Republicans can’t seem to accurately define what socialism is

[Tehon]

Here's what I don't get: "how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

How can we establish that the pay given the worker, measured in dollars, is "less than" the value created through labor, which Tehon has claimed is measured in "accumulated labor hours"? If I pay the worker $100 and it takes him 5 hours to complete the job, for example, how do we decide if $100 is less than 5 hours? How does that even make any sense?

It doesn't make sense. You first have to know what the exchange value is for the table. What commodity or proportion thereof is the equal exchange value to the table.

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value? Do we factor in the skill required to perform the two different tasks? Do we factor in the raw physical difficulty involved? Do we factor in the difficulty of acquiring the raw materials to produce the products in question? Do we factor in the time and effort expended by someone who has earned access to the actual land from which those raw materials are acquired?

There are so many more difficult AND more impactful steps in producing coffee beans than just planting and picking.

But, ever has my problem with various iterations of Marxism been the absolutely stupid levels of over simplification. It always seemed to me to be less of a philosophy and more of a collection of rosy promises used to swindle sympathetic simpletons and envious, self-loathing middle class kids into burning down their own nations.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value?

Where would you begin?

You have a problem with oversimplification?
How has science come to understand human physiology? Did the scientific community study the whole of the body or did it break the parts down to their basic interactions?

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

It doesn't make sense. You first have to know what the exchange value is for the table. What commodity or proportion thereof is the equal exchange value to the table.

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value? Do we factor in the skill required to perform the two different tasks? Do we factor in the raw physical difficulty involved? Do we factor in the difficulty of acquiring the raw materials to produce the products in question? Do we factor in the time and effort expended by someone who has earned access to the actual land from which those raw materials are acquired?

There are so many more difficult AND more impactful steps in producing coffee beans than just planting and picking.

But, ever has my problem with various iterations of Marxism been the absolutely stupid levels of over simplification. It always seemed to me to be less of a philosophy and more of a collection of rosy promises used to swindle sympathetic simpletons and envious, self-loathing middle class kids into burning down their own nations.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value?

Where would you begin?

You have a problem with oversimplification?
How has science come to understand human physiology? Did the scientific community study the whole of the body or did it break the parts down to their basic interactions?

Where would I begin what?

Also, yes, I absolutely have a problem with oversimplification. Science isn't about oversimplifying. It's about simplifying, breaking things down to the simplest -ACCURATE- explanation. Oversimplification, as the word itself implies rather obviously, means excessive simplification. That means simplifying to a point that no longer encompasses the actual nuance of a given subject, and thus creates misconceptions.

So, do I have a problem basing a society's economic system on a philosophy that oversimplifies, and thus basing the economic system of that nation on misconceptions? Holy shit, yes. Holy shit I can't even believe I have to explain this.

At any rate, I don't have a problem at all with you seeking to break this down into it's individual parts for examination. That bit is exactly what any rational person would do. The part where you're oversimplifying is where you ignore ALL THE OTHER PARTS besides labor time. To reiterate, some of those parts are relative difficulty of the tasks we're comparing, the amount of base material required, the value of the base material required, the difficulty of even accessing land from which the base material can be harvested, the difficulty and time involved in the acquisition of tools and infrastructure necessary to perform said task. That's where your level of simplification is excessive. It ignores a whole plethora of factors that ACTUALLY EXIST.

 

[bripat9643]

It doesn't make sense. You first have to know what the exchange value is for the table. What commodity or proportion thereof is the equal exchange value to the table.

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

There's nothing "objective" about that, as I have already demonstrated.

 

[dblack]

It doesn't make sense. You first have to know what the exchange value is for the table. What commodity or proportion thereof is the equal exchange value to the table.

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

 

[bripat9643]

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Notice that Tehon does not reply to my posts any longer. He hides because he can't resolve the contradictions I have pointed out.

 

[dblack]

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Let me ask some very specific questions. Hopefully you can answer:

"how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

I'm asking because this seems like an obvious logic error - you're comparing two different, unrelated, measures. It's like comparing length, measured in inches, with weight, measured in pounds? It's like asking "Is three inches less than two pounds?"

And to be frank, what's it's really doing is promoting a lie - namely the notion that capitalists pay workers less than the "real" value of their work. But with such a glaring fallacy at the heart of it, I'm wondering why anyone ever bought into it? Why did you?

 

[danielpalos]

Here's what I don't get: "how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

How can we establish that the pay given the worker, measured in dollars, is "less than" the value created through labor, which Tehon has claimed is measured in "accumulated labor hours"? If I pay the worker $100 and it takes him 5 hours to complete the job, for example, how do we decide if $100 is less than 5 hours? How does that even make any sense?

It doesn't make sense. You first have to know what the exchange value is for the table. What commodity or proportion thereof is the equal exchange value to the table.

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

Science gives us more tools to work with in modern times.

We can measure inputs and outputs, and measure them according to any fixed Standard of weights and measures, for most any purpose.

 

[francoHFW]

Communism has nothing to do with liberals or socialist or anybody in the United States for crying out loud. It failed it barely exist anymore Jesus.

china
North korea
russia
viet nam

and many more government tyrannies.

Only North Korea is pure communism old style, and there aren't any more. Russia is a corrupt capitalist semi democratic oligarchy. Who the hell cares there are no communists basically in America and only brainwashed GOP punks like you think there are.

 

[bripat9643]

Communism has nothing to do with liberals or socialist or anybody in the United States for crying out loud. It failed it barely exist anymore Jesus.

china
North korea
russia
viet nam

and many more government tyrannies.

Only North Korea is pure communism old style, and there aren't any more. Russia is a corrupt capitalist semi democratic oligarchy. Who the hell cares there are no communists basically in America and only brainwashed GOP punks like you think there are.

There are 48 Commies in the Senate.

 

[francoHFW]

Communism has nothing to do with liberals or socialist or anybody in the United States for crying out loud. It failed it barely exist anymore Jesus.

china
North korea
russia
viet nam

and many more government tyrannies.

Only North Korea is pure communism old style, and there aren't any more. Russia is a corrupt capitalist semi democratic oligarchy. Who the hell cares there are no communists basically in America and only brainwashed GOP punks like you think there are.

There are 48 Commies in the Senate.

Exactly, super dupe. They are in favor of a dictatorship that owns all industrial and business? You are out of your tiny mind. Go outside and get some fresh air for a few years.

 

[bripat9643]

Communism has nothing to do with liberals or socialist or anybody in the United States for crying out loud. It failed it barely exist anymore Jesus.

china
North korea
russia
viet nam

and many more government tyrannies.

Only North Korea is pure communism old style, and there aren't any more. Russia is a corrupt capitalist semi democratic oligarchy. Who the hell cares there are no communists basically in America and only brainwashed GOP punks like you think there are.

There are 48 Commies in the Senate.

Exactly, super dupe. They are in favor of a dictatorship that owns all industrial and business? You are out of your tiny mind. Go outside and get some fresh air for a few years.

They are pusing us in that direction.

 

[BluesLegend]

Don't worry about Dem's they will be defeated and erased from history. Most likely the faces on all the Dem statues will be hacked off like they did in ancient Egypt.

 

[Tehon]

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Let me ask some very specific questions. Hopefully you can answer:

"how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

I'm asking because this seems like an obvious logic error - you're comparing two different, unrelated, measures. It's like comparing length, measured in inches, with weight, measured in pounds? It's like asking "Is three inches less than two pounds?"

And to be frank, what's it's really doing is promoting a lie - namely the notion that capitalists pay workers less than the "real" value of their work. But with such a glaring fallacy at the heart of it, I'm wondering why anyone ever bought into it? Why did you?

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

The value only manifests itself in relation to another commodity.

In the example we are using the value created in making the table is equal to 50 lbs of coffee. The intrinsic value in each are equal to one another.

No matter the percentage, the laborer will only be given a portion of the value he created and which has become manifest in the exchange.

 

[Tehon]

"Exchange value?" Now you're bringing in another bogus term. It cracks me up that you can't do any of your calculations until after the product is sold and you know the MARKET PRICE. What happened to your concept of "intrinsic value" if everything hinges on the market price of the product?

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value? Do we factor in the skill required to perform the two different tasks? Do we factor in the raw physical difficulty involved? Do we factor in the difficulty of acquiring the raw materials to produce the products in question? Do we factor in the time and effort expended by someone who has earned access to the actual land from which those raw materials are acquired?

There are so many more difficult AND more impactful steps in producing coffee beans than just planting and picking.

But, ever has my problem with various iterations of Marxism been the absolutely stupid levels of over simplification. It always seemed to me to be less of a philosophy and more of a collection of rosy promises used to swindle sympathetic simpletons and envious, self-loathing middle class kids into burning down their own nations.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value?

Where would you begin?

You have a problem with oversimplification?
How has science come to understand human physiology? Did the scientific community study the whole of the body or did it break the parts down to their basic interactions?

Where would I begin what?

Also, yes, I absolutely have a problem with oversimplification. Science isn't about oversimplifying. It's about simplifying, breaking things down to the simplest -ACCURATE- explanation. Oversimplification, as the word itself implies rather obviously, means excessive simplification. That means simplifying to a point that no longer encompasses the actual nuance of a given subject, and thus creates misconceptions.

So, do I have a problem basing a society's economic system on a philosophy that oversimplifies, and thus basing the economic system of that nation on misconceptions? Holy shit, yes. Holy shit I can't even believe I have to explain this.

At any rate, I don't have a problem at all with you seeking to break this down into it's individual parts for examination. That bit is exactly what any rational person would do. The part where you're oversimplifying is where you ignore ALL THE OTHER PARTS besides labor time. To reiterate, some of those parts are relative difficulty of the tasks we're comparing, the amount of base material required, the value of the base material required, the difficulty of even accessing land from which the base material can be harvested, the difficulty and time involved in the acquisition of tools and infrastructure necessary to perform said task. That's where your level of simplification is excessive. It ignores a whole plethora of factors that ACTUALLY EXIST.

Where would I begin what?

You're being obtuse. Where would you begin to build a template to define value?

 

[dblack]

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Let me ask some very specific questions. Hopefully you can answer:

"how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

I'm asking because this seems like an obvious logic error - you're comparing two different, unrelated, measures. It's like comparing length, measured in inches, with weight, measured in pounds? It's like asking "Is three inches less than two pounds?"

And to be frank, what's it's really doing is promoting a lie - namely the notion that capitalists pay workers less than the "real" value of their work. But with such a glaring fallacy at the heart of it, I'm wondering why anyone ever bought into it? Why did you?

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

The value only manifests itself in relation to another commodity.

In the example we are using the value created in making the table is equal to 50 lbs of coffee. The intrinsic value in each are equal to one another.

No matter the percentage, the laborer will only be given a portion of the value he created and which has become manifest in the exchange.

I'm beginning to see I'll never get a straight answer out of you. And if your aim here is to enlighten us on socialism, then it's your loss.

 

[Tehon]

Right, you want to replace freely resolved market pricing with something different. I get that. But that's not what we're taking about.

You asked me a question that made no sense to me. I asked you to clarify. Can you? How can we look at the wage paid to an employee and say that it's less or more than the hours they worked?

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It's an equivocation used to make the claim that capitalists "extract excess value" from labor.

But that's not what we're taking about.

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Let me ask some very specific questions. Hopefully you can answer:

"how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

I'm asking because this seems like an obvious logic error - you're comparing two different, unrelated, measures. It's like comparing length, measured in inches, with weight, measured in pounds? It's like asking "Is three inches less than two pounds?"

And to be frank, what's it's really doing is promoting a lie - namely the notion that capitalists pay workers less than the "real" value of their work. But with such a glaring fallacy at the heart of it, I'm wondering why anyone ever bought into it? Why did you?

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

The value only manifests itself in relation to another commodity.

In the example we are using the value created in making the table is equal to 50 lbs of coffee. The intrinsic value in each are equal to one another.

No matter the percentage, the laborer will only be given a portion of the value he created and which has become manifest in the exchange.

I'm beginning to see I'll never get a straight answer out of you. And if your aim here is to enlighten us on socialism, then it's your loss.

We are discussing a theory of value as it relates to labor. You asked for an objective measure of value. I am giving you one.

You're claiming that labor has intrinsic value, irrespective of its utility - and further, that capitalists profit by paying employees less than this intrinsic value. Yet you can't provide an objective measure of that value, which kind of submarines the "theory".

It seems the theory remains afloat.

Objectively the table is worth 50 lbs of coffee.

If it is your desire to bring money into the equation at this point we can easily do so.

 

[dblack]

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Let me ask some very specific questions. Hopefully you can answer:

"how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

I'm asking because this seems like an obvious logic error - you're comparing two different, unrelated, measures. It's like comparing length, measured in inches, with weight, measured in pounds? It's like asking "Is three inches less than two pounds?"

And to be frank, what's it's really doing is promoting a lie - namely the notion that capitalists pay workers less than the "real" value of their work. But with such a glaring fallacy at the heart of it, I'm wondering why anyone ever bought into it? Why did you?

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

The value only manifests itself in relation to another commodity.

In the example we are using the value created in making the table is equal to 50 lbs of coffee. The intrinsic value in each are equal to one another.

No matter the percentage, the laborer will only be given a portion of the value he created and which has become manifest in the exchange.

I'm beginning to see I'll never get a straight answer out of you. And if your aim here is to enlighten us on socialism, then it's your loss.

We are discussing a theory of value as it relates to labor. You asked for an objective measure of value. I am giving you one.

You're claiming that labor has intrinsic value, irrespective of its utility - and further, that capitalists profit by paying employees less than this intrinsic value. Yet you can't provide an objective measure of that value, which kind of submarines the "theory".

It seems the theory remains afloat.

Objectively the table is worth 50 lbs of coffee.

If it is your desire to bring money into the equation at this point we can easily do so.

Cool story!

The core of your little theory is built on an equivocation and a lie. And I'm tired of chasing you around the mulberry bush.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

Don't be such a spoil-sport!

I'll play, Tehon.

How do you decide what the equal exchange value is?

By exchanging the table with another commodity in proportion to the common denominator, labor time.

We've taken nature and invested 5 hours of labor time to create a use value, a table.

What can we exchange it for?

Someone has used their labor to pick and roast coffee beans. They produced 10 lbs in an hour.

We can exchange our table for 50 lbs of coffee.

The value of the table is represented by the 50 lbs of coffee.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value? Do we factor in the skill required to perform the two different tasks? Do we factor in the raw physical difficulty involved? Do we factor in the difficulty of acquiring the raw materials to produce the products in question? Do we factor in the time and effort expended by someone who has earned access to the actual land from which those raw materials are acquired?

There are so many more difficult AND more impactful steps in producing coffee beans than just planting and picking.

But, ever has my problem with various iterations of Marxism been the absolutely stupid levels of over simplification. It always seemed to me to be less of a philosophy and more of a collection of rosy promises used to swindle sympathetic simpletons and envious, self-loathing middle class kids into burning down their own nations.

Holy shit, why would you use that as your template for value?

Where would you begin?

You have a problem with oversimplification?
How has science come to understand human physiology? Did the scientific community study the whole of the body or did it break the parts down to their basic interactions?

Where would I begin what?

Also, yes, I absolutely have a problem with oversimplification. Science isn't about oversimplifying. It's about simplifying, breaking things down to the simplest -ACCURATE- explanation. Oversimplification, as the word itself implies rather obviously, means excessive simplification. That means simplifying to a point that no longer encompasses the actual nuance of a given subject, and thus creates misconceptions.

So, do I have a problem basing a society's economic system on a philosophy that oversimplifies, and thus basing the economic system of that nation on misconceptions? Holy shit, yes. Holy shit I can't even believe I have to explain this.

At any rate, I don't have a problem at all with you seeking to break this down into it's individual parts for examination. That bit is exactly what any rational person would do. The part where you're oversimplifying is where you ignore ALL THE OTHER PARTS besides labor time. To reiterate, some of those parts are relative difficulty of the tasks we're comparing, the amount of base material required, the value of the base material required, the difficulty of even accessing land from which the base material can be harvested, the difficulty and time involved in the acquisition of tools and infrastructure necessary to perform said task. That's where your level of simplification is excessive. It ignores a whole plethora of factors that ACTUALLY EXIST.

Where would I begin what?

You're being obtuse. Where would you begin to build a template to define value?

I wasn't trying to be obtuse, I honestly wasn't sure what you were getting at.

See, in that post to who's first sentence you just responded, there was actually a couple entire paragraphs following that portion that seems to have caught all of your focus. In one of them, I answer your question. My template would include all those factors I listed both in that post AND in the post prior. I'm not going to iterate them a third time. You want those answers again, you go back and read them in the posts you've been "responding to".

Note, however, that I said that my template -would- include all those factors. Luckily for me, I recognize that, in the world of voluntary exchange between human beings, the value agreed upon by human beings is the only valid value an item has, and thus I don't need a template. I only need to know what people are willing to pay, or what I'll have to pay to get the owner of a product to part with that product. Anything other than mutually voluntary exchanges of this sort amounts to robbery or coercion, and since I don't engage in robbery or coercion, I don't need a template for deciding how much robbery or coercion is appropriate in any given "exchange".

 

[SeaGal]

The truth of the matter is that it is a very broad term. It’s something that’s always been apart of the framework of this country yet Repubs like to pretend it is the antithesis of the Founding Father’s philosophy. Republicans have a hard time even defining the term in their OWN WORDS. That alone tells you they lack a basic understanding of the word.

No it is not a broad term. Socialism is well defined as an economic and political system in which the means of production is owned and managed by the government, (which usually devolves into tyranny). It is the Left that confuses social programs and infrastructure with socialism.

You guys would hate living under socialism - that economic and governing system cannot afford the generous benefits capitalism affords to our 'unfortunate'. In a socialist country - you don't work, you don't eat...yet there is no reward for working 'harder'. It is a system that can only succeed in small, homogenous communities, not large, diverse countries such as the US.

 

[Not2BSubjugated]

It's what I am talking about.

If we have two items that were once found in nature and have been improved upon by human labor, the only objective measure in which the two stand in relation is labor time.

Is my question starting to make sense to you now?

Nope. Still the same issue. You keep steering around it. I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberate.

Let me ask some very specific questions. Hopefully you can answer:

"how could I do it but by giving the worker less than the value that he created through his labor?"

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

I'm asking because this seems like an obvious logic error - you're comparing two different, unrelated, measures. It's like comparing length, measured in inches, with weight, measured in pounds? It's like asking "Is three inches less than two pounds?"

And to be frank, what's it's really doing is promoting a lie - namely the notion that capitalists pay workers less than the "real" value of their work. But with such a glaring fallacy at the heart of it, I'm wondering why anyone ever bought into it? Why did you?

In the above question, is the amount paid to the worker a market value? It seems like it must be - you've been clear that your intrinsic labor value is measured in "accumulated hours". And is it safe to assume that you're measuring the value created by the laborer in "accumulated hours"?

The value only manifests itself in relation to another commodity.

In the example we are using the value created in making the table is equal to 50 lbs of coffee. The intrinsic value in each are equal to one another.

No matter the percentage, the laborer will only be given a portion of the value he created and which has become manifest in the exchange.

I'm beginning to see I'll never get a straight answer out of you. And if your aim here is to enlighten us on socialism, then it's your loss.

We are discussing a theory of value as it relates to labor. You asked for an objective measure of value. I am giving you one.

You're claiming that labor has intrinsic value, irrespective of its utility - and further, that capitalists profit by paying employees less than this intrinsic value. Yet you can't provide an objective measure of that value, which kind of submarines the "theory".

It seems the theory remains afloat.

Objectively the table is worth 50 lbs of coffee.

If it is your desire to bring money into the equation at this point we can easily do so.

Whose labor are we talking about, here?

If Peg Leg the Hobbling Pirate can only manage to harvest 20 lbs of coffee in the same time that it takes to build the table, is the table then only worth 20 lbs? What if the table maker is afflicted with narcolepsy and arthritis, and it takes him three times as long as previously stated to make the same table? Is that same table then worth 150 lbs of coffee?

Better yet, what if we're not talking coffee at all. What if we're talking wild berries.

Say we have Ted. Ted, over the years, has used much of his spare income to build a workshop attached to his home. He has built, bought, and otherwised compiled the machinery necessary to build furniture as efficiently as any one man might.

Then we have Chuck. Chuck picks wild berries on public land. He does this with only his hands and a small wicker basket.

In his workshop, Ted is able to make a table in 5 hours that would take someone without Ted's workshop facilities 20 hours to make. Since he makes it in 5 hours, is the "intrinsic value" of this table, in your mind, still worth only whatever amount of wild berries Chuck could harvest in 5 hours?

And this doesn't even account for the fact that building furniture properly isn't simple work. Proper carpentry is a skill earned through thousands of hours of experience. Any asshole with 2 hands can pick berries and drop 'em in a basket.

If we're only going to factor in labor time, what incentive is there to learn a skilled profession and go to the trouble of acquiring the tools for a dedicated trade? If I can get paid the same for mopping as I can for heart surgery, why the fuck would I go study anatomy for 7 years? That shit ain't fun.

Essentially, your economic theory is AWESOME! Just not for any society that's more advanced than nomadic hunter-gatherers. Even for them, it's hard to get the best hunters to really perform if you don't let 'em eat what they kill.