Dear Gil I have tried to elucidate my position in 5272. I'm not sure i can say more. It is true that Marx , also in TSV , refered to the self employed tradesman as not working capitalistically, but he also pointed out that the settler farmer , in the same position, would eventually, if successful become an emploer, however small, or become landless... the point is that we are assessing the immanent motion of capital, not trapping ourselves with specifc empirical facts at a particular time. His illustration serves a point, capital is a relation, but a social relation. If you were to believe that workers employing themselves collectively to make commodities could somehow end capital relations, then one would simply repeat Proudhon's errors. Best wishes Paul Bullock -----Original Message----- From: Gil Skillman <gskillman@mail.wesleyan.edu> To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu <ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu> Date: 25 March 2001 22:08 Subject: [OPE-L:5263] Re: Re: Re: state and workers'ownership and (un)productive labor >Oh, I forgot Jerry's final question: > >>btw, are you in agreement with what Paul B >>wrote in [5428] re whether worker-owned >>firms produce surplus value? > >Hard to say. If Paul's suggestion is that the profits accruing to the >worker-owners of such firms constitutes surplus value, I disagree, since >Marx stipulates in Chapter 5 of Volume I that surplus value must be accrued >by someone--i.e., the capitalist--other than the workers who produce the >new value. Thus Marx: > >The commodity owner can create value by his labor, but he cannot create >values which can valorize themselves. He can increase the value of his >commodity by adding fresh labor, and therefore more value, to the value in >hand, by making leather into boots, for instance. The same material now >has more value, because it contains a greater quantity of labor. The boots >have therefore more value than the leather [OK, Karl! We got it, already!] >but the value of the leather remains what it was. It has not valorized >itself, it has not annexed surplus-value during the making of the boots. >[p. 268, Penguin edition] > >Gil > >
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