The only solution to this problem is to replace capitalism with socialism, where new machinery will mean less hours per person with no reduction in pay. Through this, everybody who wants a job will have a job, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or gender.

Affirmative action will not lead us closer to socialism, but will only change the race or gender of those unemployed. Everybody should be hired. Nobody should be laid off. Universities and colleges should have open admissions.

Chuck Wolsfeld
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  
 

The source of value
I appreciated Patrick O’Neill’s article in the Militant January 27, on the shift to gold holdings as a store of value, a measure of the gathering depression.

It is useful to make a clarification on one central phrase ambiguously used by O’Neill. The article says that gold’s value is "derived from the labor power involved in mining and processing it."

"Labor power" is the term Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed for the worker’s capacity to labor, as distinct from the actual labor performed for the capitalist. Labor power is the commodity sold in advance by the worker on the market in exchange for wages paid after the actual labor has been performed.

Labor power, the living labor potential of working people in capitalist society, is the one commodity that has the peculiar characteristic of being able to produce more than its own value. Looked at in advance, labor power is the one commodity that can both reproduce its own value and create new value. But the new value, a good portion of which is surplus value, is only produced in the labor process as labor power is consumed by capital as living labor.

The value of the commodity (in this case gold) is "derived," strictly speaking, not from labor power but--to use Marx’s words--"the amount of labor, the labor-time socially necessary for its production."

Marx’s explanation of the origins of value-and therefore surplus-value-under capitalism was, and remains, scientifically unchallengeable. From this flows the revolutionary conclusion of Capital--the need to "expropriate the expropriators."

Ron Poulsen
Sydney, Australia


East Timor
A couple of points on the East Timor article in the January 20 Militant.

The map accompanying the article labeled West Papua as Irian Jaya, which is the Indonesian annexationist name. West Papua is the name used by the indigenous popular independence movement. The Indonesian government itself has now changed the official name of the province to West Papua. The article was edited to say that East Timor was "located east of Indonesia", which is not exactly true--it is west of quite a bit of Indonesia.

Also, the subheading that reads, "cops from the colonial regime" at the end of the article is a problem.

Is describing the Indonesian occupation as a "colonial regime" appropriate for an invasion and occupation (backed by imperialism) by one semi-colonial country [Indonesia] of another [East Timor]? The term that is used in the article, which refers to "cops from the time of the Indonesia occupation regime," is more accurate.

Bob Aiken
Sydney, Australia  
 
 
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