The labor-hour is not the natural unit of socialist calculation

Articles on the Marxist theory of socialist economic calculation,
 and why calculating in labor-hours rather than dollars doesn't eliminate
 the capitalist law of value and its sins against mass welfare and the environment


A reply to Seongjin Jeong on labor-time and 21st century socialism 
(Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice email list, October 14, 2018).

On the fading away of the labor theory of value in a classless society:
Labor-money and socialist planning (part one), by Joseph Green
(Issue #25, vol. 6, #3, November 27, 2000)
Introduction
Why deal with this issue?
Overview of the argument
The labor content
The search for the natural unit
-- The early days of the workers' movement
-- The emergence of Marxism
-- The Day After the Revolution
-- After 1917
-- One, two, three, many natural units (the method of material balances)

The labor theory of value does not mean that the labor-hour
is the natural unit of socialist calculation:
Labor-money and socialist planning (part 2)
(Issue #26, vol. 7, #1, May 1, 2001)
Reviewing part one
The annual cycle of production
-- The "Economic Table" of the Physiocrats--
-- Marx's analysis in Volume II of Capital--
-- Soviet material balances and Western input-output methods--
The incommensurability of living and past labor
-- Circulating goods--
-- Fixed goods--
-- Capital as the domination of dead labor over living labor--
Contradictions inherent in labor-hour calculation
-- As a measure of material abundance--
-- As a measure of efficiency--
-- The environment and things of zero labor content--

The end of the reign of the law of value--
the fading away of the labor-hour as the universal economic measure:
Labor-money and socialist planning (part 3)
(Issue #27, vol. 7, #2, Sep. 6, 2001)
About parts one and two
Apparently different views by Marx and Engels
-- Value resurrected?--
-- Concrete and abstract labor--
-- Not by labor alone--
-- The labor certificate--
-- Anti-Duhring--
-- Relative and absolute units--
-- "There is no alternative"--
-- Misreadings--
Between capitalism and socialism -- the transitional economy
-- The significance of value in the transitional economy--
Classless society and the labor hour
-- The labor certificate revisited--
-- Approximate assessments--
-- The end of the law of value--


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Posted November 20, 2020.
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