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In OPE-L: 2084, Paul C. wrote:
>> >Any unit of production that purchases its inputs and requires to sell its
>> >outputs in order to reproduce itself is a capital, so that any economy is
>> >based
>> >on such units is a capitalist economy.
Then, responding to Jurriaan's (2088):
>>
>> "Reproduction" as
>> such does not make a capital. Expanded reproduction under conditions of
>> private ownership, does (unless we agree to change the meaning of capital
>> in the Marxian sense).
Paul wrote in OPE-L: 2103:
>Why I consider such an economy
>to be capitalist is that the basic circuit of capital m-c-m' would have to
>operate here.
>
>Note that I said that a unit of production that must sell its outputs in
>order to
>reproduce itself is a capital. You reply:"Reproduction" as
>> such does not make a capital. Expanded reproduction under conditions of
>> private ownership, does (unless we agree to change the meaning of capital
>> in the Marxian sense).
>
>If the unit of production has to purchase means of production then it as a
>unit
>owns them. It is a juridical subject. Since as a juridical subject it is not
>identical
>with society as a whole, it stands opposed to it as smaller private part, we
>have private property. Hence if the economy is growing, it is by your own
>definition capitalist.
>
I'm afraid I seem to have missed something here. If we were to theorise a
simple commodity producing society in which craftspeople and peasants
exchange articles of consumption and means of production in the market, how
would that make those individual production units (or those means of
production) capital and an economy based upon such units capitalist? Isn't
the designation as capital based upon a particular social relation which is
missing in this case?
Further, if those productive units (some or all) are driven to expand
their stock of means of production (cattle, raw materials, etc) because,
eg, of the pressure of family size and fortuitously are able to do so, why
would expanded reproduction under private ownership denote capital and
capitalism (in the Marxian sense)--- in the absence of that particular
social relation marked by the purchase of wage-labour?
Isn't this a form of obliterating the distinction between commodity
production and capitalist commodity production?
in solidarity,
mike
Michael A. Lebowitz
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office: Phone (604) 291-4669
Fax (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 872-0494
Fax (604) 872-0485
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