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Re: [ox-en] extrinsic motivation = coercion



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2009/5/2 Stefan Meretz <stefan meretz.de>

On 2009-05-01 16:52, Diego Saravia wrote:
Behind money
there is exchange _value_, which does only exist, because we do not
produce societally, but isolated. Isolated producers have to
exchange their products, societal producers do not.

all we produce  is in a huge system, formed by "families" or
something like that

I don't mean families, but private producers, companies, capitalists.


if you speak about a producer, you are thinking about producing for others,
so exchange



could you spoecify better what are you thinking about?

Could you specify your question?


what is a societal producer?, how it works, for whom do they produce?





Thus talking about value in the sense of objective value is more
correct then talking about money.

yes, but diferenet concepts.
value is about work inside a product

Nope. Value is only a social relation. There is nothing "inside" a
product which creates value.



yes, accumulated work.

mm, when we speak about value I think about

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

what are you thinking about?




"monetary value" or beter  "price value" or better "exchange value"
is diferent and not proportional with value

Yes, price and value are different. Price is a local phenomenon,


local? there are global markets.


value is
a societally average measure of exchange relations. Prices are
fluctuating around their value.


mmm, that's not always true.





both values (call them ?-value)  are not conservative, nor  constant,
nor related only to the product,
values depend on social conditions, and that change

True, nevertheless, value is an objective measure.

I could have a product that today have a ?-value and tomorrow have
other, without changing it

True in a very general sense, but in average this does not happen,
because social relations did not change so rapidly.


did you review petroleum prices in las two years?



But you are right:
value is only a social relation. The bad thing is: We can't escape from
this social relation, it determines our actions, which is named
fetishism or alienation.


alienation - work for others - exchange




In any society where you continue to have value (or money) as an
objective measure of social relationships,


value only in exchange of goods, not all social relationships



you have alienation. This
never can be a free society.


you can have value in non exchange societies, as you can have work

value is related to work, and exchange value is related to work and capital





The difference here in the list between the, say it friendly, "money-
modifiers" and the "get-rid-of-money" fraction is, that the money-
modifiers assume,


money is only an instrument, our diferences are more profound, more basic
than money problem.

we must agree in a value definition, work definition, exchange definition,
before we can advance.


and not societally. Again: In a society where producers act societally,
value and thus money has no longer any function, because the role of ex-
post mediation (via markets) was replaced by an ex-ante-communication --
like in free software.


again, what is  societally?


free software  usage is free, no exchange value, nothing to do with our
discussion.
we have not work needed to distribute it, so no value involved also
it is not an economic good

you only need work to create it. once its produced (and disponible to the
public via internet), its value goes to 0, also its price.


in fact its not obvious how to create, you can not guarantee a cost  for it.
like art. Software creation is an art, not an industrie.


Yes, I know. They can only think in terms of "appropriating value".


what are others ways?




first time I heard about that definition. I think "objetive" is not a
good word near value.

It is an absolutely necessary clarification. Otherwise you are moving to
the liberal interpretation of economy (based on prices and subjective
value).


but you say sometime before that value is not related to the work content of
an item

so, what is your objetive determination of value?




My definition is really not new, you can read at Marx' theory. This
explanantion was only buried under tons of readings of Marx


first chapter of capital.


by the
traditional workers movement, which were handy, but too simple. They
need it for class struggle purposes, which I completely understand. But
it was too simple and it proved wrong when trying to build new societies


???



on the ground of their simplistic or substancialistic value theory. The
very core was the assumption, that value (and money) can be treated in
the interests of the people.



thats utility, not marx work



You can recognize the same fault as
liberals do: Objective value does not exist, we treat value as a
subjective measure for just distribution. Well, they failed, independent
if social-democrats or communists tried to apply it.

I am not eager to reproduce this fault with peer production.

was not discovery by marx, nor adam smith, its "biblical"
we were expulsed from paradise and coerced to work

Not true. This is one of the big myths of our times. We as humans
do not need to work. This sounds weird, but a proof is simple. Just
look at our daily live. Say you have an 8-hour-job. Then during one
third of the (week) day, you "work" and produce something useful
(hopefully). During two third of the day, you don't "work", but you
do other things, most of them are useful too: Relaxing, child
caring, communicating, writing on ox-list, making history or
anything else. Without these things you are doing -- simply because
you live your life -- society would not exist. These _are_
necessary activities, but they are not "work"!

why are you not calling them work?

This could be one option: Call everything "work".


not everything.

everything what we usually call work



And indeed there was
and is a tendency in emancipatory theory to extend the realms of
activity which should be called "work" (love work etc.). But then you
loose the potence to discover differences between types of action, free
and coerced/aliened ones.



the only people I know, for wich love is work are prostitutes, paid ones
(exchange prostitutes) or
married/slaves  ones (in the family)

so ther are a lot of actions, for example read a book for pleassure, play
soccer,  sleep, talk with my family, go to cinema, eat, etc than nobody
calls work



For me work is an aliened activity.


ok, thats your way, but I think most of people use other way


You do it because you are coerced to
do it. The type of coercion does not matter, be it physical personal
oppression or indirect coercion via money. Nothing explains it better
then the cite: "Who do not work should not eat". This slogan was used by
church _and_ liberals _and_ workers movements. Creepy.


"should"  is the creepy word

but nature have a more "natural" fact. "who do not  work, do not eat"
and that has nothing to do with alienation. Its direct



form wikipedia:
 In the labour process

Marx's Theory of Alienation is based upon his observation that in emerging
industrial production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of
their lives and selves, in not having any control of their work. Workers
never become autonomous, self-realized human beings in any significant
sense, except the way the bourgeois want the worker to be realized.
Alienation in capitalist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism> societies
occurs because in work
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_%28economics%29>each contributes
to the common wealth, but can only express this
fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system
that is not publicly(socially) owned, but privately owned, for which each
individual functions as an instrument, not as a social being:form wil


so, its a capitalism problem, not general one.






"Work" in sense we all know does only exist, because a lot of means
we need for our living are only available via money. And they are
only available via money (which coerces us to "work"), because
production is organized in the silly isolated way described above.

I think you are using a circular definition

you define work as something for exchange (better do not use money
here)

and then you say that exchange and work are not diferent, OK you are
right, is not falsable

but the point is that a lot of us think of work as something more
general

Well, this is up to you. I propose to better give up this naturalistic
definition of work. I prefer to use the word producing. We humans are
producing our livelihood, but we don't need to work for that goal.
Working is the type of producing livelihood in non-free societies.


so, for you, you only work in a capitalistic world?





I would say that prosume is about work

child caring is work (prosumed, usually)

How do you distinguish child caring in a kindergarten done by
professionals for money and giving your child a kiss? Is both work? What
is your kiss worth?


you are mixing a lot of stuff

people can (and ussualy do) put love in their work

I have a lot of friends in my job, and I  can show my love for them in my
work

I usualy love my work, also

Alienation usualy  happens in mass producing industrial  repetitive tasks.

Our society also have people working with his capital, that are not
alienated.

You are trying to cuadriculate stuff, to put concepts in black and white,
that is good , abstraction, but you are going to far, you loose  the real
stuff if you goes to far with that.



No, surely not, as explained above. The type of immediate personal
relationships in families is different from societal non-personal
mediation in society. But in a sense you are right: The challenge is to
develop a type of societal mediation, where humans do and produce freely
what they want resulting in a good living for all.


we have this kind of participations in families.  (we share food, shelter in
families)
people work in families, people do not exchange (usualy) inside families.
 Families prosume.

we develop  exchange sistems to organize biger groups, people work also for
exchange, not always alienated

perhaps is possible to develop a new system for sharing stuff in bigger
groups not based in exchange

I think this is your wish, ok I have no problem with that. I listen you.

you think that peer production is a germ for that: Wonderfull








Looking at wasted
energy of so many people due to oppression, unemployment, and de-
motivation, this is absolutely possible. And peer production is a germ
form of that.




animals work?

Does not exist.


castors



ok, but we are biological items :)

True, but our determination does not come from being natural
beings, but from being societal humans.

animals also form societies

Nope. I know that some name social animal structures a society,

yes



but this
is one of the false generalizations to be made. If you do this false
generalization, it is a clear indication, that you did not understand
what a society is.


?? you must read about that.

why do you say that?




 An explanation of social processes using
biological terms is a biologistic one

ok, circular definition

Ok, more precisely: "An explanation of societal processes using
biological terms is a biologistic one."


what is the diference?


The problem behind that is, that in english it is very uncommon to
distinguish between "social" and "societal". Animals build social
structures, but not societies.


what is the diference?

what is societal?




and thus misleading and dangerous.

?? what kind of fundamentalist is that speach?

Fundamentalist? I don't know, what you mean.


you are negating the posibility that we share behaviours with other living
beings
without any evidence

and now we have a lot of evidence that humans are not special. We share a
lot of behaviours withg other animal species.

In fact our behaviour emerge from that. So we can explain societies rules in
the frame of animal behaviour. Several non human animals share also a
culture

Our diferences ar only about grade, not black and white.

Probably we can not define humans as a special specie.   everything we do,
others animals do, perhaps in a lesser degree.

We will not be the last specie in evolution trail, probably. we will evolve,
perhaps we share our future with other species based on a  equals rights
rules.


 Perhaps animals, perhaps evoluted humans, perhaps artificial biological
beigns, perhaps extraterrestial ones, perhaps computers, who knows.

we are machines for the survival of our genes, perhaps other kinds of
reproducing machines emerges or are discovered.

what if a superhuman emerges, (not nietszche one), will he/she give us the
same rights?






One example. Darwins approach explains the evolution of species. The
german nazis took his biological theory to explain social behavior and


not to explain, to act



justify their eliminatory policy: "Survival of the fittest". This a
biologistic interpretation and dangerous application of a biological
theory.


this is a a way of doing things, not understanding it.

its diferent to say "nature works by survival of the fittest", than killing
people

the first is ussualy true, the second is what nazis want to do and already
did.

diferent kind of animals.







-- 
Diego Saravia
Diego.Saravia gmail.com
NO FUNCIONA->dsa unsa.edu.ar


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