From: Dave Zachariah (davez@KTH.SE)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2008 - 16:40:29 EST
on 2008-01-29 22:02 Jurriaan Bendien wrote: > I appreciate the humour but the argument is rather weak. It is not > clear how your standpoint of capital differs much from your standpoint > of historical materialism. The main thing to note is that in a > developed market society it is no longer clear how the distinction > could validly be drawn, because the distinction between earnt and > unearnt income and between wealth-creating and wealth-redistributing > labour becomes more opaque. Jurriaan, before getting too deep into numerical examples of capital I urge you not to dismiss my simple example too fast. It points to something historically invariant, that can be generalized and applied to *any* mode of production. If the solders' upkeep are a part of the surplus product, then so is the case for the producers of royal luxuries. Now if you say that what I take to be a fundamental question---"which agents produce and appropriate goods and labour?"---is irrelevant, there can hardly be a discussion. It is an axiomatic choice of the research strategy that Marx called a "material conception of history". I also note that we are not talking about productive/unproductive in the same way when you write "I have no particular objections to jewellery although I don't wear any myself." It is not a matter of objections or taste, it is a matter of what role labour plays in the material reproduction of society. //Dave Z
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