I do think the effort to figure forms that capital takes and what combinations of capital equipment are appropriate (without worrying about just what that means) as well as figuring out how other forms of labor will interact with the capital (how fast should the assembly line run?) and the like are also forms of labor. I also agree that, like monetary prices, monetary wages are not the complete wage paid. Not only are there other pecuniary compensations but there’s also non-pecuniary benefits that serve to provide compensation for labor. Still, an imperfect objective measure seems preferable to an imperfect non-objective measure. At least from a practical application perspective. Generally speaking it is a fool’s game to attempt to assign a “numeric” value to something with “philosophical” background. When attempting to determine the market value of something, one must, as much as possible, try to figure out precisely what values are being exchanged. In the case of labor it can be quite confusing. In most white collar settings it can be intensely confusing. One, I go with the assumption that any time money changes hands there is at least the assumption that there is at least percieved value being returned. Also, we have the observation that people will throw money at all kinds of things. As much as it may be difficult for me and you to understand the value being returned when someone goes to a prostitute and asks the prostitute to tie him up and beat him, for that particular customer, there is value being returned. Now, in the white collar world, I can’t help but notice the following — in a given two week period sometimes well in excess of several thousand dollars changes hands between one individual who apparently is in the market not to be tied up and beaten, but rather to watch (or just “be aware”) that the other individual is sitting in a cubicle at certain hours of the day and staring at a computer. This blows my mind. Now, generally speaking as a SIDE effect of thte 2nd indivdual sitting in the cubible, enough revenue is generated to pay the money that is changing hands, but, after having watched this behavior for a number of years, I am FIRMLY convinced that the PRIMARY exchange is several thousand dollars for sitting in the cubicle at certain defined times. What the “inherent” value of that labor might be I have absolutely no idea, but some of the bids on it blow my mind. Also, we have the observation that people will throw money at all kinds of things. As much as it may be difficult for me and you to understand the value being returned when someone goes to a prostitute and asks the prostitute to tie him up and beat him, for that particular customer, there is value being returned. Now, in the white collar world, I can’t help but notice the following — in a given two week period sometimes well in excess of several thousand dollars changes hands between one individual who apparently is in the market not to be tied up and beaten, but rather to watch (or just “be aware”) that the other individual is sitting in a cubicle at certain hours of the day and staring at a computer. This blows my mind. Now, generally speaking as a SIDE effect of thte 2nd indivdual sitting in the cubible, enough revenue is generated to pay the money that is changing hands, but, after having watched this behavior for a number of years, I am FIRMLY convinced that the PRIMARY exchange is several thousand dollars for sitting in the cubicle at certain defined times. Plus you can always add in the non-objective stuff if you are personally involved in the trade. Some of the “non-objective” things can be reduced to a monetary value if you try hard enough. For instance the value of experience can be estimated from the increased wage experienced people gain. Thus the first year pilot recieves his wage and the possibility of earning more in subsequent years. I think that needs a bit of elaboration. Just how is not consuming a form a labor? I certainly agree that one labors in producing some capital, but if all capital requires labor then capital is not productive. I don’t agree with that proposition. I see some of the general productivity as attributable to capital and not labor. Perhaps you mean something different. Something like I work 40 hours and make $1000. I only consume $750. After three weeks I could then not work and still maintain the same life style. That’s true but I could just work 30 hours a week and be in the exact same condition with respect to total hours worked and amount consumed. I still forgo consuming $1000 a week and only consume $750 a week. Since I could be consuming the $1000 I must be forgoing $250 a week in consumption. To some extent that’s true. I don’t think we can actually get to a total monetary, or objective, wage labor price though with out actually having explicit prices for the various components. For instance, we’d need to be able to identify the marginal valuation of the market clearly first year pilot to get the market price for that part of the compensation. We can apporximate that price, and economists and price analysts do that stuff. But we are then using a non-objective metric which runs into the same problems that exist for the LTV. I think things like health benefits, contributions to retirement funds and the like are quite suitible to the effort you suggest. I start out by asking “What are we talking about, generally, when we talk about labor? How is it different from other activities, like play, sleep, and so on?” One of the characteristics of labor for most people — labor in the economic sense — is that they’re doing something they wouldn’t otherwise do in order to get something they want (other than the experience of labor itself). In this it differs from work done for enjoyment, the hell of it, charity, a noble purpose, and the like. The reason the latter does not enter into economic calculations much is that if people will do something without being given anything in exchange, there’s no reason to pay them. (There are exceptions for those with unusual talents, who can do what they like and still get paid for it.

“Capitalist private property relies not on the labour of the
proprietor, as petty commodity production does, but on the
socialized labour of the workers.”
– Meghnad Desai

Although foregoing consumption can accompany productive work as a method for the accumulation of value, the actual act of saving value by abstaining from consumption is not itself an activity of labor. Doing without is not a form of productive labor. Most of us are not so lucky.) But the things people labor at are not always work in the primitive sense of changing the state of the world. Sometimes one must labor to keep the world _from_ changing in an undesirable manner, as when one sits around watching a fire or a nuclear plant. Similarly, one may be paid for being on call, as firemen, policemen, and emergency medical technicians are. So positive activity is not necessarily a mark of labor. But in all the cases we name, laborers are giving up a certain amount of their time, that is, their lives, to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do, in order to get money or some other reward. Now, let us assume for a moment that everyone must labor for their income, that they get paid in money, they would enjoy spending it on various goods, and that they have some choice about what they do. Someone who, instead of spending all their money on something they like, instead saves some of it, is in effect giving up time _and_ the possible enjoyments of subsequent consumption in order to accumulate those savings. The savings are in effect a sort of stored time or, as I think Marx put it, “frozen labor”. Except, of course, it isn’t necessarily frozen — it can do things, such as undergo transformation into tools, which amplify the productive powers of labor, or, just kept around, can reduce threats and the pain of fearing threats, confer social power, and the like. In other words, I see labor as a kind of category of suffering which is exchanged for wealth which may be enjoyed and consumed or turned into savings including capital (tools); for the accumulation of capital to be effective, the capitalist-laborer must _continue_ to suffer denied enjoyment of the capital (or it will disappear). All labor, in my view, is a foregoing of the enjoyment of working one’s will and obtaining one’s desires, a giving-up of a piece of one’s life, usually in the hope of securing and enhancing the remainder. (Of course, I’m not talking about the general historical and current practice of capitalism here, where many other considerations come into play, especially inheritance and other forms of luck, and political power; nor of those who have the good fortune to find enjoyment in accumulation and capital manipulation themselves, apart from anything they produce.) I agree that consuming capital will result in it’s consumption. Put the capital itself is productive and even if one ceases adding to the principle, the very nature of the growth process implies that at some point all the original contributions could be withdrawn while still leaving capital that will continue to grow. If that resulting amount of capital is sufficient to satisfy a person’s wants and still add to the base of capital then, while there is clearly a case where one is not consuming all they could but they are also not really doing any labor. For instance, if one were able to amass $10 billion from the returns from labor accumulated capital at 1% you could have $100 million a year. It’s pretty easy to get that 1% return so I don’t think we would say there’s much labor involved. The question I have is, if the person doesn’t consume all that $100 million, where is the labor component of the unconsumed residual? I think if we scale down the situation the logic still holds but now we have the problem of separating out the contribution to capital from capital and the contribution to capital from labor. There still remains the fact that the contribution to capital represents a condition of forgone consumption but labor is not the only source. I realize this is not the marxist perspective. At it’s core thought the marxist perspective assumes the aristilian (I think) assumption that money (capital) is infertile so cannot be productive; only labor can be productive. I don’t agree with that proposition. If I’m wrong, then forgone consumption is always and everywhere the result of labor. If I’m not wrong then that claim is not true. I think the main problem with Marx’s LTV is that it says that providing capital does not create value, but is neccesary to create value. This appears to be a logical contradiction, like saying that water is not part of the value of a cake, but you need it to make the cake. I’m saying that in the primitive case foregoing consumption to accumulate savings of any kind _is_ labor. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” The case of the fellow with ten billion is somewhat different. I would guess that such large stores of wealth attract political power, so that the burden of suffering foregone consumption is shifted on to others less powerful. Value equivelent to the value the original contributions had at the time of investment could be withdrawn and still do this yes. In fact it usaully is if you accumulate for long enough. But at some point (assuming this isn’t the inheritance of Captain Morgan’s or Cortez’s relatives) somebody worked to earn the money. That’s what created the potential consumption that was foregone. This in turn created more potential consumption that was again foregone etc. The labour is in the past but it still existes as saved value. There need not be any. The labour is _past_ labour. In the earning of the original “seed money”. I see how you might think that but in disagree. Consider the things you get payment for. Land rent is (hopefully) payment for mixing your labour with land. Interest is payment for contributing use of economic reserves for a time. These reserves must originally have be created by labour. Profits (not including interest) are rewards for using your economic reserves to cover potential shortfalls in value creation. Since both profit and interest require economic reserves they cannot create the original reserves. Only labour can do that. I think it is. The problem with Marxist theory is that it assumes that it is the result of _current_ labour, which may not be the case. The original labour may have been centuries ago, but like the original human it’s children live on. These children are interest and profit which are productive. The that production is however the result of the original labour. Foregone consumption is always and everywhere the result of labour often acting through the medium of interest and profit. I hope that’s clear. And also one has to decide, continously, to forego the consumption, and literally suffer the consequences (again, in the primitive case). One decides to eat rice and beans instead of steak, to walk instead of ride, to wear the old coat for another year. One’s savings sit under the floorboards, or with the moneylender earning interest, or are invested in a productive enterprise which one is trying to maintain and expand; they could be taken out at any time and spent on the goods which one had hitherto foregone. I agree that’s also a problem. I’m not sure how you distinguish the “primitive case” from others. What about the guy who decides to eat steak at Sizzler instead of Le Circ (or whatever expensive resturant is hot right now)? Or who buys an off the rack coat each year instead of Armani? Or washes his own mercedes (the sign according to an old joke of a poor winemaker in France)? I mean there’s usaully _something_ people could do with money to make their lives better. Where is the borderline in your opinion? Slave labor is suffering. Excessive and disproportionate work, under another’s authority and direction, is a cause of human suffering. Unnecessary and unreasonable work, needless and senseless work, are a source of so much human suffering. Imagine life without the ability to engage in productive and purposeful labor, without the ability to be employed in creative and worthwhile labor. The problem with work is that we are not free to labor as needed, and most of us must get permission to engage in work. This is because we need money in order to have access to what we need for life. In order to have a job, we are forced to work under another’s authority, and to work so much that we become tired of work, and we come to dislike work. Labor should be as enjoyable as the fruits of labor, and especially labor that has been made light by machinery, by equipment, by work associations, and by the organization of work — the division of labor. Of course, there’s the division of labor, and there’s the disintegration of labor. The fragmentation of labor is not intended to make labor an enjoyable process. The purpose of scientific management (Taylorism and Fordism) is to transform human labor into a machine-driven process of profit production. It’s all the maximization of profits; it’s not about people. Labor has been dehumanized; and there are socialists who believe that labor can be rehumanized, even with industrialization. The first step, and the most important step, to the humanization of labor is the democratization of all industry. But, the capitalist consumes capital, enjoys capital, as the source if their dividend income. The capitalists are mot denying themselves. They are not suffering; they are not sacrificing themselves; they are not foregoing the consumption of wealth, and the pleasures of leisure. In fact, they live off the value-creating labors of so many other human beings. But labor ought to be the direct enjoyment of effectively occupying and operating one’s will, of actively performing one’s will. Personal and practical industry is enjoyable, or it can be enjoyable, if it is voluntary and attentive, loving and caring, free and equal. Labor is life; life is labor. Labor is not giving up the pleasure of life; labor is one of life’s good pleasures. Labor per se is beautiful and pleasing, good and virtuous, wholesome and admirable. Labor is also sociable. Labor, under the rule of capital, is miserable and grievous; but labor does not have to be this way. Capitalism is the process and the practice of labor’s immiserization and impoverishment. In my opinion, labor is a human need. It is not just an economic need for subsistence and survival; it is also an existential need, a spiritual need. Productive work is also an ethical need, because every normal human being has a sense of responsibility to contribute to the welfare of the community, as well as providing for their own personal well-being. It is amazing that otherwise intelligent people can so easily play down — even put down — the value of labor in the creation of value, in the production of goods of value.
Besides, business is a private pursuit; and so, for that very reason, there is no accounting, there can be no reckoning, as to how much the proprietor’s measure of labor has to do with the proprietor’s measure of property. The petty proprietor, more often than not, does do productive labor; and yet, as a business proprietor whatever value is not consumed as a personal good is consumed as a capital good, whatever value is not used as an individual consumer good is consumed as an industrial investment. In other words, saving is not foregoing consumption, if it is remembered that acquisition and accumulation are also forms of consumption. There is no suffering foregone consumption in the part of super-wealthy proprietors, who do not labor to produce the wealth which they consume and enjoy in their life of luxury and leisure. The producers produce the value which the proprietors accumulate, economize, invest, and contribute.

“Marx was not justified, even in terms of his own theory, in
his prediction that communism would follow capitalism. Yet
communism, as described, could still be an overwhelmingly
attractive image of how society might be organized. So
should we sign up to the ideal (worrying about how we might
get from here to there later)? Alternatively, we might
question whether it really is a coherent ideal after all.”
– Jonathan Wolff

There are always going to be some jobs and some labor that cannot be made enjoyable. Fixing a stopped up toilet, for example. Given that the thing may literally be full of crap, there is no way that job will be enjoyable. Ditto, for cleaning out chicken houses, stables, etc. Other forms of work will be miserable due to working conditions beyond human control. Example, trains run all the time. And, boxcars have to be switched, spotted on sidings, picked up, etc. That has to take place in all types of weather, rain, snow, cold, heat, etc. The process cannot be automated. A man has to be on the ground, giving signals to the engineer, coupling and uncoupling cars, hooking up air hoses, setting hand brakes, etc. In some weather, it can be just miserable, due to the weather conditions. A lot of chemical plant and refinery work is the same. A postman has to make rounds in snow, rain, cold, heat, and all types of miserable weather. How the hell are you going to make being out in the cold or in 100 degree heat enjoyable? How are you going to make fixing a stopped up crapper enjoyable? There should be no unnecessary misery attached to work, but it would be worse under a socialist system, since you would not even have the option of quitting. Your job would likely be assigned by a bureaucrat or a worker’s council, or some other authority from whom there would be no effective appeal. Besides, people would still have to work at something, or else everyone would starve. And, some of that work will be inherently unpleasant. Construction work is necessary, but not fun in the heat of August. The Demon Lover was my Second, name of Purcell. Purcell was one of those guys who just has to go around making like a bull moose in fly-time, bellowing at the moon and banging his antlers against the rocks. He’d been to the house a couple or three times and said things about Sue that were so appreciative that I had to tell him to knock it off or he’d collect a punch in the mouth. Sue had liked him, though; well, Sue was always that way, always going a bit out of her way to get upwind of an animal like that. And I guess I’m one of ‘em myself; anyway, it was me she married. I said, “I’m afraid ol’ Purcell’s either a blowhard or he was just out of character when we rounded up the crew and brought ‘em all back. We found ‘em in honky-tonks and strip joints; we found ‘em in the buzzoms of their families behaving like normal family men do after a long trip; but Purcell, we found him at the King George Hotel”—I emphasized with a forefinger—”alone by himself and fast asleep, where he tells us he went as soon as he got earthside. Said he wanted a soak in a hot tub and twenty-four hours sleep in a real 1-G bed with sheets. How’s that for a sailor ashore on his first leave?” She’d gotten up to get me more ale. “I haven’t finished this one yet!” I said. She said “Oh” and sat down again. “You were going to tell me about the trip.” “I was? Oh, all right, I was. But listen carefully, because this is one trip I’m going to forget as fast as I can, and I’m not going to do it again, even in my head.” Like I said, she was sick. Her body temperature was wildly erratic, going from 102 all the way down to 96 and back up again. She was just this side of breakdown and must have been like that for weeks, slipping across the line for minutes at a time, hauling herself back for a moment or two, then sliding across again. But she knew Glenda was helpless, though physically in perfect shape, and she knew that even automatic machinery has to be watched. She not only dragged herself around keeping ink in the recording pens and new charts when the seismo’s and hygro’s and airsonde recorders needed them, but she kept Glenda fed; more than that, she fed herself. She fed herself close to fifteen thousand calories a day. And she was forty pounds underweight. The primate was galloping for the woods on its stumpy little legs with its long arms up over its head—even then Clement thought it was funny. Then something else went for him in the long grass and he took a big leap out of its way. He later wrote very careful notes on this thing. It was wet and it was nasty and it stunk beyond words. He said you could search your memory long afterwards and locate separate smells in that overall stench the way you can with the instruments of an orchestra. There was butyl mercaptan and rotten celery, excrement, formic acid, decayed meat, and that certain smell which is like the taste of some brasses. The burn on his cheek smelt like hydrochloric acid at work on a hydrocarbon; just what it was. The thing was irregularly spherical or ovoid, but soft and squashy. Fluids of various kinds oozed from it here and there—colorless and watery, clotted yellow like soft-boiled eggs, and blood. It bled more than anything ought to that needs blood; it bled in gouts from openings at random, and it bled cutaneously, droplets forming on its surface like the sweat on a glass of ice water. Cutaneously, did I say? That’s not what Clement reported. It looked skinless—flayed was the word he used. Much of its surface was striated muscle fiber, apparently unprotected. In two places that he could see was naked brown tissue like liver, drooling and dripping excretions of its own. And this thing, roughly a foot and a half by two feet and weighing maybe thirty pounds, was flopping and hopping in a spastic fashion, not caring which side was up (if it had an up) but always moving toward him. Clement blew sharply out of his nostrils and stepped back and to one side—a good long step, with the agony of his scalded cheek to remind him that wherever the thing had come from, it was high up, and he didn’t want it taking off like that again. Even when there is satisfaction when the job is done, the misery of the weather will still be there. Non sequitur and irrelevent to book. Not at the time the decision to consume or invest is made it isn’t. Capital goods are only consumed over time as they are used to produce consumer goods. No using capital to produce is. Saving to produce it isn’t. Then how can it be said to be “serving”? Serving who? Non sequitur. Just because you claim that someone didn’t labour to produce wealth doesn’t mean they don’t forego consumption to invest it. Why yes they do. Specifically the proprietors produce that value rather than others. Well said, all work is pleasure when it is your work. I would only take issue with The fragmentation of labor is not intended to make labor an I would describe the problem as commodification of labor, and therefore, ownership is not really the issue. It is the balance between work and availabilty of labor. She was the weirdest sight you ever saw, her face full like a fat person’s but her abdomen, from the lower ribs to the pubes, collapsed almost against her spine. You’d never have believed an organism could require so much food—not, that is, until you saw her eat. She’d rigged up a chopper out of the lab equipment because she actually couldn’t wait to chew her food. She just dumped everything and anything edible into that gadget and propped her chin on the edge of the table by the outlet and packed that garbage into her open mouth with both hands. If she could have slept it would have been easier, but hunger would wake her after twenty minutes or so and back she’d go, chop and cram, guzzle and swill. If Glenda had been able to help—but there she was, she did it all herself, and when we got the whole story straight we found she’d been at it for nearly three weeks. In another three weeks they’d have been close to the end of their stores, enough for five people for anyway another couple of months. We had a portable hypno in the first-aid kit on the scout, and we slapped it to Glenda Spooner with a reassurance tape and a normal sleep command and just put her to bed with it. We bedded Amy down too, though she got a bit hysterical until we could make her understand through that fog of delirium that one of us would stand by every minute with premasticated rations. Once she understood that she slept like a corpse, but such a corpse you never want to see, lying there eating. It was a lot of work all at once, and when we had it done Purcell wiped his face and said, “Five-nines Earth Normal, hah. No malignant virus or bacterium. No toxic plants or fungi. Come to Mullygantz II, land of happiness and health.” “Nobody’s used that big fat no,” I reminded him. “The reports only say there’s nothing bad here that we know about or can test for. My God, the best brains in the world used to kill AB patients by transfusing type O blood. Heaven help us the day we think we know everything that goes on in the universe.” We didn’t get the whole story then; rather, it was all there but not in a comprehensible order. The key to it all was Amy Segal’s personal log, which she called a “diary” and kept in hen tracks called shorthand, which took three historians and a philologist a week to decode after we returned to Earth. It was the diary that fleshed the thing out for us, told us about these people and their guts and how they exploded all over each other. So I’ll tell it, not the way we got it, but the way it happened. To begin with, it was a good team. Clement was a good head, one of those relaxed guys who always listens to other people talking. He could get a fantastic amount of work out of a team and out of himself too, and it never showed. His kind of drive is sort of a secret weapon. Glenda Spooner and Amy Segal were wild about him in a warm, respectful way that never interfered with the work. I’d guess that Glenda was more worshipful about it, or at least, with her it showed more. Amy was the little mouse with the big eyes that gets happier and stays just as quiet when her grand passion walks into the room, except maybe she works a little harder so he’ll be pleased. Clement was bed-friends with both of them, which is the way things usually arrange themselves when there’s an odd number of singles on a team. It’s expected of them, and the wise exec keeps it going that way and plays no favorites, at least till the job’s done. The Flents, Katherine and Joe, were married, and had been for quite a while before they went Outside. His specialty was geology and mineralogy, and she was a chemist, and just as their sciences supplemented each other so did their egos. One of Amy’s early “diary” entries says they knew each other so well they were one step away from telepathy; they’d work side by side for hours swapping information with grunts and eyebrows. Just what kicked over all this stability it’s hard to say. It wasn’t a fine balance; you’d think from the look of things that the arrangement could stand a lot of bumps and friction. Probably it was an unlucky combination of small things all harmless in themselves but having a critical-mass characteristic that nobody knew about. Maybe it was Clement’s sick spell that triggered it; maybe the Flents suddenly went into one of those oh-God-what-did-I-ever-see-in-you phases that come over married people who are never separated; maybe it was Amy’s sudden crazy yen for Joe Flent and her confusion over it. Probably the worst thing of all was that Joe Flent might have sensed how she felt and caught fire too. I don’t know. I guess, like I said, that they all happened at once. Clement getting sick like that. He was out after bio specimens and spotted a primate. They’re fairly rare on Mullygantz II, big ugly devils maybe five feet tall but so fat they outweigh a man two to one. They’re mottled pink and gray, and hairless, and they have a face that looks like an angry gorilla when it’s relaxed and a ridiculous row of little pointed teeth instead of fangs. They get around pretty good in the trees, but they’re easy to outrun on the ground because they never learned to use their arms and knuckles like the great apes but waddle over the ground with their arms held up in the air to get them out of the way. It fools you. They look so damn silly that you forget they might be dangerous. So anyway, Clement surprised one on the ground and had it headed for the open fields before it knew what was happening. He ran it to a standstill, just by getting between it and the trees and then approaching it. The primate did all the running; Clement just maneuvered it until it was totally pooped and squatted down to wait its doom. Actually all the doom it would have gotten from Clement was to get stunned, hypoed, examined, and turned loose, but of course it had no way of knowing that. It just sat there in the grass looking stupid and ludicrous and harmless in an ugly sort of way, and when Clement put out his hand it didn’t move, and when he patted it on the neck it just trembled. He was slowly withdrawing his hand to get his stun gun out when he said something or laughed—anyway, made a sound, and the thing bit him. Those little bitty teeth weren’t what they seemed. The gums are retractile and the teeth are really not teeth at all but serrated bone with all those little needles slanting inward like a shark’s. The jaw muscles are pretty flabby, fortunately, or he’d have lost an elbow, but all the same, it was a bad bite. Clement couldn’t get loose, and he couldn’t reach around himself to get to the stun gun, so he drew his flame pistol, thumbed it around to “low”, and scorched the primate’s throat with it. That was Clement, never wanting to do any more damage than he had to. The primate opened its mouth to protect its throat and Clement got free. He jumped back and twisted his foot and fell, and something burned him on the side of the face like a lick of hellfire. He scrabbled back out of the way and got to his feet. Dot com boom babies had fun. Nah. People do all kinds of things for “pleasure” that involve heat, cold, bad smells. Job satisfaction arises (studies show) from control. Stress is hgh for production workers, not execs. Repetition also is unpleasant. All can be fixed by a balance of workers to work. If this were true, I would enjoy cleaning my house, which is pure vernacular production. But I don’t. Then why don’t workers fix it? Because the costs of organising production to make “labor … as enjoyable as the fruits of labor” is prohibitively high. It is expensive to retrain people every time they get tired of doing their job. It is even more expensive for everyone to manage their own workplaces. Few people know how to run a business.