are being overcharged, they will tend to avoid companies that sell goods at
above their true value. This will put psychological and consumer pressure
on companies that are overcharging. This too will be an act of socialist mass
pedagogy.
At an early stage in transition, before all goods have their labour values
printed on their price tags, firms will have to impute labour values to the
goods they purchase using the printed exchange rate between Euros and
labour hours. They will add to the labour value of their inputs the number of
hours of work that are performed by their employees to get a labour value for
the final product.
At the level of National and Union accounts the EU should also move
towards having a dual system of accounts, labour accounts alongside money
accounts. Because, at the level of EU economic policy, there are many issues on
which labour accounts would be more informative than money accounts. For
instance in estimating the budget levels required to achieve full employment,
this is much more readily done if one is comparing expenditure in labour with
known labour reserves in the form of unemployment. In addition physical
input output tables, and tables denominated in carbon dioxide outputs would
be required. Money accounts hide the fact that what government economic
policy really does is re-allocate society’s labour. Money is the veil behind
which real labour allocation occurs.
3.3 Enshrine the rights of labour in law
Scientific evidence shows that in the capitalist world the money value of
goods is overwhelmingly determined by their labour contents. Studies find
that for most economies the correlation between labour values and prices
is 95% or above. So Adam Smith’s scientific hypothesis that labour was the
source of value has now been statistically verified. This scientific fact should
be incorporated in law.
3.3.1 The right not to be exploited
European law should recognise that labour is the sole source of value and that
in consequence workers, and their Unions, will have a claim in law against
their employers if they are paid less than the full value of their labour. If we
consider the previous measures and the educational effect that would follow
from them, it should be relatively easy to pass a referendum on such a law.
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Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell, Heinz Dieterich