CHAPTER 3

THE REPRODUCTION PROCESS IN GENERAL

PART 3

The Concept of Value Held by the Socialist Economists

And indeed, their Excellencies the economists do in fact, consider that distribution should be arranged in this way! It never even occurs to them to place an equal value on labour, that is to say, to apportion to each the same share of the social product. This, of course, is the significance of Neurath's "varying standards of living". The social statisticians determine the minimum standard necessary, to which the income of the "unskilled" workers is then made to correspond, whilst others receive a more generous remuneration according to their industriousness, their capabilities and the importance of their labour. A purely capitalist mode of thought!

Kautsky considers this difference in remuneration to be necessary, because he believes that higher wages should be paid for unpleasant or onerous forms of labour as compared with the more pleasant and lighter tasks. He remarks in passing that, for him, this provides evidence to prove that labour-time accounting is impracticable. In this, indeed, he agrees with Leichter, going so far as to suggest that differences in remuneration should be retained even within each occupation, because, in his view, it would be inevitable that the actual wage paid out to individuals would in certain cases rise above the basic rate in order to take account of the additional training needed by the skilled workers, etc. Those who think like him take , for instance, the view that wage tariffs should be retained in the communist economy. As against this, Leichter notes quite correctly that this does not hinder in any way the introduction of Labour-Hour accounting, a fact which we can also see from our example. He says:

"There exists the purely technical difficulty, which exists also under capitalism, that the wages to be paid for each separate labour function must be separately determined, but this offers no special complications as compared with the method used under capitalism". (5)

Here we see that Leichter considers a differing scale of evaluation of labour, the application of differing rates, indeed variations within the same type of labour, to be in principle correct. This, however, expresses nothing other than the fact that in such a society the struggle for improved conditions of labour has not ceased, that distribution of the social product still bears an antagonistic character and that the struggle for the distribution of the product still continues. This struggle is in reality nothing other than a struggle for power and would have to be conducted as such.

No clearer evidence could be offered than that given above to prove that these 'socialists' are inherently incapable of conceiving of any form of society other than the one in which forms of rule and domination are exercised over millions of workers. For them, human beings have become simply subjects. They are nothing more than parts of the productive apparatus, for whom it is necessary that the social statisticians calculate how much food and other necessities must be supplied to this human material (minimum subsistence standard of living) in order to ensure that labour-power is able to renew itself. The working class must struggle against such a viewpoint with all its strength and demand for all the same share in the riches of society.

Nevertheless, in the first stages of a communist society, it may at first be necessary that various intellectual occupations be remuneration at a higher level; that, for instance, 40 hours of labour gives the right to 80 or 120 hours of product. We have already seen that this represents no difficulty for the method of labour-time accounting. At the beginning of the communist form of society this could indeed be a just measure, if for instance the means of higher education were not available to everyone free of charge, because society is not yet sufficiently thoroughly organised on the new basis. As soon, however, as these matters have been ordered, then there can no longer be any question of giving the intellectual professions a larger share in the social product.

The basic cause underlying the fact that the 'socialist' economists are unable to free themselves from the concept of a varying evaluation of labour-power lies, amongst other things, in the class situation which they find themselves. An equal distribution of the total product totally contradicts their class sense and is for that reason "impossible". That conscious thought-concepts derive in the main from the world of feeling or sensibility is, however, if not exactly an ancient, then at least a correct principle, and for these people as for others the intellect does not in general contradict what the world of feeling dictates. It is this which explains, for instance, how it comes about that Leichter may wish to eliminate the concept of value as it applies to impersonal reproduction, but is unable to free himself from it where the remuneration of labour-power is concerned. In capitalist society labour-power appears as a commodity. The average wage paid by the employer corresponds to the cost of reproducing labour-power which, in the case of unskilled labour, lie more or less at the level of the minimum necessary for existence. The children of unskilled workers are as a general rule unable to learn a profession, because it is necessary for them to commence earning as much as possible as early as possible. (6) This establishes a situation in which unskilled labour reproduces itself only as more unskilled labour-power. For the reproduction of skilled labour-power more is necessary. In this latter case the children are trained for a profession, and this means that the skilled workers have themselves reproduced skilled labour-power. According to Leichter this commodity relationship for labour-power applies under "socialism". He writes:

"Thus labour reveals various qualifications, various intensities of labour. The various qualitatively differing labour-powers require for their reproduction a differing level of investment. Qualified workers require more in order to reproduce their labour-power fron day to day or year to year, that is to say, their current expenditures are larger. A greater investment is in general required to train and promote qualified labour up to its completion, up to a standard of a human being with the same replacement level of education and knowledge, if the person formerly bearing the responsibility for this developing labour-power is no longer capable of work. All this must be taken into account in evaluating the values to be attributed to the various labour-powers." (7)

If we now compare this with Marx's analysis of the price of labour-power under capitalism, it then becomes completely crystal clear that the so-called 'socialist' economists are unable to free themselves from the value concept:

"What, then, is the cost of production of labour-power?

It is a cost required for maintaining the worker as a worker and of developing him into a worker."

The less the period of training, therefore, that any work requires, the smaller is the cost of production of the worker, and lower is the price of the worker's labour ie, the wages. In those branches of industry in which hardly any period of apprenticeship is required and where the mere bodily existence of the worker suffices, the cost necessary for the worker's production is almost confined to the commodities necessary for keeping the worker alive and capable of working. The price of the worker's labour will, therefore, be determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence.

...In the same way, in calculating the cost of production of simple labour-power, there must be included the cost of reproduction, whereby the race of workers is enabled to multiply and to replace worn out workers with new ones. Thus the depreciation of the worker is taken into account in the same way as the depreciation of the machine:

"The cost of production of simple labour-power, therefore, amounts to the cost of existence and reproduction of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and reproduction constitutes wages. Wages so determined are called the wage minimum." (8)

In exactly the same way as the reproduction of the impersonal part of the productive apparatus is, under capitalism, a function of the individual capitalist group, in a similar way the reproduction of labour-power under that system is an individual function of the worker. Under communism, however, in the same way as the reproduction of the impersonal part of the reproductive apparatus becomes a social function, the reproduction of labour-power becomes a social function likewise. It is no longer made the responsibility of separate individuals, but is borne by the whole of society. Educational attainment, for instance, is no longer dependent on papa's purse, but is dependent solely upon the talents, the mental and physical characteristics, of the child. It would occur to nobody under communism that individuals who by nature have already been equipped with more favourable inherited characteristics or more advantageous inherent capacities, and who for that reason are able to absorb to the fullest degree all the achievements of human society in the fields of culture, art and science, should be additionally awarded a greater share in the social product. Society offers them the possibility of realising achievements above the ordinary in art and scientific knowledge, but only in order that they may return to society, in the form of a more talented and more intense cooperation in all cultural tasks, those values which were originally taken out of society in the form of cultural products. The distribution of the social product under communism is not a simple reproduction of labour-power, but a distribution of all physical and spiritual riches which have been created by society through all its technical and other resources. The aim which 'socialists' of the stamp of Kautsky, Leichter and Neurath are actually seeking to achieve with their principle of "remuneration according to differing living standards" is in reality that of securing for the lower-paid workers the minimum standard of living necessary for existence on the basis of nutritional and other domestic and family assessments, whilst the more highly paid consume the surplus. Their thought is in reality far removed from any idea of the elimination of exploitation. Indeed, they wish to continue exploitation, only this time on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production!
For us the reproduction of labour power can only mean that the social product is equally distributed. In calculating production time, the number of labour-hours expended are entered in their actual quantity, whilst each worker draws out from the social product the actual number of labour-hours the worker has expended.
In that kind of 'socialism' which reflects and is based upon "minimum standard of living" statistics, the producers give up their labour-power to a great undefined authority which is euphemistically called "society". However, wherever this undefined authority actually takes on a tangible form, it appears as an alien force over and against the producers, a force which has elevated itself above them, and exploits them and rules over them. It is in reality domination by and through the apparatus of production, an apparatus which is now a state system in which producers play a role as faceless elements.

References

5. O. Leichter: ibid, p. 76.return to text
6. "The children of unskilled workers are as a general rule unable to learn a profession, because it is necessary for them to continue earning as much as possible as early as possible".
Whilst still fundamentally true for the majority of the worlds population, the mode of operation of this particular form of the antagonism between capital and labour has been modified, (in the 'industrialised' countries), to some degree in recent decades, and in particular since the end of World War II, through the introduction of compulsory secondary education and the university grant system. In spite of these reforms, however, the children of the upper and middle classes still dominate the universities and other institutions of higher education. return to text
7. O. Leichter: ibid, p. 61.return to text
8. K. Marx: Wage Labour and Capital, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow; pp. 45 - 6.return to text

END OF CHAPTER THREE

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