Re Jerry's [7049] > Yet, as a practical matter, money wages tend to be paid at intervals that begin *after* production has commenced. How many workers do you think receive wages before they have produced anything? Indeed, the lag between work done and wages received is one of the mechanisms of control by capitalists over wage-workers. Agreed. Yet, it might still useful to theorise the money wage as being paid at the commencement of a circuit of money capital and the real wage at the end of it. If workers' and firms' expectations are met and the real wage buys the historically given requirements for reproducing labour power, then profit would express the rate of exploitation of living labour in production. I realise that in practice such a tidy 'equilibrium' condition is unlikely to arise. I'll think about it. >Thus, the M-C-M' description is misleading since it doesn't begin with M purchasing MP and LP and _then_ there is production; rather there is M advanced for MP and labour-power is secured, through an employment contract, where both workers and capitalists understand as part of that contract that the money for LP won't be paid out to workers as wages until *after* production has commenced. (Perhaps Ernesto S would like to comment on this?) Agreed. Even if expanded to M-C-P-C'-M' we still have only one of the three forms (the money capital form) that constitute the whole of circulating capital (a completely open ended process). I recently went into the need to take the circuit as a whole, so won't repeat it here. comradely Nicky ----------------------- Nicola Taylor Faculty of Economics Murdoch University South Street Murdoch W.A. 6150 Australia Tel. 61 8 9385 1130 email: n.taylor@stu.murdoch.edu.au
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu May 02 2002 - 00:00:10 EDT