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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!josh
From: josh@topaz.ARPA (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is "capitalism"?
Message-ID: <1906@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 7-May-85 00:31:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.1906
Posted: Tue May  7 00:31:37 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 8-May-85 03:13:00 EDT
References: <441@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <1831@topaz.ARPA> <1008@uwmacc.UUCP> <1855@topaz.ARPA> <1015@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 37

In article <1015@uwmacc.UUCP> myers@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeff Myers) writes:
(quoting me)
>> [A lathe] *multiplies* the "value" of the succeeding labor by some factor,
>> rather than merely adding to it.  The thing to note is that if you 
>> iterate the production of capital, using each generation to help
>> create the next, the result is an *exponential* increase in wealth.
>> This is why capitalism (in my sense) is such hot stuff.
>
>This is why *human labor* is such hot stuff -- the same lathe produced by
>exploited and non-exploited labor has the same UTILITY value.

Human labor may be hot stuff, but this is not why.  Directly ends-oriented
labor produces value in an arithmetic progression:  if you can whittle 
a thousand balusters in a year, you can whittle 2000 in two years or
3000 in three years.  If instead you use the first year to build machines
that multiply your productivity 100-fold, you can produce 200,000 balusters
in the succeeding two years; if you spend the first year building machine-
making machines, and the second using them to make 100 times as many
machines, the third year you make 10,000,000 balusters.  Using the 
"*human labor*" method you will accumulate 10,000 balusters in ten years;
using the capitalist method you will make 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
in the tenth year.  If capitalism were allowed to flourish, everyone
in the world would soon be rich;  under the socialist regime of squabbling
over the pieces of an ever-shrinking pie, we will all soon be utterly equal
in wretched poverty.

>Many influential economists take the labor theory of value very seriously,
>which you would have noticed if you had been reading recent postings.
>
>jeff m

I haven't seen a coherent account yet-- perhaps you'd like to provide one?

--JoSH

ps-- a baluster is one of the (often lathe-turned) vertical posts which
support a bannister rail.