- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Janeway?

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist party, Uk ) on June 01, 1999 at 18:49:09:

In Reply to: erm...that woman one! posted by Gee on June 01, 1999 at 16:22:50:

: Turn it around and give money to some unorganised potential workers without any guidance and what will be produced - if anything is you will find that some members have taken up then vital value enabling engine role of planning and managing.

Assuming the workers don't know what to do, if they don't know what to do, they aren't workers, because by definition labour is only that which has teh necessary skills. Labour can create value without management, management cannot create value without labour.

: The holistic approach (meaning only that it is constructed of many individual elements) means that the ice cream does not come about unless each area (including the accountants) has fulfilled its part. The information gap which would come about with their absence would soon disable the organisation meaning no ice creams.

Indeed, but I'm not, like say Class War, anti-management, they are for the most part workers too- I am anti a tiny number who don't work at all, but who gain from *everyone's* work- and I'd have thought you would depreciate such indolent parascites too.

: Weve gone through this before, its not a new point, I refer you back to my previous responses to surplus value and we'll go round and round like some Dr Who phenonoma!

Another bloody sci-fi series....hmmm intertext city!

: You are back to denying the organisation as part of the value adding. Denying that investment is part of the value adding and that both warrant a 'wage' as part of what has created the value.

No, because investment does not imply organisation, I invest in a firm, I do not care what it makes, nor how it makes it, I invest only if I can make a profit from it- my sole skill is to find firms that will make me profitable, It has no relationship to resource allocation.

: They are, because they are not the only value adding element,a nd because value is not in existence until the product is exchanged.

But surely they are exchanging their produce with the capitalist, and as I've noted, they are paid the value of their skills- a small boy who does a very vital peice of work on some gold jewelry, but which is unskilled work, will only get teh value of his skill, not the value of his produce.

: Such as a voluntarily retired person?

define.

: That means that any system, any produce by any group or individual is 'blooded' by the past. A commune as much as a pure capitalist society. I dont believe in original sin.

But you do beleive in unearned wealth? Curious, seems against you protestant(esque) values...

: The amount of capital owning people is more than you appear to believe, certainly in America, and probably in the UK where many are house owners by the time they are in their 40s and 50s aswell as savers and investors. whilst you may perceive a small investor as one caught in a trap trying to get his previously denied wages back from the market I describe it as the action of converting past labor value into future capital return (ie the 'wage' of capital in value creation) and one that is voluntary and desirable in a free society.

Indeed, but such small investors only can invest if they sell their labour power first, and almost all their investments can be easilly wiped out by a bit of an economic crisis- but such people are not Capitalists, the million and billionaires who recive almost solely through owning the firms vast quantities of money and privellege without earning it. the number of 'capital owners' would be a minority of the populatoin anyhow, but the real capitalists make up an even tinier number.

I am not recreating original sin, I am, rather, pointing out, that most of teh ultra-rich did not earn their wealth themselves, nor did their ancestors gain it through thrift and hardwork, much shafting and nastiness was required for primitive accumulation.



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