Julian excerpts the following truncated passage from me > >... D) As noted before, the key systemic basis for surplus value is capital >scarcity. ... capitalist exploitation can be eliminated simply through >sufficient wealth redistribution. and asks >I don't get it: if the cause of capitalism is capital scarcity, how does >re-distributing what is already insufficient abolish it? You ellipsed out the key part of the passage, Julian. Here's the passage reproduced in full: D) As noted before, the key systemic basis for surplus value is capital scarcity. **Marx puts this point even more strongly in Ch. 33 of Volume I: if workers own their own means of production, then the capitalist mode of production is impossible (see pages 933 and 940).** This has a number of powerful implications, but note just one: the contrapositive of Marx's claim is that capitalist exploitation can be eliminated simply through sufficient wealth redistribution. [Emphasis added] That is, it's *Marx* who has insisted that this stronger version of capital scarcity is required for the existence of capitalist exploitation. So let Marx answer your question, again from Ch. 33 of Volume I: "It is the great merit of E.G. Wakefield to have discovered, not something new *about* the colonies, but, *in* the colonies, the true about capitalist relations in the mother country....'If,' says Wakefield, 'all the members of the society are supposed to possess equal portions of capital...no man would have a motive for accumulating more capital than he could use with his own hands. This is to some extent the case in new American settlements, where a passion for owning land prevents the existence of a class of labourers for hire.' So long, therefore, as the worker can accumulate for himself--and this he can do so long as he remains in possession of his means of production--capitalist accumulation and the capitalist mode of production are impossible." [pp 932-33]. Gil
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