Dear Steve (K): Sometimes when you refer to Marx being an economist I think you are joking, sometimes I think you are serious or only half-joking. I don't know if you _fully_ appreciate that Marx was a revolutionary, a communist. He was not an economist. Indeed, he would have viewed such a designation as an insult. Writing _Capital_ was not only an intellectual task -- it was a political act that he viewed as essential. Indeed, it is worthwhile noting that in 1865 he resigned from a sub-committee of the [First] International so that he would have more time to write _Capital_ (see 7/31/65 latter to Engels). Here was a person who was banished from many European countries and had spent his time in jail. For his beliefs, he spent his lifetime in abject poverty and had to rely to a great extent on the financial generosity of Engels (which certainly must have been hard for a very proud man). This also meant that his wife and children lived in poverty. Ultimately his lifestyle -- caused by his unending and lifelong dedication as a revolutionary and a spokesperson for the working- class movement -- led to his death ... while still basically a young man. To lose sight of his political beliefs is to thus lose sight of the man. Everything that he did in his adult life was an expression of his political convictions. To get closer to your critique, I want you to think some more about the above and recall that Marx considered his theory of surplus-value to be one of his two greatest "discoveries" in political economy. From that perspective, his position that wage-labor is the sole source of value and surplus-value is more than a theoretical position -- it is an expression of his politics. It is his explanation for the exploitation of the working-class and it has truly revolutionary implications about what is required to end that exploitation. It is not just another part of his theory -- it is a cornerstone. I wonder if you can imagine the disdain with which Marx would view the proposition that means of production create new value? One does not have to read a whole lot of the _Theories of Surplus Value_ to get an answer. On the one hand, he viewed such perspectives as fetishistic to the extent that it attributes to things (means of production) an ability that only labor (and a particular social form of labor at that) can do. It turns the world upside down where the illusion appears that the commodities produced by labor are themselves creative of value (thus it is an example of commodity fetishism). Moreover, it has pernicious political implications to the extent that it leads towards the bourgeois conception that land, labor, *and capital* create value. Marx treated such theories, you will recall, with great scorn. The above is not intended as a critique of your perspective. Rather, it is intended to focus attention on how your perspective of the implications of Marx's theory is so completely are at variance not only with Marx's intent in writing _Capital_ but his entire adult life. Marx was not an economist -- never forget that fact. And, by the way, the revolution will come! And, I hope that the members of this list will live long enough to see that day. Indeed, I hope to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with many of them some day at the barricades. And then, in the words of the poet J. Bruce Glasier, "We'll turn things upside down". Venceremos! In solidarity, Jerry
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