Re: [OPE] Reply to critics

I wrote:
>> Jerry .... You're assuming that
>> 'produces a surplus-value' in the passage means 'produces a new
>> surplus-value for capital as a whole'. That's not how it's written.

And Jerry replied:
> Marx .... uses the former expression as
> shorthand for the latter.

Says who? That's only your assumption, again. But if we drop it, other
readings become possible.

Jerry also wrote:
> Oh??? It's merely a 'tautology' to distinguish between the
> production/creation of surplus value and it's realization???

The tautology is to say that retail labour is unproductive because it
realizes rather than creates surplus value. You're begging the question -
why doesn't retail labor create surplus value in the first place?

> What I asked of you, instead, was to indicate what wage labor employed
> by capital which produces commodities as physical goods has in common
> with wage labor employed by capital to act or clown: the answer is that
> they have EVERYTHING in common except one type are physical goods and the
> other are services.

And the same thing applies to what labor employed by manufacturing capital
and labor employed by insurance capital have in common - EVERYTHING except
one produces physical goods, the other services. Ergo, here lies the
difference between productive and unproductive labor (in the sense of
'un/productive of new value for capital as a whole').

And this follows from the fact that a service is not a commodity. A service
is only a use-value, which can be provided via a commodity, or directly by
labor.

Paula

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Received on Thu Oct 21 18:44:33 2010