03-11-2021, 10:04 AM
The explanation actually is his. Marx’s labor theory of value is that profit (value) is an abstract representation of human surplus labor time, which is “abstract” (measured quantitatively as time) because it is formed from labor which is social. The social character of labor makes it able to be measured quantitatively, as an average — all humans spend time laboring (in different “concrete” ways) in a global market. Marx’s theory shows that the development of the market on a world scale causes human labor to become measured as an averaged unit of time, and so the value of all commodities comes to represent the socially necessary labor time for their production, which is “alienated” or externalized in money which quantitatively represents it.
Workers are commodities. Because it appears as though workers sell the quality of their labor when they go to work, capitalists can exploit workers by paying them by the hour and making them produce more value than they consume, since the value of all commodities is the labor time necessary for their (re)production. Workers, as commodities, only have to be paid what they need to survive, so that their labor is produced for another day of work.
Capitalists can increase the surplus of labor/value, while keeping wages constant, in two ways: by lengthening the working day (absolute surplus) and by increasing productivity (relative surplus). The former can only go so far as a result of the physical capacity of workers, but the latter is constantly happening as production is revolutionized by technology. This is where the falling rate of profit comes in.
In production, workers must be replaced by machines for profit to be produced on an ever greater scale in our limitless growth economy fueled by competition. On the side of exchange, more and more commodities are created that actually hold less and less value, since value comes from labor-time. But, in a non-planned economy based on private property (which is a social relation, and different from “personal property”) where individual producers must compete against each other, there is only speculation as to what the values of these commodities actually are. So, a bubble is created in the market. Think of the housing crisis, where too many houses were assumed to have value that they did not have. Each crisis of capitalism is a crisis of overproduction because of the contradiction in the value of commodities caused by the replacement of workers by machines.
The falling rate of profit is also the reason why there are so many “bullshit jobs” that circulate value rather than producing it, like cashiers, etc. There is too much technology for productive work to continue to be increased, so the service industry has been expanded.
There are offsetting tendencies to the falling rate of profit, like war, in which a destruction of value on a mass scale allows increases in productivity again. But, eventually, the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall reasserts itself in crises.
These crises cause a destruction of commodities (houses going unused and being demolished during the housing crisis). Workers are commodities too and they must lose their jobs when the crisis shows that they are not valuable enough to be used (employed). In Marx’s theory, this creates a massive working class and a tiny capitalist class, with the former having in its objective interests a social revolution that changes private property to social property and organizes production rationally according to need and ability. There has never been a socialist state in an authentically Marxist sense. If we do not socialize production, plan the economy to balance the needs of our species with the earth, we face extinction.
Workers are commodities. Because it appears as though workers sell the quality of their labor when they go to work, capitalists can exploit workers by paying them by the hour and making them produce more value than they consume, since the value of all commodities is the labor time necessary for their (re)production. Workers, as commodities, only have to be paid what they need to survive, so that their labor is produced for another day of work.
Capitalists can increase the surplus of labor/value, while keeping wages constant, in two ways: by lengthening the working day (absolute surplus) and by increasing productivity (relative surplus). The former can only go so far as a result of the physical capacity of workers, but the latter is constantly happening as production is revolutionized by technology. This is where the falling rate of profit comes in.
In production, workers must be replaced by machines for profit to be produced on an ever greater scale in our limitless growth economy fueled by competition. On the side of exchange, more and more commodities are created that actually hold less and less value, since value comes from labor-time. But, in a non-planned economy based on private property (which is a social relation, and different from “personal property”) where individual producers must compete against each other, there is only speculation as to what the values of these commodities actually are. So, a bubble is created in the market. Think of the housing crisis, where too many houses were assumed to have value that they did not have. Each crisis of capitalism is a crisis of overproduction because of the contradiction in the value of commodities caused by the replacement of workers by machines.
The falling rate of profit is also the reason why there are so many “bullshit jobs” that circulate value rather than producing it, like cashiers, etc. There is too much technology for productive work to continue to be increased, so the service industry has been expanded.
There are offsetting tendencies to the falling rate of profit, like war, in which a destruction of value on a mass scale allows increases in productivity again. But, eventually, the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall reasserts itself in crises.
These crises cause a destruction of commodities (houses going unused and being demolished during the housing crisis). Workers are commodities too and they must lose their jobs when the crisis shows that they are not valuable enough to be used (employed). In Marx’s theory, this creates a massive working class and a tiny capitalist class, with the former having in its objective interests a social revolution that changes private property to social property and organizes production rationally according to need and ability. There has never been a socialist state in an authentically Marxist sense. If we do not socialize production, plan the economy to balance the needs of our species with the earth, we face extinction.