: Were not getting very far, we seem to be talking past eachother (I am discussing individual choices which you are not). I am asking how LTV helps us to calculate exploitation and explain why Joe buys a Dodge over a Nissan truck, the latter of which is explainable using market economic models which employ STV.I have been, throughout this 'thread' asking you to account for the equation x = £1, or to put it another way, to explain what money is, and whether or not it is itself a commodity bearing value.
I do not think, per se, that consumer choices are necessary for producing a model of production, we can assume need...
: I am not saying that LTV isnt useful in describing various broad economic phenonoma, dont imply that I am.
OK.
: How many $/units labor power etc etc were you being exploited by? Thats what you'll need to show.
The rate of Exploitation is the ratio of profit to wages within a firm.
:Shouting 'exploitation' is like shouting 'police brutality'. No one is going to listen unless you show the size of your bruises. Its not 'dead fucking easy' when people ask for evidence.
No, you're making the mistake of assigning an emotive value to exploitation, as many people do, as being unjust labour conditions, or unfair contracts, I am saying that exploitation is the inherent character of the sale of labour power, even super rich footballers one millions a year are exploited. Exploitation is a concern for the ęsthetic value of human life.
: You and your co-workers can't create the market value of your produce without the 'factory'. In this sense it doesnt matter who owns it. If y'all did then thats groovy for you. Either way you cant make the value without accessing the means - I thought thats what socialism was all about.
Indeed, and the reason why we cannot produce value without the factories of the ruling class, is because we are part of a propertyless class whose existence is to be exploited by the owners...
: Further more, worker ownership on a 'where you work' basis is not 'social ownership' in the sense socialism seems to imply. So if all the workers at Shell own the company - it doesnt do much for jobless Nigerians. To have everyone own all the means equally requires that those who are actually working at creating values agree to be 'exploited' by all those who are not.
No, because if tehre is no compulsion of poverty, no control by wages, where work is voluntary, it becomes self-activity, the self-ownership of one's life activity - we currently sell our life activity to an employer...
: Thats a start - now apply this to 'socially owned' means of production against worker owned means of production. The first still involves exploitation of workers according to this model, the latter may not.
No, because the workers would own teh surplus value themselves, in as much as no-one owns the surplus value, tehre would be no rofits, no surplus to appropriate.
: I think your frustration is misplaced - my points were specifically those mentioned in the first paragraph of this post, a focus on the individual economic choices you consider irrelevent - even though they *must* in conglomoration make up the sum of the economy. Think of it as a 'bottom up' approach - rather than starting with a sweeping universal theory.
I think of my theory as bottom up, as it focuses on the most basic and fundamental aspects of the economy, the begining of the procerss in production, rather than the end surface of consumption.
: I'd like to read your thoughts on the social v worker ownership problem as far as 'exploitation' goes.
Worker owned co-ops just basically re-create an imaginary capitalist within the system of the market, social ownership means no market.
