On Mon, 08 Jan 2001, you wrote: > >On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, you wrote: > >> Gil writes [#4729]: > >> > >> ... D) As noted before, the key systemic basis for surplus value is capital > >> sscarcity. ... capitalist exploitation can be eliminated simply through > >> sufficient wealth redistribution. > >> > >> I don't get it: if the cause of capitalism is capital scarcity, how does > >> re-distributing what is already insufficient abolish it? > >> > >> Julian > > > >Focus on scarcity is misleading. > > I don't know what "focus" means in this context Paul, but I think a > necessary condition should be recognized as such, and Marx's insistence on > the scenario of price-value proportionality necessarily obscures this link. > Which is unfortunate, because Marx himself insists on the necessity of > capital scarcity, as I indicated. Scarcity is unproblematised. Scarce relative to what? > > >One should look instead at the physical form of the means of production. > > Well, perhaps "in addition to", but certainly not "instead"--a necessary > condition is a necessary condition. The necessary condition is not the scarcity of means of production but the existence of a class deprived of means of production. > > >They are such that they > >1. require operation by a collective operative > >2. their labour content per capita represents of the order of years of work > >These circumstances inhibit personal private ownership of the means > >of production and necessitate their ownership by either rich individuals, > >firms or some form of collective ownership. > > This does not impinge on the argument one way or the other. It doesn't > deny that capital scarcity is a necessary condition for capitalist > exploitation. Nor does it deny the contrapositive that sufficient > redistribution would, in Marx's understanding, eliminate the basis for > capitalist exploitation. For example, we could arrange for these > necessarily large firms to be owned collectively by workers rather than by > rich individual capitalists. GS That is not redistribution. The means of production are indivisible and un redistributable. They must necessarily stand as a social power as opposed to the individual worker. Only through control of this social power by the public power - the workers state - can the domination of the means of production as an alien force be brought under control. Collective ownership - workers holding shares, does not stop the firms being firms and thus capitals as opposed to the individual worker. -- Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland 0141 330 3125 mobile:07946 476966 paul@cockshott.com http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/ http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html
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