In OPE-L 5156 Jerry wrote, >Re Howard's [OPE-L:5155]: > >> Land is the basis of social existence, but >> the monopoly of a private landowner formalized > in legal title does not >> represent social wealth. > >Why doesn't it represent social wealth? Because >it wasn't created by human labor? I think it >can represent wealth -- a point well understood >by landowners during the enclosure movement. > The issue is not what wealth in general ought to be, but how it presents itself in any specific historical period. Thus, you cannot understand debt or contract in the middle ages without understanding real property -- the focus was on the thing given another rather than on the promise to return or pay for it -- and you cannot understand rent today without understanding the modern form of contract. In the Grundrisse introduction, Marx writes (v.28, 44): "in antiquity and the feudal period, even industry, its organization and the forms of property corresponding thereto, have more or less the character of landed property. . . In the Middle AGes even capital -- unless it was purely money capital -- capital as traditional tools, etc., has this character of landed property." Today, wealth presents itself under the social form of value. Thus ownership of land, as you pointed out, is the right to claim a portion of value created by labor. I recall a comment that came across cyberspace about a year ago to the effect that it is easier today to imagine the end of the world than to imagine a modest change in the existing mode of production. Looking forward to some such a change we face the challenge of fashioning a social and economic calculation unencumbered by the law of value. But that is not now, so roads, I take it, represent value the way anything else does -- by the proportion of aggregate social labor needed to reproduce them. Or to take a different example, it is very much the challenge of the cooperative and worker ownership movement to figure out how to avoid spontaneously reproducing value and capital forms. >As for commercial capital proper, >I think it is a mistake to speak of variable >capital employed by the commercial capitalist. >See the long last paragraph of Vol. 3, Ch. 16. Then it is a mistake made by that pesky 19th century economist Steve insists on! See chapter 17. I'm leaving town for some days so I will have to leave this thread to its own raveling. In solidarity! Howard At 06:25 AM 3/13/01 -0500, you wrote: >Re Howard's [OPE-L:5155]: > >> Of course as to land, but you speak of taking >> objects to market and land is >> not an object of that sort. > >Wealth does not have to be physically transported >to a market to be sold. Undeveloped virgin land >can be bought and sold in a geographic location >very far from the location of the land itself. > >> Land is the basis of social existence, but >> the monopoly of a private landowner formalized > in legal title does not >> represent social wealth. > >Why doesn't it represent social wealth? Because >it wasn't created by human labor? I think it >can represent wealth -- a point well understood >by landowners during the enclosure movement. > >Relatedly, the laying claim to wealth produced >in non-capitalist societies does not represent a >new production of wealth or value but a change >in form and ownership of wealth. This has >significance for understanding the "primitive" >or "original" accumulation of capital. You will >recall that this also had significance in terms of >the colonization of what eventually became the >US and its later geographic expansion. This land >came to be treated, in many cases, *as if* it was >value even before there was value creation on the >land. > >Your comment about "promises" was interesting, >especially because of the role of promises in >contract law. And, I agree that a promise can >have a price, *assuming the state-form*, even >though it is not value. > >> <snip, JL>, then what is an example of a good >> that consists of social wealth >> alone? Certainly elements of infrastructure, such as roads, are valued, >> whether produced by unproductive labor or not. > >This is, so far, our biggest disagreement: I agree >that elements of the infrastructure "are valued"; >I don't agree that they represent value. I.e. >objects which can be valued are not necessarily >objects which represent value. Whether those >"objects" are produced by productive or >unproductive labor is key to determining whether >they represent value or are merely "valued". > >> Finally, the unpaid labor of employees of a commercial capitalist does not >> create surplus value but enables the commercial capitalist to appropriate >> surplus value. Nonetheless we speak of a merchant's variable capital. > >Should we speak of variable capital in this >context? Well, some proportion of the "costs >of circulation" should be viewed as representing >variable capital. More specifically, to the extent >that there is wage-labor required for the >"transport industry, storage and the dispersal of >goods in a distributable form", then that process >would require variable capital. Yet, that >is because these processes "should be viewed >as production processes that continue within >the process of circulation" (Vol 3, Ch. 16, >3rd paragraph, p. 379 in Penguin/Vintage ed.; >also see Volume 2, Ch. 6 on "The Costs of >Circulation"). As for commercial capital proper, >I think it is a mistake to speak of variable >capital employed by the commercial capitalist. >See the long last paragraph of Vol. 3, Ch. 16. >I think it is very clear that Marx does not >view the labor employed in the process >of circulation as creative of surplus value. He >says this quite explicitly in that paragraph. >Even though the labor employed here by >commercial capital might benefit capital in >other ways (see end of paragraph) it can >not itself create value and it is therefore misleading >to consider the wages paid to those workers >as representing variable capital. Rather, they >represent a deduction from value for the >payment of unproductive labor. > >In solidarity, Jerry > >
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