It seems that we're back onto this argument/discussion about the Labour Theory of Value, which I have to admit mystifies and bores me: how does this relate to the Class System or Imperialism or the industrial meat-grinder we still call
War. Aren't these infinitely more interesting topics?
What do people in sweatshops or call centres think about exploitation and the Labour Theory of Value?
Isn't the point of sharing capital (ie. the machines that make things so you don't have to) all about working less not more? I want to live in Iain M Banks' SF Utopia!
What's wrong with politics being "utopian" anyway? If I plan to throw a party I usually have "utopian" ideals about how it'll turn out: and when it's only half as good as my dreams, well that's still pretty good...
josef k
There is a possible Marxist response to this argument, which runs as follows: machines, technologies, capital etc, are in themselves the sedimentation of labour; thus, considered over the long term, the labour cost of the pen will in fact be the same in both cases... Any takers?
No because the people who worked to make them etc are dead and cannot enjoy any of the "value".
Maybe this is why copyrights use to expire only a couple of decades after the creators died. Now they expire 75 years later so Disney Corp. can keep milking Mickey Mouse.
To be more specific - for Marxists, the problem with capitalism is not simply that it is a flawed system (arch-conservative non-Marxists, such as Winston Churchill, are fully capable of admitting this too) but that it is itself, in some sense, the source of all of the flaws that exist in society.
Surely nobody said it was the source of
all the flaws just many of the big ones
Anyway, we don't live in a purely "capitalist" society - it's a bit of a mish mash of systems. I note that England, for example, along with many other "capitalist" European countries still has a monarch as the head of state. I think the Americans are trying for something similar..