Posted on 04/29/2006 11:23:12 AM PDT by Rakkasan1
What's the role of labor in Marx's concept of individual and social existence?
if labor is not the source of wealth, what is?
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
I don't think Groucho ever said anything about labor one way or the other.
Money.
too busy oppressing Harpo
And Zeppo kept playing his "Switzerland" role.
Pretty sad, all in all.
The mind AKA; thinking, imagination and creativity, these are at the root of wealth creation. Muscles do not create wealth, thought does!
People investing capital in superior production methods to more efficiently make items of higher demand creates wealth.
Capital mobility facilitates this, it means people and money are free to move where they receive the most gain.
Marx never considers that the value of things depends on demand, so every object that takes the same amount of labor to make is equally valuable under marxism. Gee why didn't that work.
Labor or Abstract labor?
Not quite accurate.
More like equal amounts of effort.
If two assemblers build two identical Chevies, and one builds his to Rolls Royce Standards in a week, and the other takes a month to meet Yugo standards, both must be considered equal, at least, or the Yugo must be sold for the price of a Rolls... since they were both intended to have value proportional to the effort expended..."
Remember the bread lines in the Soviet Union? Generations of them.
How hard is it to make bread?
Source of wealth was supposed to be "added value" derived from pernicious exploitation. Labor was considered to be the primary source of this "added value" [as being the most convenient and plentiful to exploit], hence the "avant-gard of society" with all the rest of that crap thrown in there like the icing on a cake.
not saying I didn't . Just wanted opinion/clarification on what Marx alleged.
I agree with Adam Smith, that it is the free market, not socialism, that promotes the common good.
Adam Smith found economic value - which he called "natural price"- by adding the costs of production. In a society without private ownership of land and which used only the simplest of tools, labour would make up the entire cost of production.
Google "Marx Labor Theory of Value."
For some reason, some people insist on pursuing points made in the open forum in private email.
I don't.
This remark was PM'd to me and I neglected to make a note of the sender before I blew it away...
Implicit in my original remark (assuming readers here all have a minimal grasp of the differences between state control vs. private property) is the underlying failure of collectivist production of anything, vs the invisible hand of self interest.
When all the means of production (aside from labor) are driven by selfish interests, none of those negative influences are allowed to occur.
thanks. I gather economic and intellectual capital is the source of wealth.
I know Harpo didn't.
Labor is ultimately the source of all wealth but undifferentiated labor is not the measure of the value af anything. Marx was wrong in that he thought that labor was indiscriminately quantifiable, i.s. an hour working a drill press on an assembly line has the same value as an hour on a shovel. Labor is the source of wealth. But some labor produces less wealth than other labor.
I found that site helpful too. I can't believe how many classmates find Marxism and communism to be admirable goals that just didn't work out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.