Does labour mean anything anymore?

[castille]

Its funny how people talk about labour...."your labour should be worth this much and this much", "you can't get money without labour".

But every second of the day, we're not really doing any labour. A typical non-factory worker spends his day letting his computer do all the labour, and even factory workers are letting machines do their labour. During a tour to a state armaments factory (the last bastion of communism, people say), nobody was actually doing any work. People were just pulling levers, pressing buttons, while sitting down or standing around comfortably.

And to think, 150 years ago in the days of Marx, people used to actually lift boxes manually without big forklifts, and stick a shovel into dirt instead of pressing buttons so a big machine can do it for them.

I can still remember 5 years ago, cleaners would actually go into toilets with a clean cloth and wipe out all the dirt. Now they've got detergents and spray guns doing all the work.

People say this is the information age, where labour is defined by how much thinking you do, not how much sweat you produce. Do you think this is true?

[Starboy]

I agree. The concept of labor as automatically having economic value is naive. It is the end result of the labor that is of value and only if there are people that value it. Many artists spend a great deal of labor on their art but for most artists few people find the end result to be of much value. Nobody wants to see an awful play even if the playwright spent their entire life writing it.

Starboy

[G. Adams]

Erm, labour does inherently have value. The fact I can sell it means it has value. The extent of the value is dependant on the work done, and how efficiently it is being done.

You don't have to be doing a hard slog to be part of labour. I'll explain....

There are 2 categories of possession that count in economics: capital and labour

Capital is money invested in order to make a return on it. Someone who does this and lives from such investment is bourgeois.

Somebody who does not possess capital must, in order to live, sell the only thing he has, which is labour. You sell your labour, that is time for working, to someone with capital, who combines your "goods" (that is your labour) with his raw materials, be it iron or data, in order to produce data that can either be sold for profit or used for greater profit making further down the production line.

So anyone who works for somebody else is part of the labour process, because they are selling their labour. I point you to Capital by Marx, most of which is not ideological diatribe, but an explanation of the economic system.

[Starboy]

Originally posted by G. Adams, Erm, labour does inherently have value. The fact I can sell it means it has value. The extent of the value is dependant on the work done, and how efficiently it is being done.

You assume that it can always be sold. People forget that not all that long ago it was not always possible for people to find places that would buy any old unskilled labor. And the value of labor is not only differentiated by the efficiency and the work done but by the outcome. People do not hire musicians based on how efficiently they play their instruments. The outcome in many cases is far more important than the number of hours or the efficiency of the labor. As the need for unskilled labor continues to decline, this fact of life will become even more glaringly evident.

You don't have to be doing a hard slog to be part of labour. I'll explain.... There are 2 categories of possession that count in economics: capital and labour Capital is money invested in order to make a return on it. Someone who does this and lives from such investment is bourgeois. Somebody who does not possess capital must, in order to live, sell the only thing he has, which is labour. You sell your labour, that is time for working, to someone with capital, who combines your "goods" (that is your labour) with his raw materials, be it iron or data, in order to produce data that can either be sold for profit or used for greater profit making further down the production line. So anyone who works for somebody else is part of the labour process, because they are selling their labour. I point you to Capital by Marx, most of which is not ideological diatribe, but an explanation of the economic system.

This is an overly simplistic picture of our current economy. Capital is not what it used to be and simple labor is not all that valued. Knowledge and skill in applying it are becoming far more important than capital or labor. Lots of huge businesses are in existence that not all that long ago had no more capital than can be found in a garage and no more labor than could be applied in the evenings and weekends by one or two people.

I understand that you are simply spouting the dogma of almost one hundred and fifty years ago. But times have changed. Marx is not applicable any more.

Starboy

[G. Adams]

I think you are incorrectly terming labour as unskilled work, it's not. High skill trades and high knowledge positions are still under the category of labour. When you sell your time to someone to employ for whatever terms you have set out, you are selling labour. If you had read Capital, rather than simply throwing out vaguely covered insults, you would understand. Most of Capital is a reiteration of Adam Smith's work, they just come to different conclusions, and it wasn't those conclusions I was bringing up.

I forgot to add to my 2nd sentance "and the scarcity of the product and skills to create the product"

I'm not spouting, I'm re-applying. If you have read capital, which I'll admit is a bit of a pain in the ass to read, you'll see that it can be re-applied to todays system. I'm not denying the complexities of todays advanced, post-industrial society.

[castille]

In that case, Bill Gates must be a labourer according to Marx, because he never put any capital into Microsoft.

Marx lived in a time when we did not have computers, the Internet, or information industries. Marx lived in a time when people worked with their hands - even industrialists like Carl von Siemens started their business by using their hands to build things (he used to build houses).

But today, all that is irrevelant. Today, a single piece of information learnt in 2 seconds can be worth a thousand times more than a man who spends his life digging a ditch.

Information, however, is not a tangible product. It isn't something you can put a quantity to. People like web designers, graphic designers, freelance writers, and consultants are selling an intangible product, that is only worth as much as people are willing to pay. Who wants to buy my amazing, yet useless website, for $100,000?


Can we put an exact cost on labour anymore? If a man provides us with a piece of information, is there a universal price for that, or is the free market the only way to determine the real cost?

[G. Adams]

The cost of the labour, rather than the value, is based upon the demand for that persons labour in relation to the product that labour can create, be it a shoe or something intangible like a website. When someone employs your time to do something, you are selling your labour, regardless of what the employer does with your time.

Gates sold his labour if someone bought his labour, that simple. Once Gates began creating and selling his own products, he became petty bourgeois, he invested capital and combined it heavily with his own labour. Once Gates income was predominantly based upon his capital investments in Microsoft rather than his labour investment he became bourgeois.

[Starboy]

Originally posted by G. Adams, I think you are incorrectly terming labour as unskilled work, it's not. High skill trades and high knowledge positions are still under the category of labour. When you sell your time to someone to employ for whatever terms you have set out, you are selling labour. If you had read Capital, rather than simply throwing out vaguely covered insults, you would understand. Most of Capital is a reiteration of Adam Smith's work, they just come to different conclusions, and it wasn't those conclusions I was bringing up.

I sell my labor all the time. I am a consultant. I can tell you that my clients are far more concerned about outcomes. They will not hire me for even $1/hr if there will be no acceptable outcome. And if I can guarantee a successful outcome I can get $10,000 per hour if I charge $100,000 and it takes me ten hours to do it and the result of my labor is worth far more to my client. The idea of labor in this context is questionable. It is more a question of value for both parties. I think I understand very well where you are coming from. You want to make some sort of distinction between so called capitalists and laborers. This was a distinction made by Marx based on the context of his times. Those times don't exist anymore. But the invisible hand of Adam Smith moves on. That is because Smith was not trying to predict and justify a new social order but simply trying to expound on how a society could allocate its resources by way of its economy.

I'm not spouting, I'm re-applying. If you have read capital, which I'll admit is a bit of a pain in the ass to read, you'll see that it can be re-applied to todays system. I'm not denying the complexities of todays advanced, post-industrial society.

What part can be applied? I think that the economy of Star Trek has more likelihood of being applicable to the future than Marx ever will. His was a philosophy based on a snapshot in time which has been over for a very long time. We live in a time when it is very likely for a person to be laborer and capitalist at the same time. When people like Oprah or Jackson or Steward can make billions on their charm, talent and wits. In the time of Marx a large percentage of the population was dedicated to growing the food and making the goods for society as a whole. The percentage of the population needed to grow food for everyone is now somewhere around 2% and the percentage of the population needed to make the goods for everyone is falling. I expect in the not too distant future that it will also be around 2%. It is very likely that intellectual property and pursuits will be far more valuable than any other segment of the economy. This is a very different time than that of Marx. His ideas just don’t apply anymore.

Starboy

[Suburbanite]

Originally posted by G. Adams, Erm, labour does inherently have value. The fact I can sell it means it has value. The extent of the value is dependant on the work done, and how efficiently it is being done. You don't have to be doing a hard slog to be part of labour. I'll explain.... There are 2 categories of possession that count in economics: capital and labour Capital is money invested in order to make a return on it. Someone who does this and lives from such investment is bourgeois. Somebody who does not possess capital must, in order to live, sell the only thing he has, which is labour. You sell your labour, that is time for working, to someone with capital, who combines your "goods" (that is your labour) with his raw materials, be it iron or data, in order to produce data that can either be sold for profit or used for greater profit making further down the production line. So anyone who works for somebody else is part of the labour process, because they are selling their labour. I point you to Capital by Marx, most of which is not ideological diatribe, but an explanation of the economic system.

Hi, my name is Suburbanite. I make $7.5 an hour and I work full time. I am a proletariat, then. I have extensively large savings (the value of which I won't actually post). I invest this money in the stock market and within a few years into real-estate. I am bourgeois, then. So what am I then? It isn't such a dichotomous system, there is a huge amount of room for a mixture of the employee and the investor.

[Suburbanite]

Originally posted by G. Adams, I think you are incorrectly terming labour as unskilled work, it's not. High skill trades and high knowledge positions are still under the category of labour. When you sell your time to someone to employ for whatever terms you have set out, you are selling labour. If you had read Capital, rather than simply throwing out vaguely covered insults, you would understand. Most of Capital is a reiteration of Adam Smith's work, they just come to different conclusions, and it wasn't those conclusions I was bringing up.

I actually share a first print of Das Kapital with a friend of mine (First Print in English I mean, still, it is old and shit). Anyways, the book is out dated. G.W.F. Hegel is an outdated philosopher who has been horribly rejected as contributing much proof to anything by inventing scientific concepts to explain social progression which don't equate out when evaluated. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an anarchist, is also who Marx based many of his socialist concepts on in that book. But Marx later started writing against him. Even his explanations of anarchism don't hold much weight with twentieth century anarchism, like that of Emma Goldman.
And even in Das Kapital his refutation of Adam Smith and Ben Franklin was very crappy, to be honest. His concepts all were based on stringent rules which he used to set up a system, but the system was not as bound by these rules as he thought they were, and especially in this modern era. He firstly treated capitalism as if it were free-trade, even though he understood it was not, how he plays with the concepts was as if they were lawless. Next, his flaw is in his dichotomous split of working and owning class, when in this modern time being all of one is quite rare, and no one considers these classes in "conflict".
Look man, I used to think this shit was true, but then I looked into my motives for doing so and I realized I was just trying to associate myself for dumb reasons. Marx is hardly an economic genius when put up against real economist and not political soothsayers.

[castille]

Funny...I'm a proletariat and bourgeois, a capitalist and a worker. I invest in other peoples companies, yet I run my own company. I work for other people, yet I also have employees.

So what am I?

Somehow, I think Marx would be so confused by today's modern economy that he'd sit in a corner of the room and start crying.

G Adams, you're starting to sound like one of those intellectuals from the 1850s with your talk about the eternal class conflict and proletariats and petty bourgeois. This isn't the 1800s anymore

[JohnLockeRocks]

Actually, Suburbanite, I don't think Hegel is outdated. Maybe it's because I just learned about the fellow in Philosophy 1301, but I don't think he's too far off. He has two ideas that are interesting:

The first is the dialectic. Although Marx said that capitalism was just a step along the dialectic, and Communism was the (supposed) ideal conclusion, the idea that two opposing ideas create a synthesis, which becomes a thesis, which ultimately becomes another synthesis, is appealing. It represents the evolution of the (state, individual, etc.)--very interesting.

Another appealing idea of his is his idea of "freedom as autonomy". Those of us of the West are familiar with "freedom as license" (unrestricted freedom to do anything) and "freedom as liberty" (think John Locke and what the US was SUPPOSED to represent). The idea of "freedom as autonomy" is different from these two. Basically, this idea of freedom implies that there are links between all individuals, and everyone is thus free only to the extent that others are free. Sounds Communistic... but what's wrong with concern for others? I swing pretty far to the right when it comes to what I think the proper role of government is, but I think it's important to think about others--about the rest of the world--while I'm thinking about myself.

Socialism is similar to FOX News: there's a lot of swill, but if you pick through it you might find something of value...

[G. Adams]

At least socialism had noble origins, Fox has never been anything other than a propaganda network for ultra-nationalism and anti left-wing rant.

[Suburbanite]

G you miss3ed addressing my and castille's posts.

JohnLockeRocks:

I agree about the dialectic, the concept of synthesis is quite genius. I'd like you to research his definitions of freedom though. They appeal to libertines if you believe he felt freedom was the same thing as most do, but his MO on freedom is actually more to do with God and Christ than social freedom; it is a spiritual one. In the end Hegel was a devout Christian. Regardless, his philosophies are still outdated if not because they were faith-based but because they no longer have a direct affect especially now that Marxism has been pushed back into the mountains of Columbia.

[castille]

Quote by: G. Adams At least socialism had noble origins, Fox has never been anything other than a propaganda network for ultra-nationalism and anti left-wing rant.

A sign you're losing the debate when you resort to waving mass generalizations and insults.

By the way, Fox represents capitalism as much as Stalin represents Communism.