Max Sawicky wrote,
>I'd like to hear more
>on the substance of the accounting issues, which
>really get my juices flowing.
I'd like to hear more, too. It seems to me that there is a missing link that
I'll call "labour accounting within capitalism". Having done a literature
scan on accounting information and collective bargaining, I have a sense of
what the missing pieces are but the task of pulling the loose threads
together is huge. I could write an article or even a book, but I have a
sense there is an entire missing sub-discipline here.
The usual level of analysis for accounting is the enterprise (the precise
meaning of "enterprise" is flexible). The tools that accountants have
developed are for analyzing the performance of enterprises. Even without any
intent, this perspective privileges the well-being of the enterprise above
all else. In lay terms, this translates into "your job depends on the
profitability of the company." What they *really* means is, "*from the
perspective of the enterprise* your job depends on the profitibility of the
company." In other words, it's a circular argument dictated by the chosen
level of analysis.
What I've said above implies that there is a potential "other" accounting.
Call it non-enterprise accounting or collectivity accounting or even invent
a new word: "oeccounting". I suspect this is easier said than done. An
alternative is neither a critique nor a caricature.
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS IN THE WHOLE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
To further provoke the sense of an absence, I'd like to quote from the
Marxist-Leninist classics on accounting. Engels, in his introduction to the
1891 edition of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital stressed the importance of
the distinction that Marx subsequently made (years after writing WL&C)
between "labour" and "labour power". Engels called this distinction, "one of
the most important points in the whole of political economy."
How does Engels set the stage for his discussion of this "most important
point"? He does so with a discussion of the relationship between political
economy and book-keeping:
"Classical political economy took over from industrial practice the current
conception of the manufacturer, that he buys and pays for the *labour* of
his workers. This conception had been quite adequate for the business needs,
the book-keeping and price calculations of the manufacturer. But, naively
transferred to political economy, it produced there really wondrous errors
and confusions."
Since my purpose in citing these classics is to tantalize thought rather
than to enshrine doctrine, I'll now leap to Lenin, on the eve of the Russian
Revolution (State and Revolution), discussing the socialization of industry
during the revolutionary period:
"The accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by
capitalism to the utmost, till they have become the extraordinarily simple
operations of watching, recording and issuing receipts, within the reach of
anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic."
Note that in a mere 26 years, capitalist bookkeeping had progressed from
"producing wondrous errors and confusions" in political economy to being
wholly adequate for the socialist transformation. Incredible advance!
Fast forward another three-quarters of a century. Did Oskar Lange give an
adequate response to von Mises' critique of the "impossibility of economic
accounting" under socialism? Did mathematics supersede accounting? Are these
questions rhetorical? Where does this leave the questions of:
1. socialist accounting; and
2. accounting counter-discourse within capitalism?
There are suggestive fragments all over the place. I've come across papers
that look at the accounting issues arising from privitization in Poland and
the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. In an earlier post, I
mentioned Fogarty's paper on accountants' construction of the industrial
relations arena. There's a review of the literature on accounting and
collective bargaining and a paper on the use of accounting in wage
determination in the U.K. coal industry.
But the literature that exists is almost exclusively critique (and that
which isn't critique is, alas, caricature). As I said before, an alternative
is neither a critique nor a caricature. If -- as Engels claimed over a
century ago -- the distinction between labour and labour power is "one of
the most important points in the whole of political economy", then what has
prevented this *most important point* from being articulated in an
accounting discourse?
I can anticipate and reject one answer, which is that the labour theory of
value doesn't provide an objective foundation for accounting calculation. My
rejection of this is that the calculation doesn't need an "objective
foundation." After all, the perspective of the enterprise is subjective.
--------------------------------
Berry, Maureen. "The Accounting Function in Socialist Economies."
International Journal of Accounting (1982): 185-198.
Bougen, P. D., Ogden, S. G., & Outram, Q. (1990). The Appearance and
Disappearance of Accounting: Wage Determination in the U.K. Coal Industry.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, 149-170.
Cullinan, C., Clark, M., & Knoblett, J. (1994). Accounting and Collective
Bargaining: A Literature Review. Journal of Accounting Literature, 44-80.
Lange Oskar. "From Accounting to Mathematics," in On the Economic Theory of
Socialism by Oskar Lange and Fred M. Taylor. Edited by Benjamin E.
Lippincott. New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1970
"No Escaping the Financial: The Economic Referent in South Africa"
http://les.mcc.ac.uk/IPA/papers/cooper57.html
"The Rhetoric of Accounting in Poland: Will the Expert be On Tap or On
Top?" de la Rosa, Denise M. & Barbara D. Merino
"Extending Practice: Accountants' Constructions of the Industrial Relations
Arena in the U.S." Fogarty, Timothy, et.al.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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