[Daktoria]

Socially-necessary labor-time is the average labor-time in a given economic context to produce a given commodity. If the socially-necessary labor-time to produce a hat is, say, 0.3 hours, you will not add value to your product by producing hats at 0.7 hours a piece. One, however, will extract tremendous gains if they can produce the hats at 0.2 units. Industries that can produce hats at 0.2 units will eventually out-compete those industries producing at 0.3 or 0.4, shifting the average down to 0.2 and reducing the value of the commodity (this explains why mass, intensive production reduces the value of certain products).

There are problems with the labor-theory of value, no doubt, but I think you are confused about the very basics of Marxian economics.

Note also that the price of a product does not necessarily reflect its value (i.e. the socially-necessary labor-time 'contained' in the price). The price is determined the old-fashioned way: supply and demand.

I feel like you just described the free rider problem.

Why would workers work harder than average labor time when they're going to be compensated the same regardless?

[Vera Politica]

If production is directed according to need, then the faster and more productive the workers, the greater their leisure time since the less labor-time needed for the subsistence of workers in general. I am not a Marxian economist thought, I'm only a newb.

[Decky]

Which means you define teachers as "people who reduce workers", a definition most teachers would be highly offended by, because the purpose of teaching is to create independently thinking people, not work slaves.

Where did you get that idea from?

[The Captain]

I feel like you just described the free rider problem.

Why would workers work harder than average labor time when they're going to be compensated the same regardless?

I would paraphrase a wise man named Doug Stanhope to answer to that:

If your job isn't something you would do for free, just quit, there's not reasonable explanation for you doing this job. If it's not a work of passion, don't bother just quit.

(and steal a bunch of shit on the way out haha)

By the way, jobs are not meant to be boring, it's just our society that has not tried to prevent the jobs from being boring.

I love my job, I enjoy every bit of it and if suddenly I had the possibility to do a better job but with no extra monetary compensation whatsoever in return, I'll be happy to do it.

[SE23]

I suppose in Karl Marx's mind, we would all dedicate a certain part of the day to exploring the arts and painting pictures around some utopian lake. In reality i suppose the arts was used by socialists to promote concepts of relativity and post modernism, which are intwined with Marxist beliefs. Art is an essential part of every society, to eradicate the arts would make a society grim as hell to live in.

[The Immortal Goon]

Do understand, that communism would not be the industrialization process of the Soviet Union's worker's state. You would not be "an artist" any more than anyone would be a "cabinet maker." The two concepts would become one. I know people aren't really fond of the wall of quoted text, but it is easier and better than me trying to crib everything.

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. [2]

The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot control, which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, nay even being the prime governor of these.

Trotsky expands upon this in more detail:

Take the penknife as an example. The combination of art and technique can proceed along two fundamental lines; either art embellishes the knife and pictures an elephant, a prize beauty, or the Eiffel Tower on its handle; or art helps technique to find an “ideal” form for the knife, that is, such a form which will correspond most adequately to the material of a knife and its purpose. To think that this task can be solved by purely technical means is incorrect, because purpose and material allow for an innumerable number of variations. To make an “ideal" knife, one must have, besides the knowledge of the properties of the material and the methods of its use, both imagination and taste. In accord with the entire tendency of industrial culture, we think that the artistic imagination in creating material objects will be directed towards working out the ideal form of a thing, as a thing, and not towards the embellishment of the thing as an aesthetic premium to itself. If this is true for penknives, it will be truer still for wearing apparel, furniture, theaters and cities. This does not mean the doing away with “machine-made” art, not even in the most distant future. But it seems that the direct cooperation between art and all branches of technique will become of paramount importance.

Does this mean that industry will absorb art, or that art will lift industry up to itself on Olympus? This question can be answered either way, depending on whether the problem is approached from the side of industry, or from the side of art. But in the object attained, there is no difference between either answer. Both answers signify a gigantic expansion of the scope and artistic quality of industry, and we understand here, under industry, the entire field without excepting the industrial activity of man; mechanical and electrified agriculture will also become part of industry.

...Man at last will begin to harmonize himself in earnest. He will make it his business to achieve beauty by giving the movement of his own limbs the utmost precision, purposefulness and economy in his work, his walk and his play. He will try to master first the semiconscious and then the subconscious processes in his own organism, such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, reproduction, and, within necessary limits, he will try to subordinate them to the control of reason and will. Even purely physiologic life will become subject to collective experiments.

...Emancipated man will want to attain a greater equilibrium in the work of his organs and a more proportional developing and wearing out of his tissues, in order to reduce the fear of death to a rational reaction of the organism towards danger. There can be no doubt that man’s extreme anatomical and physiological disharmony, that is, the extreme disproportion in the growth and wearing out of organs and tissues, give the life instinct the form of a pinched, morbid and hysterical fear of death, which darkens reason and which feeds the stupid and humiliating fantasies about life after death.

[Andrea_Chenier]

Of course, this probably wreck certain forms of art that haven't traditionally been entertainment for the "masses"- opera, ballet, and any bourgeoisie past times for the most part- but then again, this seems like a small price to pay for a more democratic society.

The theory that traditional art has to be sacrificed or has no room in a socially progressive society, as in Huxley's "Brave New World" e.g., has been proven wrong by the history of the Soviet Union. The Bolshoi theatre, cultural center of opera ballet and so on, didn't suffer at all from the communist revolution. The rise of socialism only helped the cultural institutions as it liberated them from the influence of speculants, landlords and the nobility. Enrico Causo, the greatest tenor of all time, had to face a lot of difficulties in his career, caused by members of the nobility who controlled the theatres and influenced the public opinion against him. In the USSR, extemely gifted and subtle artists such as Sergei Lemeshev, Ivan Kozlovzky, Irina Maslennikova and Irina Arkhipova emerged with great appreciation and love of the "masses". The Lemeshev/Maslennikova recording of Puccini's "La Bohème" is still among my favorites of all time, today's corrupt opera world can only dream of such artistry. Among Lemeshev's most well developed roles was also the one of Massenet's "Werther". If I judged the whole Werther-theme from a superficial communist poit of view, I'd condemn Goethe's novel and Massenet's opera as "bourgeois". But that certainly wasn't the case with the soviet cultural institutions. Then we have the famous 1959 Bolshoi visit by the great italian tenor Mario Del Monaco who was amazed by the professionality of the soviet opera, Arkhipova's Carmen in particular. Del Monaco's incredibly successful perfomances as Canio and Don José immediately earned him an order of Lenin!

From these obsevations, I can only conclude that the socialist society did sponsor cultural engagement to a considerable extent. Even nowadays, Russia's theatre world is still regarded as a stronghold of traditional opera and ballet culture. In fact, german leftist politician Gregor Gysi recently came back from a "La Traviata" performance at the Bolshoi, praising it for the professionality, integrity and artistry of the production, opposed to the decadent modern "interpratations" of classic works by western companies. The only fault of the USSR was ironically to be quite conservative when it comes to this matter. I guess they oppressed modern pop "culture" to a much greater amount than classical culture, which would contradict the fascist-populist argument that communism "destroys traditional culture".

Concerning the question about the artist's role in socialist/communist society I'd like like to quote a passage from Mao's "Little Red Book" which seems reasonable to me:

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.

(On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957), 1st pocket ed., pp. 49-50.)