This project develops a unified formal notation for two interlaced cycles:
- The Capital-Producing Cycle - how value self-expands through production
- The Labour Cycle - how human creative capacity is expended and reproduced
Marx defined capital as a movement, a process of self-expansion, denoted by the following equation;
Shorthand: M -> C -> M'
Expanded: M -> C(Lp+Mp) ... P ... C' -> M'
Where M was the money advanced to cover the cost of the living labour's wage and the means of production. Production (P) occurs when living labour is applied to the means, denoted by Lp+Mp. This produces a commodity embodying all previous value, plus the suplus created by living labour. An exchange occurs, and the capitalist receives this value plus the suplus created as M'.
The full process is revealed, and we can see the capitalist reaps a surplus value created by the labour of the worker. This is the crux of Marx's criticism.
However, how can we actually return this surplus to the worker? History reveals that post-revolution, any allowance for accumulation will be exploited by the sum of all bourgeoisie & petite-bourgeoisie elements that exist in the economy. Society has been trained a consciousness based on the right of capitalists to expropriate value, and this aspect of society feels right and natural to even the most revolutionary of the working class. How can a society be transitioned into socialism, a society post-accumulation, without a fundamental change in the method of exchange, money itself?
In the Critique of Gotha, Marx posed his most radical solution; the 'Arbeitszertifikat', or labour certificate. Initially a critic, Marx had denounced the labour-money schemes of Proudhon, Gray, and others as Utopian and idealistic; attempts to fix capitalism's distribution without abolishing commodity production itself. However, by the 1870s, Marx had developed his theory and observed the fundamentally centralisable nature of an exchangeable currency. How could one truly abolish the massive unequal accumulation without abolishing the accumulative nature of money itself?
Marx proposed this solution shortly before his death, and left its full elaboration unfinished.
An estimation of Marx's labour-cycle foundation is described below;
Shorthand: L -> V -> L*
Expanded: L ... P(Lp+Mp) ... U' -> D : V ~ Uc ... L*
Where L is the labourer entering production with their capacity to work. Production (P) occurs when living labour (Lp) is applied to the means of production (Mp). This yields a total social product (U'), embodying all value created. Before individual distribution, society deducts a portion (D) for the replacement of means, expansion, social services and ecological regeneration. What remains is distributed to labourers via a differential voucher (V), reflecting contribution and need. The voucher mediates access to consumption goods (~ Uc), which the labourer consumes, reproducing their labour power for the next cycle (L*). The cycle restarts, but the labourer may be more skilled, more rested, or aged. The asterisk is open.
Please note that this is an estimation of how Marx might have described the labour-cycle. His suggestions for how socialism would look was based on observations of the capital-producing cycle, and he refrained from theorising about the next stages of economy as he was aware that his word was decisive.
However, the cycle above adopts his estimation of how a socialist economy would be ordered, and how it mediates a worker's access to the collective stock. The basis of this cycle is labour, rewarded in a non-transferable labour certificate. In the lower-phase of communism, Marx states that the Bourgeois right of equivalence is likely to persist, and therefore, Labour-certificates are aggregated across an industry or the entire economy, and rewarded after the social deducations and differentials are calculated.
The social deducations are denoted by (D). This is a complex calculation, and captures the raw process of socio-political mediation. It will likely be contentious, as many invested parties will vie for their interests. Contained within V is the calculation of labour differentials. The raw calculation of differentials is also complex, but in the context of labour-quality and intensity. As Marx suggested, this is where the bourgeois right of equivalence will enter into the process.
There are a variety of methods to calculate differentials, from the crude to the complex.
In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx levels a scathing critique at the General German Workers' Association for not just a failure to plan for a socialist economy, but an ignorance of what he calls the metabolism of capitlism. The difference between what is extracted from nature, and what nature actually needs to be replenished.