Re Gil's [5265]: > Where does Marx say that employment of > wage-labor by capital is part of the *definition* > of surplus value? Surplus-value is more than a quantity -- it represents a "specific social relation of production" (Vol 3, Penguin ed., p. 957. Note "specific". Employment of wage-labor by capital is already implied on p. 1 of Volume 1 -- well before the presentation (i.e. reconstruction in thought) of surplus-value. Thus: "What is implied already in the commodity, and still more so in the commodity as a product of capital, is the reification of the social determinations of production and the subjectification [Versubjektifierung] of the material bases of production which characterize the entire capitalist mode of production" (Ibid, p. 1020). Thus, already in the category of the commodity as a product of capital is presupposed the wage labor/capitalist social relation. Shortly before the above passage, Marx notes [in regard to "two characteristic traits (which, JL) mark the capitalist mode of production right from the start"] that "It produces its products as commodities" and that "... this means, first of all, that the worker himself appears only as a seller of commodities, and hence as a free labourer -- i.e. labour generally appears as wage-labour". He goes on to add "... the relationship of capital and wage-labour determines the whole character of the mode of production. The principal agents of this mode of production itself, the capitalist and the wage-labourer, are as such simply embodiments and personifications of capital and wage-labour -- specific social characters that the social production process stamps on individuals, products of these specific social relations of production" (Ibid, pp. 1019-1020). Note the following: "the two above characters of the product as commodity and the commodity as capitalistically produced commodity give rise to the *entire determination of value and the regulation of the total production by value" (Ibid, emphasis added, JL). The determination -- and definitions -- of value *and surplus value* are based on the character of the commodity in the two-fold sense of being both a product and a *capitalistically produced* commodity. And, Marx continues (p. 1021): "It is *only* because labour is presupposed in the form of wage-labour, and the means of production in the form of capital (i.e. *only* as a result of this specific form of these two essential agents of production), that *one part of the value (product) presents itself as surplus- value and this surplus-value presents itself as profit (rent)*, the gains of the capitalist, as additional available wealth belonging to him." While he goes on to say (next page) that: "Even though the form of wage-labour is decisive for the shape of the entire process and for the specific mode of production itself, it is not wage-labour that is value- determining. What matters in the determination of value is the overall social labour-time ...." he goes on to *add* "But the particular social form in which social labour-time plays its determinant role in the value of commodities coincides with the form of labour as wage- labour ....". Well ... enough for now. Time to take a break. Others are welcome to add their 2 cents .... (notice how our phrases used in communication tend to be expressed in a manner consistent with the value-form). In solidarity, Jerry
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