Communism is a bad system

[removeduser_4536284751384]

well those two "helpful tips" threads are nothing more than trolling, and I'd like a proper discussion, so lets discuss it here.

About 10 days ago one of our resident communists (I can't remember who, it wasn't Jingle or Vohl though) claimed that it "wasn't fair" that someone could buy wood for €30, pay a worker €10 to spend an hour making a chair with it and then sell that chair for €150 - that the worker wasn't getting the real "value" of his work.

That's nonsense. The labour theory of value has been discredited completely. The value of the worker's work is €10 an hour. Why should the worker be entitled to more than that?

Think of the guy who owns the chair factory as a baker. A baker buys flour, eggs, milk, sugar etc and makes bread or a cake or whatever. The chair factory owner buys wood and labour and uses them to make a chair. Why should the person who provided the labour be entitled to any more than the value of their labour if the person who provided the wood isn't entitled to more than the value of their wood?

[xcorps]

Labor is wrongly associated with value.

If you pay a union worker $50 an hour to stand at a machine and push a button every 22 minutes to produce car doors, did you really add $50 of value to the car door?
No. It doesn't matter what happens after the button gets pushed. You added $50 an hour to cost.

If I as a carpenter decide to build a house, and I hire 10 people to build it, does their labor make a difference to the value of the home? No, the size of the home, the location it is in, the construction materials and techniques, those all add value. The final selling price of $100,000 isn't set because 11 carpenters worked on the house, it's set because the perception of the buyer determines its value.

If I hire a mechanice to build me an engine, and his labor is 5,000 but I can only sell the engine for 4,000 the engine isn't worth 5,000.


The market determines value. Labor influences cost.

[Odovacar]

Labor is wrongly associated with value.

If you pay a union worker $50 an hour to stand at a machine and push a button every 22 minutes to produce car doors, did you really add $50 of value to the car door?
No. It doesn't matter what happens after the button gets pushed. You added $50 an hour to cost.

So..cat doors usually produce themselves?
If not, and someone was needed to push the buttons, he made most of their value in cooperation with the workers who built those machines and keep it running etc.

Labour value theory was not seriously discredited scientifically.

[xcorps]

So..cat doors usually produce themselves?
If not, and someone was needed to push the buttons, he made most of their value in cooperation with the workers who built those machines and keep it running etc.

Labour value theory was not seriously discredited scientifically.

What determines the value of labor?

Is it the good/service produced, or is it the value of the skill?

(In some highly specialized endeavors, the answer is of course both.)

[removeduser_4536284751384]

So..cat doors usually produce themselves?
If not, and someone was needed to push the buttons, he made most of their value in cooperation with the workers who built those machines and keep it running etc.

Labour value theory was not seriously discredited scientifically.

why do you think labour is worth more than anything else?

Without the wood they couldn't make anything.

[YuriVII]

why do you think labour is worth more than anything else?

Without the wood they couldn't make anything.

Unless you have the ability yourself, you couldn't make anything with the wood.

[Rolling Thunder]

Unless you have the ability yourself, you couldn't make anything with the wood.

Of course I could. I could hire a woodsmith. It's like saying that unless I can bricklay, plumb, lay tiles, construct beams, pour concrete and survey then I can't build a house. Of course I can. I just hire others to do it.


I tend to observe that, amongst communists, that anything that they do not agree with - the regimes of Lenin, Stalin and so on - are of course, not in fact communism, and were not even an attempt to achieve communism (despite innumerable contemporary sources stating to the contrary).

[Bleda]

Labor is wrongly associated with value.

If you pay a union worker $50 an hour to stand at a machine and push a button every 22 minutes to produce car doors, did you really add $50 of value to the car door?
No. It doesn't matter what happens after the button gets pushed. You added $50 an hour to cost.

Union workers of the GMAC (GM auto workers union), in the US, in total were making about $117 an hour when we factor in their pensions and benefits. It's no surprise that when the union refuses to allow wage decreases that plants either have to shut down, or send those jobs to Canada or Mexico, or anywhere that union leadership isn't placing undue "value" to the cost of labor.

Had they accepted the decrease, the workers would still make about $90 an hour, instead of the $20 an hour "green job" provided by Democratic politicians to former GMAC auto workers. People touting the "value of labor" should take a trip to Detroit to see how that philosophy has worked out.

[Strelok]

Finally, one of the few threads that actually make a legitimate, non-strawman criticism of Communism.

[Ratzor]

Think of the guy who owns the chair factory as a baker. A baker buys flour, eggs, milk, sugar etc and makes bread or a cake or whatever. The chair factory owner buys wood and labour and uses them to make a chair. Why should the person who provided the labour be entitled to any more than the value of their labour if the person who provided the wood isn't entitled to more than the value of their wood?

Are you comparing human labour with ingredients? Another example: Say that you write a group-essay in school and you do 80% of the work alone becouse your co-group members are incapable/unwilling to do the work with you. Your group members make the finishing touches and then get better grades than you do. Does that seem fair?

[removeduser_4536284751384]

Are you comparing human labour with ingredients? Another example: Say that you write a group-essay in school and you do 80% of the work alone becouse your co-group members are incapable/unwilling to do the work with you. Your group members make the finishing touches and then get better grades than you do. Does that seem fair?

yes I am comparing it to ingredients

what this comes down to is "some people are unfairly exploited by some people in capitalism, which means communism is better"

if you think your pay isn't enough for the amount of work that you do, find a better job. I mean, if you had a ton of grain and thought you weren't being offered enough for it, you would sell it to someone who would pay higher.

And if you can't find a better paying job, then your expectations are wrong. Price of labour is influenced like any other good or service. If there is a lot of labour with little demand (i.e. high unemployment), its price will do down.

Labour is like any other ingredient.

The "labor theory of value" that says prices are proportional to the amount of labor in a good has been discredited. But the theory that says that a person's moral claim to compensation is proportional to the work he does has hardly been discredited. Not to say that such a theory is correct, but you can't just dismiss it by (incorrectly) asserting that it's been discredited.

I just discredited it. "Why should the person who provided the labour be entitled to any more than the value of their labour if the person who provided the wood isn't entitled to more than the value of their wood?"

EDIT: Also +rep to xcorps for his even clearer argument.

[magickyleo101]

I just discredited it.

Lol wut.

"Why should the person who provided the labour be entitled to any more than the value of their labour if the person who provided the wood isn't entitled to more than the value of their wood?"

Again, what do you mean by "value"? If by "value" you mean price, why should a person's moral entitlement to property correspond to price? If by "value" you mean the moral value of the contribution, why do you think that each party is being given that much under a free market?

Your argument only works if you equivocate on the meaning of "value."

[removeduser_4536284751384]

If by "value" you mean price, why should a person's moral entitlement to property correspond to price?

by value I mean price and this is what I am arguing.

[magickyleo101]

by value I mean price and this is what I am arguing.

So your question is: "Why should the person who provided the labour be entitled to any more than the price of their labour if the person who provided the wood isn't entitled to more than the price of their wood?"

The easy answer is that price doesn't equal entitlement. The market price of a certain kind of labor might be well below the minimum wage, but a person who's hired to do that labor is still entitled to the minimum wage.

Why should society be arranged such that a person is compensated relative to their ability to compete in a marketplace rather than, say, how good a person they are? Why should the market be the only thing society uses to determine who gets what?

[Ratzor]

yes I am comparing it to ingredients

That's kinda cold and calculating

what this comes down to is "some people are unfairly exploited by some people in capitalism, which means communism is better"

I'm not saying communism is a superiour system and I think both Capitalism and Communism fail by the same reason.

if you think your pay isn't enough for the amount of work that you do, find a better job. I mean, if you had a ton of grain and thought you weren't being offered enough for it, you would sell it to someone who would pay higher.

But if you didn't sow that grain, society would crumble, right? Ain't that worth a little extra dollars?

And if you can't find a better paying job, then your expectations are wrong. Price of labour is influenced like any other good or service. If there is a lot of labour with little demand (i.e. high unemployment), its price will do down.

I'm just saying that alot of services provided are undervalued and seen as "low" class jobs worth minimum wage. I just think our perception of what positions are important in society is skewered.

I just discredited it. "Why should the person who provided the labour be entitled to any more than the value of their labour if the person who provided the wood isn't entitled to more than the value of their wood?"

You base this on the perception that the final product wont change price regardless of the amount of labour put into it. I say why should a good be valued more than the material and labour put into it?

[Rolling Thunder]

Are you comparing human labour with ingredients? Another example: Say that you write a group-essay in school and you do 80% of the work alone becouse your co-group members are incapable/unwilling to do the work with you. Your group members make the finishing touches and then get better grades than you do. Does that seem fair?

False analogy is false. You entered into no contract with your co-group members, you were not paid by your co-group members, etc. A more accurate analogy would be this: A peer of yours hires you to tutor him in maths, and pays you money. You tutor him. He gets better grades than you all around. Why do you complain?

[magickyleo101]

That's nonsense. The labour theory of value has been discredited completely. The value of the worker's work is €10 an hour. Why should the worker be entitled to more than that?

The "labor theory of value" that says prices are proportional to the amount of labor in a good has been discredited. But the theory that says that a person's moral claim to compensation is proportional to the work he does has hardly been discredited. Not to say that such a theory is correct, but you can't just dismiss it by (incorrectly) asserting that it's been discredited.

In any case, insofar as society is dissatisfied with the way that the free market distributes resources, the corrections for that should come at the taxation/entitlements level and not at the setting prices for labor level. The government doesn't have any business saying how much chair makers should get paid.

[Helm]

It isn't necessarily bad in theory it's just that it doesn't fit in with human nature, which is why we have never had a proper Communist system only leftwing police states.

[G-Megas-Doux]

I think we are perhaps missing the point of communal living when we refer to personal wealth. In a Communist state there would actually be no personal property or currency. The communist state would be run as a meritocracy and military state.

Where it falls down is that people are greedy horders, thus preventing the main point of communal living which is provide a protection to the constituant populace allowing them to achieve their needs for food, shelter, equipment, security and a family life.

Communism by its nature is a bureaucracy to provide by list all the basic needs for survival and insistance that all the populace contribute to the machine that provides the items.

Capitalism is flexible because it provides a machine called finance which allows bartering and enslaves people to their own greed. It falls down because it cannot guarentee the basic needs are met due to people exploiting each other.

Ultimatly no system of government is perfect because we are selfish and it only needs a few for all to suffer.

[Ratzor]

I think we are perhaps missing the point of communal living when we refer to personal wealth. In a Communist state there would actually be no personal property or currency. The communist state would be run as a meritocracy and military state.

Where it falls down is that people are greedy horders, thus preventing the main point of communal living which is provide a protection to the constituant populace allowing them to achieve their needs for food, shelter, equipment, security and a family life.

Communism by its nature is a bureaucracy to provide by list all the basic needs for survival and insistance that all the populace contribute to the machine that provides the items.

Capitalism is flexible because it provides a machine called finance which allows bartering and enslaves people to their own greed. It falls down because it cannot guarentee the basic needs are met due to people exploiting each other.

Ultimatly no system of government is perfect because we are selfish and it only needs a few for all to suffer.

I agree to this