The concept of turnover is related to production for exchange, in particular to the production of surplus value by wagelaborers. If society becomes the owner of the means of production, then what happens to surpluslabor and the production of surplusvalue? Surplusvalue is of course a form of exchangevalue, the moneyform of commodities produced by living labor in excess of its daily requirements. If society as a whole replaces the capitalist as the owner of the means of production, and therefore replaces him also as the employer of labor, then the mass of laborers the entire population capable of working becomes the employer of itself.
No more 9 to 5!
Under capitalism the need to produce at a profit always requires there be a greater supply of laborers than those actually employed. But who are those actually employed? They are those employed for as much as an entire day at a stretch, perhaps five, six or seven days in a row. If the employment structure is reorganized to permit access by the entire population, as its own employer, then a worker need put in no more time than that required to produce an average supply of necessities, and he/she can then step aside for his/her replacement; the actual time spent working will naturally vary from case to case. This will provide for the needs of society (not to mention any extras desired and found to be worth the effort) and at the same time leave no one unable to contribute to the production necessary to meet them. (Industrial production is simply taken as the norm in this case. In fact all kinds of activities, isolated as well as socialized, will be constantly flowing in and out of one another.)
Thus, each person will be putting in just as much work time as is socially required to keep the wheels of society turning, yet there will be no need to calculate the maintenance of some level of surpluslabor, since fluctuations can always be adjusted on the spot, as the case might require. The productive powers of technology, being by definition always in excess of individual needs, can eminently absorb the labor of a large number of mutually selfreplacing individuals in the same location and not only that, but one individual can also perform different kinds of labor in unrelated fields on the same day, during the same week, month or year, etc. Production for use is, above all else, enormously flexible.
The abolition of turnovers
The question of accounting for all the labor, however, has to be considered. “Turnover of capital” applies to production for exchange; does it continue under the form of “turnover of usevalues” under production for use? Marx, in Capital, Vol II (Ch IX), points to the fact of qualitative differences in the turnover of various parts of fixed capital: “It is therefore necessary to reduce the specific turnovers of the various parts of fixed capital to a homogeneous form of turnover, so that they will remain different only quantitatively, namely, according to duration of turnover” (p 184). The circuit of capital which he selects to reduce these specific turnovers is the circuit of moneycapital. The question is, in a moneyless society, how will this reduction be accomplished? Or will there be any further need for it? In so far as it is capital alone which is to be turned over, the abolition of capital will be also the abolition of turnovers. Is the concept of the “turnover,” in other words, socially necessary?
“We assume that value is always advanced in money,” he says, “even in the continuous process of production, where this moneyform of value is only that of money of account.” The “value” is exchange-value. Since the a discontinuation of money is the cessation of commodity production (money being the universal commodity), it follows that the only remaining measure of turnover is the circuit of productive capital. But capital is money, and money (and wages) has now been abolished. There is no “productive capital.” There are only usevalues of production and usevalues of consumption. Can there be a turnover of usevalues which is qualitatively homogeneous?
One of the advantages of living without money, of having free access to the means of life, is that tedious calculations relating to purely formal needs (such as accounting) are reduced to a small fraction of what they were before. Counting money is essentially an exercise of the imagination, not an act of intelligence. (This is a wellknown fact to the rich, especially in regard to taxation.) Accounting for the turnover of fixed capital, consequently, is ultimately but a highly refined exercise of the imagination. The amount of really useful mental exercise is quite small; and it is this which constitutes the only part of the notion of “turnover” that is socially necessary.
Capitalism: Just too complicated
When fixed capital “turns over,” the machinery is worn completely out and can be used no more. If, however, the machinery ( the building and so on) is accounted for not as capital but as a useful instrument of social prooduction, its life is really the combined working hours multiplied by its total product over the entire period of its use. Whatever term future generations may devise for “fixed capital,” it will turn on this concept. The qualitative uniformity of this measurement thus goes well beyond the machinery’s own specific usevalue, which cannot by itself be translated into the language of production as a whole. One will only have to compare the producthours with the consumption to have a scientifically determined idea of the needs of the production system, a quantitative measure good for all kinds of products.
That is how a society of working owners of the means of production will regulate affairs at the factory, or at any other place where labor is performed. It will make all the sophisticated procedures of capitalist economics seem as cumbersome and unwieldy to our descendants as the suits of armor once worn by knights now seem to us.
Related posts:
