Jerry continues > >Yet, to concentrate _only_ on the characteristic of commodity >(understood here to mean simply a product that was produced >with the intention of sale) production when discussing *surplus >value* is to ignore the _specific_ production relations under >which surplus value is created. 1. Before we get to what you think I have ignored, let's get clear what I have introduced and what you have ignored. Marx makes a distinction between products that are produced with an intention of sale at prices of production and that are thus big C commodities from the start and products that can be dumped on the market below their values as little c commodities because subsistence requirements have already been met. In the former case, value regulates production: a condition of the supply of plantation commodities was the plantation capitalists' ability to realize prices of production. In the latter case value and price of production do not regulate production. The prices at which the surplus product can be dumped on the market are much more arbitrary and indeterminate and despite that indeterminacy viability and reproduction are not threatened as long as subsistence requirements are met Marx clearly and correctly thought that value regulated the production of modern plantation slaves. Plantations sometimes had to go bankrupt and bought cheap so that the new owner could make the so called average profit. Therefore, the regulatory power of value does not depend on wage labor, though it may depend on the inputs having taken the commodity and thus money form. Of course at this point you may want to say that modern plantation slavery was regulated by value but slaves themselves did not produce surplus value, though since they were not donkeys they objectified alienated human labor in commodities such as sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo which were thus values from the start, not objects which were meant first for direct consumption. 2. It is very wrong to say that I have concentrated only on the commodity characteristic of the output. I have also pointed repeatedly to commodity characteristics of the inputs into modern plantation slavery--the commodity form of the means of production, the commodity form of subsistence goods, and the borrowing of money on the market. It is exactly because of the monetization of the inputs, i.e., over and above faux fraix there was an investment in constant and variable capital (a money investment was made to purchase directly the subsistence goods that would allow for the reproduction of a value posting, albeit enslaved, proletariat), that slaves had to produce the quantity of saleable commodities needed for the plantation capitalist to realize the average rate of profit vis a vis the capital investment that he had been made in the plantation. Unlike the colonial settler peasantry, modern plantation slaves thus worked under the compulsion of value and valorization since not only the ouput but also the input had taken the commodity form and been monetized. So you are simply refusing to understand me in saying that I concentrate only on the commodity characteristic of the output. This comes close to bad faith argumentation. Let's go on: >Let us consider how these two sets of social relations express >two *fundamentally* different forms of production relations *even >where and when the producers in both relations are engaged in >commodity production* -- Jerry, you forget that our argument is not whether a taxonomic exercise in the differences between slavery and wage labor is possible. I have never denied it. You are switching topics. Another form of bad faith. What you have to to show is why those differences make it such that only wage labor can produce surplus value and non wage labor can produce only a surplus product. I shall now look at your points to show that they do not speak for or against your a and b theses. >Within *all* class societies, the exploiting class has certain common >goals within the production process: > >a) where possible, increase the *intensity of labor* As we have >discussed previously the specific *way* in which the intensity of >labor can be increased is fundamentally and essentially different >under a plantation owner/slave relation than under a capitalist/ >wage-labor relation; I have already shown that this point does not establish your theses. You never did reply; now you repeat the point. Unethical form of argumentation. >b) where possible, increase the *working day* and/or *workweek*. >Under the plantation owner/slave system, direct control is required; >under the capitalist/wage-labor system, indirect control is >built in. Fear of physical punishment vs. fear of joining the >IRA represent very different forms of compulsion (and make >possible different forms of resistance); This is in fact the same point as (a). As I have pointed out the fear of being thrust into the IRA may not have been great enough to compel the reliable performance of surplus labor. American capitalist farmers had tried wage labor and indentured labor; they failed. There was a resort to slavery; moreover, there was resort to a historically unique form of slavery exclusively of one race. It's an anachronism to say that early capitalism had to rely or could have relied on the same mechanisms for the compulsion of surplus labor as does a developed capitalism. >c) where desirable, introduce *technical change* in means of >production. The *benefits* of technical change for the >exploiting class vary depending on which class they confront in >the labor process. E.g. technical change where there is wage- >labor is not only used to expel workers from the production >process but is also utilized to decrease the bargaining power >of workers and drive down wages and benefits ... and increase >the intensity of labor, etc.. This is very different for *why* a >plantation owner might under certain circumstances increase >technical change in means of production on the plantation. Well as a side note: sugar plantations assimilated machinery before textile mills, as Fogel shows (which does not mean that I agree with his characterization of slave psychology or the structure of the slave family). You seem to be saying that slaves do not fear being replaced with machines and thus cannot be forced in the same way as wage laborers to accept cuts in subsistence or intensification of labor. But you have ignored my previous post in which I argue that your point is an anachronism. You do not prove that if plantation capitalists had hired wage laborers there was then the technology available to threaten wage workers with replacement if they did not accept susbsistence cuts and intensification. Would slaves have even been frightened by the prospect of being throw out on to the land rich Americas? It was exactly because tropical, gang agriculture was so labor intensive and back breaking in the context of both a general labor shortage (attempt to use European indentured labor was failing, and only exacerbated the labor shortage in the Old World) and a limited availability of machines with which to replace human labor in the 16th to 18th centuries that the farmer capitalists of the Americas found that the cheapest way to secure labor was racial slavery, backed by terror, as Eric Williams long ago argued. That is, it was not true for early capitalists in tropical agriculture that the best way to compel the reliable performance of surplus labor was the making of the threat of mechanization to free wage workers. It would have been an idle threat in two ways: there were not the machines and workers would have welcomed the sack given massive amounts of virgin territory. It's not for nothing that Marx ends Capital I with a critique of Wakefield. And again, you do not prove that even if slavery and free wage labor systems have a differing calculus in terms of which the decision for mechanization is made--a point that I do not contest--then slaves cannot produce surplus value. Again you have shifted the topic. Capitalists will mechanize in different ways if they are relying on the slave, indentured labor or free wage form of exploitation. I don't deny it. What I do reject is your implicit idea: because capitalists will make different mechanization choices when they use slave and indentured labor than when they use free wage labor, slave and indentured labor cannot produce surplus value. >d) where possible, drive down the customary *standard of >subsistence* (expressed in quantity and quality of means of >subsistence) for the producing class. Where there is a >plantation owner/slave relation, this is often possible simply by >-- through direct means -- decreasing the food, etc. consumed >by slaves. Of course, even the slave owner knows that there are >*natural limits* to this process (since slaves need a minimum >amount of food, etc. to remain as productive in terms of >output/slave/period of time.) The capitalist, however, can not >decrease the means of subsistence that wage-earners have >in the same way *and* [in addition to natural limits] there are >*social limits* that confront capitalists in terms of resistance of >workers to such efforts. While it is true that slaves can resist, the >*form of resistance* and the consequences of resistance vary very >much in the two types of relations. So the forms of resistance and consequences of resistance differ though you have hardly specified exactly how. At any rate, how does this prove that only wage laborers who resist in their specific ways can produce surplus value? >a-d are not minor differences. They are specific expressions of >fundamentally and essentially different forms of production >relations. It is for this reason -- that surplus value is fundamentally >an expression of a *specific* social relation -- that makes it specific >to the particular class relation of capitalist/wage-laborer. No you do not show that only if ruling class makes the threats of the sack and mechanization to a free wage labor class can the direct producers then objectify their alienated labor in what are values and big C commodities. In fact your points a-d make no effort to show that. They just state the differences between slavery and wage labor. Differences that are not the subject of dispute. >It is, of course, true that commodities and Commodities are >*superficially* the same in terms of physical characteristics and >generally price, but they are *essentially* different for the above reasons. No, again little c commodities are not the same in price as big C commodities; the former do not have to be sold tendentially at prices of production for production to remain viable. Moreover, the above reasons do not prove that only those commodities which are produced by wage laborers can be carriers of surplus value. >However, If one wants to view surplus value merely as "stuff" in a >physicalist sense then one will have a different perspective. If that >be the case, as surplus approach theorists suggest, then value >theory is unnecessary and "redundant". This is another form of bad faith argument. I have opposed the physicalist approach by agreeing that the commodities marketed by colonial settler peasants were not the same as big C commodities produced through capitalist agriculture and modern plantation slavery in particular though physically the commodities may appear the same and surplus labor was embodied in both the little c and big C commodities. Different social relations stand behind the production of little c and big C commodities. Value does not regulate the former; the production of surplus value did not drive the former. Far from suggesting that value theory is unnecessary and redundant, I have argued repeatedly that value theory is needed to differentiate the colonial settler peasantry which throws small c commodities on the market from modern slave plantations in which products were big C commodities from the start and differentiate slavery as a patriarchal system from slavery as a form of capitalist enterprise. The form of the inputs need not take the value form; price of production need not regulate production as a condition of supply; the aim of production need not be surplus value, and production thus need not be driven by the voracious appetite for surplus labor to which the search for surplus value gives rise. But all these three conditions can obtain in some conditions even if capitalists do not use free wage labor. As the Moor himself understood. Rakesh
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