Subject: AUT: The Dark Satanic Mills
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 12:34:50 +1100


Hi all,

I have a rather fundamental question in regards to surplus value and
machines.

Surplus Value, the basics:

People work, labour. The capitalist class, however, do not purchase what
people produce, but their potential to produce, and reward not labour in
particular, but labour in general. So if a worker produces 5 lines of code
one day, but 10 the next, they are paid the same on both days. (aside: what
about commission work? telemarketing for example?)

That I understand, and fits with production generally. That also makes the
concept of surplus value potentially correct as well. If people *were* paid
according to what they've produced individually (barring things like piece
work) there would be no surplus value, for example: artisans. (contract work
too perhaps? or is that just another piece work?)

What I'm still missing (after the whole of vol 1 of capital, and various
other texts) is the role the machine in the rise and fall of both value and
surplus value. Machinery, from the stone tools onwards, dead labour,
function in allowing living labour to produce more "things" (commodities
perhaps) in a shorter period of time. They do not produce more value as
such, as each individual "thing" merely contains less value (objectified
labour) than they did prior to the introduction of the particular machine.
So that's why after the introduction of the machine the particular commodity
achieves less exchange value than prior to the machine. Eg. That's why
computers become cheaper and cheaper the more computers are used to create
them. (aside: a strange occurrence: it would be impossible to create a
modern computer without the use of a modern computer.)

But it still hasn't clicked with me as to how machines benefit the
production of surplus value.

Is it because machines allow for less labour needed in producing for the
producer, and more can be spent producing for the
consumer(capitalist)???????? True, I guess. If I was producing 3 cobs of
corn, two of which I bought back to consume for myself, then really only one
goes as surplus. If, through a nifty little corn machine, I increase that to
6 cobs of corn, and still only consume 2, that's 4 cobs of corn as surplus.
Is that it??? If it is, well something seems not quite right, not sure what.
It kind of makes sense, yet kind of doesn't. But I don't know why. Almost
circular perhaps? HELP!


bye
patrick



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