Re: [OPE-L] 3 crucial points?

From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Tue Jan 30 2007 - 11:59:35 EST


> Capital's unpublished chapter, The Results of the Immediate Process of
> Production, opens with a discussion of the commodity as the product of
> capital.  Two and a half pages in Marx summarizes by making 3 points.

Howard and Hans:

For context and further explanation, see his NEXT division into 3 -- 1 1/2
pages further on (end of page 953 until beginning of page 955 in Penguin
edition).

He suggests  (in the para beforehand) that "The *commodity* that emerges
from capitalist production  is different from the commodity we began with
as an element, the precondition of capitalist production."    He goes to to
suggest that "The commodity may now be FURTHER DEFINED as follows:
...." (emphasis added, JL).

It's worth especially noting in this FURTHER DEFINITION of the commodity
how "the *commodity* as the *product of capital* can be said to contain both
paid and unpaid labour." (p. 954)  |Note|

In solidarity, Jerry


|Note| He explains that "this is not strictly true since the labour itself
is not bought or sold directly".  You can read this yourself, but  I
interpret this to mean, in the context of the section, that it is "not
strictly true" because *labour time* rather than labour itself is directly
bought and sold.  Thus, he writes that a "portion of this objectified
labour ... is exchanged for the equivalent of the worker's wages; another
portion is appropriated without any equivalent being paid .... and it is a
convenient abbreviation to describe the one as paid and the other as
unpaid labour." (Ibid).


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