shifting gears
Well-Known Member
What are the current child poverty figures (I'm on my phone so can't really check right now) - it's around 3.5million kids who are living in poverty isn't it?
Reading Marx's 'Capital': Tips, Questions, Theory, Support and Bookclub Bunfight...
- Thread starter Riklet
- Start date
Britons better off than ever as disposable incomes jump to record high
"But now, even after taking into account price rises and changes to family composition, disposable incomes are at a record high, according to the Office for National Statistics."
Maybe we should count our blessings a little more and whinge a little less. There are, of course, people who are struggling and they need help, but it's not all doom and gloom.
"But now, even after taking into account price rises and changes to family composition, disposable incomes are at a record high, according to the Office for National Statistics."
Maybe we should count our blessings a little more and whinge a little less. There are, of course, people who are struggling and they need help, but it's not all doom and gloom.
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krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Levels of child hunger and deprivation in UK among highest of rich nations
Nearly one in five UK children under the age of 15 suffers from food insecurity – meaning their family lacks secure access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food – putting it above the rich country average of 13%.
One in three UK children are in what Unicef calls “multi-dimensional poverty” – which measures deprivation in a number of areas linked to children’s rights including housing, clothing, nutrition and access to social and leisure activities.
Globally, according to World Bank/UNICEF, is 385 million.
Nearly 385 million children living in extreme poverty, says joint World Bank Group – UNICEF study
You appear to be suggesting that poverty is solely to blame for children not receiving adequate care.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There are several other reasons. According to the NHS :
"There were 15,074 hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of poisoning by illicit drugs. This is 6 per cent more than 2014/15 and 51 per cent more than 2005/06
2015/16 there were 8,621 hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of drug-related mental health and behavioural disorders. This is 6 per cent more than 2014/15 and 11 per cent higher than 2005/06.
Deaths related to drug misuse (England and Wales)In 2015 there were 2,479 registered deaths related to drug misuse. This is an increase of 10 per cent on 2014 and 48 per cent higher than 2005.
Deaths related to drug misuse are at their highest level since comparable records began in 1993.2015/16 there were 8,621 hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of drug-related mental health and behavioural disorders. This is 6 per cent more than 2014/15 and 11 per cent higher than 2005/06."
Parents with drug abuse problems are a major factor in many dysfunctional households where parents are neglecting their children.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Ever wondered why some people resort to drug taking, Larry?
Their reasons are not helpful to the kids that suffer as a result of their doing so.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Just stop talking to this prick - unless the plan is to help him ruin thread after thread.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
So, all in all, that whole capitalism/poverty isn't such a wonderful thing, is it, Larry?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
I'm currently reading Harvey's "Limits of Capital". Answers a lot of questions about how well Marx's ideas work given the developments of capitalism since Capital was written (spoiler: quite well).
There are some good summaries of disputes between Marxists (which, let's be honest, I will never read in the original). It's quite heavy going (much more so than his lectures or "Seventeen Contradictions" which I also read). But I'm not doing myself any favours by reading it in 15 minute bursts while standing up on a train in the morning either.
There are some good summaries of disputes between Marxists (which, let's be honest, I will never read in the original). It's quite heavy going (much more so than his lectures or "Seventeen Contradictions" which I also read). But I'm not doing myself any favours by reading it in 15 minute bursts while standing up on a train in the morning either.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I still think it's his best book - his most luxemburgist. I've been meaning for ages to collect a group of criticisms of his lectures on capital and post them up. I'll try and do this later in the week.
Idaho
blah blah blah
I was reading the first few chapters of capital - the bit about all value being derived from labour value - and was trying to think of counter examples and came up with these:
- streaming of a music file of an old hit song
- patents filed across a number of similar technologies
- search engine optimization to drive traffic to a particular site
These are all modern technologies where the vast bulk of the work is done mechanically and the small amount of human input can be scaled massively (and disproportionately) by machines to create very high exchange value.
I am guessing that this isn't covered by later chapters as it wasn't really a thing back then? I suppose in the examples it is electricity and computers being exploited rather than people?
- streaming of a music file of an old hit song
- patents filed across a number of similar technologies
- search engine optimization to drive traffic to a particular site
These are all modern technologies where the vast bulk of the work is done mechanically and the small amount of human input can be scaled massively (and disproportionately) by machines to create very high exchange value.
I am guessing that this isn't covered by later chapters as it wasn't really a thing back then? I suppose in the examples it is electricity and computers being exploited rather than people?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Idaho - it's hard to think of music which isn't produced by human labour. Without human labour there would be no music to stream. The hardware and the software for the streaming service is also a result of human labour, no?
Elsewhere in Capital, Marx does talk quite a bit about the relationship between distribution and value.
Elsewhere in Capital, Marx does talk quite a bit about the relationship between distribution and value.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
and surely who mines the rare earth minerals, who solders the circuit boards, who fashions the cases, who maintains and installs the machinery- then who does all the things that get the electricity into the computer?
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Also I think a search engine is a bit more akin to infrastructure (roads, railways, sewers etc) than a commodity.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It's shifting/redirecting value produced elsewhere. It's not producing value unless you take profit as value. And not to do that is sort of the point of the book.
Idaho
blah blah blah
Yes, once upon a time the rolling stones went into a studio and wrote and recorded some songs. But they have long since been massively paid, repaid and overpaid again for that relatively small amount of labour. What labour now goes into each of the million streams a week of "satisfaction"?
Likewise with the machines that stream. They would cost the same to stream even if "satisfaction" had never been written and the rolling stones never existed.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
The Rolling Stones have produced a commodity in the form of the song "Satisfaction". They were paid for this at the time and subsequently. Let's say at the time that 7" single which was used to distribute it sold for £1. Of this a certain amount of money went to the band, and other amounts went to the record company, shops, distribution company etc.
These days the song can be downloaded or streamed or whatever.
If it is downloaded from Itunes, a certain amount of the 79p goes to the band, a certain amount to the record company and a certain amount to apple etc.
It's the same as if it was streamed too, although the model is harder to understand. For every play of Satisfaction on Spotify - a certain amount of money (fractions of a pence) goes to the band, record company etc.
So the answer to your question is that unusually it is the same quantity of labour which is creating value over and over again.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Now it might be that a discussion of U75 favourite Ruddy Yurts would be a good counterpoint to this.
Yurts' classic "Honky Tonk Mailman" was famously recorded in one take and sold to unscrupulous music man One-Eyed Bob Fischer for 3 shotgun cartridges and a bottle of whiskey.
The track features on one of the radio stations in Grand Theft Auto for which a small licensing fee was paid to Rainbow Life PLC - a music conglomerate which has hoovered up the rights to a bunch of music when various other publishing companies went bust (who had in turn done deals with other people, including One-Eyed Bob Fischer).
I think we can agree that most of the value created in Grand Theft Auto is by programmers, designers, etc. But some of the value is created by the soundtrack. And some of that by the original human labour undertaken by Ruddy Yurts on that cold Mississippi morning. But all that Ruddy has had to show for it is the shotgun cartridges and whisky, all of which were used up that self same day.
Arguably there might be additional human labour involved in preserving the recording, contracts and also marketing the song - but none of that would create value without the song existing.
Yurts' classic "Honky Tonk Mailman" was famously recorded in one take and sold to unscrupulous music man One-Eyed Bob Fischer for 3 shotgun cartridges and a bottle of whiskey.
The track features on one of the radio stations in Grand Theft Auto for which a small licensing fee was paid to Rainbow Life PLC - a music conglomerate which has hoovered up the rights to a bunch of music when various other publishing companies went bust (who had in turn done deals with other people, including One-Eyed Bob Fischer).
I think we can agree that most of the value created in Grand Theft Auto is by programmers, designers, etc. But some of the value is created by the soundtrack. And some of that by the original human labour undertaken by Ruddy Yurts on that cold Mississippi morning. But all that Ruddy has had to show for it is the shotgun cartridges and whisky, all of which were used up that self same day.
Arguably there might be additional human labour involved in preserving the recording, contracts and also marketing the song - but none of that would create value without the song existing.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
I have to say that I also went through quite a few hmmm but... moments when I was reading Capital. I don't think that it really helps with your understanding of the book though. It's far better to go with it and stick to the basics of commodities produced on a production line.
Marx himself comes up with all sorts of caveats (the assumption that commodities exchange at their value for example) - because he is trying to paint a general picture of the system as a whole, not an all encompassing framework that everything will fit completely comfortably in.
With those that I know, their economic situation was certainly a contributory factor.
They had far more money than sense.
Idaho
blah blah blah
Isn't it incumbent on any system-of-the-world explanation to readily incorporate and explain new and odd phenomenon? In science, things that don't fit the model usually are the same things that show the model to be defective.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Yes, absolutely. But you will get to a lot of this stuff if you persevere with Marx. (And then Limits of Capital which I mentioned above). The first few chapters are the foundation but not the entire thing...
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
There are several things going on when a record is sold and resold. You’re not just selling the song the Rolling Stones wrote, or even just the performance of it. You’re selling the various commodities which are the single on 45, the first UK vinyl album it was on, “Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)”, subsequent compilations, CD releases, the MP3, the streamed broadcast of the song. Each of these is in itself a commodity, and each involves a mechanical process to oversee – transferring the song in the pressing process, manufacturing the physical product, or the equipment needed to transmit the product. Capital at each advance in technology needs to recuperate the value locked into the machinery. Each new iteration of Satisfaction is a new commodity. If it were not, it would have no exchange value. I have bought two copies of Satisfaction myself – on pre-recorded cassette and on CD. Each was a separate commodity. If I listen to it on Spotify, that too is a commodity (although a far more ephemeral commodity than a 45” single. So, my subscription, or the advertising revenue in the “free” version, is in part paying for a service, which is itself a commodity, like a haircut, but also for the machine-minding production process involved). Which brings us to intensification.
In addition to each new commodity, we also have new forms of intensification. We can see each new technology – vinyl, CDs, streaming – as new ways of organising the intensification of labour: new iterations of the machine technology used by capitalists to change and regulate the intensity of the labour process. Workers at each stage are the machine minders, in some senses an appendage to the labour process.
You’ll find discussion of this in this section: Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I — Chapter Fifteen
“In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.
‘The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus’.” (p548).
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
In later chapters of Capital volume one Marx does talk about the increase in productivity brought about by factories / new mechanisation of industry.
So it needed less workers to produce more wealth/ profit. I remember in one part of the Capital Marx pointing out that there was an increase in the servant class in his time. Increased wealth was not evenly distributed. Less workers were needed to produce it. But the profits were appropriated by the bourgeois. The workers no longer needed in productive labour producing surplus value could enlarge the servant class.
So there is a difference between labour input and value. It's not about the number of workers involved in productive work.
I think Marx made distinction between workers in a factory and those not directly producing a commodity. A servant would not be putting labour into a commodity which is then exchanged.
In Marx time the population rendered surplus due to mechanisation and increased productivity could be sent out of the country as emigrants.
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Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
I have a question about the labour theory of value. The theory, as I understand it, says that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time that is required to produce that commodity. My question is: what is 'value' in this context? At the beginning of capital, Marx draws a distinction between use value and exchange value, and I had assumed that in the context of the labour theory of value he is talking about the later. However, he goes on to give an example of an uncultivated piece of land that can be sold at a price even though no labour went in to it because of its location etc. And he also says
“things which in and for themselves are not commodities, things such as conscience, honour, etc., can be offered for sale by their holders, and thus acquire the form of commodities through their price. Hence a thing can, formally speaking, have a price without having a value. The expression of price is in this case imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics.”
I am not clear what is meant by value in the context of the LTV and how it differs from price and how, or if, price differs from exchange value.
(Am I correct in understanding LTV as saying that only labour can *increase* value rather than only labour can *create* value? That various raw materials etc. have value independently of the labour that goes in to their transformation into commodities)
“things which in and for themselves are not commodities, things such as conscience, honour, etc., can be offered for sale by their holders, and thus acquire the form of commodities through their price. Hence a thing can, formally speaking, have a price without having a value. The expression of price is in this case imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics.”
I am not clear what is meant by value in the context of the LTV and how it differs from price and how, or if, price differs from exchange value.
(Am I correct in understanding LTV as saying that only labour can *increase* value rather than only labour can *create* value? That various raw materials etc. have value independently of the labour that goes in to their transformation into commodities)
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Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Jeff Robinson
I'm still quite new to all this myself so might not be that great at explaining it. Hopefully others can chip in.
In terms of the Labour Theory of Value you are better off thinking about value as exchange value, yes.
Later on in Capital there are explanations of other ways that value forms. For example in volume 3 there is a section on ground rent - why some pieces of land are more valuable than others. And interest, speculation and so on.
Price can be different from exchange value, but for the purposes of Volume 1 it is assumed that commodities exchange at their values. So in vol 1 price = exchange value. (And then in the other volumes different assumptions are used).
I'm still quite new to all this myself so might not be that great at explaining it. Hopefully others can chip in.
In terms of the Labour Theory of Value you are better off thinking about value as exchange value, yes.
Later on in Capital there are explanations of other ways that value forms. For example in volume 3 there is a section on ground rent - why some pieces of land are more valuable than others. And interest, speculation and so on.
Price can be different from exchange value, but for the purposes of Volume 1 it is assumed that commodities exchange at their values. So in vol 1 price = exchange value. (And then in the other volumes different assumptions are used).
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
For Marx, as I understand him, value and socially necessary labour time are the same thing. He is using use-value and exchange-value to define value, and value, he says, is socially necessary labour time. These can't be separated out in the commodity. They're all there. But use-value is what he describes in order to arrive at exchange-value, which is the bearer of socially necessary labour time.
I have a table. In order to benefit from its exchange-value I sell it to you. I no longer have its use-value, you do. But the value that facilitated that exchange is the socially necessary labour time embedded in the table. The value as it is understood in everyday parlance.
