Labour Certificates and artists

Many Marxian economists suggest that a system whereby people are given certain "certificates" to confirm that they had worked so many hours, and then these could be used in exchange for consumer goods that took an equal amount of hours to produce. It is suggested that only in this way can you avoid the exploitation of workers; that is, only then can you pay them fairly for their work. Instead of part of the value they produce being siphoned off to the non-productive members of society, they instead keep all of the profits of their labour.

However, how does this apply to an artist? For example, in a capitalist system, an artist could spend many days on a work of art, and then exchange it for money. While that money may not have the same value as the hours he worked, he does get something out of it.

However, in a society based upon hours worked, how can you compare 6 hours spent working on a painting with 6 hours out on a farm, 6 hours in a laboratory, or 6 hours as a bus driver? Further, how can you prove an artist spent as much time on a painting as he suggests he did?

Nobody would suggest artists provide nothing to society. Art is of great value to many people, and certainly enriches the lives of plenty of individuals. I just don't understand how you could claim that the amount of labour on a painting is equivalent to that on a farm, and how you could go about determining how long an artist spent painting at home.

If you decide to define it as a hobby instead of a job, then must we then decide that despite contributing to society with his work, he deserves no compensation for it? That seems unfair.

"Art"

Hey STEM cucks! I get paid the same as you! Give me muh Certificates comrade!

WAKE ME UP

"art" is NOT socially necessary labour. If you want to be artist that's great, but what wrong would be done if you'd have to work one day a week in order to support yourself? If however some commune democratically decide to have such socdem policies, it's fine by me.

The whole point of the voucher system is to distribute from the producers of consumer goods to the producers of intangible and non-consumable goods; it is the latter factors that initially are difficult in a production-for-use system. Using a voucher system, producers of consumer goods are allocated less than they made so that the surplus can be used to nourish the producers of intangible and non-consumer goods and also those unable to work. That takes care of point A as long as you're not talking to one of those autists that thinks communism is just about remedying "injustice" of worker exploitation or whatever.

As to point B, some work is more valuable than others,yes. This is not remedied through the voucher system; the voucher system works as a rationing system to ensure everyone works and is nourished, not aiming to ensure people get properly rewarded. 1 hour of labor under a plan gives you 1 hour of labor vouched, regardless of whether you were working as a doctor or a fry cook. Rather, I'd have those who contributed uniquely valuable labor more than what is reflected in their vouchers to be rewarded, if possible by enhanced social prestige and more people being willing to do things with them and if not working their desires into economic plans in the first place.

Finally, Communism aims to make a world where people are republicans and care about improving the common good, not just theirselves. As time progresses more and more people will do so and these problems of motivation and "fair" allocation become less and less excellent.

(this is just my personal view, might not be mainstream)

The only way your counter to point A is fair is if the decision to strip the workers of the means of exchange for certain goods is if the decision is taken democratically.

That is, the people in society agree to sacrifice some of their wealth to ensure others can go on creating art, literature, music etc., otherwise aren't you exploiting the workers by taking from them what they laboured for?

This. Ideally, SNLT reductions means artists can contribute their fair share of necessary labor and have enough leisure time to pursue art.

Is journalism and writing considered "Art"?

Shouldn't they also make the same amount of certificates as a STEM worker or a laborer who grows food, or manufactures engines?(you can criticize art and its function in capitalist society without resorting to Holla Forums shit)

Fucking STEM autists, Jesus

No.
Space imperialist technofascist communism NOW.

Praise Howard.

Oh, and to answer your question OP, I imagine it'd work a lot like commissions. The DotP would hire artists for a certain time period to do a piece of art. Then they'd be payed accordingly for that time frame.

It's not that I hate art or something, but communism provides the leisure time for everyone to be able to actually dedicate themselves to art instead of having a small leisure class of artists who live off the labor of others.

Not everyone wants or needs to be an artist.

That's like saying "communism provides the leisure time for everyone to be able to actually dedicate themselves to plumbing instead of having a small leisure class of plumbers who live off the labor of others"

If you aren't an artist then frankly you have no soul.

Plumbing is socially necessary labor, you can't organize plumbing based on free time. You can for art. Art as work is actually a restraint on it.

Stop.

Art IS socially necessary labor. Point to a single industrialized society that doesn't have a high demand for artistic labor time.

Capitalism isn't sentimental. If artists get paid, that means their labor is socially necessary.

You stop divorcing yourself from your species essence.

Humans have an innate need to be creative. Creativity is not synonymous with artistic and there are plenty of ways you can create without being a painter or a sculptor.

If whatever you're creating isn't created artistically then you're a robot doing a robot's work. By thinking there is a dichotomy between "artistic" and "creativity" then it already sounds like there's little hope for you.

I don't think art should be organized on the same principles as under capitalism. Working hours would be a lot less, people could dedicate themselves to art in their free time.
Seriously, art is rarely worth it as something you can live off full-time, so it'd be better to have people do regular labor and have free time for art.

maybe the artist can occasionally do some other form of work?

that said, it is not like we have a reason to force everyone to work all the time. our productivity should be high enough that we don't need to ration everything with labour vouchers. the artist would probably get their food and clothes whether they contribute anything or not.

if they need special tools for their art or something, why can't they volunteer to do some labour helping old people or cleaning up our streets or something? that would maybe earn them the exta voucher for acquiring special tools. or maybe, if we as a society deem art necessary, we can have some sort of a storage place where we keep art necessities that artists can use/take hold of freely.

Kropotkin was right labor vouchers are gay full speed ahead to communism faggots.

The labor voucher idea imo is antiquated and was a workaround developed with 19th century tech in mind. It was a given that a large number of people would still have to work to realize socialism, the idea of full automation of many industries was far away, and food production was not as well understood as it is today.

All your questions are really problems with trying to incentivize production in general - there will be people who try to game the system, there needs to be monitors to check who is doing what, and the whole thing starts to involve a lot of babysitting. But perhaps it is inevitable, so long as people are compelled to work a lot of shitty jobs no one really wants to do. That's the price of civilization; someone has to pick up garbage or work the night shift, and it is not practical to build robots to do everything.

Really though, no one said the voucher system had to pay equal amounts for each hour of labor, or that it had to even be paid by the hour. All that matters is that what needs to be done, is done. The vouchers are not intended to incentivize everything; I imagine the artist in most cases would be granted some resources in order to survive and realize his art, or would just get the same food/shelter everyone receives and pursue art of his own volition.

The whole point of the socialist project is to get rid of the notion of a "job" and social division of labor as much as possible, and design our society's activity around that goal rather than the goal of profit (and thus a lot of people working just to increase profit margins for dubious commodities / services). In practice, yeah, there are going to be tasks that people don't like to do, and it's not so easy to just divide those tasks among many different people in some cases if they necessarily need to be performed by one person for a continuous period (for example, an IT project involving a master systems analyst, where too many people working on the project would never be able to form a coherent result; or, a night shift stocking clerk job that most people don't want to disrupt their sleep schedule to perform).

just gonna leave this here

Tbh I think people need to be a little less strict with the whole idea of labour vouchers. For example I don't think that goods should necessarily cost their exact number of hours of production, or that hours of work should be the only factor in determining payment (after all not all labour is equal). I think that the important part is that the vouchers be non transferable and have an expiration date, so as to end the cycle of capital and prevent excess accumulation. On that note, I think a system of artistic patronage would be a good way to ensure artists are able to support themselves and contribute to society's culture. If their art can be endorsed by a certain number of people then they can simply be given a grant that will pay them so they can continue to create.

(cont from ) IMO the Law of Value is not a fucking rubric that we want to follow. That's what really bugs about the labor voucher concept - sure I understand there needs to be a fair way to compensate people for their work, but it just seems like a recreation of wage labor if it's taken as the model for future society.

Another thing I take issue with is Marx's concept of skilled labor, and how people try to determine which jobs are worth what. I think either Marx and Engels fucked up or I/others are misreading them. As far as I can tell, the only thing that differentiates skilled labor from unskilled is that extra resources (value) MAY be required to create it (and this will differ from person to person - someone might be slow and require a lot of education to pick up an education, and another might be an autodidact who needs only books and time; and then some skills are just derived from someone's natural traits rather than any value requirement to produce the skill). Obviously, when looking at the labor pool as a whole resources go into education and that does have a cost to society as a whole, but it's impossible to take two people from the same field and say they both have the exact same value put into them, because everyone learns at different rates and in different ways. So far as the price of skilled labor in the market is concerned, it's purely a matter of supply/demand, haggling with workers so they stay on the job, and for some professionals bribing them with a part of the surplus value so that they believe their company and the system itself is sound (especially important for those professionals whose job is to uphold the capitalist system, like police and lawyers). But I don't think there is inherent value locked up in skilled labor - indeed in a footnote to Capital Marx states that "skilled labor" is partly illusory, and that in a population where much of the labor pool is unhealthy due to deteriorating conditions, someone who is strong and healthy becomes a skilled worker just by virtue of being relatively strong and healthy. So in closing, I think all you can say is that some skilled labor is necessarily more mentally complex than others / requires an unusual physique, but it's impossible to accurately quantify levels of complexity (or indeed, for some skilled professions, make an accurate judgement about the quality of the labor performed).

Going back to the original topic though - as far as I see it, the labor voucher idea is basically a bribe to get people working, not "fair compensation". Sure you can make arguments about scarcity, but what if everyone were to put in their fair share of labor and not enough scarce stuff was available? That's really the problem with retaining individualist incentives, or producing lots of consumer goods which would be expensive in world resources if 7-8 billion people lived at that standard.

What I wouldn't want is to introduce a rigid hierarchy of people based on division of labor (supposedly on the basis of "merit"), but that's what I'm afraid would happen if the need for incentives is taken to extremes.

What would be a good answer in the interim between capitalism and full communism? I have no good, coherent idea, to be honest.

There's this thing called grants, famalam.

I prefer Shermans.

Literally Paul Joseph Watson tier.


That's not going to work. I know enough people working in the art business and what you are proposing is not realistic. Many art managers, gallery owners and curators work full-time, and in many cases even longer than an average person.

Some what on this topic
how will fashion be carried out in this system?

There's a neat book called Style Deficit Disorder that talks about the origins of Shinjuku fashion magnates and the culture of street fashion. I would imagine it would go something like that, where make their own stuff out of constituent parts, and those that care to tailor clothing for themselves and others.

I think the massive amount of accumulation we're experiencing will help this along, that there's already so much existing apparel that those that don't really care about fashion and just want things to wear could go to their (hopefully local) clothing dispensary (for lack of a better term) and take from what other people are no longer using, sort of akin to thrift shop culture that exists now, only without porky getting his cut out of it.