Re: [OPE-L] Why aren't non-labourers sources of value?

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Thu Apr 07 2005 - 11:21:38 EDT


At 11:51 PM +1000 4/7/05, Nicola Taylor wrote:
>(imo) Marx's key insight into the social relations of capital is
>that workers trade their labour-power freely.

This is rich! Marx's key insight is that the wage labor contract is free.

But let's look at the rest.

>as usual I find myself aligned with Jerry on this issue.

an appeal to authority?



>  What is important in Marx is the fact that labourers sell their
>*labour power* on markets.

what is important about it? let's see if we find out.



>   They do not sell themselves.

this is implied in the above.


>  Moreover, the *labour power* paid for in the wage must be converted
>by capitalists into *labour* - a process that is by no means assured.


Is labour assured in the case of slaves? The whip is superfluous then.


>Where people, animals and machines are *owned* the capital-labour
>relation cannot exist,

but it only follows in the case of slaves that the capital-labor
power relation cannot exist




>in the very real sense that the sale of labour power does not take place;


This is part of the definition of slavery.




>in relations of slavery, for example, workers do not willing sell
>their labour but on the contrary are traded body and soul against
>their will.


yes, I think we can agree.

>



>The slave owner may, if he choses, work his slave to death just as
>he may work a donkey to death.

Ah it will come as a relief to so called free wage workers that they
are never--in fact cannot be-- worked to death.


>(imo) Marx's key insight into the social relations of capital is
>that workers trade their labour-power freely.  i.e. the crucial
>distinction is not between humans, land, donkeys etc but between
>living *labour* and the *labour power* purchased for wages.


And why is the the crucial distinction? An argument has yet to be presented.

Rakesh


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