From: rakeshb@stanford.edu
Date: Sat Jan 11 2003 - 13:34:15 EST
John, I don't whether you agree with me or not. I do not have your book with me, and have only limited access to email. Quoting jmilios@hol.gr in 8295: > > No, I think that we know what surplus value is (the specifically > capitalist > type of surplus labour, more exactly, the notion of a historically > specific > social relation of exploitation which manifests itself as profit [not > as > tribute, feudal compulsory labour, etc.]) which CAN BE MEASURED > (empirically) > only on the level of its form of appearance (in monetary units). Everything changes as to the dynamcs of the system when the surplus is fundamentally appropriated in the value form, i.e., as alienated labor objectified in commodities which have to be sold for money, as opposed to taken as direct labor services, rent in kind, money rent or taxes. In order to specify capital's laws of motion, Marx took over Richard Jones' comparative historical framework of the forms of rent and specified capitalism in relation to them, e.g. cottier, metayer rents. To me Marx's emphasis on the form of the surplus stems first and foremost not from philosophers such as Aristotle or Hegel but from the historical and evolutionary materialist Jones whose influence on Marx has generated no where the interest as Hegel's or Aristotle's. I think the value form school is much too philosophical; following Fred, Alfredo, and others, I also do not accept the breaking by some value form theorists of the quantitative linkage between unpaid labor time and surplus value as it appears phenomenally as profit, interest and rent. Neither the transformation problem nor the redundancy charge is in my opinion a good enough reason to sever the link between labor time and economic magnitudes. Marx's value theory is both qualitiative (it specifies the historical specifity of capitalism and lays out the necessity of money) and quantitative (it provides a theory of the movement of economic magnitudes). Yours, Rakesh
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