CHAPTER 4

PART 3

Some Comparative Evaluations

Thus the production factors are seen to be fully accurate ( with the exception of possible false estimations in the early period of communism ). The final product of a factory, assuming it is not a consumption article, moves on to the next factory, where it serves as means of production ( p or c ). This establishment, of course, likewise controls its production by means of applying the same unit of regulation and accounting control. In this way each factory obtains a completely accurate method of accounting control over its final product. The fact that this procedure is valid for not only industrial installations which produce a mass product, but is also applicable to the most varied products of a complex productive organism, soon becomes generally excepted, especially since this particular branch of the "science of cost accounting" is already so highly developed. The labour-time taken up by the last finished product is in reality nothing other than the average labour-time contributed by the last factory in the chain which, by application of the standard formula ( p + c ) + L, simultaneously takes up and includes in its computation the total sum of all the separate labour-times attributable to each participating establishment, from the beginning of the production chain to the finished product. The computation of this final total is built up out of all the partial processes and lies fully in the hands of the producers.

Kautsky indeed recognises very well the necessity for calculating the average social labour-time of the products, but he conceives of no possibility of realising this conception completely and in practice. No wonder that he is unable to make the slightest sense out of any of the various problems associated with this category! For instance, he already runs aground when he tries to consider the question of variations in productivity between individual factories, and, of course, the problem of the determination of the 'price' for each product. Although it may seem superfluous for us to concern ourselves further with these objections - since we have already uncovered Kautsky's principal errors - we may nevertheless find it expedient to follow his views further, since this may assist us in achieving by negative example a more concrete formulation of the category of average social labour-time.

Let us begin with the concept of 'prices' of products. The point must be made at the outset that Kautsky speaks quite unreservedly about the 'prices' of products as if these still have validity under communism. He is of course entitled to keep faith with his own terminology since, as we have seen, 'prices' continue to function in the Kautskyian brand of 'communism'. In the same way as, for this 'Marxist', the category of value is attributed with everlasting life and just as, under his 'communism' money also continues to function, in the same way prices also are assured an eternal life. But what kind of communism is it in which the same economic categories continue to have validity as exist under capitalism? Marx and Engels at least refused to have anything to do with this brand of 'communist' economy. We have already shown how, according to them, value and price are eliminated and subsumed in the category of average social labour-time. It is for this reason that the producers calculate "how much labour each useful article requires for its production". (F. Engels: Anti-Duhring). Kautsky pronounces this calculation to be impossible. In order to give substance to this judgement, he directs our attention to the fact that not all factories would be equally productive, with the labour-time actually expended being in one case, above, in another, below the social average - so leading to chaos in prices. He says in this connection:

"And what quantity of labour should one actually take into account? Certainly not that which each product has actually cost. If this be done, the various articles of the same kind from different establishments would throw up differing prices, those produced under less favourable conditions being higher than those of others. That would of course be absurd. It would be necessary for them all to have the same price, and this would be calculated not according to the labour actually expended, but on the basis of the average social labour. (Sic - trans.) Would it in fact prove possible to determine this for each separate product?" (10)

Here Kautsky demands with justice that the "prices" of products must agree with the socially necessary labour and not with the labour (11) which has actually been expended upon that product in that particular factory, since, (not all factories being equally productive), the labour-time actually expended will in one case lie above and in another case below the social average for that industrial group. The solution to the problem resides, of course, in a procedure in which the producers themselves, by means of their own factory organisations, calculate the average social labour-time, and not Kautsky. That which his economic headquarters is not capable of achieving, the factory organisations themselves, the Workers' Councils, are perfectly capable of realising, in this way simultaneously imparting to the category of average social labour-time its concrete form.

References

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