From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Sat Jan 19 2008 - 18:12:23 EST
The fact of the matter is that the measured magnitude of surplus value DEPENDS both theoretically and empirically on how you draw the distinction between productive and unproductive labour. If paid unproductive labour exists, and if that labour is a deduction from total surplus value, then total profits can NEVER equal total surplus value, either in theory or in reality. It is a very simple logical argument although 99% of Marxists have missed it in their learned disputations about the transformation problem. Only people like Shane Mage, Murray Smith and myself noted it. Mandel tries to get round the problem by arguing that unproductive workers are "paid out of social capital" (whatever that means).
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Jurrian this seems so obvious that it never seemed a controversial issue to me when I first started doing statistics on the UK economy in the 70s, I suspect that I was influenced by having read Gillmans book which gave a fairly
straight forward definition of the effect of u on p. I am pretty sure that the formulae I have subsquently used came from Gillman.
Since it was published so long ago I dont see how you say marxists have missed the point that total profits
can never equal total surplus value.
@book{gillman1957frp,
title={{The falling rate of profit: Marx's law and its significance to twentieth-century capitalism}},
author={Gillman, J.M.},
year={1957},
publisher={D. Dobson}
}
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