Rakesh, In light of your comments here, let me reword the question: In your reading, does Marx show in Chapter 6 that, given capitalist property rights and a class of workers "free in the double sense," capitalists must purchase a commodity whose use value is labor in order to appropriate surplus value via the circuit of capital? Gil >>Rakesh, you write: >> >>>In order to extract surplus value in a free exchange society in which >>>labor is carried out by formally free proletarians--that is, assuming >>>the basic institutional set up of a developed capitalist >>>society--entrepreneurs have to find on the market a commodity whose >>>use value posseses the peculiar property of being a source of >>>exchange value. In Steve's K terms, the dialectic of use >>>value-exchange value allows Marx to specify that it cannot be labor >>>time but rather labor capacity which proletarians alienate on the >>>market. This basic distinction is novel. >> >>OK, so your reading is that Marx shows in, or at least as of, Vol. I, Ch. >>6, that under the conditions you mention--free exchange economy with >>workers "free in the double sense"-- capitalists must hire labor power as a >>commodity in order to appropriate surplus value. [I agree, by the way, >>that Marx's use of the distinction is novel, and would add that the >>distinction is fundamentally important in capitalist political economy.] > >No, they have to find a commodity the use of which creates value, >which *is* the objectification of new labor. This *then* suggests >that it is not their future labor time which proletarians have >exchanged for wages. What is it then that proletarians sell? It is >not labor time at all but the capacity to labor. So I think you got >the "must" wrong. Marx is not proving so much that capitalists must >hire free wage workers in any and all cases of surplus value >production--again he has already accomodated himself to this fact; he >is demonstrating that in a free exchange economy in which all labor >is assumed to be carried out by such workers, it "must" be labor >power, rather than labor time itself, which workers exchange on the >market for wages; and the price on this labor power, a subject's >capacity for labor and creation, is determined no more or less by the >labor needed to reproduce it, that is by the laws of big number >commodity exchanges. Hence, the thingification of the human coupled >with the humanisation of things, as already analyzed in the fetishism >of commodities. > >And once we have figured out what it is that is alienated on the >market, the question then becomes the more difficult and profound one >of who it is exactly that can be found *freely* alienating labor >power in the form of a commodity on the market. We are dealing here >with proletarians, qua juridical subjects. We find human the persona >of legal agents who are by law free to enter into binding (and thus >be bound by) contracts--we have to go back to Chris Arthur's work on >Pashkunis.It is fundamental. See also Lawrence Krader Dialectic of >Civil Society and Treatise on Social Labour. > > >Oh, it's late. I hope I made some sense. >Yours, Rakesh >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 31 2000 - 00:00:04 EST