Jerry, It seemed that you (and Nicky and Paul B) originally argued that slaves could not have produced surplus value because having not paid slaves a money wage, plantation owners had not made a money investment in variable capital (v) that is the sole source of surplus value. While Paul B is no longer pursuing this point, Nicky seems to be sticking to this argument, and surprisingly Ian seems to agree that there could not have been a v in modern plantation slavery, though he then argues that those slaves produced surplus value (I have shown where Marx thought it was meaningful not only to speak of the relation between paid and unpaid labor with modern slaves but to compare that relation to the same relation endured by free wage laborers). It also seems to me that Nicky skirts quite close to the rather unpersuasive argument that because modern plantation owners made no investment in variable capital, slaves could not have have any more performed even surplus human labor for another class than a donkey does. At any rate, you never did explain to me or Paul C (who also pressed you on this) why a direct monetary purchase of means of subsistence for slaves by plantation capitalists is not variable capital since the money paid by the plantation capitalist for the reproduction of the slaves' ability to labor (utensils, food, shelter and above all else cotton clothes--I hesitate to include the purchase price of the slave as v) was less than the new money value which slaves objectified in commodities (cotton, sugar, tobacco, indigo). No wonder Marx challenged the illusion that all slave labor was unpaid. Which is not to claim that Marx believed that slavery was not more degrading than the free wage form of exploitation even if the rate of s/v may have been higher with the latter! In the first round of this debate, it had been suggested that since the flow of value which a slave could produce should have been included at some discount in the price that a trader charged a plantation owner--I actually think this is the point implicit in Nicky's concern about competitive laws of exchange--it should not have been possible for slaves to produce surplus value that a plantation owner could himself appropriate. But this argument fails for two reasons: (a) it does not prove that slaves could not have produceed value, only that the plantation owners may not have appropriated all the value which they did in fact produce and (b) the price of slaves would have been driven down to the price that allowed the slaver to make a reasonable profit on a very small capital investment and that price was in fact quite below the flow of value which slaves objectified in commodities. The evidence does in fact suggest that money capital spent on slaves was quickly amortized, and it need not have been recurring if plantation owners did not work slaves to death. Now instead of defending your first argument about there being no variable capital in modern plantation slavery or no money investment which was the exclusive source for the production of new value or why variable capital has to exist in its pure form for variable capital to exist at all, you have shifted emphasis to the idea that that only when workers depend on the money wage for their subsistence do they live under the shadow of the sack which shadow is (for some unspecified reason) the essential condition for the production of surplus value. You however agree that the sack is not essential to the compulsion of the performance of surplus labor. But now you are repeating this new point in this last post without engaging the reply which I have already made. Again: Why does it matter how the performance of surplus labor has been compelled as to whether surplus value has also been produced? Would early capitalists especially those operating in the tropics always have been able to rely on the sack as the special factor to convert the potential energy of labor power into the kinetic activity of proletarian, value positing labor? You will see that no where in this post do you give clear answers to the questions that I have already put to you. At any rate, you respond as such: >Sigh. > >Social relations of production, within class societies, express >*class relations*. > >Specific production relations are thus expressions of specific class >relations. > >Specific production relations may require specific exchange relations. >Under capitalism production and exchange relations are necessarily >tied to each other: this is a consequence of how capital represents >a unity of the processes of capitalist production and circulation. There is no explanation here of why the specific exchange of a money wage for labor power is necessarily tied to the production of value and surplus value in the abode of production. Note that the exchange of a money wage for labor power is not the same thing as the monetization of the means of subsistence (again see Kenneth Pomeranz on the monetization of the the means of modern slave subsistence, especially in the case of cotton clothes and also due to the fact that women who would have done subsistence food production were often not transported). The latter (the monetization of the means of subsistence) can obtain without the former (the direct payment to "doubly free" workers of a wage), and modern plantations were massive markets for mfg and industrial goods despite no money wage being directly paid to slaves. So the modern plantation system strengthened exchange relations. You make an assertion of two elements being necessarily tied together, but there is no explanation. Talk about "sigh"! You have put forward two theses: a. only wage labor can produce surplus value b. slaves can never produce surplus value. Again your mere assertion over and over again of a necessary link between the money-labor power exchange and surplus value production--as well as your other uncontested, uncontroversial point that the performance of surplus labor is compelled differently in the case of slaves than in the case of wage earners--does not establish or strengthen either of your theses. You have however agreed that free wage workers do not have to have meaningful freedoms to choose employers and spend their wage as they wish in order to engage value positing labor. This was clarified in our discussion of the South African compound system. The question of whether once this was conceded it is arbitrary to maintain thesis b was dropped. So you are left with the question of why your maintainence of point b is not arbitrary given what you have already conceded. I would suppose your answer is that unlike the slave the indentured or compounded worker does live under the shadow of the sack and the concomittant loss of subsistence as does the wage laborer. But then you have to provide a reason as to why this form of the compulsion of surplus labor alone results in the production of surplus value. And you simply have not done so. >Let us then consider two distinct class relations, two specific social >relations of production: > >Relation One: plantation owner confronts slaves in production > process > >Relation Two: capitalist confronts wage-laborers in production > process. You have to split Relation I I.A. patriarchal plantation owner confronts slaves in production process I.B. capitalist plantation owner confronts slaves in production process. Just as Relation II should be split in two IIA. non capitalist confronts wage laborers in production process IIB. capitalist confronts wage laborers in production process Once we do that it is clear that the absence or presence of wage labor in itself does not establish whether there is a capitalist production of surplus value. Are you making any effort to understand what I am saying? It should be clear to you as well that I am not saying the the so called physicalist stuff in which surplus labor is embodied is ipso facto surplus value. Yet you burden me with the charge of stuffism or physicalism and you continue to say that my views lead to a transhistorical surplus approach. Yet I have said over and over that not in all cases of slavery do inputs and outputs take the commodity and money form, though in all cases of slavery there may be a surplus product. I wrote a long reply why not in the case of slavery in general but modern plantation slavery in particular did value regulate production (though Marx recognized exceptional cases in antiquity in which surplus value and thus the boundless appetite for surplus labor had become the aim of slavery). You never did respond to that post. In fact, it seems to me that you have violated many of what should be the canons of ethical and rational debate. You repeat your arguments without engaging counter arguments (I responded to your argument about why the differences that you state between wage labor and slave labor are not sufficient to establish your theses-- you did not respond; I clarified in what sense I meant that the purchase of a slave may have been faux fraix, and you made no attempt to engage my reasoning before lauching the same charge of absurdity in the same unmodified form) or you jump to new arguments to avoid engaging counter arguments (what happend to your insistence that Engels knew that Marx should have said only surplus labor, not surplus value, in his discussion of the changing corvee labor system or that this section of Capital is about surplus labor, not absolute surplus value?); you make empirical assertions without providing sources; you use guilt by association arguments (when I referred to Fogel and Engerman's data on the rate of exploitation, you said that they were discredited reactionaries without commenting on either the specific point that I had made or the criticism of their work that I had associated myself with; when I pointed out that Marx himself underlined that not only wage laborers can produce surplus value, you suggested that I was ending up in bed with Gil, though I have clearly written against Gil that Marx's chapter 5 and 6 point was not to prove that the production of surplus value required the commodification of labor power but rather this great discovery: if we assume that in a theoretically pure and fully developed capitalism Mr Moneybags finds himself on the free wage labor island, the production of surplus value would only be possible if free wage workers alienated labor power in exchange with Mr Moneybags instead of labor time itself). In fact I feel that the irrationality of your debating tactics is quite obvious, though not to Nicky who seems somewhat comforted by them. At no point in this discussion have I felt that we were engaged in a good faith and honest debate. I am also not clear as to whether you have been justifying your debating tactics as opposed to mine as feminist. I would not however invoke the banner of feminism to justify your or Nicky's debating style! >There are similarities -- just as there are similarities in all modes >of production: in both relations, there is a ruling class which lives >off of the labor of a producing class; there is thus class exploitation >and surplus product production. Yes but these distinctions between surplus product alone and surplus product + surplus value hold as much between IA and IB as IA and IIB. I can maintain your distinctions while still refuting your two main theses. At this point, I suppose you have given up on the argument that your theses were shared by Marx--if so, why not say so explicitly as Nicky has. Nicky is clear that she does not care what Marx himself had to say on this topic. And it seems that you have given up on your idea that in speaking of the changing corvee system and modern plantation slavery Marx (and Engels) meant only to refer to surplus labor, not absolute surplus value and early capitalist production. But... why then would Engels refer to the changes in the corvee system as the way in capitalism announced itself in the German countryside? Why would Marx refer to the transformation of slavery from a patriarchal institution into a system of surplus value production twice in Capital I and once in Capital 3 and slavery as a form of capitalist enterprise in TSV II? All mistakes, slips of the pen? But then why did Marx refer to the surplus value produced in the putting out system if he meant to advance your thesis that only wage labor (as you have defined it) can produce surplus value presumably because only in this case have capitalists made an investment in variable capital? You are not still claiming that Marx shared your theses a and b, correct? You may want to argue that Marx should not have said these things just as Fred (though more reasonably) has said that in order to make his value theory of coherent Marx should not have referred to double divergence as he in fact did at least twice. But Fred proceeds honestly and directly in his interpretation of Marx. But if you are now dropping your argument as to what Marx really said (and assuming Nicky's stance here) or switching your argument from what Marx said or really meant to say to what Marx should have said to maintain maximum consistency in this theory (as Fred has done), then please say so clearly again as Fred has done. Of course you may still be saying that Marx propounded your theses; if so, then please indicate. > These relations can also have >the common characteristic of commodity (note small "c") >production when commodities are also produced in Relation One. What do you mean by small c commodities? It seems that you are defining small c commodities as those commodities that are not produced by wage labor. And big C commodites are those commodities that are produced by wage labor. So now instead of saying that non wage labor can produce only a surplus product and only wage labor can produce surplus value, you are shifting to a point by definition that little c commodities are produced by non wage laborers and big C commodities are produced by wage laborers. Not only is this new point nothing more than a tautology--you are simply defining little c commodities as commodities that are produced by non wage laborers-- it's an evasion of your own a and b. theses stated above. Moreover, your little c and big C distinction is not the distinction Marx himself was making between little c and big C commodities. But about that passage you will have nothing to say. continued
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