>Michael W.
>IMO
>1. It is right that there is this verbal distinction in English.
>2. It is a useful distinction, if for no other reason than that it invites
us to
>distinguish between the trans-historical species necessity of creating what are
>recognised as useful objects ('work'), on the one hand, and the specifically
>capitalist form which that process takes - (wage) labour, on the other.
>Of course form and content are inter-dependent: the fact that it appears
only as
>one pole (use-value) of the commodity, along with value (the product of labour)
>means that the usefulness of an object takes on a distorted and alienated form
>in the bourgeois epoch. (There is an excellent book by Einer(?) Haugen: The
>Promise of the Commodity, which elaborates this thesis.)
>My recent discussion with Paul C. about whether 'labour' is an epochally
>specific category is also germane.
>What do you think Paul?
Paul:
I tend to think that it is just an artifact of the way English is is
a Latino-Germanic language and thus has a duplication of words.
Paul Cockshott
wpc@cs.strath.ac.uk
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/CS/Biog/wpc/index.html