Re Ian's [6819]:
> Marx also makes the point that surplus value can arise
> from merchant capital, where the surplus value does not arise from hiring
> workers to produce commodities with more value than costs of production,
> but from buying cheap and selling dear.
Hi Ian. A couple of points:
a) Marx is very clear in Volume 3, Ch. 17 ("Commercial Profit") in stating
his belief that commercial workers do not produce surplus value. Rather,
this labor helps the commercial capitalist to "appropriate a portion of the
surplus-value by getting it transferred from industrial capital to itself"
(Penguin ed., p. 407). [Based on the above, I gather that you agree with
this.]
b) surplus value can not, I would assert, "arise" from buying cheap and
selling dear where the cmp dominates, but the process of buying cheap
and selling dear even where there are no wage-workers employed by
an individual merchant capitalist can cause a redistribution of surplus
value among capitalists so that the individual merchant gets a "share"
of surplus-value.
In solidarity, Jerry
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