>> Your formulation is self-contradictory: you say that capitalist
>> social relations "are a specific social relation within production
>> (not exchange)" which refer to the wage-capital relation. *The
>> wage relation to capital requires the purchase and sale of labor
>> power - an exchange relation*.
> The exchange of money for labor is not in itself a sufficient
> explanation for the existence of capitalist exploitation or the
> enduring power of the capitalist class.
Hi Ian:
What I referred to above was the exchange of labor power with capital.
This means that labor power takes the commodity-form and this is a
_necessary_ condition for capitalist social relations of production.
No one argues that exchange is a _sufficient_ condition for capitalism
or that surplus value is a consequence only of exchange.
> Note that this social relationship between capitalist
> owners and workers is not a market relation: it's a contractual
> relation.
That contractual relation specifies market - and production -
relations.
> For example, a co-op may purchase labor-power and the workers may sell
> their labor to the co-op, but since the workers own the firm and its
> profits, there is no exploitation and no capitalist owners.
In which case, there wouldn't be the exchange of labor power with capital.
We had both referred explicitly to the wage-capital relation.
> I think it's very important to understand that capitalism is not
> constituted by money and markets, but by the wage-capital relation.
The wage-capital relation is, *in part*, a relation of exchange. It
expresses both relations of production and relations of exchange.
In solidarity, Jerry_______________________________________________
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Received on Wed May 6 09:11:11 2009
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