Gil wrote [#4639] in reply to Rakesh Rakesh, I'd certainly accept the notion that "surplus value" is an aggregate category. A corollary of this understanding is that, whatever it is, surplus value has to be attainable by the capitalist class as a whole, and not just a subset of the class. Gil, are you saying that all capitalists have to "attain" surplus value if any of them are to do so? And what does "attain" mean -- "successfully extract surplus value from 'their' workers", or "individually hold on to some positive quantity of that extracted surplus"? I don't think I'd agree with any of these, but I suspect I'm adrift here. > >Marx clarifies the distinction between labor power and labor. That >is, the worker is not selling a commodity in which past labor is >embodied; she sells a commodity which exists only in her living self. I agree that the commodity called "labor power" is itself embodied in living people. But doesn't one's labor power, understood as a commodity, embody the labor necessary to reproduce that labor power up to the point of exchange? Isn't that necessarily the case in order for this commodity to have a value in the same sense that a manufactured commodity has? Surely not? What you say would be true if labour power was a produced commodity, but it isn't -- it's reproduced, and there clearly isn't a standard technique. Moreover, what about labour-power that has been (re)produce outside the capitalist economy up to the moment of its first exchange against capital -- e.g., peasants who turn from subsistence agriculture to industrial wage labour.? Your comments would seem to imply that their labour-power has no value -- but however low wages may be in such circumstances, the capitalist is clearly not going to be able to employ them for nothing. Julian
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