Adn vs Bsn

ADN vs BSN Grand Canyon University: NRS 430V October 18, 2012 Over the course of time, many different types and levels of degrees have developed in the field of nursing. Today, many individuals are in an internal conflict of having either their ADN or BSN, the two most common degrees in the field. According to a sample survey, 50. 0% of the nursing workforce currently hold a BSN and 36. 1% have obtained an ADN (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). An ADN is an Associates degree in Nursing, whereas a BSN is a Baccalaureate in Nursing.The issue of the conflict arises from the confusion of what the actual benefit and difference the BSN would make in the work field due to the current good mixture of nurses with both degrees who work in the same areas doing the same work. Other than a slight pay difference, there are many benefits that individuals don’t realize there are in having a BSN. The first baccalaureate degree was developed in the United States at the Univers ity of Minnesota in 1909. Today, most BSN programs take about 4 years to complete.These programs prepare students to practice in the beginning levels of leadership. They prepare students by including the components of quality and patient safety, evidence-based practice, liberal education, information management, communication/collaboration, clinical prevention, public health and other professional values in the course. In today’s world, the demands placed on nursing in the emerging health care system are likely to require a greater proportion of RNs who are prepared beyond the associate degree or diploma level (Creasia & Friberg, 2011).Research has shown a few major, very important differences in the work force of those with BSN’s opposed to those of ADN’s. Those differences, although all ADN/BSN nursing programs have the same passing rate for the NCLEX-RN licensing examination, show that those nurses whom have a higher education are linked to a decrease in medi cation errors, lower mortality rates, and better quality patient care. The NCLEX tests for those minimum basic skills and knowledge needed to have a safe entry into the nursing practice.The test does not test those abilities learned in the baccalaureate program (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). These extra skills include, but are not limited to: critical thinking, health promotion, management, and flexibility to work in both in and outpatient areas (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). Those extra skills are being shown to be essential for the future demands that will come in the changing health care system and the new, increasing needs of the patient population.Many hospitals today are becoming what are called Magnet hospitals. These hospitals are those that are requiring all nurses who are in leadership/management positions to have a baccalaureate or diploma degree by 2013, and have an 80% baccalaureate prepared RN personnel by 2020 (American Asso ciation of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). As an example of a patient care situation involving a nurse handling an issue involving a patient, comparing a nurse prepared at the BSN level as opposed to the ADN level, the BSN RN would better handle the situation.Of the many nurse/patient scenarios that this concept could apply to, one that would be more commonly seen would be being a team leader in a code. The nurse that holds the ADN level of education does not have the same amount of education as the nurse holding the BSN level does, that extra education being specifically linked to leadership, critical thinking, professionalism and evidence-based practice research. The nurse with the BSN would be able to more efficiently recognize early signs and symptoms, direct a team during a code, know which action to take at which time, and handle speaking with family.The decision-making process of the nurse with the BSN would be made quicker and be made with more experience behind the issue or que stion. In conclusion, the act of nursing revolves around the focus of health. That level of act with the higher education is becoming more and more needed as healthcare progresses. The baccalaureate of nursing provides that higher level of act, including the roles of critical thinking, professionalism, ethics, teaching, and accountability.With the continued research, more and more studies are proving every day how a nurse with a BSN compared to one with an ADN can decrease mortality rates and failure-to-rescue cases. With the development of the Magnet hospitals, the movement is being made to help those numbers continue to progress in a positive direction. The education of nursing is theory driven, those theories being obtained from science, religion, ethics, humanities and evidence-based practice. (Grand Canyon University, 2011) References American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2012).Fact sheet: creating a more highly qualified nursing workforce. Retrieved from http://www. aa cn. nche. edu/media-relations/ NursingWorkforce. pdf American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2012). The impact of education on nursing practice. Retrieved from http://www. aacn. nche. edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/impact-of-education Creasia, Joan L. , & Friberg, Elizabeth E. (2011). Conceptual foundations: the bridge to professional nursing practice (5th ed. ). St. Louis, MS: Mosby, Inc. Grand Canyon University. (2011). Grand Canyon University College of Nursing Philosophy. 1-2. ———————– 2 2 Adn vs Bsn ADN vs BSN Grand Canyon University: NRS 430V October 18, 2012 Over the course of time, many different types and levels of degrees have developed in the field of nursing. Today, many individuals are in an internal conflict of having either their ADN or BSN, the two most common degrees in the field. According to a sample survey, 50. 0% of the nursing workforce currently hold a BSN and 36. 1% have obtained an ADN (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). An ADN is an Associates degree in Nursing, whereas a BSN is a Baccalaureate in Nursing.The issue of the conflict arises from the confusion of what the actual benefit and difference the BSN would make in the work field due to the current good mixture of nurses with both degrees who work in the same areas doing the same work. Other than a slight pay difference, there are many benefits that individuals don’t realize there are in having a BSN. The first baccalaureate degree was developed in the United States at the Univers ity of Minnesota in 1909. Today, most BSN programs take about 4 years to complete.These programs prepare students to practice in the beginning levels of leadership. They prepare students by including the components of quality and patient safety, evidence-based practice, liberal education, information management, communication/collaboration, clinical prevention, public health and other professional values in the course. In today’s world, the demands placed on nursing in the emerging health care system are likely to require a greater proportion of RNs who are prepared beyond the associate degree or diploma level (Creasia & Friberg, 2011).Research has shown a few major, very important differences in the work force of those with BSN’s opposed to those of ADN’s. Those differences, although all ADN/BSN nursing programs have the same passing rate for the NCLEX-RN licensing examination, show that those nurses whom have a higher education are linked to a decrease in medi cation errors, lower mortality rates, and better quality patient care. The NCLEX tests for those minimum basic skills and knowledge needed to have a safe entry into the nursing practice.The test does not test those abilities learned in the baccalaureate program (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). These extra skills include, but are not limited to: critical thinking, health promotion, management, and flexibility to work in both in and outpatient areas (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). Those extra skills are being shown to be essential for the future demands that will come in the changing health care system and the new, increasing needs of the patient population.Many hospitals today are becoming what are called Magnet hospitals. These hospitals are those that are requiring all nurses who are in leadership/management positions to have a baccalaureate or diploma degree by 2013, and have an 80% baccalaureate prepared RN personnel by 2020 (American Asso ciation of Colleges of Nursing, 2012). As an example of a patient care situation involving a nurse handling an issue involving a patient, comparing a nurse prepared at the BSN level as opposed to the ADN level, the BSN RN would better handle the situation.Of the many nurse/patient scenarios that this concept could apply to, one that would be more commonly seen would be being a team leader in a code. The nurse that holds the ADN level of education does not have the same amount of education as the nurse holding the BSN level does, that extra education being specifically linked to leadership, critical thinking, professionalism and evidence-based practice research. The nurse with the BSN would be able to more efficiently recognize early signs and symptoms, direct a team during a code, know which action to take at which time, and handle speaking with family.The decision-making process of the nurse with the BSN would be made quicker and be made with more experience behind the issue or que stion. In conclusion, the act of nursing revolves around the focus of health. That level of act with the higher education is becoming more and more needed as healthcare progresses. The baccalaureate of nursing provides that higher level of act, including the roles of critical thinking, professionalism, ethics, teaching, and accountability.With the continued research, more and more studies are proving every day how a nurse with a BSN compared to one with an ADN can decrease mortality rates and failure-to-rescue cases. With the development of the Magnet hospitals, the movement is being made to help those numbers continue to progress in a positive direction. The education of nursing is theory driven, those theories being obtained from science, religion, ethics, humanities and evidence-based practice. (Grand Canyon University, 2011) References American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2012).Fact sheet: creating a more highly qualified nursing workforce. Retrieved from http://www. aa cn. nche. edu/media-relations/ NursingWorkforce. pdf American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2012). The impact of education on nursing practice. Retrieved from http://www. aacn. nche. edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/impact-of-education Creasia, Joan L. , & Friberg, Elizabeth E. (2011). Conceptual foundations: the bridge to professional nursing practice (5th ed. ). St. Louis, MS: Mosby, Inc. Grand Canyon University. (2011). Grand Canyon University College of Nursing Philosophy. 1-2. ———————– 2 2

Importance of Internet Essay

Books and libraries have long held a position of esteem and regard within civilized societies. Books are the stoic, unchanging witnesses of our past; ghosts in our social conscience; memories of dreamers and the pale laughter from jestered spirits of discontent and revolutionary ideas. Books are the intimate lovers of readers everywhere, beguiling and beckoning travel to places and situations that open the mind and create a foundry of glowing, shiny alloys melded with the brittle iron of the present. Books have the power to lift us from poverty, shift our thinking and empower the powerless with knowledge. This, of course, is why they must be burned, banned and limited to only the privileged. Book burning  has a lot of negative connotations that make many uncomfortable. Burning a book just any ol’ book, serves little purpose. In order to be effective libricide, or biblioclasm, must be supported with thoughtful selection, social responsibility and a healthy dollop of justice and righteous indignation. Before one starts brainstorming and making a list of books to burn for a Church agape group or disciple project, consideration of the recommended code of conduct from international  Memory Hole  experts is helpful. Quote:Are Teachers Becoming Obsolete? How the Internet is slowly replacing formal education By Scott Ijaz From good-natured websites that provide free medical advice, to disturbing ones that explain how to build a firework bomb out of an onion and tin foil, digital dilettantes can learn all sorts of things by surfing the Web. Students often use the Internet’s broad array of information to educate themselves. By presenting course material as a teacher would, websites cater to students who prefer teaching themselves by simplifying the self-education process. Selfscholar. com organizes and connects students with academic tools and resources. The website provides links for free downloadable textbooks, assembles learning communities comprised of students from all over the world who are interested in learning the same topic, and even has a section that teaches languages. Selfscholar. com also has a feature that allows its â€Å"students† to instant message a live tutor. Mike Spuzzilo, a second year mechanical engineering major, said about the site, â€Å"Everything you need is in one spot. If I come across a tough homework problem, I can type it into YouTube,† he said, adding, â€Å"A digital teacher will appear, taking me step by step with a similar problem.Spuzzilo remarked that the process makes more sense to him. â€Å"I learn easier that way,† he said. He notes that the Internet better meets his needs. â€Å"[The resources online] are accessible whenever you can get an Internet connection. University teachers can only help out as their schedule permits. It is much more convenient,† Spuzzilo said. Top tier schools like The London School of Economics, MIT and Yale embrace the advent of self-educational websites through Open Course Software. Open Course Software streams recorded lectures from the classroom into the audience’s room. The Internet viewer who doesn’t drop a dime experiences the same explanations as the students in the classroom who pay high-end tuition dollars. Nathan Shubick, a second year student studying  physics, better comprehended the online explanation than the classroom’s. â€Å"I went to the oyc. yale. edu, and listened to one of their teachers explain the same material on a podcast,† remarked Shubick. Shubick favored the Internet source over his classroom teacher. â€Å"Turns out, the Yale professor authored the textbook which my university teacher refers to in class. It was easier to learn coming from the horse’s mouth,† he said. With such an ample and diverse array of resources, students question emptying their pockets to pay for university tuition if the same material is accessible on the Internet without charge. Karen Diaz, the librarian at OSU responsible for managing online courses, emphasized the advantages of university schooling while pinpointing the shortcomings of an online education. Diaz stressed the importance of learning in person. â€Å"First-hand experience are things you cannot experience in a free online environment,† she said. Whereas the classroom is geared toward meeting individual’s needs, the Internet tries to accommodate the larger population. Supporters of formal education believe that student peers and mentors improve the structure of the overall learning environment. â€Å"You have the chance to interact with the instructor, ask questions, seek clarification or alternate explanations, and seek out help outside of class,† Diaz said. State-of-the-art facilities add another important dimension to the educational setting by applying what a student learns into everyday life. â€Å"There is a big difference between knowing how to do a lab involving a titrate and actually doing it,† Diaz said. The large quantity of online information doesn’t necessarily ensure its quality.

An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory

An Introduction to Marxist ECONOMIC THEORY Ernest Mandel 2 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc ) was the most influential exponent of Marxist economic theory in the Western world during the second half of the 20th century, and is best known for his masterful two-volume work Marxist Economic Theory (1962) and his brilliant Late Capitalism (1972).In the former, he demonstrated that it was possible, on the basis of the contemporary data, to reconstitute the whole economic system of Karl Marx 100 years after the first publication of Marx’s Capital. In the latter work, Mandel provided an explanation of the causes of the 20-year â€Å"wave† of rapid growth of the world capitalist economy after World War II, which also demonstrated that it would soon be followed by an indeterminately â€Å"long wave† of much slower economic growth, and recurrent social and political crises in the developed capitalist countries.Late Capitalism also provided the first comprehensive analys is of the new features of global capitalism that emerged in the post-war period and that are still with us today — transnational corporations as the dominant form of capitalist business organisation, the enormous growth of the services sector, the crucial role of state expenditure in propping up an economic system marked by financial instability, long-term stagnation punctuated by speculative booms, mindless consumerism and accelerating environmental destruction.This pamphlet, which was first published in French in 1964, provides a concise exposition of the elementary princples of Marxist economic theory. In the first section, Mandel elucidates the basic categories of Marx’s economic doctrine from the emergence of the social surplus product to the labour theory of value. In the second section, he explains the basic laws of motion of capitalism and its inherent contradictions.In the final second, he applies these to some of the new features exhibited by the new stage of imperialist capitalism that emerged after the second world war, which at the time he termed â€Å"neo-capitalism†. In his more mature work Late Capitalism, Mandel abandoned this term in favour of the designation â€Å"late capitalism†, explaining in the introduction to 4 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory that work that the designation â€Å"neo-capitalism† could be falsely â€Å"interpreted to imply either a radical continuity or discontinuity with traditional capitalism†.Instead, Mandel stressed that the â€Å"era of late capitalism is not a new epoch of capitalist development [but] merely a further development of the imperialist, monopoly-capitalist epoch† with â€Å"the characteristics of the imperialist epoch enumerated by Lenin† at the beginning of the 20th century remaining â€Å"fully valid for late capitalism†.? I. thE thEory of VAluE And surplus VAluE In the last analysis, every step forward in the history of civili sation has been brought about by an increase in the productivity of labour.As long as a given group of men barely produced enough to keep itself alive, as long as there was no surplus over and above this necessary product, it was impossible for a division of labour to take place and for artisans, artists or scholars to make their appearance. Under these conditions, the technical prerequisites for such specialisation could not possibly be attained. socIAl surplus product As long as the productivity of labour remains at a level where one man can only produce enough for his own subsistence, social division does not take place and any social differentiation within society is impossible.Under these conditions, all men are producers and they are all on the same economic level. Every increase in the productivity of labour beyond this low point makes a small surplus possible, and once there is a surplus of products, once man’s two hands can produce more than is needed for his own sub sistence, then the conditions have been set for a struggle over how this surplus will be shared. From this point on, the total output of a social group no longer consists solely of labour necessary for the subsistence of the producers.Some of this labour output may now be used to release a section of society from having to work for its own subsistence. Whenever this situation arises, a section of society can become a ruling class, whose outstanding characteristic is its emancipation from the need of First presented at an educational weekend organised by the Paris Federation of the United Socialist Party in 1963 and subsequently published in Les Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Socialistes, February 1964. 6 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory working for its own subsistence.Thereafter, the labour of the producers can be divided into two parts. A part of this labour continues to be used for the subsistence of the producers themselves and we call this part necessary labour; the other part is used to maintain the ruling class and we give it the name surplus labour. Let us illustrate this by the very clear example of plantation slavery, as it existed in certain regions and periods of the Roman Empire, or as we find it in the West Indies and the islands of Portuguese Africa starting with the 17th century, on the great plantations which were established there.In these tropical areas, even the slave’s food was generally not provided by the master; the slave had to produce this himself by working a tiny plot of ground on Sundays and the products from this labour constituted his store of food. On six days of the week the slave worked on the plantation and received in return none of the products of his labour. This is the labour which creates a social surplus product, surrendered by the slave as soon as it is produced and belonging solely to the slavemaster.The work week, which in this case is seven days, can be divided into two parts: the work of one day, Sunday, constitutes necessary labour, that labour which provides the products for the subsistence of the slave and his family; the work of the other six days is surplus labour and all of its products go to the master, are used for his sustenance and his enrichment as well. The great domains of the early Middle Ages furnish us with another illustration. The land of these domains was divided into three parts: the communal lands consisting of forest, meadows, swamps, etc. the land worked by the serf for his own and his family’s subsistence; and finally, the land worked by the serf in order to maintain the feudal lord. The work week during this period was usually six days, not seven. It was divided into two equal parts: the serf worked three days on the land from which the yield belonged to him; the other three days he worked on the feudal lord’s land, without remuneration, supplying free labour to the ruling class. The products of each of these two very different types o f labour can be defined in different terms.When the producer is performing necessary labour, he is producing a necessary product. When he is performing surplus labour, he is producing a social surplus product. Thus, social surplus product is that part of social production which is produced by the labouring class but appropriated by the ruling class, regardless of the form the social surplus product may assume, whether this be one of natural products, or commodities to be sold, or money. Surplus value is simply the monetary form of the social surplus product. The Theory of Value and Surplus Value When the ruling class appropriates the part of society’s production previously defined as â€Å"surplus product† exclusively in the monetary form, then we use the term â€Å"surplus value† instead of â€Å"surplus product†. As we shall see later on, however, the above only constitutes a preliminary approach to the definition of surplus value. How does social surpl us product come into existence? It arises as a consequence of a gratuitous appropriation, that is, an appropriation without compensation, by a ruling class of a part of the production of a producing class.When the slave worked six days a week on a plantation and the total product of his labour was taken by the master without any compensation to the slave, the origin of the social surplus product here is in the gratuitous labour, the uncompensated labour, supplied by the slave to the master. When the serf worked three days a week on the lord’s land, the origin of this income, of this social surplus product, is also to be found in the uncompensated labour, the gratuitous labour, furnished by the serf.We will see further on that the origin of capitalist surplus value, that is to say, the revenue of the bourgeois class in capitalist society, is exactly the same: it is uncompensated labour, gratuitous labour, which the proletarian, the wage worker, gives the capitalist without rec eiving any value in exchange. coMModItIEs, usE VAluE And ExchAngE VAluE We have now developed several basic definitions which will be used throughout this exposition. A number of others must be added at this point. Every product of human labour normally possesses utility; it must be able to satisfy a human need.We may therefore say that every product of human labour has a use value. The term â€Å"use value† will, however, be used in two different senses. We will speak of the use value of a commodity; we will also talk about use values, as when we refer, for example, to a society in which only use values are produced, that is to say, where products are created for direct consumption either by the producers themselves or by ruling classes which appropriate them. Together with this use value, a product of human labour can also have another value, an exchange value.It may be produced for exchange on the market place, for the purpose of being sold, rather than for direct consumpt ion by the producers or by wealthy classes. A mass of products which has been created for the purpose of being sold can no longer be considered as the production of simple use values; it is now a production of commodities. The commodity, therefore, is a product created to be exchanged on the market, as opposed to one which has been made for direct consumption. Every 8 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory commodity must have both a use value and an exchange value.It must have a use value or else nobody would buy it, since a purchaser would be concerned with its ultimate consumption, with satisfying some want of his by this purchase. A commodity without a use value to anyone would consequently be unsaleable, would constitute useless production, would have no exchange value precisely because it had no use value. On the other hand, every product which has use value does not necessarily have exchange value. It has an exchange value only to the extent that the society itself, in whi ch the commodity is produced, is founded on exchange, is a society where exchange is common practice.Are there societies where products do not have exchange value? The basis for exchange value, and a fortiori for trade and the market place, is constituted by a given degree of development of the division of labour. In order for products not to be directly consumed by their producers, it is essential that everybody should not be engaged in turning out the same thing. If a particular community has no division of labour, or only its most rudimentary form, then it is clear that no reason for exchange exists. Normally, a wheat farmer has nothing to exchange with another wheat farmer.But as soon as a division of labour exists, as soon as there is contact between social groups producing different use values, then exchange can come about, at first on an occasional basis, subsequently on a more permanent one. In this way, little by little, products which are made to be exchanged, commodities, make their appearance alongside those products which are simply made for the direct consumption of their producers. In capitalist society, commodity production, the production of exchange values, has reached its greatest development.It is the first society in human history where the major part of production consists of commodities. It is not true, however, that all production under capitalism is commodity production. Two classes of products still remain simple use value. The first group consists of all things produced by the peasantry for its own consumption, everything directly consumed on the farms where it is produced. Such production for self-consumption by the farmer exists even in advanced capitalist countries like the United States, although it constitutes only a small part of total agricultural production.In general, the more backward the agriculture of a country, the greater is the fraction of agricultural production going for self-consumption. This factor makes it extreme ly difficult to calculate the exact national income of such countries. The second group of products in capitalist society which are not commodities but remain simple use value consists of all things produced in the home. Despite the fact that considerable human labour goes into this type of household The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 9 production, it still remains a production of use values and not of commodities.Every time a soup is made or a button sewn on a garment, it constitutes production, but it is not production for the market. The appearance of commodity production and its subsequent regularisation and generalisation have radically transformed the way men labour and how they organise society. thE MArxIst thEory of AlIEnAtIon You have no doubt already heard about the Marxist theory of alienation. The emergence, regularisation and generalisation of commodity production are directly related to the expanding character of this phenomenon of alienation.We cannot dwell on this aspect of the question here but it is extremely important to call attention to it, since the history of trade covers far more than the capitalist era. It also includes small-scale commodity production, which we will discuss later. There is also a postcapitalist society based on commodities, a transitional society between capitalism and socialism, such as present-day Soviet society, for the latter still rests in very large measure on the foundations of exchange value production.Once we have grasped certain fundamental characteristics of a society based on commodities, we can readily see why it is impossible to surmount certain phenomena of alienation in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, as in Soviet society, for example. Obviously this phenomenon of alienation does not exist — at least in the same form — in a society where commodity production is unknown and where the life of the individual and his social activity are united in the most elementa ry way. Man works, but generally not by himself; most often he is part of a collective group having a more or less organic structure.His labour is a direct transformation of material things. All of this means that labour activity, the act of production, the act of consumption, and the relations between the individual and his society are ruled by a condition of equilibrium which has relative stability and permanence. We should not, of course, embellish the picture of primitive society, which was subject to pressures and periodic catastrophes because of its extreme poverty. Its equilibrium was constantly endangered by scarcity, hunger, natural disasters, etc.But in the periods between catastrophes, especially after agriculture had attained a certain degree of development and when climatic conditions were favourable, this kind of society endowed all human activities with a large degree of unity, harmony and stability. Such disastrous consequences of the division of labour as the elimin ation of all aesthetic activity, artistic inspiration and creative activity from the act 10 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory of production and the substitution of purely mechanical and repetitive tasks were nonexistent in primitive society.On the contrary, most of the arts, music, sculpture, painting, the dance, were originally linked to production, to labour. The desire to give an attractive and appealing form to products which were to be used either by the individual, his family, or larger kinship groups, found a normal, harmonious and organic expression within the framework of the day’s work. Labour was not looked upon as an obligation imposed from without, first of all because it was far less intense, far less exhausting than under capitalism today. It conformed more closely to the rhythms of the human organism as well as to the rhythms of nature.The number of working days per year rarely exceeded 150 to 200, whereas under capitalism the figure is dangerously cl ose to 300 and sometimes even greater. Furthermore, there was a unity between the producer, his product and its consumption, since he generally produced for his own use or for those close to him, so that his work possessed a directly functional aspect. Modern alienation originates basically in the cleavage between the producer and his product, resulting both from the division of labour and commodity production.In other words, it is the consequence of working for the market, for unknown consumers, instead of for consumption by the producer himself. The other side of the picture is that a society which only produces use values, that is, goods which will be consumed directly by their producers, has always in the past been an impoverished society. Not only was it subject to the hazards of nature but it also had to set very narrow limits to man’s wants, since these had to conform exactly to its degree of poverty and limited variety of products.Not all human wants are innate to man . There is a constant interaction between production and wants, between the development of the productive forces and the rise of new wants. Only in a society where labour productivity will be developed to its highest point, where an infinite variety of products will be available, will it be possible for man to experience a continuous expansion of his wants, a development of his own unlimited potential, an integrated development of his humanity. thE lAw of VAluEOne of the consequences of the appearance and progressive generalisation of commodity production is that labour itself begins to take on regular and measurable characteristics; in other words, it ceases to be an activity tied to the rhythms of nature and according with man’s own physiological rhythms. Up to the 19th century and possibly even into the 20th, the peasants in various regions of Western Europe did not work in a regulated way, that is to The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 11 say, they did not work with the same intensity every month of the year.There were periods in the work year when they worked very hard and other periods, particularly during the winter, when all activity virtually came to a halt. It was in the most backward agricultural areas of most of the capitalist countries that capitalist society, in the course of its development, found a most attractive source of reserve manpower, for here was a labour force available for four to six months a year at much lower wages, in view of the fact that a part of its subsistence was provided by its agricultural activity.When we look at the more highly developed and prosperous farms, those bordering the big cities, for example, and which are basically on the road to becoming industrialised, we see that work is much more regular and the amount of expended labour much greater, being distributed in a regular way throughout the year, with dead seasons progressively eliminated. This holds true not only for our times but even as early as the Middle Ages, at least from the 12th century on.The closer we get to the cities, that is to say, to the marketplace, the more the peasant’s labour becomes labour for the market, that is to say, commodity production, and the more regulated and more or less stable his labour becomes, just as if he were working inside an industrial enterprise. Expressed another way, the more generalised commodity production becomes, the greater the regulation of labour and the more society becomes organised on the basis of an accounting system founded on labour.When we examine the already fairly advanced division of labour within a commune at the beginning of commercial and craft development in the Middle Ages, or the collectives in such civilisations as the Byzantine, Arab, Hindu, Chinese and Japanese, certain common factors emerge. We are struck by the fact that a very advanced integration of agriculture and various craft techniques exists and that regularity of labour is true for the countrysi de as well as the city, so that an accounting system in terms of labour, in labour-hours, has become the force governing all the activity and even the very structure of the collectives.In the chapter on the law of value in my Marxist Economic Theory, I give a whole series of examples of this accounting system in work-hours. There are Indian villages where a certain caste holds a monopoly of the blacksmith craft but continues to work the land at the same time in order to feed itself. The rule which has been established is this: when a blacksmith is engaged to make a tool or weapon for a farm, the client supplies the raw materials and also works the blacksmith’s land during the whole period that the latter is engaged in making the implement.Here is a very transparent way of stating that exchange is governed by an equivalence in work-hours. In the Japanese villages of the Middle Ages, an accounting system in work- 12 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory hours, in the liter al sense of the term, existed inside the village community. The village accountant kept a kind of great book in which he entered the number of hours of work done by villagers on each others’ fields, since agriculture was still mainly based on cooperative labour, with harvesting, farm construction and stock breeding being done in common.The number of work-hours furnished by the members of one household to the members of another was very carefully tallied. At the end of the year, the exchanges had to balance, that is, the members of household B were required to have given household A exactly the same number of work-hours which members of household A had given household B during the year. The Japanese even refined things to the point — almost 1000 years ago! where they took into account that children provided a smaller quantity of labour than adults, so that an hour of child labour was â€Å"worth† only a half-hour of adult labour. A whole system of accounting was set up along these lines. There is another example which gives us a direct insight into this accounting system based on labour-time: the conversion of feudal rent from one form to another. In feudal society, the agricultural surplus product could take three different forms: rent in the form of labour (the corvee), rent in kind, and money rent.When a change is made from the corvee to rent in kind, obviously a process of conversion takes place. Instead of giving the lord three days of labour per week, the peasant now gives him a certain quantity of wheat, livestock, etc. , on a seasonal basis. A second conversion takes place in the changeover from rent in kind to money rent. These two conversions must be based on a fairly rigorous accounting in work-hours if one of the two parties does not care to suffer a loss in the process.For example, if at the time the first conversion was effected, the peasant gave the lord a quantity of wheat which required only 75 workdays of labour, whereas p reviously he had given the lord 150 workdays of labour in the same year, then this conversion of labour-rent into rent in kind would result in the sudden impoverishment of the lord and a rapid enrichment of the serfs. The landlords — you can depend on them! — were careful to see to it when the conversion was made that the different forms of rent were closely equivalent. Of course the conversion could eventually turn out to be bad one for one of the participating classes, for example, against the landlords, if a sharp rise in agricultural prices occurred after rent was converted from rent in kind to money rent, but such a result would be historical in character and not directly attributable to the conversion per se. The origin of this economy based on an accounting in labour-time is also clearly apparent in the division of labour within the village as it existed The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 13 between agriculture and the crafts. For a long time the division rem ained quite rudimentary.A section of the peasantry continued to produce part of its own clothing for a protracted historical period, which in Western Europe extended almost a thousand years; that is, from the beginning of the medieval cities right up to the 19th century. The technique of making clothing was certainly no mystery to the cultivator of the soil. As soon as a regular system of exchange between the farmer and textile craftsman was established, standard equivalents were likewise established — for example, an ell of cloth [a measure varying from 27 to 48 inches] would be exchanged for 10 pounds of butter, not for 100 pounds.Obviously the peasants knew, on the basis of their own experience, the approximate labour-time needed to produce a given quantity of cloth. Had there not been a more or less exact equivalence between the time needed to produce the cloth and the time needed to produce the butter for which it was exchanged, there would have been an immediate shift i n the division of labour.If cloth production were more lucrative than butter production, the butter producers would switch to producing cloth. Since society here was only at the threshold of an extreme division of labour, that is to say, it was still at a point where the boundaries between different techniques were not clearly marked, the passage from one economic activity to another was still possible, particularly when striking material gains were possible by means of such a change.In the cities of the Middle Ages as well, a very skilfully calculated equilibrium existed between the various crafts and was written into the charters which specified almost to the minute the amount of labour-time necessary for the production of different articles. It is inconceivable that under such conditions a shoemaker or blacksmith might get the same amount of money for a product which took half the labour-time which a weaver or other artisan might require in order to get the same amount of money f or his products.Here again we clearly see the mechanism of an accounting system in workhours, a society functioning on the basis of an economy of labour-time, which is generally characteristic of the whole phase which we call small-scale commodity production. This is the phase intervening between a purely natural economy, in which only use values are produced, and capitalist society, in which commodity production expands without limit. dEtErMInAtIon of thE ExchAngE VAluE of coMModItIEsOnce we have determined that the production and exchange of commodities becomes regular and generalised in a society based on an economy of labourtime, on an accounting system in work-hours, we can readily understand why 14 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory the exchange of commodities, in its origins and inherent nature, rests on this fundamental basis of an accounting system in work-hours and consequently follows this general rule: the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the quanti ty of labour necessary to produce it.The quantity of labour is measured by the length of time it takes to produce the commodity. This general definition of the labour theory of value is the basis of both classical bourgeois political economy from the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, from William Petty to Ricardo; and Marxist economic theory, which took over the theory of labour value and perfected it. However, the general definition must be qualified in several respects.In the first place, not all men are endowed with the same capacity for work, with the same strength or the same degree of skill at their trade. If the exchange value of commodities depended only on the quantity of labour expended individually, that is, on the quantity of labour expended by each individual in the production of a commodity, we would arrive at this absurdity: the lazier or more incompetent the producer, and the larger the number of hours he would spend in making a pair of shoes, the gr eater would be the value of the shoes!This is obviously impossible since exchange value is not a moral reward for mere willingness to work but an objective bond set up between independent producers in order to equalise the various crafts in a society based both on a division of labour and an economy of labour-time. In such a society wasted labour receives no compensation; on the contrary, it is automatically penalised. Whoever puts more time into producing a pair of shoes than the average necessary hours — an average determined by the average productivity of labour and recorded in the Guild Charters, for example! such a person has wasted human labour, worked to no avail for a certain number of hours. He will receive nothing in exchange for these wasted hours. Expressed another way, the exchange value of a commodity is not determined by the quantity of labour expended by each individual producer engaged in the production of this commodity but by the quantity of labour socially necessary to produce it. The expression â€Å"socially necessary† means: the quantity of labour necessary under the average conditions of labour productivity existing in a given country at a given time.The above qualification has very important applications when we examine the functioning of capitalist society more closely. Another clarifying statement must be added here. Just what do we mean by a â€Å"quantity of labour†? Workers differ in their qualifications. Is there complete equality between one person’s hour of work and everybody else’s, regardless of such differences in skills? Once again the question is not a moral one but has The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 15 o do with the internal logic of a society based on an equality between skills, an equality in the marketplace, and where any disruption of this equality would immediately destroy the social equilibrium. What would happen, for example, if an hour’s work by an unskilled laboure r was worth as much as an hour’s work by a skilled craftsman, who had spent four to six years as an apprentice in acquiring his skill? Obviously, no one would want to become skilled. The hours of work spent in learning a craft would be wasted hours since the craftsman would not be compensated for them after becoming qualified.In an economy founded on an accounting system of work-hours, the young will desire to become skilled only if the time lost during their training period is subsequently paid for. Our definition of the exchange value of a commodity must therefore be completed as follows: â€Å"An hour of labour by a skilled worker must be considered as complex labour, as compound labour, as a multiple of an hour of unskilled labour; the coefficient of multiplication obviously cannot be an arbitrary one but must be based on the cost of acquiring a given skill. It should be pointed out, in passing, that there was always a certain fuzziness in the prevailing explanation of c ompound labour in the Soviet Union under Stalin which has persisted to this very day. It is claimed that compensation for work should be based on the quantity and quality of the work, but the concept of quality is no longer understood in the Marxist sense of the term, that is to say, as a quality measurable quantitatively by means of a specific coefficient of multiplication. On the contrary, the idea of quality is used in the ourgeois ideological sense, according to which the quality of labour is supposed to be determined by its social usefulness, and this is used to justify the incomes of marshals, ballerinas and industrial managers, which are ten times higher than the incomes of unskilled labourers. Such a theory belongs in the domain of apologetics despite its widespread use to justify the enormous differences in income which existed under Stalin and continue to exist in the Soviet Union today, although to a lesser extent.The exchange value of a commodity, then, is determined by the quantity of labour socially necessary for its production, with skilled labour being taken as a multiple of simple labour and the coefficient of multiplication being a reasonably measurable quantity. This is the kernel of the Marxist theory of value and the basis for all Marxist economic theory in general.Similarly, the theory of social surplus product and surplus labour, which we discussed at the beginning of this work, constitutes the basis for all Marxist sociology and is the bridge connecting Marx’s sociological and historical analysis, his theory of classes and the development of society 16 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory generally, to Marxist economic theory, and more precisely, to the Marxist analysis of all commodity-producing societies of a precapitalist, capitalist and postcapitalist character. hAt Is socIAlly nEcEssAry lAbour? A short while back I stated that the particular definition of the quantity of socially necessary labour for producing a commod ity had a very special and extremely important application in the analysis of capitalist society. I think it will be more useful to deal with this point now although logically it might belong to a later section of this presentation. The totality of all commodities produced in a country at a given time has been produced to satisfy the wants of the sum total of the members of this society.Any article which did not satisfy somebody’s needs, which had no use value for anyone, would be a priori unsaleable, would have no exchange value, would not constitute a commodity but simply a product of caprice or the idle jest of some producer. From another angle, the sum total of buying power which exists in this given society at a given moment and which is not to be hoarded but spent in the market, must be used to buy the sum total of commodities produced, if there is to be economic equilibrium.This equilibrium therefore implies that the sum total of social production, of the available pro ductive forces in this society, of its available work-hours, has been distributed among the various sectors of industry in the same proportions as consumers distribute their buying power in satisfying their various wants. When the distribution of productive forces no longer corresponds to this division in wants, the economic equilibrium is destroyed and both overproduction and underproduction appear side by side.Let us give a rather commonplace example: toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a city like Paris had a coach-building industry, which together with associated harness trades employed thousands or even tens of thousands of workers. In the same period the automobile industry was emerging and although still quite small it already numbered some scores of manufacturers employing several thousands of workers. Now what is the process taking place during this period? On the one hand, the number of carriages begins to decline and on the other, the number of a utomobiles begins to increase.The production of carriages and carriage equipment therefore shows a trend toward exceeding social needs, as these are reflected in the manner in which the inhabitants of Paris are dividing their buying power; on the other side of the picture, the production of automobiles is below social needs, for from the time the industry was launched until the advent The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 17 of mass production, a climate of scarcity existed in this industry. The supply of automobiles on the market was never equal to the demand. How do we express these phenomena in terms of the labour theory of value?We can say that in the carriage industry more labour is expended than is socially necessary, that a part of the labour expended by the sum total of companies in the carriage industry is socially wasted labour, which no longer finds an equivalent on the marketplace and is consequently producing unsaleable goods. In capitalist society, when goods are unsal eable it means that an investment of human labour has been made in a specific industrial branch which turns out to be socially unnecessary labour, that is to say, it is labour which finds no equivalent in buying power in the marketplace.Labour which is not socially necessary is wasted labour; it is labour which produces no value. We can see from this that the concept of socially necessary labour embraces a whole series of phenomena. For the products of the carriage industry, supply exceeds demand, prices fall and goods remain unsaleable. The reverse is true in the automobile industry where demand exceeds supply, causing prices to rise and under-production to exist. To be satisfied with these commonplaces about supply and demand, however, means stopping at the psychological and individual aspects of the problem.On the other hand, if we probe into the deeper social and collective side of the problem, we begin to understand what lies below the surface in a society organised on the basi s of an economy of labour-time. The meaning of supply exceeding demand is that capitalist production, which is anarchistic, unplanned and unorganised, has anarchistically invested or expended more labour hours in an industrial branch than are socially necessary, so that a whole segment of labour-hours turns out to be pure loss, so much wasted human labour which remains unrequited by society.Conversely, an industrial sector where demand continues to be greater than supply can be considered as an underdeveloped sector in terms of social needs; it is therefore a sector expending fewer hours of labour than are socially necessary and it receives a bonus from society in order to stimulate an increase in production and achieve an equilibrium with social needs. This is one aspect of the problem of socially necessary labour in the capitalist system. The other aspect of the problem is more directly related to changes in the productivity of labour.It is the same thing but makes an abstraction of social needs, of the â€Å"use value† aspect of production. In capitalist society the productivity of labour is constantly changing. Generally speaking, there are always three types of enterprises (or industrial sectors): those which are technologically right at the social average; those which 18 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory are backward, obsolete, on the downgrade, below the social average; and those which are technologically advanced and above average in productivity.What do we mean when we say a sector or an enterprise is technologically backward and has a productivity of labour which is below the average? Such a branch or enterprise is analogous to our previously mentioned lazy shoemaker, that is, it is one which takes five hours to produce a specific quantity of goods in a period when the average social productivity demands that it be done in three hours. The two extra hours of expended labour are a total loss, a waste of social labour.A portion of the t otal amount of labour available to society having thus been wasted by an enterprise, it will receive nothing from society to compensate it. Concretely it means that the selling prices in this industry or enterprise, which is operating below average productivity, approach its production costs or even fall below them, that is to say, the enterprise is operating at a very low rate of profit or even at a loss. On the other hand, an enterprise or industrial sector with an above average level of productivity (like the shoemaker who can produce two pairs of shoes n three hours when the social average is one pair per three hours) economises in its expenditure of social labour and therefore makes a surplus profit, that is to say, the difference between its costs and selling prices will be greater than the average profit. The pursuit of this surplus profit is, of course, the driving force behind the entire capitalist economy. Every capitalist enterprise is forced by competition to try to get greater profits, for this is the only way it can constantly improve its technology and labour productivity.Consequently all firms are forced to take this same direction, and this of course implies that what at one time was an aboveaverage productivity winds up as the new average productivity, whereupon the surplus profit disappears. All the strategy of capitalist industry stems from this desire on the part of every enterprise to achieve a rate of productivity superior to the national average and thereby make a surplus profit, and this in turn provokes a movement which causes the surplus profit to disappear, by virtue of the trend for the average rate of labour productivity to rise continuously.This is the mechanism in the tendency for profit rates to become equalised. thE orIgIn And nAturE of surplus VAluE And now, what is surplus value? When we consider it from the viewpoint of the Marxist theory of value, the answer is readily found. Surplus value is simply the monetary form of th e social surplus product, that is to say, it is the monetary form of that part of the worker’s production which he surrenders to the owner of the means of production without receiving anything in return. The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 19 How is this surrender accomplished in practice within capitalist society?It takes place through the process of exchange, like all important operations in capitalist society, which are always relations of exchange. The capitalist buys the labour-power of the worker, and in exchange for this wage, he appropriates the entire production of that worker, all the newly produced value which has been incorporated into the value of this production. We can therefore say from here on that surplus value is the difference between the value produced by the worker and the value of his own labourpower. What is the value of labour-power?In capitalist society, labour-power is a commodity, and like the value of any other commodity, its value is the quanti ty of labour socially necessary to produce and reproduce it, that is to say, the living costs of the worker in the wide meaning of the term. The concept of a minimum living wage or of an average wage is not a physiologically rigid one but incorporates wants which change with advances in the productivity of labour. These wants tend to increase parallel with the progress in technique and they are consequently not comparable with any degree of accuracy for different periods.The minimum living wage of 1830 cannot be compared quantitatively with that of 1960, as the theoreticians of the French Communist party have learned to their sorrow. There is no valid way of comparing the price of a motorcycle in 1960 with the price of a certain number of kilograms of meat in 1830 in order to come up with a conclusion that the first â€Å"is worth† less than the second. Having made this reservation, we can now repeat that the living cost of labour-power constitutes its value and that surplus value is the difference between this living cost and the value created by this labour-power.The value produced by labour-power can be measured in a simple way by the length of time it is used. If a worker works 10 hours, he produces a value of 10 hours of work. If the worker’s living costs, that is to say, the equivalent of his wage, is also 10 hours of work, then no surplus value would result. This is only a special case of the more general rule: when the sum total of labour product is equal to the product required to feed and maintain the producer, there is no social surplus product.But in the capitalist system, the degree of labour productivity is such that the living costs of the worker are always less than the quantity of newly created value. This means that a worker who labours for 10 hours does not need the equivalent of 10 hours of labour in order to support himself in accordance with the average needs of the times. His equivalent wage is always only a fraction of his day’s labour; everything beyond this fraction is surplus value, free labour supplied by the worker and appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent offset.If this difference did not exist, of course, then no employer would hire 20 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory any worker, since such a purchase of labour-power would bring no profit to the buyer. thE VAlIdIty of thE lAbour thEory of VAluE To conclude, we present three traditional proofs of the labour theory of value. The first of these is the analytical proof, which proceeds by breaking down the price of a commodity into its constituent elements and demonstrating that if the process is extended far enough, only labour will be found.The price of every commodity can be reduced to a certain number of components: the amortisation of machinery and buildings, which we call the renewal of fixed capital; the price of raw materials and accessory products; wages; and finally, everything which is surplus value, such as profit, rent, taxes, etc. So far as the last two components are concerned, wages and surplus value, it has already been shown that they are labour pure and simple. With regard to raw materials, most of their price is largely reducible to labour; for example, more than 60% of the mining cost of coal consists of wages.If we start by breaking down the average manufacturing cost of commodities into 40% for wages, 20% surplus value, 30% for raw materials and 10% in fixed capital; and if we assume that 60% of the cost of raw materials can be reduced to labour, then we already have 78% of the total cost reduced to labour. The rest of the cost of raw materials breaks down into the cost of other raw materials — reducible in turn to 60% labour — plus the cost of amortising machinery. The price of machinery consists to a large degree of labour (for example, 40%) and raw materials (for example, 40% also).The share of labour in the average cost of all commodities thus passes suc cessively to 83%, 87%, 89. 5%, etc. It is obvious that the further this breakdown is carried, the more the entire cost tends to be reduced to labour, and to labour alone. The second proof is the logical proof, and is the one presented in the beginning of Marx’s Capital. It has perplexed quite a few readers, for it is certainly not the simplest pedagogical approach to the question. Marx poses the question in the following way. The number of commodities is very great.They are interchangeable, which means that they must have a common quality, because everything which is interchangeable is comparable and everything which is comparable must have at least one quality in common. Things which have no quality in common are, by definition, not comparable with each other. Let us inspect each of these commodities. What qualities do they possess? The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 21 First of all, they have an infinite set of natural qualities: weight, length, density, colour, size, mo lecular nature; in short, all their natural physical, chemical and other qualities.Is there any one of the physical qualities which can be the basis for comparing them as commodities, for serving as the common measure of their exchange value? Could it be weight? Obviously not, since a pound of butter does not have the same value as a pound of gold. Is it volume or length? Examples will immediately show that it is none of these. In short, all those things which make up the natural quality of a commodity, everything which is a physical or chemical quality of this commodity, certainly determines its use value, its relative usefulness, but not its exchange value.Exchange value must consequently be abstracted from everything that consists of a natural physical quality in the commodity. A common quality must be found in all of these commodities which is not physical. Marx’s conclusion is that the only common quality in these commodities which is not physical is their quality of bei ng the products of human labour, of abstract human labour. Human labour can be thought of in two different ways. It can be considered as specific concrete labour, such as the labour of the baker, butcher, shoemaker, weaver, blacksmith, etc.But so long as it is thought of as specific concrete work, it is being viewed in its aspect of labour which produces only use values. Under these conditions we are concerning ourselves only with the physical qualities of commodities and these are precisely the qualities which are not comparable. The only thing which commodities have in common from the viewpoint of exchanging them is that they are all produced by abstract human labour, that is to say, by producers who are related to each other on a basis of equivalence as a result of the fact that they are all producing goods for exchange.The common quality of commodities, consequently, resides in the fact that they are the products of abstract human labour and it is this which supplies the measure of their exchange value, of their exchangeability. It is, consequently, the quality of socially necessary labour in the production of commodities which determines their exchange value. Let us immediately add that Marx’s reasoning here is both abstract and difficult and is at least subject to questioning, a point which many opponents of Marxism have seized upon and sought to use, without any marked success, however.Is the fact that all commodities are produced by abstract human labour really the only quality which they have in common, apart from their natural qualities? There are not a few writers who thought they had discovered others. In general, 22 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory however, these have always been reducible either to physical qualities or to the fact that they are products of abstract labour. A third and final proof of the correctness of the labour theory of value is the proof by reduction to the absurd. It is, moreover, the most elegant and most à ¢â‚¬Å"modern† of the proofs.Imagine for a moment a society in which living human labour has completely disappeared, that is to say, a society in which all production has been 100% automated. Of course, so long as we remain in the current intermediate stage, in which some labour is already completely automated, that is to say, a stage in which plants employing no workers exist alongside others in which human labour is still utilised, there is no special theoretical problem, since it is merely a question of the transfer of surplus value from one enterprise to another.It is an illustration of the law of equalisation of the profit rate, which will be explored later on. But let us imagine that this development has been pushed to its extreme and human labour has been completely eliminated from all forms of production and services. Can value continue to exist under these conditions? Can there be a society where nobody has an income but commodities continue to have a value and to be s old? Obviously such a situation would be absurd. A huge mass of products would be produced without this production creating any income, since no human being would be involved in this production.But someone would want to â€Å"sell† these products for which there were no longer any buyers! It is obvious that the distribution of products in such a society would no longer be effected in the form of a sale of commodities and as a matter of fact selling would become all the more absurd because of the abundance produced by general automation. Expressed another way, a society in which human labour would be totally eliminated from production, in the most general sense of the term, with services included, would be a society in which exchange value had also been eliminated.This proves the validity of the theory, for at the moment human labour disappears from production, value, too, disappears with it. II. cApItAl And cApItAlIsM cApItAl In prEcApItAlIst socIEty Between primitive society founded on a natural economy in which production is limited to use values destined for self-consumption by their producers, and capitalist society, there stretches a long period in human history, embracing essentially all human civilisations, which came to a halt before reaching the frontiers of capitalism.Marxism defines them as societies in which small-scale commodity production prevailed. A society of this kind is already familiar with the production of commodities, of goods designed for exchange on the market and not for direct consumption by the producers, but such commodity production has not yet become generalised, as is the case in capitalist society. In a society founded on small-scale commodity production, two kinds of economic operations are carried out.The peasants and artisans who bring their products to market wish to sell goods whose use value they themselves cannot use in order to obtain money, means of exchange, for the acquisition of other goods, whose use value i s either necessary to them or deemed more important than the use value of the goods they own. The peasant brings wheat to the marketplace which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say, cloth. The artisan brings his cloth to the market, which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say, wheat.What we have here, then, is the operation: selling in order to buy . C ommodity—Money—Commodity, C —M—C w hich has this essential character: the value of the two extremes in this formula is, by definition, exactly the same. But within small-scale commodity production there appears, alongside the artisan and small peasant, another personage, who executes a different kind of economic operation. Instead of selling in order to buy, he buys in order to sell. This type of person goes to market without any commodities; he is an owner of money.Money cannot be sold; but it can be used to buy, and that is what he does: buys in order to sell, in order to resell: M—C—M’. There is a fundamental difference between the two types of operation. The 24 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory second operation makes no sense if upon its completion we are confronted by exactly the same value as we had at the beginning. No one buys a commodity in order to sell it for exactly the same price he paid for it. The operation â€Å"buy in order to sell† makes sense only if the sale brings a supplementary value, a surplus value.That is why we state here, by way of definition. M’ is greater than M and is made up of M+m; m being the surplus value, the amount of increase in the value of M. We now define capital as a value which is increased by a surplus value, whether this occurs in the course of commodity circulation, as in the example just given, or in production, as is the case in the capitalist system. Capital, therefore, is every value which is augmented by a surplus value; it therefore exists not only in ca pitalist society but in any society founded on small-scale commodity production as well.For this reason it is necessary to distinguish very clearly between the life of capital and that of the capitalist mode of production, of capitalist society. Capital is far older than the capitalist mode of production. The former probably goes back some 3000 years, whereas the latter is barely 200 years old. What form does capital take in precapitalist society? It is basically usury capital and merchant or commercial capital. The passage from precapitalist society into capitalist society is characterised by the penetration of capital into the sphere of production.The capitalist mode of production is the first mode of production, the first form of social organisation, in which capital is not limited to the sole role of an intermediary and exploiter of non-capitalist forms of production, of small-scale commodity production. In the capitalist mode of production, capital takes over the means of produ ction and penetrates directly into production itself. orIgIns of thE cApItAlIst ModE of productIon What are the origins of the capitalist mode of production?What are the origins of capitalist society as it has developed over the past 200 years? They lie first of all in the separation of the producers from their means of production. Subsequently, it is the establishment of these means of production as a monopoly in the hands of a single social class, the bourgeoisie. And finally, it is the appearance of another social class which has been separated from its means of production and therefore has no other resources for its subsistence than the sale of its labour-power to the class which has monopolised the means of production.Let us consider each of these origins of the capitalist mode of production, which are at the same time the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist Capital and Capitalism 25 system as well. First characteristic: separation of the producer from his means of pr oduction. This is the fundamental condition for existence of the capitalist system but it is also the one which is generally the most poorly understood. Let us use an example which may seem paradoxical since it is taken from the early Middle Ages, which was characterised by serfdom.We know that the mass of peasant-producers were serfs bound to the soil. But when we say that the serf was bound to the soil, we imply that the soil was also â€Å"bound† to the serf, that is, he belonged to a social class which always had a base for supplying its needs, enough land to work so that the individual serf could meet the needs of a household even though he worked with the most primitive implements. We are not viewing people condemned to death by starvation if they do not sell their labour-power.In such a society, there is no economic compulsion to hire out one’s arms, to sell one’s labour-power to a capitalist. We can express this another way by stating that the capitalist system cannot develop in a society of this kind. This general truth also has a modern application in the way colonialists introduced capitalism into the African countries during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Let us look at the livin

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Water pollution - Essay Example Water pollution The thesis will contend that water pollution comprises thermal pollution, industrial effluent and flooding (Agarwal,115). Though, there is solution for the prevention of problems such as making law for the control of water pollution or creating dams to control flooding among others. Industrial influent is the main cause of water pollution, since many factories releases the polluted water into the water bodies like rivers or lakes and pollutes the water in those sources. The water which are discharged from the industries to the water sources contains numerous chemicals such as acids, hydroxides and heavy metals like mercury which are detrimental to the aquatic life and water (Agarwal, 115). If polluted water is taken by human beings it can cause diseases like cancer, disrupt hormone typhoid fever, stomach ache suppression of the hormone system in swimming pool it causes skin rushes Also illegal discharge of the wastes from industries to which contains chemicals kill the nature lives i n lakes and rivers like crab, fish among others. Wastes from industries discharge into the water bodies contaminates water with chemicals and heavy metals like asbestos, petrochemicals and mercury which are very harmful when consumed with human beings or have the negative effects on the aquatic. When oil spills in water, from tankers or from the ships in seas or lakes also causes pollution in lakes and ocean. Since oil does not dissolve in water it forms a thick sludge on the water surface that prevents air circulation thereby causing the death of aquatic.

No topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

No topic - Essay Example I think that you described Adlers beliefs really well. However, I was a little confused with what you meant in your second sentence.  It was good though that you had the time to write something down because I had difficulty trying to put it into my own words. The quality of education today is far superior to what it was in my day. When my kids were in middle school, they had to learn so much more than I did when I was in middle school. This can be seen in the higher math levels today in middle schools. I believe that our children have better opportunities to gain a quality education at earlier stages in their lives.   It is impossible to stereotype that all children cannot be educated; many children in today’s society are much more mature and have life experiences. On the other hand, there are many adults who are immature and lack motivation. Adler suggested that some children and young adults do not take things seriously, are not responsible enough, and dont have the maturity to fully comprehend what is being presented to them. In order to combat his, basic skills of learning must be taught at a young age and these skills need to be built upon over time so our youth will be prepared enough to become "educated" later in their

Global tech change simulation final paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Global tech change simulation final paper - Essay Example To cater for such shortcomings, the change management plan was tailored accordingly. The outcomes of the change management simulation clearly provide that most objectives were met with. Evidence for this fact is provided by the many quantifiable indicators presented in the findings of the change management simulation. On the other hand, there are some areas, such as understanding the problem, where the quantifiable indicators could not score very well and hence it could be surmised that these areas could have benefited from better planning and implementation. If there were an opportunity to redo this project, the Understand part of the project, particularly problem identification, would be redone with greater objectivity to achieve greater success at it. In a similar manner, the Enlist part of the project could have done better through greater motivation to employees. Similarly, there were some loose ends in the Motivate and Communicate parts of the exercise that could have had better outcomes through better planning, implementation and reporting. Kotter’s change process carries a large amount of respect in contemporary change management practices given its efficacy in delivering on outcomes. The change management plan used for Global Tech is differentiated from Kotter’s change process although it does hold some comparable exponents. If the change plan for Global Tech is analyzed sequentially, it becomes clear that the first phase of the change plan â€Å"Understand† is in some part influenced by Kotter’s exponents of â€Å"Increase urgency† and â€Å"Get the vision right†. Kotter’s ideas on â€Å"Increase urgency† build on an examination of the market’s competitive nature and present challenges that require change. Similarly, Kotter’s ideas on â€Å"Get the vision right† rely on developing an understanding of where the organization is at and where it needs to go to meet looming challenges

Business Organisations and the Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Business Organisations and the Law - Essay Example Principally, UK company law is ruled by the Companies Act of 2006, the Insolvency Act 1986, the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 and the old Companies Act 1985. A limited company can be registered in England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Australia. Registration of business firms in Great Britain is done through Companies House while the registration of companies in Northern Ireland is through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (Davies 2008; Companies Act 2006; Sealy and Worthington 2007). 1. Private company limited by shares - this type of business organization has a share capital and the accountability of each member is restricted to the amount not paid on shares that a member holds; this type of private company cannot sell its shares to the general public 2. Private company limited by guarantee - here, a member does not throw in any amount as a contribution to the capital during its lifetime as it does not purchase shares. The member's liability is limited to the amount that he/she has agreed to contribute to the company's assets if it decides to wind up its activities 3. 3. Private unlimited company - this form of business organisation may or may not have a share capital and there is no limit to its members' liability and since there are no limitations on members' liability, the company can disclose less information compared to other types of companies 4. Public limited company - this kind of group has a share capital and the liability of every member is limited to the amount unpaid on shares that a member holds; it can also offer its shares for sale to the general public and likewise can be quoted on the stock exchange. Administrative Receivership In the United Kingdom, administrative receivership10 is a process whereby a creditor can enforce security against a business firm's assets endeavoring to gain settlement or compensation of the secured debt. Previously, it was the most accepted scheme of enforcement by secured creditors, however, recent governmental restructuring and legal developments in several jurisdictions have significantly diminished its importance in specific nations11. Administrative receivership diverges from simple receivership in that an administrative receiver is assigned over all of the assets and tasks of the business firm. This signifies that an administrative receiver can, as a rule, only be assigned by the holder of a floating charge. Because of this remarkable responsibility, bankruptcy/insolvency legislation more often than not endows broader powers to administrative receivers and likewise also have power over the exercise of those powers in an effort to take the edge off potential prejudice to unsecured creditors. Normally, an administrative receiver is an accountant with substantial knowledge, familiarity and understanding regarding insolvency matters. Current Implication As it is, administrative receivership is a significant component of contemporary insolvency practice. Today, business firms that plunge into financial complexities may well have security packages that were created prior to the 15th of September 2003, a circumstance

Analaysis ratio Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Analaysis ratio - Research Paper Example In comparison, Tesco offers massive return to its share holders. The trend resembling that of Morrison, the ROE of Tesco also decreases in the financial year 2009. From investor’s point of view, it is far more lucrative to invest in Tesco as compared to Morrison’s as the earlier gives an attractive return on the investments. Return on Capital Employed Being quite similar to the ROE, the ROCE of Morrison’s also illustrates that the profits of the company declined after the financial year 2008. One reason for decrease in the ratio could be due to the fact that in the years subsequent to the financial year 2008, the Morrison’s might have issued new shares in order to raise capital. It has been generally observed that it takes time for the fresh injected capital to generate the desired returns and even if it does, it is not in proportion. ROCE is better in Tesco comparatively which represents that the company is providing expected and lucrative returns to both the financers and shareholders. Net Assets Turnover The net assets turnover analyzes how effectively the company is utilizing its asset in generating the sales revenue. Morrison’s net assets turnover ratio increased in the financial year 2009 as compared to 2008.

The Best Accounting Software Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The Best Accounting Software Systems - Essay Example The software is best for small and medium-sized businesses because first of all, it prides itself with a very easy to use system where you can do almost all accounting job done from calculating payroll checks with correct federal, state, and local taxes, keep track of employees’ pay records including vacation and sick leaves, produce accurate payroll register reports, calculate and print employees W2, W3, 1099-M at the year-end, create direct deposit files and a lot more! Computer specifications to get the most of the software would be at least 1gb RAM, 600 MB of free disk space, and preferably Windows Server 2003. What is great about this is that prices start at $249 only depending on the package you need (Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Direct Deposit, n.d.) The second alternative to payroll accounting system would be Andica software manufactured by Andica which is suitable for all types of businesses because it complies with the latest government legislation that would be sure to allow payments of salaries and at the same time be able to monitor the deductions by allowing you to do statutory calculations without being an accountant. Also, what is great about this software is that you can immediately view employee data on the screen and would give you an organized file in easy to follow reports. Some of its essential features are as follows: calculation of PAYE, National Insurance Contributions, Statutory Payments such as Statutory Sick Pay SSP, Statutory Maternity Pay SMP, Statutory Paternity Pay SPP, Statutory Adoption Pay SAP, students loan deductions and perform a range of other payroll functions.

Sherlock Holmes Essay Example for Free

Sherlock Holmes Essay His appearance also, with his pipe and deerstalker, has become a widely accepted depiction of a detective. Many detectives since Sherlock Holmes have copied his basic appearance, also being depicted as wearing a cloak and deerstalker, and smoking a pipe. Conan Doyle uses the aspect of Holmes appearance to reflect his character; Watson describes him as having a hawklike nose. This comparison to a hawk suggests that Holmes is powerful, strong, and inescapable; Holmes is predatory, and he is hunting his prey. Further symbolism as to the depiction of a hawk is that large birds of prey are revered for their immense skill at catching prey, in a similar way to Holmes. Their speed and power, is that of Holmes. The United States of America use a bald eagle as their national bird and as part of the great seal of national congress; the eagle, as a bird of prey, symbolizes power. Throughout the Holmes stories, he exhibits an intelligence that goes beyond the traits of a common investigator. His powers of observation and deduction are most apparent when he meets his client Helen Stoner; There is no mystery, my dear madam, said he, smiling. The left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven places. The marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left-hand side of the driver. This shows how superior Holmes ability to observe and deduct information really is. This superiority is emphasised by Watson; serving as a filter between Holmes himself and the reader, Watson is able to emphasise Holmes abilities and to make him appear even more admirable. Conan Doyle creates the character of Dr Watson, whom we learn about as we read through the stories, as Holmess companion. He is always there with Holmes and assists him when he is in trouble. He occasionally helps Holmes solve elements of different cases and is reasonably good at working things out, however his powers of deduction are not nearly as powerful as Holmes; You reasoned it out beautifully, I exclaimed, in unfeigned admiration. It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true. Doyle uses this sense of inferiority to subtly elevate Holmes ability. Watson is always there for Holmes and he makes the stories more interesting by serving as a comparison to Holmes; Watson is a person who has a romantic, less practical imagination than Holmes. This contradictory attitude serves to exalt Holmes and the abilities of his concentrated mind. Watson is also used as a filter; Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs. Through Watson we see only what Conan Doyle wishes us to see, this then means that when the mystery is revealed, it is even more awe-inspiring, since the reader, along with Watson, were oblivious to what was such an elementary conclusion. Holmes has a very prominent duality that is obvious to us as a reader; It saved me from ennui, he answered, yawning. Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so. Holmes took drugs on a regular basis while he was not working; he used them to help him relax. Holmes detests being unable to occupy his ceaseless mind and reverts to drugs to give himself a distraction from his boredom. Since first appearing in the Strand magazine, the Holmes stories have been enjoyed by many readers. These stories appealed to the Victorians because they offered an escape from the crime ridden society they lived in. Holmes never failed to solve a crime and offered them moral certainty. Although in current society we are more competent at solving crimes, Conan Doyles stories are still enjoyed as they are an entertaining, easy read for many modern day readers. I, for one, enjoy the old-fashioned, formal language used.   Matthew Gatehouse 10i 2 Friday 1st May 2008 1 | Page Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Arthur Conan Doyle section.

Construction And Application Of Linear Accelerators

Construction And Application Of Linear Accelerators A linear accelerator particle is a type of particle which accelerator greatly increases the velocity of charged subatomic particles or ions by subjecting the charged particles to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear beam line; this method of particle acceleration was invented in 1928 by Rolf Wideroe. Linear accelerators have many applications, from the generation of X-rays for medical purposes, to being an injector for a higher-energy of accelerators, to the investigation of the properties of subatomic particles. The design of a linear accelerator depends on the type of particle that is being accelerated: electrons, protons or ions. Introduction: The first linear accelerators used only a single stage of acceleration, with a direct current potential providing the energy. This could be provided by a Van de Graaff generator or a voltage multiplier power supply. Such the accelerators are severely limited in accelerating power since at high voltage; energy is lost due to corona discharge with electrical energy dissipated into the surrounding atmosphere. Such devices are still used as ion injectors for other accelerating devices. The accelerating potential in electron volts is equal to the voltage potential between the ion source and the target. The maximum voltage potential relative to the ground potential is generally not limited by the generator but rather by the tendency of voltage potential to leak away due to corona discharge or to suddenly drop due to a spark. While various techniques may be applied to raise this maximum potential the structures required become impractically massive or expensive. The multiple-stage accelerators were limited by the lack of suitable electron tubes capable of operating at high frequency and high power while maintaining both precise frequency and phase control. Various other types of accelerators such as the cyclotron and synchrocyclotron were developed to overcome these limitations. With the development of the high power klystron tube it became practical to continue the development of the linear accelerator, first for use as a high-speed injector for the synchrotron and finally as a high-power accelerator for research use, culminating in the two-mile-long Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). Construction and Working: It will be consist of following components: (1) The design of the source depends on the particle that is being moved. Electrons are generated by a cold cathode, the hot cathode and photocathode, or radio frequency ion sources. Protons are generated in an ion source, which can have many different designs. If the heavier particles are to be accelerated, e.g. uranium ions and the specialized ion source are needed. (2) A high voltage source for the initial injection of particles. (3) A hollow pipe vacuum chamber. The length will vary with the application. If the device is used for the production of X-rays for inspection or therapy the pipe may be only 0.5 to 1.5 meters long. If the device is to be an injector for a synchrotron it may be about 10 meters long. If the device is used as the primary accelerator for nuclear particle investigations, it may be several thousand meters long. (4) Within the chamber, electrically isolated cylindrical electrodes are placed, whose length varies with the distance along the pipe. The length of each electrode is determined by the frequency and power of the driving power source and the nature of the particle to be accelerated, with shorter segments near the source and longer segments near the target. The mass of the particle has a large effect on the length of the cylindrical electrodes; for e.g. An electron is considerably lighter than a proton and so will generally require a much smaller section of cylindrical electrodes as it accelerates very quickly à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ think about a boulder versus a ping pong ball; it is easier to accelerate the ping pong ball. Likewise, because its mass is so small, even compared to the nucleus of an atom, electrons have much less kinetic energy than protons at the same speed. Because of the possibility of electron emissions from highly charged surfaces, the voltages used in the accelerator have an upper limit, so this cannot be as simple as just increasing voltage to match increased mass. (5) One or more sources of radio frequency energy used to energize the cylindrical electrodes. The very high power accelerator will use one source for each electrode. The sources must operate at precise power, frequency and phase appropriate to the particle type to be accelerated to obtain maximum device power Quadrupole magnets surrounding the linac of the Australian Synchrotron are used to help focus the electron beam (6) An appropriate target the electrons are accelerated to produce X-rays then water cooled tungsten target is used. Various target materials are used when protons or other nuclei are accelerated, depending upon the specific investigation. For particle-to-particle collision investigations the beam may be directed to a pair of storage rings, with the particles kept within the ring by magnetic fields. The beams may then be extracted from the storage rings to create head on particle collisions.As the particle bunch passes through the tube it is unaffected while the frequency of the driving signal and the spacing of the gaps between electrodes are designed so that the maximum voltage differential appears as the particle crosses the gap. This accelerates the particle, imparting energy to it in the form of increased velocity. At speeds near the speed of light, the incremental velocity increase will be small, with the energy appearing as an increase in the mass of the particles. In portions of the accelerator where this occurs, the tubular electrode lengths will be almost constant. (7) The additional magnetic or electrostatic lens elements may be included to ensure that the beam remains in the center of the pipe and its electrodes. (8) The very long accelerators may maintain a precise alignment of their components through the use of servo systems guided by a laser beam. Fig. (1.1) 805MHz SCC LINAC Working: A linear accelerator works on the principle of electric attraction and repulsion. A charged particle such as an electron or a proton is injected into a tube with a similar charge (negative for electrons, positive for protons). Just beyond that tube is another tube with an opposite charge. The particle gets attracted by the far tube, so it moves towards the next tube. Recall that inside a conductor, the electric field is zero therefore the charge of the tube its in doesnt affect it. But when its in the space between the tubes, it experiences an electric field which drives it forward. Just as it hits the next tube, its polarity switches so now its the same as the particle. A third tube, just beyond the second one, gets charged with the opposite polarity, and the same thing happens. This continues on, tube after tube. The particle gets a kick of energy each time it sees a new field, and the electric potential gets converted into kinetic energy. As the particle gets faster, the tubes hav e to get longer; the particle spends the same amount of time in each tube. Obviously, the geometry of the tubes and the frequency with which theyre switched needs to be calculated precisely. Linear accelerators of this type can be many miles long; theyre often long enough that the curvature of the earth needs to be accounted for during their construction. But they can accelerate particles to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Fig. (1.2) 208MHz DT LINAC Fig.(1.3) Applications of LINAC: The LINAC System highly efficient accelerators are ideally suited to many applications in industry, medicine, and research. (1) LINAC Synchrotron Injector is serving as the perfect first stage to other higher energy accelerators. (2) Semiconductor Processing. (3) Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) conventionally uses a nuclear reactor as the neutron source. Our LINAC-based neutron source provides a better controlled neutron energy spectrum, at lower cost, without the concern of radioactive waste associated with a reactor. (4) Isotope Production Our LINACs are ideally suited for isotope production, such as the PET isotopes. (5) Neutron Radiography. (6) Neutron Activation Analysis. (7) Surface Science. (8) Particle-Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE). (9) Pulsed Neutron Applications is LINAC-based neutron source allows for pulsed neutron beams for applications such as time-of-flight measurements. Uses: A linear accelerator (LINAC) is most commonly used for external beam radiation patients with cancer. It delivers a uniform dose of high-energy x-ray to the region of the patientà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢s tumor. These x-rays can destroy the cancer cells, while sparing the surrounding normal tissue. The linear accelerator uses microwave technology to accelerate electrons in a part of the accelerator called the wave guide and then allows these electrons to collide with a heavy metal target. As a result of these collisions, high energy x-rays are scattered from the target. A portion of these x-rays is collected and then shaped to form a beam that matches the patients tumor. The beam comes out of a part of the accelerator called a gantry, which rotates around the patient. The patient lies on a moveable treatment couch and lasers are used to make sure the patient is in the proper position. Radiation can be delivered to the tumor from any angle by rotating the gantry and moving the treatment couch. Fig. (1.4) LINAC Advantages and Disadvantages of linear accelerator: Advantages: Linear accelerator of appropriate design are capable of accelerating heavy ions to energies exceeding those available in ring-type accelerators, which are limited by the strength of the magnetic fields required to maintain the ions on a curved path. The High power LINACs are also being developed for production of electrons at relativistic speeds, required since fast electrons traveling in an arc will lose energy through synchrotron radiation; this is the limits the maximum power that can be imparted to electrons in a synchrotron of given size. LINACs are also capable of prodigious output, producing a nearly continuous stream of particles, whereas a synchrotron will only periodically raise the particles to sufficient energy to merit a shot at the target. The burst can be held or stored in the ring at energy to give the experimental electronics time to work, but the average output current is still limited. The high density of the output makes the LINAC particularly attractive for use in loading storage ring facilities with particles in preparation for particle to particle collisions. The high mass output also makes the device practical for the production of antimatter particles, which are generally difficult to obtain, being only a small fraction of a targets collision products. These may then be stored and further used to study matter-antimatter annihilation. As there are no primary bending magnets, this cost of an accelerator is reduced. Medical grades LINACs accelerate electrons using a complex bending magnet arrangement and a 6-30 million electron-volt potential to treat both benign and malignant disease. The reliability, flexibility and accuracy of the radiation beam produced have largely supplanted cobalt therapy as a treatment tool. The device can simply be powered off when not in use; there is no source requiring heavy shielding. Disadvantages: (1) The device length limits the locations where one may be placed. (2) A great number of driver devices and their associated power supplies are required, increasing the construction and maintenance expense of this portion. (3) The walls of the accelerating cavities are made of normally conducting material and the accelerating fields are large, the wall resistivity converts electric energy into heat quickly. On the other hand superconductors have various limits and are too expensive for very large accelerators. Therefore, high energy accelerators such as SLAC, still the longest in the world, limiting the average current output and forcing the experimental detectors to handle data coming in short bursts. Future Scope: Any of the next generation accelerators will need high power of sources and if accelerating systems that transfer ac power to beam power efficiently. The challenges though span a wide range of technologies and wavelength. From very low frequency cavities used in Muon Colliders (70 MHz) to very high frequency cavities in Multi TeV linear colliders (30 GHz and more), many of the designs are based on experience and where experience is missing, scaling laws are used. How does Breakdown scale with electric field stength, pulse length and frequency? What limits peak power and effciency in modern power sources? The experts in this field should generally try to answer these questions and therefore give guidance to the accelerator designers. Limits on fields, peak powers and efficiencies should therefore be an outcome of the working group. Given the experience in the ongoing RD programs for normal and superconducting cavities the performance achieved today should be described, as well as the limitations and possible cures. The time scale for establishing these cures should be summarized as well. For both, the normal conducting and the superconducting case the subsystems (Modulators, Klystrons, Pulse Compression systems) and cavities should be addressed independently with a description of present status and of the progress being made over the last five years to allow some extrapolation. For the power sources itself, a very active field only partially driven by accelerator builders, future trends and new directions of improvements should be described. This group should also describe the likely spinoffs of these different technologies into other fields, coming out of the technical developments being done in the HEP research environment.