of demand for and supply of their products. For instance, the supply of pictures cannot be increased ceteris paribus, without damage to the quality of the product. Yet one can- not allow the laborer who had put in an hour of the most simple type of labor to be entitled to the product of an hour’s higher type of labor. Hence, it becomes utterly im- possible in any socialist community to posit a connection between the significance to the community of any type of labor and the apportionment of the yield of the communal process of production. The remuneration of labor cannot but proceed upon an arbitrary basis; it cannot be based upon the economic valuation of the yield as in a competi- tive state of society, where the means of production are in private hands, since—as we have seen—any such valua- tion is impossible in a socialist community. Economic realities impose clear limits to the community’s power of fixing the remuneration of labor on an arbitrary basis:
... keep reading on reddit ➡"The order of work was the order of a world. The evidence of its ruin is paralyzing to those who dread what will come after. Today work is tied less to the economic necessity of producing goods than to the political necessity of producing producers and consumers, and of preserving by any means necessary the order of work." -TIQQUN
I really encourage everyone to read the works of Autonomia, Negri and Hardt and Tiqqun. Their anti work essays are brilliant. Abandon work.
I've been struggling a bit, while reading Das Kapital, to understand whether Socially Necessary Labour Time means:
- labour time necessary for the production of a commodity;
- labour time in the production of a commodity, a commodity that is necessary for some use value;
- something completely different (or both the above).
It might seem like a small point, but Marx included the word for a reason or he would have just called it ‘Social Labour Time’.
Could someone help me make sense of this, please?
Hi everyone!
I was reading Capital for the first time and found the definition of socially necessary labor time quite paradoxical.
"The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production."
I think I understand what he meant but then a few things that I dont seem to understand correctly . Assume there is a single group of people producing commodity A very efficiently. If another group of people less skilled, slower people decided to start producing the same commodity, would that make the commodity more valuable, as the average socially necessary labor time would increase? i.e., there is a single fast baker in a town, a new bakery opens that makes bread significantly slower, the bread is now more valuable even though there is more bread?
Original LTV formulated by Adam Smith and David Ricardo stated that value of a commodity is derived from the amount of labour that goes into producing it. Marx added the words 'socially necessary' to it. So what does socially necessary labour mean?
I've been working my way through Capital Vol I, but the concepts of value and socially necessary labour time need some clarifying. I suspect that I already have an answer to my own question, but I'd really like if this was addressed.
When we speak of value, or posit value, we are speaking of value as existing within the consideration of future exchange (i.e. within production) or in the process of exchange itself.
Value is posited in the first place as a way of explain the equating of one commodity to another.
>-value's substance is labour, value's magnitude is labour-time, value's form is exchange value.
This is true, in a sense, but the correct way of putting it would be that value's substance is socially necessary abstract labour, and value's magnitude is socially necessary labour time.
Socially necessary labour-time is the-
>-labour-time required to produce any use-value under the conditions of production normal for a given society and with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society.
Any product of concrete labour can be created, exist, and be 'managed' with consideration to the time required to produce it without it necessarily being a value. Marx's example of Robinson Crusoe at the end of the first chapter of Capital exemplifies this.
A society with "means of production held in common" refers to the centralization of the means of production and the abolishing of private property. This means that the "different forms of labour power" exist "in full self awareness as one single social labour force."
>We shall assume, but only for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour-time.
Marx says that this only follows for the sake of a parallel with commodity production. This implies that apportionment could be done by other methods, but let's follow this parallel, since he developed it further.
An individual's labour, measured in time, is apportioned in accordance with a definite social plan. Marx develops this concept further in the Gotha Critique, even laying out a makeshift formula for the apportionment of the total social stock in Part I.
If we follow this parallel, individuals receive the part of the social stock equal to the labour that they input to said stock, me
... keep reading on reddit ➡I live in an area where naloxone training for using narcan kits is available for non-medical professionals at no cost in the case they encounter an opioid overdose. Maybe this is available everywhere, I don't know.
The wording around training (or acquiring naloxone kits) in my region confuses me. It says it's available to those "who are at risk, or know someone at risk, of opioid overdose"
I don't know anyone who uses opioids (to my knowledge) but I do work in mental health and that has made me aware how common opioid use really is in my region. So I can't decide if having a kit with me would be helpful or hurtful.
I can't find stats on the availability or the expiration of these kits, so right now I'm leaning towards "leave that for those who need it more than you, since you probably would just let it expire without ever being used"
On the other hand I like the idea of at least knowing how it works just in case of an emergency.
Is it weird or inappropriate for me to try to get that training, since I probably won't encounter an overdose personally? Is it stealing resources from people who are closer to the problem (like drug users, or those close to drug users)? Or is it more like first aid training where the more people who know how it works, the better?
So I’ve been on HRT for well over a year, and I don’t really have a boy mode or a girl mode. I just have a me mode, which entails wearing whatever I feel most comfortable in at any given time.
I’ve worn a dress among friends. I’ve worn leggings among friends. I’ve worn cute tops that are undeniably for women among friends, and at this point, it feels like friends always expect me to dress feminine when we go out.
With that said, I have not told any new friends I’m trans. I told a few close friends, and I’m sure they probably told their other close friends who knew me pre-transition that I’m trans, so some people know, but not everyone knows.
On my Instagram, I started sharing pictures of me and my friends 6+ months into my transition, so people know I look different, but I haven’t officially labeled myself as trans. Certainly most people have figured it out by now, but I think there’s probably a few people who think I’m just an androgynous gay man now.
With that said, I feel like I’m almost done transitioning. I’m not really interested in getting any work done aside from laser hair removal on my face and chest area, nor am I interested in changing my name for legal reasons or my pronouns for social reasons. I might change my gender marker to an X, but I’m not sure yet. I also just use my gay voice that sounds male but will occasionally enter the female range whenever I get too excited, since my voice was never really deep to begin with. All this is to say that I basically feel like I finished socially transitioning without actually socially transitioning.
And that brings me to my question: what does it even mean to socially transition? is it even necessary?
I'm wondering how to think about the amount of labor embodied in, say, a frozen chicken thigh. You can't make a chicken thigh on its own, you have to farm a whole chicken. And a whole chicken makes chicken breast along with some organs, fat, etc, along with the chicken thigh.
So is it an intelligible question to ask about the "value" of just 100 lbs of chicken thigh? How do we conceptualize this? It's easier to talk about the value of 100 lbs of _chicken_, but I'm not sure how to think about the "socially necessary" labor required to make a single component of the chicken.
I've had this question for a long time, but I thought of it again as I was reading this article:
hello, i'm kind of new to marxism and the LTV theory has got me very confused. marx managed to get into such abstract level that for me it seems i can't "measure" it in reality (specially when talking about abstraction to concretion). is this true? is "abstract simple labor" and "socially necessary time" so abstract that it seems impossible to measure it in concrete and specific situations without taking into account a million of other conditions?
sorry for my english, it's my second language
im trying to get my family to suport me, but they dont undestand, i've tryed teling them how important and helpful it would be for me, but i can bearly convince them to use my name and pronouns. since been emotional dosent work, do you have some arguments or resourses that have helps you ?
im 18 so i could posible try to go on my own but i dont have any money or were to go and i dont think i could make it on my own, i've already lost a ton of friends and I relly dont want to lose my family to.
it would mean a lot to me if any body could help
As far as I'm aware, although they tout themselves as being socially conservative, by emphasising the whole, "Family, Faith, Flag," in some crucial areas they are lacking.
For example Blue Labour - as far as I am aware - fully supports Gay Marriage. I get that they support freedom of religion and in that sense are against it when (for example) a church minister wants to exercise his freedom of conscious by not being forced to conduct such ceremonies (as some want). But as a whole, they support the overall notion of it, as they support other encroachments on family values such as transgenderism.
So they are socially conservative because... they oppose immigration, act patriotic and want a society based off of families (inc. LGBT and pres. single-parent families) etc.? That's it??
I feel like there's a vacuum of support for socially conservative values. Out of the major parties, not even the Conservatives support social conservationism anymore, after all it was a Tory government and PM who brought in the Gay Marriage bill. I have a Catholic friend who expressed shock at this - he said he didn't vote for that when went to the polls (and pres. voted Tory). But what are you going to do?
There are no more socially conservative parties, 'social conservative' has a different meaning now, its meaning is, "keep the current socially liberal order, stop the radical woke anarchists from making society decay any more." I mean is that it? That's all we'll get?
Maybe I've got it wrong though. Can anyone refute me on this? Maybe the good baron has said something I've missed?
I.e. is something either socially necessary or not? Or can different labour both be socially necessary but one more than the other as to affect the value?
Thank you.
