Re Paul Z's [6267]: > Vol. 3 in the Vintage edition, p. 348, has, I understand, a wording > "expropriating the final residue of direct producers who still have > something left to expropriate". Could someone who has that edition confirm > the wording and tell me the exact antecedent, who is being expropriated? Page *349* [note difference] in the Vintage/Penguin edition: "Ricardo, while claiming to be dealing with the rate of profit, actually deals only with the rate of surplus-value, and this only on the assumption that the working day is a constant magnitude, both intensively and extensively. A fall in the profit rate, and accelerated accumulation, are simply different expressions of the same process, in so far as both express the development of productivity. Accumulation in turn accelerates the fall in the profit rate, and in so far as it involves the concentration of workers on a large scale and hence a higher composition of capital. On the other hand the fall in the rate of profit again accelerates the concentration of capital, and its centralization, by dispossessing the *smaller capitalists* and expropriating the final residue of direct producers who still have something to expropriate. In this way there is an acceleration of accumulation as far as its mass is concerned, even though the rate of this accumulation falls together with the rate of profit" (emphasis added, JL; 2nd & 3rd paragraphs, Ch. 15) In context, the 'direct producers' above seem *not* to refer to the wage-earning (working) class but to 'smaller capitalists' broadly understood to include all those who do not own and control the means of production (including e.g. peasant farmers). Hope that helps. I hope your snow has melted! In solidarity, Jerry
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