re 4651 Hi Gil, > But I infer from your following answer that you don't >think Marx adds anything else to the definition, explicitly or otherwise. >[Please tell me if this inference is inaccurate.] Yes,he has a definition of surplus value and a theory of its source. > > > >May I infer, then, that in your reading, Marx's Ch. 5 rejection of the >possibility that surplus value results from the redistribution of existing >value constitutes an intended *inference* from his definition of surplus >value as the positive difference between M' and M, rather than as an >illustration of an aspect of the *definition* of surplus value? No new value can be created in exchange. So a colony which sells wares above value is paid back with the already extracted tribute. No new value has been created by selling above value. In this example, Marx does not seem to be rejecting the possiblity that sv can result from exchange as a matter of definition of surplus value. So you may infer the former of your two possibilities. Now Roemer has shown the possibility of what he defines as exploitation through commodity exchange without a labor market, right? So the question becomes whether surplus value has been produced in his example, right? Is this what you are getting at? > >you write > >>I was trying to get at the distinction between the exchange of live >>and dead labor. The tenability of that distinction is of course >>crucial to fend off Steven K's critique. > >Would it be reasonable to say that while labor power, i.e.the ability to >create "live" labor, is necessarily embodied in living persons, the labor >that is the substance of the *value* of labor power understood as a >commodity is dead labor, just as the labor embodied in a manufactured >commodity is dead labor? Strictly speaking, I do not think labor power has value. What the laborer gives up in exchange with the the capitalist is not a commodity in which dead labor is materialized but rather the capacity for future live labor. The capitalist does indeed (tendentially) pay workers the wages which are needed for them to buy the commodities needed to reproduce themselves. So the value of labor power seems to me to be shorthand for the value of the wage goods what has been needed to reproduce workers (of course as long as we are assuming P<>V; if the price of wage goods is greater than their value, then the value of labor power is the price of those goods, not their value). Strictly speaking, I do not think labor power has value but for all practical purposes we can determine whether labor power has been sold at or below value. But I am open to correction of interpretation. > > >And again: can we infer from Marx's analysis in Chapter 6 that capitalists >as a class must purchase labor power as a commodity in order to appropriate >surplus value? Sorry, I did not answer this the first time. As you know, I do think plantation slavery and the putting out systems were important sources of surplus value production in early capitalism. But I think Marx confines himself theoretically only to a market in which labor power is freely disposed. It allows him to focus on the nature of that perplexing exchange between proletarian and capitalist. Yours, Rakesh
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