Peters Rose
«Peters Rose» – a term for a graphic matrix suggested by Arno Peters for the exact determination of the value of any product or service. The determination is based on the omnisocial working time that includes all necessary expenses, which come up during the production process of goods and services.
Description
The product is located in the centre of the matrix. It stands for the final amount of the work. This can be the finished industrial work (shoes, a tractor, a PC), and also a service, done during the process of the serving (the consultation of a lawyer or a doctor, the work of a hairdresser or a policeman). Also the products out of the agrarian, the fishing and the animal husbandry sector (potatoes, fish, meat) belongs here. Each job, that has a value for the whole society is a product of the work.
Within Peters Matrix the complete cost of a product consists of the cost of the time included in the product by living people (living work) and mechanical work, that has been included earlier in the process. Further, as is visible in the matrix, these categories are divided into various sectors and sub-sectors that lead back into the first categories. This way the amount of time that is needed to produce a product or service, as well as their final costs can be determined.
Application
The following example is given to determine the cost of a product by applying Peter's matrix:
How much does a cup of coffee with milk cost? (the amount of work for each component – a hypothetical illustration)
- 10 gram of coffee – 10 minutes
- 400 ml milk – 15 minutes
- 1 piece of sugar – 1 m.
- Service of the waiter – 5 m.
- A spoon – 5 m.
- A cup – 25 m.
Therefore, the final amount of time from all of the participants to produce and serve a cup of coffee with milk comes down to 61 minutes. Keeping in mind the industrial mass production and the permanent improvement of the technology, the final cost of the work involved in producing one cup of coffee with milk can be 53 minutes, as well as 2 minutes and 20 seconds (two minutes for the work of the waiter and twenty seconds for the production of the components). The example above is just an illustration.
The real process of determination of the costs of each unity spent by all of the participants during the process is much more complicated. Just to determine the final costs of 10 gram of coffee, for example, one has to know the time spend by the Ethiopian workers, their way of working, the time spend on the production of the tools, the ploughing, for boots, coffee seeds, for roasting the coffee beans, for the logistic work including packaging and shipping, etc. Peter's matrix provides general parameters for the determination of the cost of a product. But each parameter has to be determined for itself in order to include it into Peter's matrix. For the determination of this single parameter the matrix is applied on a lower level to determine just the cost of this singular parameter. This way Peters matrix should help automatising the determination by creating the matrix on each level of the production. For example, to determine the cost of the energetical or agricultural supply on state-wide level, one has to put the dates of the various matrices from the regional levels into the matrix, and so on. The same happens on the global level. According to Peter's matrix, the cost of one hour of work of one football player (who gets millions of dollars each hour in the free economy sector) equals one hour of work of a baker and also equals one hour of work of a programmer. The cost of the final product of their work ( playing football, a loaf of bred, programming services) depends on the general time, spend on the product or service by each participant during the process. The concept of Peters Rose has been worked out by him during his studies on th e topic of equivalent economy in which the trade of goods and services, in difference to the market economy and its prices, happens only on the basis of the summed up spend working time.
According to Heinz Dieterich, the applying of Peters Rose in connection with his concept of the socialism of the 21st century is a new project of a socialist government to change the dependent work to collective work, so that as a result the production of goods ( = products meant for trading on the market in order to make profits) will slowly vanish. With it should also disappear the separation into different social classes, their struggle as well as the difference between physical and intellectual work and the differences between cities and villages.
Literature
- Arno Peters, Konrad Zuse: Computer-Sozialismus. Gespräche mit Konrad Zuse (Computer-socialism. Talks with Konrad Zuse), 2000, ISBN 3-35501-510-5
- Arno Peters: Das Äquivalenz-Prinzip als Grundlage der Global-Ökonomie (Aquivalence principle as basis of the global economy), 1995
- Heinz Dieterich: „Der Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts. Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Demokratie nach dem globalen Kapitalismus“, Homilius, 2006, ISBN 9783897066526
References
- Peters Rose. How much costs a cup of coffee? (sp.)
- Peters Rose and socialism of the 21. century - a reform or revolution? (sp.)
- Socialism of the 21. century can not be without science and technologies. (sp.)
ca:Rosa de Peters de:Peters-Rose es:Rosa de Peters pt:Rosa de Peters ru:Роза Петерса