Re Howard's [OPE-L:5162]: > <snip, JL> so > roads, I take it, represent value the way anything else does -- by the > proportion of aggregate social labor needed to reproduce them. Although I want to turn to another issue you raise, I want to note that I observe a connection between the above and the issue that will be discussed later in this post. Namely, an indiference to the *specific social form* labor takes in terms of whether that labor creates value. Of course, it is true that some proportion of the aggregate social labor will be required to build roads wether those roads are built by wage-labor employed by capital or wage-labor employed by the state. The issue, though, is wether labor employed in some useful activity -- regardless of its particular social form -- is productive of value and surplus value. Previously I wrote: > >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. Howard responded: > Then it is a mistake made by that pesky 19th > century economist Steve > insists on! See chapter 17. OK, let's examine this issue. The issue being: do wages for workers employed by commercial capitalists represent variable capital? The pesky 19th Century "economist" [!] states quite clearly and repeatedly both in Volumes 2 and 3 that (exempting the transport industry and the storage and dispersal of goods in a distributable form which he thinks should be viewed as "production processes that continue within the process of circulation"), the "pure functions" of capital in the circulation sphere produce neither value nor surplus value (see e.g. the 1st paragraph of Vol 3, Ch. 17): "On the contrary, it was shown that the time these operations require sets limits to the formation of value and surplus-value" (Penguin ed., p. 394). Indeed: "Commercial capital, therefore, stripped of all the heterogeneous functions that may be linked to it, such as storage, dispatch, transport, distribution and retailing, and confined to its true function of buying in order to sell, creates neither value nor surplus-value, but simply facilitates their realization, and with this also the actual exchange of commodities, their transfer from one hand to another, society's metabolic process" (Ibid, p. 395). So, there is no doubt that the pesky "economist" thought that surplus-value was not produced by wage-earners employed by commercial capitalists. (There are many more quotations like the above that I could cite but I will refrain for the benefit of others as well as myself). The problem (Howard is right!) is that the pesky "economist" *does* refer to variable capital employed by commercial capitalists in Vol. 3, Ch. 17. In referring to this "variable capital" he again notes repeatedly that these workers "do not add any extra value" and that "his labour is not value-creating labour". Yet, at the same time, he refers to the "unpaid labour" of commercial workers. Thus, he writes that "What he costs the capitalist and what he brings in for him are different quantities. What he brings in is a function not , of any direct creation of surplus-value but of his assistance in reducing the cost of realizing surplus-value, in so far as he performs labour (part of it unpaid)" (Ibid, p. 414). This enigma is resolved in the following manner: while "their unpaid labour, even though it does not create surplus-value, does create his ability to appropriate surplus-value, which, as far as this capital is concerned, gives exactly the same result; i.e. it is its source of profit" (Ibid, p. 407) and "Just as the unpaid labour of the worker creates surplus-value for productive capital directly, so also does the unpaid labour of the commercial employee create a share in that surplus-value for commercial capital" (407-408). Are you confused? You should be. On the one hand, the "economist" clearly states that this labor does not create value and surplus- value but rather assists in the realization of surplus- value and thereby the appropriation of a portion of the aggregate surplus value by the commercial capitalist. On the other hand, he refers to variable capital and unpaid labour in this context. Variable capital has the capacity to create value and surplus-value. Workers employed by commercial capitalists do not have this capacity. Although it appears that commercial capitalists receive a "profit" it is simply a share of the surplus- value and profit produced elsewhere. Thus, it *appears" that the "profit" of commercial capitalists has a relation to the "unpaid labor" of commercial workers. Yet, "unpaid labor" can only make sense in the context of where there is surplus value creation and a distinction between necessary labor time and surplus labor time. As far as I can figure, there are only two ways out of this *m-e-s-s*. One way would be to claim that labor which helps realize surplus-value is productive labor and is paid out of variable capital. This is a reasonable position perhaps, but I don't think it is consistent with what this "economist" wrote elsewhere. The only other way out is to claim that even though there are similarities between commercial workers and workers who are productive of surplus-value, they are unproductive of surplus-value and that it was a mistake for that very fallible and human "economist" to refer to "unpaid labour" and "variable capital" in the context of the drafts for what later became under F.E.'s editorship Volume 3. I think that this later position is the most consistent with the rest of his theory. What do others think? In solidarity, Jerry
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