From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Apr 22 2006 - 18:54:11 EDT
Hi Jurriaan, > I cannot trace the context of this remark, but if I remember correctly > Marx argued in these manuscripts against an apologetic interpretation > of profit The quote came from _TSV_, Volume 3, The Addenda on "Revenue and its Sources. Vulgar Political Economy", Section 5 ["Essential Difference Between Classical and Vulgar Economy"] (about 8 pages in) -- for those of you who want to look it up in another edition or language. He goes on to offer "two facts which provide the best proof" _why_ the wages of superintendence do not enter into the average rate of profit. That's right, he wrote that there were two proofs. > Sometimes he suggests that > the wages of management are a "faux frais of production" (a constant > capital outlay). Yes, the wages of superientendence could count as faux frais (incidental expenses of production). Where, however, did you get the idea that faux frais constitute a portion of constant capital? Is supervisory labor to be counted as means of production? > In that case, you would think that managerial labour in private > enterprise is a capital cost met from sales revenues which enters into > the cost structure of the product, but is it part of C, V, or S or > none of these? Faux frais is a cost, to be sure. It is paid out of revenues and represents a portion of S. > "Theories of Surplus Value" was written in 1863 and most of the manuscript > of Cap. Vol. 3 was written after that. If managerial labour could be > either productive or non-productive, Productive or unproductive of what? I was using the term in the sense in which I understand Marx to have intended it -- productive of surplus value. Nowhere, that I am aware of, did Marx ever suggest that capitalists or their agents in the production process -- managers -- are productive of surplus value. Yes, they have in many cases a vital role in coordinating and organizing production and, of course, extracting work from wage-workers. This does not mean that they themselves create surplus value and are exploited. > But I think we can reject out of hand the > idea that all managerial labour is non-productive; supposing all > managerial labour was suddenly withdrawn, production would collapse, > though probably the withdrawal of a portion of it would make little > difference. Your conclusions are based on, imo, on conflating labor employed in production with productive labor. Simply because production depends on a particular type of labor does not by itself make that labor productive of surplus value. So, I think we can dismiss your dismissal out-of-hand. > How valid is it really to superimpose > a schema from a previous epoch of history on current realities? Well, of course, that's a legitimate question _if_ one were attempting to "superimpose a schema from a previous epoch of history on current realities". In solidarity, Jerry
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