[OPE-L:6981] Re: Re: Re: the cost of slaves

From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 13 2002 - 01:39:36 EDT 



Re: [OPE-L:6978] Re: Re:  the cost of
slaves

re: Paul B's 6978:








Hi jerry,


 


to you only here, where is Engels say
'surplus value' was transhistorical...?  value yes.... but where
sv?


 


Thanks


 


Paul


 


p.s .   Neither you ( by
sticking to imprisoned labour issue) nor rakesh...who I think goes
all over the place on this matter, with a mix of strange





the examples of my strange ideas being? as for being all over
the place, of course my ideas are all over the place. We are dealing
with a 400 hundred year old institution which was spread out of all
over the place in time and place. It's a very complex history.












 and then perfectly acceptable
ideas.....  commented on my question/ statement that ( I
restate)... Cotton was produced as a commodity, its price regulated
by the world market, it had a price, so a value, it became a 'cost of
production'  within advanced capitalist society, surplus labour
was certainly performed by the slaves.... but why do we need
to go further and say 'surplus value was produced?





because the product which slaves were forced to produce had to
take the commodity form and be sold (tendentially) at prices of
production (a transformed value) if the modern plantation slave
enterprise was to remain a going and growing concern.





I say they produced surplus value because all the compulsions of
surplus value production were there:





* the general product of labor had to take the commodity form,
the form of a value, not a good for immediate consumption; 





**that since the means of production and much of subsistence
goods and the slaves were monetized, the only reason for having made
such capital investments would have have been that there was a
reasonable prospect of selling commodities at their prices of
production; in fact such investments would not have been made had
there not been such a prospect. 





***that  production found no limits in the closed circle of
the needs of the ruling class or the direct producers but was as Marx
himself clearly says organized around the boundless thirst for
surplus value.












 Since as you say a wage was
not paid, but only bare subsistence offered in the form of products
or access to petty cultivation...value, a cash outlay directly to the
labourer, was not reproduced, nor thus surplus value
created.





I don't think you are implying this, but... Why does a cash
outlay have to be made directly to the producer for surplus value to
be produced?












The other social forms were definitely
attendant because as we both agree US slavery was a creature of
capitalism...... but this is where I am trying to see how the
historical development of, limits to etc of the full set of social
relations expressed in mature capitalism comes about, forcing out
anachronistic forms as in this case.


 


Does this approach manage to satisfy
you? Clearly I can't have anything to do with the wild list of ideas
in your list below!








Rakesh


















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