Re: [Marxism] labor theory of value

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> What would you to say to the argument that in a system in which the
> result of production are surplus goods not needed to recommence
> production again at the same scale there is no reason to single out
> labor as the sole source of that surplus of goods as it could be the
> emergent result of of the interaction of all the inputs to
> production?

Rakesh, I'm trying to wrap my mind around your question.

Your question arises from a hypothetical situation that I must first
try to understand. You refer to a system of production in which
surplus goods are not needed to recommence production at the same
scale. Do you mean by this a unit of production in which the creation
of surplus value is not mandatory?

Would this be an example: a state-owned factory in which pricing of
the product is determined by its costs of production? This is not an
unlikely possibility even within capitalism, although it obviously
can't characterize capitalist production as a whole.

Let me provisionally take this as what you have in mind and try to
address your question. It seems to be theoretically the same as the
issue of a fully automated factory consisting of self-repairing and
self-directed machines and without labor inputs, which we also see to
some extent as being physically possible.

First, let me agree with you that a system that does not engage humans
can indeed be emergent and generate more than the sum of its inputs. A
tropical storm is an example.

The problem with this, however, is that a surplus value (a real
unobservable as they put it in terms of scientific realism) that
arises from a factory is not actualized until the product is sold, and
so it is important that the product have use value. That is, it must
be given qualities that address human needs. If the product served no
useful purpose (again, a theoretical possibility), it does not embody
surplus value as a _real potency_, but only as an abstraction.

A fully automated factory will ultimately prove inadequate to meet our
needs. It is chained to the past; it was built to address needs as
they existed at the time it was built. However, human development
implies emergent needs, and so the fully-automated factory will soon
become obsolete. Well, it might be objected, suppose that we
build into the factory an ability to poll the population to ask what
their current needs might be, and then it adjusts itself to address
these emergent needs. My reply would be, well you have just
reintroduced human labor in the very simple form of directing the
factory. Today we see forms of labor that don't amount to much more
than this. For example, managers of a nuclear power plant often do
little more than observe gauges and take notes.

True, this is not the hypothetical you offered, but I believe the logic
is the same. The combination of all inputs to production can work
together to generate emergent qualities as long as the system can
process energy. But are these emergent qualities the same as "surplus
value"? A tropical storm concentrates enormous power; would we call
that power surplus value? No, of course not. The word "value" always
refers to a relationship, and surplus "value" that relates to nothing
means nothing. What the relationship is in this case is a relation of
the product to human development and therefore emergent needs, and
this can't occur without human input.

This human input is not just a contribution to surplus value, sharing
that role with the means of production. It is human labor that gives
value to the product. The means of production only establish the
quantity and quality of that value. An automatic machine produces more
product per unit cost, and good quality raw materials lend themselves
to a better quality product. These enhance value, but don't create it.

I'm not at all sure I addressed your question.

Haines   

 

  

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