Date post: | 16-Dec-2015 |
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"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents
itself as an immense accumulation of commodities"
Almost everything has a number (price tag)
attached to it. We work in return for numbers on coloured bits of paper,
rather than because we want the products of the
work for ourselves or our community, or
because we are forced to. Weird, or what?
4 apples = 1 pen? But you can't write with 4 apples any more than
with 1 apple, and you can't eat pens
One particular commodity is separated off from others and
becomes money. Later, commodity-money is replaced by pure
credit-money
Labour-power is not the same as labour. You own labour-power when you are not working. When you sell your labour-power, your boss owns it and "consumes" it by making you
labour.
How? Conventional explanation:the capitalist just adds a percentage to his costs when setting his selling price
Marx offers a theory of profit
because he does not take it for
granted that things have prices, and then explain one
price (selling-price) from another(cost-
price).
Cost of output = value of material inputs plus value of labour-power
"Material inputs" includes wear and tear (a % of value) of machines etc.
What is the value of labour-power? It is not a commodity produced in factories.
You produce it yourself, in your free time, which does not count as social
labour-time. But to produce it, you need inputs which do embody social labour-
time: food, etc.
Value of labour-power is determined by labour-time embodied in a "living wage" which maintains the worker
as a worker
But the bankers' or financiers' loot also comes from the workers
working longer and harder than needed to cover their "living wage"