What the fuck guys?

What the fuck?

So let's say they worked 10 hours on the first day and 10 hours on the second day. On the first day they extracted 600 kg of coal, and on the second day, 1200 kg. Let's also assume both days are representative of the average results of all the mines in the country, since that's what we're interested in.

So, at the end of the first day, the value of 1 kg of coal is 10 hours / 600 = 1 minute.
At the end of the second day, the value of 1 kg of coal is 10 hours / 1200 = 30 seconds.

In other words, the value of all the coal in the country, including the coal extracted on the first day, has dropped by 50%.

Not really. What matters is the *socially necessary* labor time, which is measured by the average time it takes to make a cake. If you made a cake that took you this long to make, then you would have to sell it for a very high price to justify the value of it, but since this value is far above the socially necessary labor time for a cake then you won't be able to sell it for a price to justify your time. You see, Marx was interested in how societies function and reproduce, and for society to survive the producers need to sell their commodities at a price that matches to the labor-time they invested in it, i.e. a price that matches the value, otherwise you've worked too much for too little and will probably starve. But no one will buy a cake that costs a million bucks when there's one right around the corner that costs 3$. So you can't just sell it at whatever price you want - you need to sell it at a price that's close to the market price, and that is the socially necessary labor time, which comes from an average of all the labor-times of all the producers. If you produce at a labor-time much above that average, then this means you are basically wasting your time and being very inefficient so either you have to move to another profession or perish. Basically it doesn't matter what the value of every individual cake is, because you can't really see it on the cake itself, what matters is the labor time you invested vs. the labor time everyone else invested, and you need your labor time to match the others' otherwise you are being too inefficient to be allowed to work. What matters to Marx is not what you as an individual did once, but the ability to reproduce your work because that's how societies function.

you are fucking retarded OP

this is the only argument in favour of planned production that I can ever understand tbh

you see if you only need X amount of coal and you can extract it in 10 hpours, and the next day you can extract that same amount in 5 hours, it doesn't make sense that you would need to work the extra 5 hours at all

the value of coal does change, but it doesn't simply makes the coal cheaper, it makes it useless, the surplus extraction would technically be useless, at least that day, because you would have already mined the necessary amount, meaning the next day you would only need to work for 5 hours

unless you have a market economy is that the value of the coal would get cheaper

But obviously you can sell the coal that's a higher quality for a higher price. And on a higher level of abstraction, which I think was what Marx was doing, certainly quality must factor into how society value's a commodity.

Typo, sorry

Also, if I wasn't clear earlier, the amount of coal extracted was the same. It's just that on the second day there was something about the coal as a substance that gave it a higher quality, for example it had a better concentration of carbon.

The LTV isn't incompatible with supply and demand but rather an explanation of how supply and demand works

I think you're also missing a part of my argument. I'm not talking about the amount changing, certainly if the workers became more efficient or the amount changed, so too would the market price and SNLT change. I'm just talking about quality.

Also, in capitalism it would make sense to work those extra 5 hours because you'd be able to charge less for the same amount and thus attract more customers and thus sell more.

Under planned production you may or may not work the extra five hours depending on the system of incentives enforced.

coal therefore must be measured in calories and so on, not in kilograms alone

But then what of things such as dresses? A dress generally agreed to be ugly must surely have less value than one generally agreed to be pretty?

only if you think of acquiring a dress as a commodity exchange

if you instead create your own dress and get it done according to what satisfies your needs the most, all dresses would have the same use-values for the individual

only when they are exchanged their values can be compared

Wrong, try again

But exactly, SNLT was made to describe where value comes from in capitalism, from a situation where exchange occurs. I think that to be more accurate, SNLT must be modified so that use value is not just a pre-requisite but a factor, as use-value by its nature comes in degrees.

I think it's generally thought that a quality product requires higher SNLT. What you're saying doesn't conflict the SNLT.

Yes, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes, better products will be created almost entirely by chance as is the case with the coal miners.

This

And so they get to sell the product above its value. SNLT is a trend that fixes the value of commodities across all industries. Being able to produce something of higher quality faster means you have an edge in the market because you can sell it for above its value. The miners are selling it above its value, but the SNLT required for coal of higher quality has not changed. They can sell it above its value in this case. The classical economist were well aware of quality.

user pls

you never read marx, good job on exposing yourself as an uneducated retarded illiterate faggot

you got it as wrong as you can get, faggot
fucking basics and you fuck up beyond recognition
at this point only suicide can make up for how much of a stupid faggot you are

every
fucking
time

"Low intelligence and “low effort thinking” are strongly linked to right-wing attitudes, including authoritarianism and conservative politics. And again, there appears to be a demonstrable causal link: Studies have found, for example, that children with poor mental skills grow up to be strongly right-wing adults."

SNALT
socially necessary average labor time
very different concept from what you've been told

If it was an ugly dress that took the same amount of labor (living labor and dead labor, or capital) as a pretty dress, it wouldn't be nearly as profitable or profitable at all to produce
that commodity wouldn't be made

GET FUCKING DUNKED LOW-TIER BAIT

give me the sauce for that gif son i need to know where those tiddies from

But you still haven't gotten to the heart of what "value" in a marxian sense means. Certainly it is an abstraction used to explain why we pay for goods, and indeed pay for some goods more than others, even though it itself is not equivalent to price. I'm just of the opinion that Marx undervalued use in his theory, although certainly he has picked up on something that all of modern economic and marginal use theorists have missed.

Ah but here again you are assuming perfect knowledge, just like the "political economists" and Austrians. Differences in quality can occur purely by accident. Not to mention, items of lower quality can still be sold, and indeed can even be profitable in capitalism. For example, suppose it takes the same SNLT to make the same amount of ramen noodles as linguini. The ramen noodles per ounce cost quite a bit more because they are sold off in smaller units as people prefer individually wrapped containers of one use ramen. Indeed, the ramen is valued more per ounce than the linguini when it is presented in such a way, even though most would agree it is of a lower quality.

LTV isn't a price setting mechanism.

So on the first day they extracted 600 kg of bad coal, and on the second day, 600 kg of good coal. What is it you want to determine?

So let's say there are three different commodities:
A = bad coal;
B = good coal;
C = simply coal (that is: C can be A or B or a little bit of both, it doesn't matter).

I can only assume that you want to know the value of each commodity, namely the value of 1 kg of A, the value of 1 kg of B, and the value of 1 kg of C.

Allow me to find it out in the opposite order: C, B and, finally, A.

So let's star with C: coal, whatever it's quality may be.
In two days, that is in 20 hours of work, the miners extracted 1200 kg of coal.
So the value of 1 kg of C is :
20 hours ÷ 1200 = 1 minute

Now, what about B: good coal?
Sure, the miners extracted 600 kg of B on their second day, that is in only 10 hours of work. But they didn't they were gonna find B and not A, it was merely luck. As far as we know, they had been searching for B since day one. And as a matter of fact, if they want to extract 600 more kg of B, they will have to search for two days again, for your chances to find B and not A are only of 50%.
So, the average labour time needed to extract 600 kg of B isn't one day but two days, that is 20 hours of work.
So the value of 1 kg of B is:
20 hours ÷ 600 = 2 minutes.

As for A, that is bad coal, the same reasoning stands: the value of 1 kg of A is 2 minutes.

So we have found out that the value of good coal (B) is twice the value of simple, average coal (C). This seems logical.

We have also found out, though, the the value of bad coal (A) is the same as the value of good coal (B). This, you may find odd, since you certainly do not find bad coal so expensive on the market.
The reason is simple: you do not find bad coal at all on the market. You only find coal, and good coal, C, and B. Sure, when you buy simple coal it will be bad. But that's not because it is bad that you buy it; you buy it because it's coal.

If this doesn't make sense to you you're most likely too stoopid to add two intergers as well. Go back to Holla Forums, idiot.

You know, that's not only Holla Forums that has a bad understanding of Marx.

the difference in value between the two goods is equal to the difference in required work to heat an oven. that is, you need to invest more hours/minutes/seconds of work using bad coal if you want to heat your entire house than if you're using good coal. example: if you need to move 10 tons of bad coal into an oven to heat your house, adding up to 5 hours of work, but you only need to move 5 tons of good coal and do 2.5 hours of work in order to achieve the same goal, the value of the bad coal will be half the value of the good coal and vice versa.
note (this is very important): if miners have mined an equal amount of good coal and bad coal but don't sell either on a market both commodities don't have a value at all. value/price exists *only* on a market.
the fact that neo-classicals/liberturdians are apparently too stoopid to understand such simple math yet tell everyone that marx' awt (arbeitswerttheorie, don't know the english term, i haven't read marx in english) has been proven wrong by one of their shamans is what triggers me the most about them.

You confuse value with use-value.

no.

Yes. Be it good or bad coal, the value of a product depends on the labour time spent producing it, not on its efficiency in the way you later use it.

Stop measuring coal on kilograms, stop thinking of it like a commodity

Lol what?

You are extracting coal for its use-value, not for its exchange value

You must use units derived from the use you are going to give to the coal

Fire? Calories, Carbon fiber? Whatever composition is needed, Graphite? Harshness according to each pencil

a commodity needs to become a product first before a value is assigned to it, then does indeed assume the value of the labout contained in it. before that, it doesn't have any value.

please read again and consider what marx himself wrote about use-value (i don't like the term though, i think it is redundant). i'm gonna translate it literally for you, hopefully it makes sense:

quote MEW 23, page 55: "Ein Ding kann Gebrauchswert sein, ohne Wert zu sein. Es ist dies der Fall, wenn sein Nutzen für den Menschen nicht durch Arbeit vermittelt ist."
"a thing can be use-value, without being value at all. this is the case if it's purpose for the human is not mediated through labour."

quote MEW 23, page 50:
"Der Gebrauchswert verwirklicht sich nur im Gebrauch oder der Konsumtion"
"the use-value manifests itself only in use or consumption".

Ah, so you argue that all the time spent on mining A is also a part of the time spent mining B? And you can make this distinction because bad coal would not make it to the market in the first place?

Now that seems rather silly to me. Why would the coal mine not sell coal A? Certainly people with less money still want coal and are willing to buy low quality coal so long as its cheaper. And certainly, if the mine must extract coal A to get to coal B, they would certainly get more profit and revenue by selling all that "by-product". After all, if they have no choice but to extract it, why not sell it?

Allow me to provide a better solution for you. Coal A and Coal B are in fact different commodities, and every time a thing is distinguished from another thing by quality, it is in fact a different thing. But of course this brings in use value back into the equation as something that can differentiate different products besides labor value. Use value and socially necessary labor time are needed to produce a complete theory of value in a capitalist society.

OK let's do the Marxism ABC once again just for you, dear pirateflag poster.

It depends. If I intend to use it or give it to someone who will use it, I am extracting it for its use-value. If I intend to exchange it, I am extracting it for its value.

A kilogramme of coal refers to its use-value. Like I said, use-value is a set of characteristics of the object.

Now if I sell my coal, I am giving away value, while my buyer is taking use-value.

I would like to remind you that SNLT is a theory of value in capitalism. It itself is not exchange value or use value, but rather the logic of value in general in a capitalist society, and thus is most closely related to exchange value, although not identical as exchange value also has a multitude of other factors involved.

I don't see the point you are trying to make. Yes, a product need to have a use-value to become a commodity, and thus have a value. So the use-value determines the existence of the value, but doesn't determine the value itself.

Sure, but if we are talking about actual communism, there would be no exchange per se

This is a market exchange, esentially commodifying the coal I agree with you on this

I see what you mean, but I still fail to see the point you are trying to make. Or rather, I think you believe you fou d a contradiction where there is none.

When I say here:
I speak of "a commodity". Its use-value is what defines a commodity. So of course, the value of a commodity depends on the use-value of said commodity, since it means nothing more than:
This is a tautology. And it doesn't in any way change the fact that, the value of a given commodity, or, if you prefer, the value of a given use-value, is defined by the socially necessary labour time needed for its reproduction.

perhaps there was something lost in translation. if i had used used "thing" instead of "commodity" perhaps it would have been clearer.

it does determine the use-value, which can be 0 or equal to the exchange value.

But here we're not.

We were

I think you mixed up something here. The use-value determines… the use-value yeah, that's for sure, but I don't think that's actually what you were trying to express.

0 what?

No, precisely. Use-values are of very different nature depending on their object, so you can't compare them. That's precisely why we need value.

You can't compare use-value to exchange value either (unless the commodity you're talking about is labour force).

No, read the topic. You are the one bringing this on.

But it is precisely my argument that socially necessary time is not what totally defines the value of a use-value. Certainly the fact that some things are more useful than others is just as much a part of value as how difficult it is to reproduce a thing by society.

You are still operating in the orthodox Marxist position that relative use-value is not a factor in value or exchange value, only the fact that the use value exists.

And yet if value is to be a useful concept it must be a theory of how each particular commodity is valued relative to each other. It must explain the logic which is the foundation of exchange. The Marxist theory of value, was after all, an attempt to show how exchange value and prices are in fact determined by social relations

Of course, since it is a correct one.

What do you mean, "relative"?

Well it does. "This takes more time to produce than that, then it has more value."

Socially necessary labour time has to be useful, even marx recognizes this

The use-value of one commodity relative to another.

But I've just shown that two different commodities with the same SNLT had different values, and that what determines "this" from "that" is often use-value to begin with.

Yes and if you read my post you'd know that I recognized he recognized that. What I'm saying is that the amount of use-value can be a factor and not just a pre-requisite.

You cannot compare use-values like that. What you can compare is values.

What are you talking about? This?

Thats because you keep thinkijg ofngoods like commodities

When you go to the supermarket, you start to think about which commodity might satisfy your needs the most, assigning them a subjective value to them

This however, is wrong there is only one commodity that will satisfy your needs and others that wont

Those that wont have no use value to you, those that do do have use value

If you pick one over the other is hecause one of thoses dont satisfy your needs, f you pick both then its because both satisfy your needs

There is no "more useful" either they are useful or not

Ah but you can, and in fact already are.
When you measure with any unit you are in fact already making a judgment about use-value. The physical amount of coal is a way of measuring use-value, as is the calories per physical unit, as is a bunch of other measures. The only reason we make these measurements is in relation to their usefulness to man.

Why are some dresses worth more than others even if they are made in same sweat-shop with the same value of materials? It’s because in a capitalist society dresses which signal higher prices are inherently more valuable things to the social status they bring. In a capitalist society, higher priced dresses are more useful than lower priced dresses on that factor alone.

No, that wasn’t me. I’m talking about

In a supermarket, goods are a commodity. And if you were paying attention, you'd realize that SNLT is designed to give a theory of value in a capitalist society. It's not about the individual at all.

But user a more expensive dress doesnt have higher use value than a cheap one

My example of course was of a dress that was widely recognized as being expensive, just to clarify. I think its fairly obvious that in a capitalist society there are more uses for such a dress than a less expensive one.

…a room full of blind ghosts with identical voices indeed…

wmbriggs.com/post/5118/

...

Reread Chapters 1-3. Value is never immediately measurable as a unit. It always appears in monetary form. The theory of value is a monetary theory of value. Marx is almost everywhere in Capital speaking in money terms.

oekonomiekritik.de/310Ambivalences.rtf

And everybody here's making a basic mistake.

The value of a commodity is the expression of the value of constant capital (tools/materials/machinery/etc.) consumed and living labour expended in the production process.

That's why commodities with high constant capital costs but low direct labour needs have a greater value than is thought when value is simply reduced or direct labour time.

But price can fluctuate above the value

Yes, yes but that's rather irrelevant to a discussion of whether use value deserves to be a factor in our understanding of value as opposed to a pre-requisite, which is what most of the thread has been about.

I should have turned my flag on earlier to keep things more clear.

Marx analysis recognize that use value has been present in all forms of society, but exchange value(objective expression of value) is the principal and defining characteristic of capitalism.

W-what is that abomination?

So? That doesn't justify his theory of value being incomplete. Certainly even if this particular aspect of use value isn't unique to capitalism, it still exists within it!

Wot?
If you ever read Das Capital(i doubt you will) you would know that he definitely talks about use value(even it don't being the main focus), and wouldn't be a spouting shit marsoc in the first place.

Wouldn't this mean that exchange-value currency is a keystone of capitalism?

I'm doing a first read through and I really seem to notice that money in itself seems to actually be the underlying thing that causes much of the rest of what happens.

I have read das kapital, and yes I know he talks about use value. I am saying that his theory of "value" is lacking because to him value only requires use value as a prerequisite and does not take it as a factor. This is important because of the theoretical function value plays in his theory.

Indeed the soviet union attempted to create a theory for value under socialism and ran into many problems on account of this.

yes

Yeah, I can compare quantities of the same use-value (here: coal). But I cannot compare different use-values without the medium of value.

Three mistakes:
1 – On one hand, you only assume ramen take as much time to produce than linguine. On the other hand, you state a fact (I have to trust you on this) about their respective price on the market. You'd need to prove both for your demonstration to work; here your assumption only conveniently confirms your pre-conceived conclusion.
2 – It's probably negligible, but you have to take into consideration the labour time spent in packing the noodles.
3 – More importantly: you confuse price and value. The price of a product is not its value: it is the value the buyer is willing to concede in exchange of the product. Note that, even if the price isn't equal to the value, it doesn't mean there is a creation of value in the process of trading: only a transfer.

gigglingstirners.jpg

I think I found it
shikimori.org/animes/34213-getsuyoubi-no-tawawa

I don't think the point of Marx was that life should be like that, but that capitalism is like that. The low importance of use value is an issue with capitalism, not with his model of capitalism.

If you want an economy where use value is important, you should advocate for central planning with a lexicographic logic and not your free-market socialism nonsense. By that I don't mean that all products and services have to be put in a strict ranking, but there will be lexicographic tiers. We will plan with upper and lower bounds instead of instantly fixing all the quantities, and for inputs that are used for stuff in different tiers, we plan for the less important stuff with what is left after deducting the upper-bound estimates of what will go to the higher-ranked stuff.