From: Anders Ekeland (anders.ekeland@ONLINE.NO)
Date: Thu Jun 07 2007 - 18:05:14 EDT
Anders: Let me just repeat/rephrase my main arguments: As I see it that without the word "production" the textual support for treating complex labour the same way as a machine whose price is determined by labour cost has considerably less textual support. It also stands in contraditicion to other passages where Marx treats this issue. The phrase "plus difficile a former" does not mention production, does not mention "costs" directly. But the most important is that the labour producing gold is put at center stage - what relation do that have to eductation costs? By introducing "a special kind of labour" we are back to the many indications that Marx saw wages as a rough - but due to the persistence of opinions turning them in to prejudices/illusions (blosse Illusionen) a often misleading indicator. Marx also favourably quotes in Capital I John Cazenove who states that a special kind of labour is chosen as a benchmark - and when that is done - the reduction coefficients are easy to find. Of course Hilferdings argument stands on its own ground, but Hilferding tried to make Marx consistent, so what Marx actually wrote was very important to him. This not the least indicated by the famous "daher" versus "aber" discussion between Hilferding and Bernstein, where Hilferding argued that if Marx had intended to make a connection between value creating ability and wages he would have used "daher" not "aber". Unfortunately for Hilferding - Engels had used "daher" in the 4th German edition of Das Kapital. (See Rosdolskys treatment of this in "The Making of Marx Capital" There are several serious objections to the "production" of complex labour which I regrettably have not time to go into, but they are outlined in Makoto Itohs book, Ian Steedman has also several valid points against it in his articles on the subject. Regards Anders At 12:57 06.06.2007, you wrote: > Anders: >In my opinion the French version seriously >weakens the textual support for the >Hilferding/Okishio/Rowthorn "whose production has >cost more labour" - that is the "education cost" >solution to the labour reduction problem. > >Paul: >Why do you think that? >There is no coherent argument in the French edition against Hilferdings >solution? > >Whether Hilferding was right or wrong stands on the merits of >Hilferding's argument not on what Marx said, unless Marx makes a >specific rebutall of the idea that the labour cost of educating workers >enters into the labour cost of what these workers themselves produce. As >far as I can see Marx makes no such contrary argument. >
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