Section 3. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.
Are we really dealing with the necessary consequences of common ownership of the means of production?
Is there no way in which some kind of economic calculation might be tied up with a socialist system?
In every great enterprise, each particular business or branch of business is to some
extent independent in its accounting.
It reckons the labor and material against each other, and it is always possible for
each individual group to strike a particular balance and to approach the economic results
of its activities from an accounting point of view.
We can thus ascertain with what success each particular section has laboured, and accordingly
draw conclusions about the reorganization, curtailment, abandonment, or expansion of
existing groups, and about the institution of new ones.
Admittedly, some mistakes are inevitable in such a calculation.
They arise partly from the difficulties consequent upon an allocation of general expenses.
Let other mistakes arise from the necessity of calculating with what are not from many
points of view rigorously ascertainable data, e.g. when in the ascertainment of the profitability
of a certain method of procedure, we compute the amortization of the machines used on the
assumption of a given duration for their usefulness.
Still, all such mistakes can be confined within certain narrow limits, so that they do not
not disturb the net result of the calculation.
What remains of uncertainty comes into the calculation of the uncertainty of future conditions,
which is an inevitable concomitant of the dynamic nature of economic life.
It seems tempting to try to construct by analogy a separate estimation of the particular production
groups in the socialist state also, but it is quite impossible, for each separate calculation
of the particular branches of one and the same enterprise depends exclusively on the
fact that it is precisely in market dealings that market prices to be taken as the bases
of calculation are formed for all kinds of goods and labor employed.
Where there is no free market, there is no pricing mechanism.
Without a pricing mechanism, there is no economic calculation.
We might conceive of a situation in which exchange between particular branches of business
is permitted so as to obtain the mechanism of exchange relations, prices, and thus create
a basis for economic calculation even in the socialist commonwealth.
Within the framework of a uniform economy, knowing not private ownership of the means
of production, individual labor groups are constituted independent and authoritative
of Disposers, which have indeed to behave in accordance with the directions of the Supreme
Economic Council, but which nevertheless assign each other material goods and services only
against a payment, which would have to be made in the general medium of exchange. It
is roughly in this way that we conceive of the organization of the socialist running
of business when we nowadays talk of complete socialization and the like. But we have still
I will not come to the crucial point. Exchange relations between production goods can only be established on the basis of private ownership of the means of production.
When the coal syndicate provides the iron syndicate with coal, no price can be formed, except when both syndicates are the owners of the means of production employed in their business.
not be socialization, but workers capitalism and syndicalism.
The matter is indeed very simple for those socialist theorists who rely on the labor
theory of value.
As soon as society takes possession of the means of production and applies them to production
in their directly socialized form, each individual's labor, however different its specific utility
may be, becomes a priori and directly social labor.
The amount of social labor invested in a product need not then be established indirectly.
Daily experience immediately tells us how much is necessary on an average.
Society can simply calculate how many hours of labor are invested in a steam engine, a
quarter of last harvest's wheat, and 100 yards of linen of given quality.
To be sure, society will also have to know how much labor is needed to produce any consumption
good.
It will have to arrange its production plan according to its means of production to which
labor especially belongs.
The utility yielded by the various consumption goods weighted against each other and against
the amount of labor required to produce them will ultimately determine the plan.
People will make everything simple without the mediation of the notorious value.
Here it is not our task once more to advance critical objections against the labor theory
of value.
In this connection, they can only interest us insofar as they are relevant to an assessment
of the applicability of labor in the value computations of a socialist economy.
On a first impression, calculation in terms of labor also takes into consideration the
The Natural Non-Human Conditions of Production
The law of diminishing returns is already allowed for in the concept of socially necessary
average labor time to the extent that its operation is due to the variety of the natural
conditions of production.
If the demand for a commodity increases and worse natural resources must be exploited,
then the average socially necessary labor time required for the production of a unit
increases too.
If more favorable natural resources are discovered, the amount of socially necessary labor diminishes.
The consideration of the natural condition of production suffices only in so far as it
is reflected in the amount of labor socially necessary.
But it is a misrespect that valuation in terms of labor fails.
It leaves the employment of material factors of production out of account.
Let the amount of socially necessary labour time required for the production of each
of the commodities P and Q be ten hours.
Further, in addition to labour, the production of both P and Q requires the raw material
A, a unit of which is produced by an hour's socially necessary labour.
Two units of A and eight hours' labour are used in the production of P, and one unit
of A and Nine Hours Labor in the Production of Q. In terms of labor, P and Q are equivalent,
but in value terms P is more valuable than Q. The former is false, and only the latter
corresponds to the nature and purpose of calculation. True, the surplus, by which according to value
calculation P is more valuable than Q, this material substratum, is given by nature without
about any addition from man.
Still, the fact that it is only present in such quantities that it becomes an object
of economizing must be taken into account in some form or other in value calculation.
The second defect in calculation in terms of labor is the ignoring of the different
qualities of labor.
To Marx, all human labor is economically of the same kind.
It is always the productive expenditure of human brain, brawn, nerve and hand.
Skilled labor counts only as intensified or rather multiplied simple labor, so that a
smaller quantity of skilled labor is equal to a larger quantity of simple labor.
Experience shows that skilled labor can always be reduced in this way to the terms of simple labor.
No matter that a commodity be the product of the most highly skilled labor, its value
can be equated with that of the product of simple labor, so that it represents merely
To judge Marx's view, we need not ask if it is possible to discover a single uniform physiological
measure of all human labor, whether it be physical or mental, for it is certain that
That there exist among men varying degrees of capacity and dexterity, which cause the
products and services of labor to have varying qualities.
What must be conclusive in deciding the question whether reckoning in terms of labor is applicable
or not, is whether it is, or is not possible, to bring different kinds of labor under a
common denominator, without the mediation of the economic subject's valuation of their
products.
The proof Marx attempts to give is not successful.
Experience indeed shows that goods are consumed under exchange relations without regard of
the fact of their being produced by simple or complex labor.
But this would only be a proof that given amounts of simple labor are directly made
equal to given amounts of complex labor.
If it were shown that labor is their source of exchange value, this not only is not demonstrated,
but is what Marx is trying to demonstrate by means of these very arguments.
No more is it a proof of this homogeneity that rates of substitution between simple
and complex labor are manifested in the wage rate in an exchange economy, a fact to which
which Marx does not allude in this context.
This equalizing process is a result of market transactions and not its antecedent.
Calculation in terms of labor would have to set up an arbitrary proportion for the substitution
of complex by simple labor, which excludes its employment for purposes of economic administration.
It was long supposed that the labor theory of value was indispensable to socialism, so
so that the demand for the nationalization of the means of production should have an ethical basis.
Today, we know this for the error it is, although the majority of socialist supporters have thus employed this misconception,
and although Marx, however much he fundamentally took another point of view, was not altogether free from it,
it is clear that the political call for the introduction of socialized production neither requires nor can obtain the support of the labor theory of value on the one hand,
and that on the other, those people holding different views
on the nature and origin of economic value can be socialist according to their sentiments.
Yet the labor theory of value is inherently necessary for the supporters of socialist production
in a sense other than that usually intended.
In the main, socialist production might only appear rationally realizable
if it provided an objectively recognizable unit of value
which would permit of economic calculation in an economy where neither money nor exchange were present and only labor can conceivably be considered as such.