If she only had a penny

If Susan Boyle just had a penny for everyone who watched her on YouTube....

An Upgrade in RAM

So I Upgraded my RAM today... 2->4 for $60bucks... not bad I thinks. Im running VMware with windows(2GB ram) and linux(1GB) right now...

All three systems are running basically as fast as when I had 2GB, however I am running 2 vms at once now... something I didn't do before. Im going to try LFS again and time what 1SBU is now that I can dedicate lots more ram to the VM:)

LFS - pt3

So I restarted using EXACTLY what the LFS book says (not using up-to-date gcc or kernel) and I've gotten to the second recompilation of gcc... build broken

Im making slow but steady steps... thank god for VMware and the ability to roll back, I'd be lost without it.

Linux From Scratch - pt 2

So I've started to compile binutils... time to extract(unzip) binutils is:

extract time:
real 0m18.281s
user 0m6.703s
sys 0m12.316s

time { make && make install; }:
ERROR on compile... ROLLING BACK

2nd try
problem: needed to log out-log in to lfs after setting .bashrc

extract time:
real 0m18.967s
user 0m7.1003s
sys 0m11.503s

configure time:
real 6.68s
user 1.14s
sys 3.246s

time { make && make install; }:
real 3min 1.46sec
user 1m10.925s
sys 1m45.680

Cant build glibc going to give up for today... try again later.

Linux From Scratch

Im trying to install Linux from scratch on VMware Fusion. This is the first time I've done LFS so we'll see how it goes.

Right now Ive booted the LiveCD, created my partitions on /dev/sda and am in the middle of downloading all the required packages. I'll keep you up to date :)

One change to the packages Im downloading is the gcc compiler... Im downloading 4.3.3 rather than 4.3.2 as 4.3.3 is the latest stable release, command options should be the same as 4.3.2, and I'll always have this nagging desire to recompile everything with the newer gcc if I dont do this... we shall see if this is a mistake

another change is that I am going to use the 2.6.28.x kernel rather than the 2.6.27.x kernel listed.

I took a snapshot after I dled all the packages (before patches)... more in my next post

A response to "Wage Labour and Capital: Introduction"

This evening I read Fredrick Engels' introduction to "Wage Labor and Capital" by Karl Marx, and I cannot wait to poke holes in Engels' theories contained within.

In the introduction, Engels gives an example of how we can can judge the cost of labour. He states

Let us assume that the money price of these means of subsistence [the cost to keep the labourer able and willing to work] averages 3 shillings a day. Our laborer gets, therefore, a daily wage of 3 shillings from his employer. For this, the capitalist lets [makes] him work, say, 12 hours a day. Our capitalist, moreover, calculates somewhat in the following fashion: Let us assume that our laborer (a machinist) has to make a part of a machine which he finishes in one day. The raw material (iron and brass in the necessary prepared form) costs 20 shillings. The consumption of coal by the steam-engine, the wear-and-tear of this engine itself, of the turning-lathe, and of the other tools with which our laborer works, represent, for one day and one laborer, a value of 1 shilling. The wages for one day are, according to our assumption, 3 shillings. This makes a total of 24 shillings for our piece of a machine.

But, the capitalist calculates that, on an average, he will receive for it a price of 27 shillings from his customers, or 3 shillings over and above his outlay.

Whence do they 3 shillings pocketed by the capitalist come? According to the assertion of classical political economy, commodities are in the long run sold at their values, that is, they are sold at prices which correspond to the necessary quantities of labor contained in them. The average price of our part of a machine – 27 shillings – would therefore equal its value, i.e., equal the amount of labor embodied in it. But, of these 27 shillings, 21 shillings were values were values already existing before the machinist began to work; 20 shillings were contained in the raw material, 1 shilling in the fuel consumed during the work and in the machines and tools used in the process and reduced in their efficiency to the value of this amount. There remains 6 shillings, which have been added to the value of the raw material. But, according to the supposition of our economists, themselves, these 6 shillings can arise only from the labor added to the raw material by the laborer. His 12 hours’ labor has created, according to this, a new value of 6 shillings. Therefore, the value of his 12 hours’ labor would be equivalent to 6 shillings. So we have at last discovered what the “value of labor” is.

“Hold on there!” cries our machinist. “Six shillings? But I have received only 3 shillings! My capitalist swears high and day that the value of my 12 hours’ labor is no more than 3 shillings, and if I were to demand 6, he’d laugh at me. What kind of a story is that?"

If before this we got with our value of labor into a vicious circle, we now surely have driven straight into an insoluble contradiction. We searched for the value of labor, and we found more than we can use. For the laborer, the value of the 12 hours’ labor is 3 shillings; for the capitalist, it is 6 shillings, of which he pays the workingman 3 shillings as wages, and pockets the remaining 3 shilling himself. According to this, labor has not one but two values, and, moreover, two very different values!

As soon as we reduce the values, now expressed in money, to labor-time, the contradiction becomes even more absurd. By the 12 hours’ labor, a new value of 6 shillings is created. Therefore, in 6 hours, the new value created equals 3 shilling – the amount which the laborer receives for 12 hours’ labor. For 12 hours’ labor, the workingman receives, as an equivalent, the product of 6 hours’ labor. We are, thus, forced to one of two conclusions: either labor has two values, one of which is twice as large as the other, or 12 equals 6!

This binary conclusion that Engels presents is the basic flaw of Marx and Engel's theories; when a customer is buying a part from the Capitalist, the customer is not simply buying the part, but she is also purchasing the service of simplifying the acquisition of said part. The Capitalist adds value to the "experience" of purchasing the part for the customer. Without the intervention of the Capitalist, the Customer would need to perform many tasks to obtain the needed part. The Customer would need to obtain access to the machinery, vet and chose potential labourers, calculate the cost of subsistence for the labourers, and transport the finished part to where it is needed. By handling these tasks, the Capitalist can justify adding his 3 shillings to the cost of the part.

Engels does not seem to understand that when a customer buys a thing, she not only buys the thing, but also buys the service involved in getting the thing to her. Thus we can now understand that there is not one single labour cost but two costs of labour added to the raw materials and deprecation value of tools. There is a "production labour" and a "service labour."

Simply put there are not two values of labour... there are two labours, each with value. Engels is wrong when he states "the working class alone produces all values." While it is true that the working class alone produces all _production_ values, the working class produces nearly none of the service values.

Even if the bourgeois Capitalist were to employ someone to manage the service labour involved in selling the part (we will call these labourers "managers"), there is still a labour associated to maintaining the management or a risk involved in neglecting them; for if the Capitalist owner does not oversee management, their business is at greater risk of failure.

Back on my feet

After a terrible few weeks. Im started to get back on my feet and feeling happy. My work morale has gone up quite a lot, and superiors have started to give me a heavier work load as they see me getting better.