In response to my question >> Is the commodification of labor power *essential* or *incidental* to the >> process of transforming money into capital, according to Marx's account in >> Volume I of Capital? Paul C. writes in 6409: >Whatever input counts as the substance of value will generate the >same paradox. If one constructs input output tables computing oil values >you get the paradox that the price of one barrel of oil is less than one >barrel, just as the price of one hour of labour is less than one hour. Assuming a positive rate of exploitation, that is, and there's nothing "paradoxical" about it. Of course I agree--Roemer generalizes this point in his Generalized Commodity Exploitation Theorem--but this misses the point of my question: is the fact that workers gain access to capital *by selling their labor power as a commodity*--rather than, say, borrowing money to finance constant capital costs or leasing capital goods directly--essential to the process of creating surplus value under the capitalist mode of production, according to Marx's account in Volume I of Capital? Gil >> Gil >-- >Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland >0141 330 3125 mobile:07946 476966 >paul@cockshott.com >http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/ >http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html >
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