Re: [OPE] "Parasitism"

Paula wrote:
>
> I agree with Dave that a capitalist firm selling the service of
> private guards would be unproductive; the same, IMO, does not apply to
> the production of armaments, to the extent that armaments are
> commodities (that is, objects produced for market exchange, as per my
> previous arguments).

Armaments are produced by social labour and have therefore labour-value.
When sold as commodities they tend to fetch a price proportional to
their labour-values and yield a profit for the firms that produce them.
However, if one stops at this level of analysis one cannot see the
fundamentally parasitic nature of the arms industry on the rest of the
economy:

It lives off entirely from the surplus labour pumped out from the
workers in the basic sector, and it impedes the growth of the real
capital stock and of productivity. In this sense it is completely
analogous to the parasitism of the financial sector.

//Dave Z
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Received on Sat Jan 24 06:07:57 2009