4 ms·

Markets in the capitalist sense, with people having to sell labour-time for wage in order to survive to a market of bourgeoisie is also a recent invention, a li

by ue_ 10y ago

Markets in the capitalist sense, with people having to sell labour-time for wage in order to survive to a market of bourgeoisie is also a recent invention, a little over 200 years old. There's no reason to think it's the 'natural state' of humanity as some people have said. Edit: Clarified what is being sold.

drdeca 10y ago
Can you use words more associated with some other ideological group to describe what you mean by, e.g. "bourgeoisie"? When trying to convince people who are of a differing ideology of something, I think it is often useful to use the terminology they are familiar with, and to use their shiboleths. Speaking to people in the language of their group probably often makes them more willing to take your ideas seriously. Like, you use the term "labor-time", which probably makes perfect sense to the people who already agree with the ideology you are promoting, but for people who don't already agree (who are the people you are presumably talking to), they likely don't already have "labor-time" as a clearly understood concept that they recognize as important. If you want them to recognize the idea of "labor-time", you might have to convince them that it is an important concept.
- ue_ 10y ago
  I think I can manage to do that, though I don't really want to 'convert' people to any particular ideology, not even the one I subscribe to. I just wanted to comment with my perspective, which is a Marxian-inspired (though not necessarily Marxist) view. >Markets in the capitalist sense, with people having to sell labour-time for wage in order to survive to a market of bourgeoisie is also a recent invention, a little over 200 years old. There's no reason to think it's the 'natural state' of humanity as some people have said. Who are the bourgeoisie? The bourgeoisie are a class of people, the necessary prerequesites are roughly that they firstly own the means of production (i.e capital and land; machinery is of course also included in this), everything required to make commodities aside from the key component of human labour (unless embodied in 'dead labour', as machinery). The second requisite is that they pay for labour time in order to add value to the products that are made. The bourgeoisie are actually a minority, as the majority of people do not employ others nor own capital (they may do one of these two, but their conjunction, which is necessary to be considered bourgeois, is rare). Those who own stock however do not count as bourgeois, as this is 'fictitious capital'; they do not exploit others, though they do benefit from the exploitation. What is labour-time? Labour-time is what a worker has available to sell. It is not labour itself, but rather the capacity to perform labour. For example, a capitalist (i.e a memeber of the bourgeoisie) would purchase a certain amount of sugar. Sugar is measured by the kilogram. In the same way, in order to produce a commodity, say candy for example, he will purchase some labour-time. Labour-time is measured by the hour. He will pay for a certain number of hours. Of course the amount he pays for is also related to the quality. Just as he may pay for poor or good quality sugar, he will pay for poor or good quality labour-time. What are wages? Marx defines them in Wage Labour and Capital as follows: "The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labour-time, and are usually called the price of labour; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood." Workers, the majority of whom must sell their labour-time for a wage (by paying the wage, the capitalist has provided the labourer with a certain amount of meat, of water, of rent etc.) are referred to as the proletariat. They often have very little else to sell other than their productive capacity. Self-employed people may, depending on the situation, be counted as bourgeoisie or proletarians, though there is roughly a 'middle' class of those artisans or self-employed workers who are viewed as bourgeois-in-potential, petit-bourgeoisie. These are not very common, especially in the world where corporations employing economies of scale with many employees (proletarians) can quickly outpace the individual labourer or group of people in an equal partnership (e.g a co-operative). I contend that this division of society is an example of class conflict, initially developed out of violence and coercion. It may be compared to a serf/peasant and a landlord in feudal times. Or even a slave and master in ancient times. It is within the interests of the proletariat to overthrow this system. Why do I refer to a capitalist as 'exploiting' the worker in the exchange of labur-time for wage? For this, look no further than the profit after goods have been sold. If things are traded at equal [exchange] value, the capitalist will end up with some amount of profit. This is the amount left over after accounting for: parts to fix wear and tear of machinery, the object of labour (e.g land and material) and worker's wages. I contend that this profit originates by result of surplus labour. That is, extra labour which is performed on the job by the worker. The worker is not paid for the amount of value he creatos or imbues a product with, he is paid simply by the hour. The value of a product does not become apparent until the very act of exchange, it can only be predicted. In short, I am trying to say that the wages which are given to the worker have no relation whatsoever to the value of the products being made (this value arising out of labour). The amount the worker is paid is only the bare minimum required for the worker to keep working. Too little and the worker stops. Too much and the worker will start to invest and buy his own capital, moving into the class of bourgeoisie. The value which the worker creates is therefore not returned to him in the form of wages. The worker, like a machine or amount of sugar, is used up, exploited. Exploitation isn't a bad term, it refers to using something up for what it is useful for. At the risk of this being an insufficient explanation, I would like to recommend two resources: firstly, "Exploitation of Labour"[0], a chapter written by Itsurou Sakisaka as an introduction to Marx's masterpiece Capital. The second is An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx's Capital by Michael Heinrich. For a more general idea, Marx has provided materials in pamphlet form. Wage Labour and Capital is one such document. It can be found at the marxists.org website. I hope this helped clear my opinion up so that others can understand it. [0] https://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation...
  - drdeca 10y ago
    I want to thank you for writing this. I think this helps me understand your position (and the position of people with similar positions) a lot, and I appreciate your answering my question. I'm sorry that your comment has been downvoted more than upvoted, when you were answering a question that I asked. While I don't really agree with the conclusions, I do think this very much helped clear up your point of view, and also what you mean by those terms, and I thank you for it (and also upvoted you). thanks
xixi77 10y ago
You are right, but the arguments above and in Hayek are really relevant for all kinds of markets. PS: it is nice to see an actual Marxist! :) Even though I disagree with them on most things (really just LTV, but you can't really take that one out, can you), they deserve my respect for having an actual theory, and for having genuinely progressive goals. Too much of the left wing is occupied these days by people with muddled, vaguely regressive ideas who have obviously never heard of historical materialism.
- ue_ 10y ago
  >really just LTV, but you can't really take that one out, can you Marx wasn't a proponent of the LTV, he critiqued previous formulations of it and then made his own contributions to the theory that some aspect of the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour time applied to create it. Although I'm still learning myself, I haven't rejected it outright. If I recall correctly, some work conducted by Cockshott showed validity of the LTV as a good indicator for the prices about which changes in supply and demand cause fluctuations of the UK market. I can't find it at the moment though unfortunately. I think it's a real shame that sometimes points I make are downvoted without explanation. I try to be civil, though many people feel the need to downvote and not explain. I'm not going to refer to specific comments I've made, but I'm noticing that even bringing up the theory of exploitation or alienation is enough to gather downvotes. Is HN a libertarian forum? I didn't think so.
  - xixi77 10y ago
    Nope, as a kinda libertarian myself, I don't think this a libertarian forum at all, judging by all the hate for things like sharing economy and such. I think a lot of people (on all sides really) just react to keywords instead of thinking about the content :( And yes labor input determines cost, and in equilibrium cost and value are the same, and would be correlated in the data -- but reasoning from cost imo amounts to putting the carriage before the horse, and leads to all kinds of shenanigans with the "socially necessary" component...
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Markets in the capitalist sense, with people having to sell labour-time for wage in order to survive to a market of bourgeoisie is also a recent invention, a little over 200 years old. It's significantly older than that; "capitalism" was described and named by socialists over 250 years ago, but labor markets of the type you describe are much older (the transition from feudal to capitalist economies began several hundred years before "capitalism" was named by its critics.)
- ue_ 10y ago
  I was under the impression that the large-scale market with massive commodification, worthy of talking about in terms of a distinct class of bourgeoisie as owners of capital was a phenomenon beginning around the mid 18th century. But I think nevertheless my point remains - it is by no means the 'natural' state of humanity (as if being a natural state would be an excuse for such a societal structure anyway).

by ue_ 10y ago

drdeca 10y ago

Can you use words more associated with some other ideological group to describe what you mean by, e.g. "bourgeoisie"? When trying to convince people who are of a differing ideology of something, I think it is often useful to use the terminology they are familiar with, and to use their shiboleths. Speaking to people in the language of their group probably often makes them more willing to take your ideas seriously. Like, you use the term "labor-time", which probably makes perfect sense to the people who already agree with the ideology you are promoting, but for people who don't already agree (who are the people you are presumably talking to), they likely don't already have "labor-time" as a clearly understood concept that they recognize as important. If you want them to recognize the idea of "labor-time", you might have to convince them that it is an important concept.

ue_ 10y ago
I think I can manage to do that, though I don't really want to 'convert' people to any particular ideology, not even the one I subscribe to. I just wanted to comment with my perspective, which is a Marxian-inspired (though not necessarily Marxist) view. >Markets in the capitalist sense, with people having to sell labour-time for wage in order to survive to a market of bourgeoisie is also a recent invention, a little over 200 years old. There's no reason to think it's the 'natural state' of humanity as some people have said. Who are the bourgeoisie? The bourgeoisie are a class of people, the necessary prerequesites are roughly that they firstly own the means of production (i.e capital and land; machinery is of course also included in this), everything required to make commodities aside from the key component of human labour (unless embodied in 'dead labour', as machinery). The second requisite is that they pay for labour time in order to add value to the products that are made. The bourgeoisie are actually a minority, as the majority of people do not employ others nor own capital (they may do one of these two, but their conjunction, which is necessary to be considered bourgeois, is rare). Those who own stock however do not count as bourgeois, as this is 'fictitious capital'; they do not exploit others, though they do benefit from the exploitation. What is labour-time? Labour-time is what a worker has available to sell. It is not labour itself, but rather the capacity to perform labour. For example, a capitalist (i.e a memeber of the bourgeoisie) would purchase a certain amount of sugar. Sugar is measured by the kilogram. In the same way, in order to produce a commodity, say candy for example, he will purchase some labour-time. Labour-time is measured by the hour. He will pay for a certain number of hours. Of course the amount he pays for is also related to the quality. Just as he may pay for poor or good quality sugar, he will pay for poor or good quality labour-time. What are wages? Marx defines them in Wage Labour and Capital as follows: "The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labour-time, and are usually called the price of labour; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood." Workers, the majority of whom must sell their labour-time for a wage (by paying the wage, the capitalist has provided the labourer with a certain amount of meat, of water, of rent etc.) are referred to as the proletariat. They often have very little else to sell other than their productive capacity. Self-employed people may, depending on the situation, be counted as bourgeoisie or proletarians, though there is roughly a 'middle' class of those artisans or self-employed workers who are viewed as bourgeois-in-potential, petit-bourgeoisie. These are not very common, especially in the world where corporations employing economies of scale with many employees (proletarians) can quickly outpace the individual labourer or group of people in an equal partnership (e.g a co-operative). I contend that this division of society is an example of class conflict, initially developed out of violence and coercion. It may be compared to a serf/peasant and a landlord in feudal times. Or even a slave and master in ancient times. It is within the interests of the proletariat to overthrow this system. Why do I refer to a capitalist as 'exploiting' the worker in the exchange of labur-time for wage? For this, look no further than the profit after goods have been sold. If things are traded at equal [exchange] value, the capitalist will end up with some amount of profit. This is the amount left over after accounting for: parts to fix wear and tear of machinery, the object of labour (e.g land and material) and worker's wages. I contend that this profit originates by result of surplus labour. That is, extra labour which is performed on the job by the worker. The worker is not paid for the amount of value he creatos or imbues a product with, he is paid simply by the hour. The value of a product does not become apparent until the very act of exchange, it can only be predicted. In short, I am trying to say that the wages which are given to the worker have no relation whatsoever to the value of the products being made (this value arising out of labour). The amount the worker is paid is only the bare minimum required for the worker to keep working. Too little and the worker stops. Too much and the worker will start to invest and buy his own capital, moving into the class of bourgeoisie. The value which the worker creates is therefore not returned to him in the form of wages. The worker, like a machine or amount of sugar, is used up, exploited. Exploitation isn't a bad term, it refers to using something up for what it is useful for. At the risk of this being an insufficient explanation, I would like to recommend two resources: firstly, "Exploitation of Labour"[0], a chapter written by Itsurou Sakisaka as an introduction to Marx's masterpiece Capital. The second is An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Marx's Capital by Michael Heinrich. For a more general idea, Marx has provided materials in pamphlet form. Wage Labour and Capital is one such document. It can be found at the marxists.org website. I hope this helped clear my opinion up so that others can understand it. [0] https://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation...
- drdeca 10y ago
  I want to thank you for writing this. I think this helps me understand your position (and the position of people with similar positions) a lot, and I appreciate your answering my question. I'm sorry that your comment has been downvoted more than upvoted, when you were answering a question that I asked. While I don't really agree with the conclusions, I do think this very much helped clear up your point of view, and also what you mean by those terms, and I thank you for it (and also upvoted you). thanks

xixi77 10y ago

You are right, but the arguments above and in Hayek are really relevant for all kinds of markets. PS: it is nice to see an actual Marxist! :) Even though I disagree with them on most things (really just LTV, but you can't really take that one out, can you), they deserve my respect for having an actual theory, and for having genuinely progressive goals. Too much of the left wing is occupied these days by people with muddled, vaguely regressive ideas who have obviously never heard of historical materialism.

ue_ 10y ago
>really just LTV, but you can't really take that one out, can you Marx wasn't a proponent of the LTV, he critiqued previous formulations of it and then made his own contributions to the theory that some aspect of the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour time applied to create it. Although I'm still learning myself, I haven't rejected it outright. If I recall correctly, some work conducted by Cockshott showed validity of the LTV as a good indicator for the prices about which changes in supply and demand cause fluctuations of the UK market. I can't find it at the moment though unfortunately. I think it's a real shame that sometimes points I make are downvoted without explanation. I try to be civil, though many people feel the need to downvote and not explain. I'm not going to refer to specific comments I've made, but I'm noticing that even bringing up the theory of exploitation or alienation is enough to gather downvotes. Is HN a libertarian forum? I didn't think so.
- xixi77 10y ago
  Nope, as a kinda libertarian myself, I don't think this a libertarian forum at all, judging by all the hate for things like sharing economy and such. I think a lot of people (on all sides really) just react to keywords instead of thinking about the content :( And yes labor input determines cost, and in equilibrium cost and value are the same, and would be correlated in the data -- but reasoning from cost imo amounts to putting the carriage before the horse, and leads to all kinds of shenanigans with the "socially necessary" component...

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Markets in the capitalist sense, with people having to sell labour-time for wage in order to survive to a market of bourgeoisie is also a recent invention, a little over 200 years old. It's significantly older than that; "capitalism" was described and named by socialists over 250 years ago, but labor markets of the type you describe are much older (the transition from feudal to capitalist economies began several hundred years before "capitalism" was named by its critics.)

ue_ 10y ago
I was under the impression that the large-scale market with massive commodification, worthy of talking about in terms of a distinct class of bourgeoisie as owners of capital was a phenomenon beginning around the mid 18th century. But I think nevertheless my point remains - it is by no means the 'natural' state of humanity (as if being a natural state would be an excuse for such a societal structure anyway).