The Transformation Problem

I'm pretty convinced he didn't give it enough thought to give us a good answer. It's my opinion that the law of value of capitalism would continue under socialism(as a transition period to communism), albeit with democratically chosen exceptions for subsidies and with worker/social ownership.

I would agree in your assessment that SNLT is only discover-able through a market, which is why I say we should keep markets for the most part, as a necessary tool to check economic planning (whether by cooperatives or by the state), check quality of goods, and to figure out socially necessary labor time. Albeit, with limits on advertising so as to prevent gross distortions of value.

Of course but you aren't a Marxist. The law of value persisting in ML countries is one of the reasons Marxist call it state capitalism. Under the law of value the worker is still alienated from his means of production, capitalist structures persist.

Marx was against the LTV in the sense he acknowledged it only existed as a result of commodity production in a market which is what he wanted to abolish. In socialism things would be produced for their use value within a planned economy. This would probably end up looking like the means of production more or less, being the same as the means of consumption in terms of industrial output and how much of that is consumed.

If you consider yourself a Marxist you are not understanding Marx's critique of Capital and pol-econ if you think the point of Capital is to argue that we can somehow know value without markets and thus don't need markets. Marx is very much against the very concept of value and SNLT disciplining labor.

If not, lel

Well sure, my reasons for calling ML countries state capitalist is that they did not have worker/social ownership. But in general, alienation is a necessary part of large economic organizations, so I think a certain amount of alienation should be tolerated.

I understand his critique I just think it's wrong because there is no real alternative besides a post scarcity economy. What I like about Marx's analysis is his theory of surplus value.

Alright, I can respect your pragmatism. At least you're not an ultra-leftist. pic related

Wait a sec, what's that pic say? That SNLT has nothing to do with exchange value? Why?

I'm playing devils advocate but wanna explain why things weren't owned by the workers? In Yugoslavia the state very much existed and was a coercive force and Tito has been called a "benevolent dictator".

Post scarcity is where you get "from each according to his ability" blah blah. Marx very much envisioned lower stage communism as existing without the law of value and without post scarcity.

So much revisionism.

Small correction. Take "reveals the real value" to mean "sets the real value". Reveal misleadingly implies the value is already metaphysically there in the product, which is Marx's mistake.

lol no. Winfield doesn't care about what Marx thought he was proving, he's just autistic about Hegel's Logic, which Marx tries to use for his own purposes, but breaks.

The workers did not control the state or the means of production. Yugoslavia at least allowed control over the MOP, but it did so in a flawed manner (they had control but not responsibility), and yes the State was a coercive force which was not controlled effectively by the workers and thus that would be a subject of correction in future attempts to market socialism. But since the state controlled the MOP in soviet economies, and the workers did not control the state, there was not socialism.

And yeah to continue on about why the Soviet Union being State Capitalist that only makes sense from a Marxist perspective. There are lots of systems where the workers did not own the MOP, but that doesn't make them capitalism.

You can't use the state capitalism meme unless you're a Marxist, you can just say you disagree with how they went about accomplishing socialism. State Capitalism is used because the law of value persisted and the MOP outpaced the MOC.

Well my position is that it's not socialism, I just call it state capitalism because it seemed like the most apt description, I don't know what else to call that method of production. Just statism? That's rather silly.

That SNLT is determined in the market, not in production. It explains how a fucking iphone sells for $600 when it costs $200 to make and ship, yet people don't feel ripped.

Well I think it's much easier to just go ahead and say that market's allow for an interaction between SNLT, dead labor, class structure, and use value to create exchange. Over-determinism ftw!

As my first post sorta points to SNL

SNLT itself is most useful as an abstraction which both ontologically explains where value comes from, and is what would determine prices all other things being

equal

I'm having trouble trying to figure out what to call the USSR from a non-marxist perspective. I suppose you could have multiple types of socialism but you could just call it "authoritarian socialism". Worker councils called Soviets existed but there was hierarchy within the state that took precedent over the Soviets.

wow I feel stupid for pressing post so many times on accident

The logic doesn't work that way, though. Price begins as arbitrary. SNLT doesn't explain exchange, it isn't needed to explain it at all. What SNLT has to do with is market competition driving down prices by pressures to mechanize and pay the least for labor of any kind. The value of labor-power is a social determination in the class struggle.

I would prefer not to call it socialism, tbh, partly for the reason you mention, almost all power workers had was either a token, or due to erratic political pressures

But obviously price is not arbitrary, we can trace its roots to the factors I mentioned. I'm not saying SNLT explains prices, but that it is apparent in prices and influences them, thus, if all other aspects of production in exchange were equal, prices would reflect SNLT.

Such as?

Socialism is if anything the dismantlement of the law of value. This obviously doesn't happen immediately but there's definitely no socialist law of value.

and determining the necessary labor time for production doesn't imply that the law of value is still operating, after all there is no real "value" anymore as things aren't exchanged.

Then you will be forced to use the capitalist law of value in transition or prices which are arbitrary and don't reflect costs or demand.

There is a myth that capital is about resource allocation efficacy. It's not. Quit believing this bullshit.

The "capitalist" law of value is the LTV.

How did the law of value operate in the Soviet Union then?

Explain please.

And what, are you going to have a socialist police force come and gulag anyone who so much as barters goods? You're literally buying into the neoliberal myth that capitalism is just trade guys!

No. But the means of production being produced will match the means of consumption.

I'm well aware that it is mostly due to class hierarchy, but you cannot deny that prices are also needed to express costs. In the Soviet Union prices did not and as a result there were often shortages thanks to demand basically becoming an externality.

Soviet Union firms were actually as efficient as allocation as Western firms desu.

And also the law of value operated in the USSR.

And here you buy into the other capitalist myth of equalibrium. In order for there not to be shortages, more of a good must be produced than is consumed because unless you pre-determine what everything is everyone needs, and where they will get it from, you cannot match up demand and consumption perfectly

I know what study you are referring to and I'm pretty sure it was not about the ussr but other countries in the communist bloc

Capital exists only to expand its value. This can be done through more than selling more than your competition. It can be done by you spooking the buyers into buying status on a regular product, by bribing the government officials to give you monopoly status, etc.

Capital doesn't give a fuck about efficiency except for its costs, but it doesn't care about your costs. It'll dump as much as it can on you. It is efficient for profit, not material goods.

It wasn't helped by soviet economists trying to make prices equal to snalt or the gov overpaying workers for political reasons

Your missing the point, in order for capital to expand the prices must be greater than costs. Costs are expressed because prices must always be more than them for there to be profit and reproduction

No it was the USSR. jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/

Producing more of a good than is consumed means exploiting the worker for surplus value. I would say we're now at the point where technology can simulate a market economy efficiently enough.

Yes, and the cost is cut by exploiting the worker.

Capital costs are always labor power, labor power is always arbitrary to the class struggle, thus all prices are nothing but beating the ultimate cost of labor power.

Capital doesn't give a shit about efficacy for anything other than beating the bottom line and exceeding it as much as it can.

He's asking how you determine how much of someone a given group of X needs without price signals which is a valid question and is related the ECP Mises postulated.

My point is that nowhere is there really a metaphysical basis like SNALT to determine prices against which Capital is fighting against. It just has to, and does, fight against the price of labor-power in the entire chain of labor. It can sell its product as prestige, it can sell it as luxury, it can do far more than just cut SNALT and wages to increase profits, none of which have anything to do with efficiency other than profit maximizing.

You don't, you never have. What anything costs is just what people value a labor to be. Why the fuck is an hour of a dr's time worth more than a miner's time? You could invoke the metaphysical abstraction of SNALT which is the same as invocating marginal utility, or you can accept there really is no real reason other than social perception and agreement. Dr.s haven't always been so highly paid y'know.

He's not talking about capital specifically. I think he just means a market, an example of supply and demand to make sure MOP match MOC.

Dude listen we're not talking about the value of labour vs another type of labour we're talking about allocation of resources within a socialist economy without price signals or always producing a surplus of material by exploitation of the workers.

Price signals mean one thing, and one thing only: people want >this< shit, so get in on it and capture it by any means possible negro. Lowering costs AND maximizing value is the game.

So how do you suppose to allocate resources in a Socialist economy?

You don't. Because economies are not about allocating resources, they're about meeting desires. The shit people want is arbitrary and changes all the time. "Resource" allocation is fucking impossible, we're not goddam animals who consume the same shit for all time.

I'm a socialist and there are genuine solutions to what he's asking but you….

You don't understand the economy, i don't give a shit about economics, pseudoscience.

Now I know why no ones like us anymore. The Economic problem is scarcity. You can only have so much of X and so much time to produce X. Scarcity will be in effect until we have super robots and we have to work around it. Knowing this how do you allocate your limited resources( remember SCARCITY) efficiently?

Scarcity of what, you dumb fuck? Do you not realize that our animal needs are literally the last fucking thing we want in capitalism?

What is the fucking need of apples? What is the fucking need of phones? What is the fucking need of ps4's? Scarcity of what? Shit you WANT.

People in poor areas riot, what do they steal? Is it food? Is it clothes? Nope. They steal tvs, computers, cell phones, etc. They steal shit they wanted, not shit they ever needed.

Everything. Food, water, minerals.

We all need food, water and shelter.

And this is relevant to the economic problem how?

Yeah? Tell me what we need ps4s for. Or phones. Or anything beyond the stone age. I'm waiting to know why humans need these things.

I'll make it easier on you. We need food, water, medicine and shelter. How do you allocate these four things and the materials needed to make them in a socialist economy?

What's the need? Do you die without them? How did cave people do it? How did they live without all these NEEDS?! We NEED this shit man! We need to allocate these PS4s! We just NEED to allocate these fucking pies, what will humans do without pies?! Or Levis, or apple computers, or cameras, or fucking internet. The species will disappear!

You aren't a Marxist right?

I'm not a retard arguing from a bad position called "resource efficiency". Marx's arguments don't revolve around it, they revolve around the freedom to control our labor and use it as we please with no compulsion of need by nature or by another human being's compulsion upon us.

You're a fucking retard if you simply refuse to discuss the logistics of a socialist economy. If you think that controlling labor has nothing to do with nature or that some how there will be a unifying set of things society will want then you're an even bigger retard.

The truth is you must account for individual wants, even for the minority. Especially the minority! How do you suppose we determine in a socialist society how to produce goods required by the minority, that you don't need until the one day you do?

Futhermore, resources are not unlimited, if for no other reason because labor time is not unlimited. Saying opportunity costs do not exists is a utopian fantasy that brings us back into post-scarcity lala-land.

>It is the market which reveals what the real value is, there is no disparity of transforming values to prices since prices reveal values and a sale retroactively determines what the recognized >actual< SNLT is.
How would you model price ratios of products corresponding to their ratios of socially necessary labor time if the model also has different organic composition of capital in different sectors and the same profit rate in each sector?

These two statements contradict each other.

Do you complain to your thermometer when it's too hot? After all, Marx believed that an already existing metaphysical temperature is merely revealed by thermometers, whereas a philosophy ace such as yourself knows the thermometers themselves create the temperature.

Yep, it's idealism.

No, he ain't.

you are a retard if you don't take into account costs of production, be it labour time, amount of resources, logistics, etc.

you don't, actually? Socialism is a planned economy.

Well the Soviet Union was capitalist after all.

Why would you barter goods? That doesn't make sense.

Do I even want to know?

NOW THIS IS SHITPOSTING

Someone has something you want and they won't give it to you unless you give them something in return.

jej

how is your planned economy working?
does plan not take into account labour time, available resources, distance to place of consumption, demand in particular products?

Obviously, not him, but you can shift wealth within the society.

Even if producing, let's say toothpaste, costs 3 roubles, you can still sell it for 1 rouble and cover the difference by increasing price of some luxuries a bit.

You don't even need Planned Economy for this.

No natural ground for price, and price driven down by competition aren't contradictory. In the general economy we enter with prices already set(usually) which become inputs and this for. The ground floor of reproduction. Its still fundamentally arbitrary, it just necessarily follows from an arbitrary ground price.

Think of production as a physical process, a cycle where some things are inputs into their own production. Steel is used in the production of steel itself.

In a world where production inputs are bought, price ratios must be within certain boundaries for reproduction to happen. This is not something entirely determined by the strength of unions relative to the bosses or the whims of consumers, since there are technical constraints.

Facts about production as a physical process have an influence on market prices, these facts make themselves felt and are clumsily and indirectly revealed by the market, not created by it.

Surely A.W. will post an intelligent rebuttal and show how Marx is wrong about everything, and not be an assblasted pomo fagot that opens yet another passive-aggressive thread about how you'll all niggers who don't read no theory. Read ten thousand pages of Hegel and then you will see that value is created in the thermometer, err, market, and time doesn't exist, and other important insights.

I heard Laws of Chaos by Farjoun and Machover claims a close correspondence between profits and values and also transformation problem (didn't read it myself). They deny that there is a strong tendency towards a unified profit rate.

What is their argument? Surely it is obvious that capital is (somewhat) fluid?

...

In this you already assume a full economy where the arbitrary price of labor-power is already set and the products of labor already taken into production elsewhere. Know what this is called? Circular thinking. You assume your conclusion as part of your proof for the conclusion.

Just because you're butthurt doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Not much "argument" being put against me, try harder y'all.

>In this you already assume a full economy
A what? Do you mean a full-employment economy, perhaps?
You really take idealism to the next level. Production is circular IN REAL LIFE. Hens come out of eggs and eggs come out of hens, whether that offends our master debater and philosopher king A.W. or not. Steel is used in the production of steel itself. Food isn't simply an end product, a final output (as how somebody working in retail might see it), humans are fed and human work itself is an input in producing food. The ongoing REproduction process where outputs are sold and that income is used to buy the inputs, again and again, cannot have just any arbitrary set of prices.

don't bother replying to stupid libertarian faggots who haven't read a word of marx/hegel in their entire lives

You presume the economy to prove the economy. It's logic. You are making a LOGICAL argument, right? If not, you're just stating mere contingent happenings.

Yeah, he totally assumes that the existing economy exists. What a hypocrite.

Thanks for your insight on the transformation problem, AW! I love you!!

nice :^)

IIRC it was based on statistical observation.