In the labour theory of value, how is use value determined...

In the labour theory of value, how is use value determined? How would you know where to send resources if you're basing resource allocation on use rather than profit?

Other urls found in this thread:

spliddit.org/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

In classical economics & Marx, use value is not talked about much. It is not determined, it is a prerequisite for something becoming a commodity; and then, assuming that sector is competitive, it is the amount of necessary labor which basically, roughly, determines the price. It is not assumed that there are complex interactions between the quality of the product and the production cost in determining the price. The use-value is seen like a switch. Does that thing have use-value? Yes? If so, we can now think about production cost without ever going back to thinking about use-value.

Why did use-value play such a small role in the writings of Marx? What would say in his defense? Probably this:

Does use-value really play such a small role in capitalism as is implied in those old writings? I think it does play some role and does show up in price when you strongly restrict your analysis, that is when you focus on how a group of consumers with similar disposable income decides between monopolistic suppliers.

You probably have seen this socialist slogan: "Production for use, not for profit." I'm afraid the people holding that banner have no economic model for achieving that. I do have some ideas myself: Planning uses an iterative approach with lexicographic distinctions between consumer items. Only after the basics are covered does the planning move on to the non-basic stuff. There can be more than two tiers, the point is that when it comes to inputs that can be used for different consumption-importance tiers, the "demand" coming from a higher tier has infinitely higher weight than all the tiers below combined, so only after we are sure the higher tier plan will be met 100 % can resources be allocated to the less important stuff, and likewise with planning fuckups and re-allocating inputs we never allow a higher tier to drop below 100 % to give something to a lower tier.

Replying to myself.
I should have rather said we never allow a higher tier to drop below 100 % of the planif it currently is at 100 %, and if it is currently only at 90 % or some other percentage, since shit happens, we don't allow it to drop any further by re-allocating resources to lower tiers either.

To add to the infographic, also because you can't just buy part of the earth, as every member of society owns an equal share of the planet.
Buying resources or private property is void because YOU are entitled to own as much of any resource as any other person, regardless of class.

Thanks for the response, but what this seems to suggest is this the left has no real plan for how a Socialist society would distribute resources or even compare them to eachother.

I've heard about something called "FCAL" or something spelled similarly which I've been told is a pretty standard organization method but I know little about myself.

You can compare use-values.
They aren't numbers though, they are the utility of a certain object.
Wool keeps you warm, so a use-value of wool is keeping you warm. However, the desirability of such use-value will always fluctuate, even down to the individual level.

It is of course a little difficult to know who desire or need something more than others, and that will be an issue to overcome, but one place we could start is to build a society where we don't both have people-less comes and homeless people and where we don't burn oranges rather than giving them to the starving, because destroying the food drives up market prices.

You mean FALC?

The labour theory of value EXPLAINS profit in value terms. Use-value is subjective [but from the capitalists prospective the use-value of a commodity is always just to turn a profit off its exchange-value] but exchange-value is always osculating around evolving objective market factors. Commodities producers face objective labour costs and machinery costs (its production labour costs - deprecation expenses over time). Actual market prices have other factors like rent and capitalization off property titles factored in but those are more political.

With weighing scales, measuring tapes, simple counting, etc.
Some examples of use-values:
- 1kg of rice
- 1m of cloth
- 50 yellow cars
- 1 kg of basmati rice
- 1 original painting by Picasso

This is probably not what you had in mind, so let met say it: use-value is absolutely not subjective.

You have one piece of chicken for each member of your family, and you're cooking tonight. How would you know if you must fry them or put them in oven?
Well, you ask. Or to put it in economic terms: you study the demand.

FALC is just fully automated luxury communism. It's partly a meme, partly a long term goal of achieving star-trek-esque society


Well Holla Forums sure doesn't (people here aren't experts we just like to pretend we are) but I've heard of some sources on socialist planning that I've been meaning to get to. Kalecki (socialist economist) has some essays on economic planning. I've also heard Paul Cockshott's towards a new socialism addresses some of these concerns.

Part of the issue is that most Marxists aren't really interested in explaining "here's exactly how every aspect of a communist society will work" and intentionally so. They believe as Marx did that communism is not a program to be established but something that will necessarily come about from the downfall of capitalism.

Think about how the capitalist system came about. No one said beforehand "here's how it's all gonna work," but rather the feudal system gave way to something different and after several violent revolutions allowed it to fully take hold, economists began the work of studying how this already-existing economy works. The invisible hand existed and was at work before Smith wrote about it.

shit. I keep forgetting to remove the "sage" from the name field. Such is life

you sure about that? I though I remembered Marx saying otherwise.

Organizing resource allocation could potentially be handled similarly to how the US Army (us military in general) handles resource allocation. BHA (basic housing allowance) is given based on the cost of housing in your area. BSA (basic soldiering allowance) is intended for buy uniforms and equipment for use in the military (largely overriding the older DX (damage exchange) system that allowed you to exchange your worn out issued clothing for newer but now doesn't normally accept the standard base uniform except in certain cases).

Those who do not qualify for their own housing stay in the barracks and their BHA is effectively cut off. Ft Hood even has an automatic 300$ a month reduction from your wages for those who live in the barracks but they in turn can eat at the DFAC (dining facility) for free.

If something like this were to be implemented, it would still cause obvious class disparities and the sheer amount of bureaucracy handling everything has made things highly inefficient but the roots of how lower enlisted are handled in and out of the barracks could be a solid starting point to build a far better system where single, low income workers with little ambition to either maintain a family or climb to more technically proficient leadership positions are basically taken care of by the state in exchange for light labor (without including accountability formation and all the extra training we do. My actual "work day" is 9am to 5pm with release at 4pm on Thursdays to allow soldiers a little extra time with family (its called family day at least) and weekends off. This doesn't include "details" either which are basically just security or low technical skill matinence.

Yes I am sure.

Your need for this or that use-value is of course subjective, but the use-value itself is an objective characteric of the product (fried chicken is fried chicken, wether you prefer grilled chicken or not).

When you trade an object, your are always after an use-value of the object you're receiving in exchange.

do capitalists not find the invisible hand to be an absurd concept or am I just blind ?

These are not use-values. These are things that have use-values.
But yeah, a use-value is not subjective, the desirability of any given use-value is.

No. If I give you two packs of rice you will have two different things, but with the same use-value.

Yeah that was my point anyway.

Exactly.
Therefore any amount of rice will have the same use-value, and that use-value will not be "rice" but "eating" for example.

You are talking about their value in relation to one another, correct?

It's even worse than that. Among some Marxists, you get bullied when you want to talk about a hypothetical socialist economy. It is like drawing Muhammed.

There is a niche in economics that does actually deal with issues of distributing tasks or goodies in some way that some sort of happiness measure is maximized, and it's pretty interesting, and Marxists have played no role whatsoever in its development, while even people from the far right have contributed. You can check out some interactive examples here and actually use this for some group decisions:
spliddit.org/


FALC, Fully Automatic Luxury Communism is just some shitty meme. The semi-jokey claim is that machines will solve all our problems.

It is a topic of extreme division. The anarchists, the leftcoms, the classic marxists, the leninists, and the maoists all want something that is radically different. They all want worker control of the means of production, but what that looks like is different in each of their minds.

Could you be a little more specific on how you study demand?

I suppose a part of it would be using statistics to see the rate of consumption for certain commodities, and extrapolating off of that, but is there anything else?

I feel like if there's a solid plan on how to properly gauge demand for resource allocation, I'm happy. Supply is already covered by labour time.

Well statistics indeed. And the orders from customers too. Nothing different from what is already used now really.

cost-of-production theory of value, obviousl, where cost of production includes the cost of recylcing, enviromental concerns and cost to fix other damaging industrial practices

ignore marginalists and labour (alone) retards

How does it include these?

well first let's think about the commodity not as a simple commodity, but as raw materials that have to be mined or collected, then transformed and then sold, so there is a determined cycle which each commodity has to follow

now we can assest how much of the externalities are not kept in check, both enviromentla, political, social and so on, and force the consumer to absorb the cost

well sure if its immediately implemented, but as we make the change towards production with less externalities to account for the cost will be lower

This is a policy you're talking about, not a theory of value.

Spliddit looks moderately promising as a reference source but a few of its claims look like they would fall apart or cause a massive amount of bureaucracy when scaled up. I could easily see conspiracies popping up to give certain groups more credit than what they are due if it were applied to more important matters. 30% of a group claiming each other did most the work still tips the scales in their favor a bit. Transparency after the fact could help spot corruption but how do you argue opinions when the work teams are segregated due to the nature of their roles in the finished product? When others aren't able to supervise each other consistently, it may lead to undue credit or lack there of.

Then there is the problem in its handling of assets where some pieces may only be worth much if they can be used in conjunction with others such as tools within a technical field or how some people may both value one item above all others to a similar degree.

Basically, it's about keeping materials in circulation, and thus, not being wasted, for as long as possible.

It follows that recycling is a mandatory cost of operation as it is nessicary to resupply rapidly depleting natural reserves. Monetary costs are second to actually keeping a supply to meet the demand present and thus the process of making the object and then reclaiming the materials for recycling determines the cost, not necessarily how popular it is to make. In fact, higher demand can mean lower prices as bulk manufacturing is exceptionally efficient.

This also means that if an object is cheap to recycle, it will cost less, but if it takes a lot of time effort and waste to clean up and reclaim, it will cost more.

Wood and metal can usually be reclaimed easily with a number of methods but petroleum products and chemical batteries tend to leave waste that we don't know what to do with yet as complex chemical compounds are dangerous and hard to recycle into usable materials that we might need. New technology may make this easier as it becomes critical in this system for it to be done, but as a result, selling those products will come at a massively increased.

I suppose I looked at that a bit pessimistically to start. Let me reitterate. It looks like a solid attempt to coordinate some automated common sense rules for distribution of credit for work and allocation of resources but needs refinement to go beyond the purposes of small group management. Perhaps when we finally can come to some consensus as to what the resource distribution and pay of the workers should look like, we can offer to give some ideas for such a project or perhaps make it our own if they get greedy or prove too inflexible.

That wasn't the claim. The claim was that they don't know what they want and they have a taboo against even thinking about it.


If the system uses labour vouchers, it's nothing particularly original: Consumer items are priced according to production cost initially. If the stuff sells badly, the price is lowered, and you produce less. If the stuff sells well, the price is raised and you produce more. There could also be a low-stakes lottery for the entire population, where it happens all the time that some people get temporary rebates for this or that thing, with that being used to help estimating how the numbers sold change when the price changes.


The people could directly vote on a few key plan aggregate targets with the median being the result. Such as how big the the maximum hourly remuneration should be relative to the minimum.

Is BAH, fam. Basic Allowance for Housing, you fucking newfag. :^)