The CB Collective Thought for the Day - “Labor?” Day

Grover Cleveland, spooked by the Haymarket Riots that occurred a while back, put his Okie Dokie on the first Monday in September, as a national holiday, celebrating work. He got the idea from Canada. So “Labor?” Day, the first Monday in September, is a uniquely Canadian and US holiday. These days, its main significance is that many humans and proto humans in Canada and the US don’t go off to what passes for their work, maybe.

Fairly well known it is that most of the humans and proto humans take their work holiday on May first, May Day, a date, appropriately enough, that celebrates the human relationship to the WG. May Day, as a day of celebration/holiday is so old a tradition that Heck the Pup wasn’t even a gleam in the WG’s eye, yet, during the very first May Day. Anarchists, naturally, celebrate May Day as our holiday. Nonetheless, most of us take Labor Day off anyway, as just deserts for getting ripped off by the ruling class. So we get two holidays, but only if we live in Canada or the US.

Labor, considered abstractly, occurs when you do anything that adds value to the human environment. A serious example is cows. Cows add a lot of value to the human environment. Much human and proto human labor goes into growing a cow; fences, shots and whatnot. Then, even after the cow is grown, more labor is required to maintain the usefulness (value) of the cow to society. Obviously, the more cows, the more labor, the more value created. So generally speaking, there are plenty of cows produced. The cows are valuable because of all the labor that went into growing and maintaining those cows. This is spelled by some, the Labor Theory of Value.

So now it’s time to eat the cows. Those cows need to be hauled off somewhere and processed. The different cow parts need to be packaged up or canned. Even the hides are valuable once labor is put into getting the cows out of them. Then the parts need to be moved around to the humans and proto humans who will eat the cows. Plus, the hides need to be exported. All these activities require labor to add value to the cow parts. Some component of the cows will then go into maintaining the humans and proto humans so they can do, labor. Or, in the case of the hides, to provide leather coverlets or purses for humans or proto humans. Again, all this is spelled by some, the Labor Theory of Value, because of all the labor that goes into making the cow parts valuable.

The Labor Theory of Value does not, however, take the WG into account, a big mistake. She really hates being ignored, and seriously punishes evil doers who fail to take Her into account. The punishment visited on the evil doers occurs both on this plane and in subsequent planes of their existence which existence shall wax increasingly miserable. But we digress, maybe.

Let’s take another example touching on the Labor Theory of Value; human or proto human sperm. Sperm are an important crop in the human environment, for without sperm, we can’t usally, aside from the occasional miracle, replicate the human component of the human environment. Much labor goes into producing sperm and for a long time it was thought there was an inexhaustible supply. Perhaps, considered globally, there still is an almost inexhaustible supply. But the Labor Theory of Value takes into account the individual's labor, even though the individual's labor is a piddling amount compared to group or global labor. So now, society has expended quite a bit of labor to store up sperm in sperm banks, thereby making the stored sperm more valuable than regular sperm. (Do you work in a sperm bank? Ha! You must feel that you’re labor is exceptionally valuable. I bet you don’t take Labor Day off. Something might happen to that valuable sperm if you went off on a picnic.) But we digress, again.

Sperm, as must be readily apparent, are just like cows. Lots of labor goes into keeping them valuable and eventually they will have to be moved off somewhere and that takes some labor too, to increase the sperm value.

So far, the Labor Theory of Value examples we have presented have been easy ones to figure out and follow. Agriculture related examples are always the easiest because agriculture is one of our oldest labors and fairly familiar, to many. But most of us humans and proto humans no longer work in agriculture. In fact, it may be really hard for many of us to see how our labor at the office actually adds any value to a commodity.

So let’s consider an example of office labor that adds lots of value. Let’s consider, realtor. Er. Perhaps realtor may be too hard to follow as an example. Let’s consider, car salesman. Er. Hmmm. Car salesman may not be a good example either, because some of our labor confuses the real value of a commodity with its imaginary value. Er, let’s try book keeper. Yepper, book keeper, though rather abstract, is an easy example of an office job that add lots of value. Somebody has to keep track of the cows and the sperm numerically. Otherwise, nobody will have an enumeration of the many cows and sperm, and enumeration is essential to knowing how many you have got. Enumeration is, in fact, the very foundation of the Labor Theory of Value and of modern commerce. Plus, book keepers keep track of the other laborers' credit card antics and keep those other workers from using their credit cards on extemporaneous commodities and services unrelated to their value creating labor.

All righty then, another example is school teacher. This one is very abstract so you will need to pay close attention. The school teacher adds value, by conducting exercises with presumptive humans and proto humans that will eventually encourage those presumptive humans and proto humans to do labor that will add future value. It’s a duty now, for the future, type of labor. See what we mean, abstract. Anyway, the theory goes that teaching these presumptive proletarians how to cipher will eventually turn them into book keepers or sperm bank regulators. Often, the school teacher is successful and out go the products of their labor, the literate , the semi-literate , and the illiterate, ready for future labor, and the creation of increased value as a product of their labor.

Now we need to get especially abstract. In modern society, much labor is expended upon the creation of virtual value. Virtual value is the value added to a commodity to make that commodity seem more valuable. Sometimes, the commodity itself is virtual, in the sense that it does not exist on this plane of this little globe. Nevertheless, because labor is expended, value is added to the commodity, real or imaginary.

Advertising, has been the historical venue for adding virtual value to a real or imaginary commodity. In the US especially, advertising labor has added much value to Pop Tarts, for example. Just imagine all the labor that went into motoring the Ford automobile from Fix or Repair Daily to its current exalted state. Wouldn’t you really rather drive a Buick?

Ha! Too funny. But on a more serious note, the computer assisted advertising laborers have become so productive, and added so much virtual value to all the commodities, that virtual value has come to obscure real value. And virtual commodities are supplanting real commodities in the marketplace. Consider bears. How many real bears are there, compared to virtual bears? Consider border security. Tejas shall soon feature a virtual fence from Brownsville to El Paso. And busy Republican laborers are already adding plenty of value to our virtual fence. Consider all the new infrastructure in the Big Easy and in Miserable, Iraq. That’s all virtual infrastructure with lots of value added.

Guess what though! All the real stuff that value is added to, is first suckled from the Ample Bosoms. Praise the Goddess.

All righty then. The Cow Barn Druidry has labored sufficiently now on Labor Day. Praise the Goddess. What’s the value added?