[OPE-L:7306] [OPE-L:835] Re: Re: Re: Horsepower

Ajit Sinha (sinha@cdedse.ernet.in)
07 Apr 99 13:52:12 IST (+0530)

>Chris A:
> >> It could be said - and this might suit a C Part One context -
> >> that it is
> >> because human labour involves what Lukacs called 'teleological
> >> positing'
> >> (Simon Mohun says this in his Value Debates collection).
> >> However this runs into the problem that in capitalist
> production
> >> the most
> >> substantial part of the workforce have no such control over
> the
> >> purpose and
> >> method of work but just execute orders.
> >> So I prefer to locate the key difference in the fact that only
> >> labour has
> >> the subjective potential to overturn the relations of
> production
> >> and
> >> capital therefore faces it as a special case of the things it
> has
> >> to
> >> 'exploit' to produce a surplus product.
> >> I would locate the treatment of abstract labour in this
> context
> >> too in that
> >> before it appears as abstract in exchange it is already
> treated
> >> abstractly
> >> as a universal resource/problem by capital.
> >> Especially interesting I think is whether we agree with Marx
> in
> ___
Ajit S:
> >I don't know if I understand everything said above. But it seems
> to
> >me that you are rejecting the arguments pointing toward labor as
> >cause of value. If value, that is the labor time needed to
> produce
> >the commodities, is a social relation, then the question is what
> >kind of social relation it is? Does it represent the relation of
> >social division of labor or does it represent the relation
> between
> >capital and labor? Cheers, ajit sinha
> >>
Chris A.
> In the first instance it represents the relation between capital
> and
> labour; however since capital is defined in terms of the social
> division of
> production between capitals value magnitudes are determmined by
> the
> relation between the labours exploited by the various capitals. I
> have
> coined the expression 'socially necessary exploitation time' for
> this.
> Chris Arthur
___________________
I think we need to think about aggregation and disaggregation issue
here. The necessary and surplus labor distinction can be understood
and calculated only when all the productive sectors are taken into
account simultaneously. So let's call this aggregative analysis.
Now the question is that the reproduction of the system requires
exchange of commodities between sectors. The question is: what does
one gain by defining commodities in labor time units. And how does
one get over the transformation problem. The labor accounting at
the aggregative case seems okay, but at the dis aggregative level
there seems to be a problem. We need to think, what does one gain
by defining a commodity as so much of labor time?
Cheers, ajit sinha
>
>