>The real reason it is wrong to say that the wage is determined by the worker's
>consumption-basket is more basic: it's because the price of the wage is the
>same as it is for every commodity, ie, it is determined by *the socially-
>necessary abstract labour-time required to reproduce the commodity*.
Mark, the problem with that is that it doesn't work in practice. Do you have
experimental references to back such a counter-intuitive theory? If you want to
define value as determined by SNALT, fine. But prices?
>...
>it is surely clear ab initio that
>domestic labour - ie mostly, women's unpaid labour - is not waged because
>it does not produce a commodity, but only produces *the conditions fo
>existence of the
>particular commodity* (ie labour-power).
Mark, many jobs that are waged only produce "conditions" as you define it.
You could argue about the health sector and stuff like that, but what's the
commodity produced by the police? BTW, many "products" of domestic
labour can be buyed (servants, day care for childs, etc.).
>If domestic labour (including the process
>of procreation!) could be waged, ...
It can be waged and is currently!
>... then capitalism would fall, because the
>central paradox of capitalism is that it depends upon a commodity which it
>itself cannot
>produce, ie, the commodity, labour-power. If it COULD produce labour-
>power, then competition would soon ensure that the value of the product of
>labour produced in a working day would never rise above the value of that
>working day.
Even if your fantasies about competition applied in practice, surplus value can
and does exist even in the case where profits are equal to zero in the part of
the economy employing wage labour.
BTW, the issue is not whether or not domestic labour and procreation is
waged but whether or not it can be directed by capitalists. This does not only
mean some kind of rent for domestic workers and pregnant women but also
factories producing humans, slavery, etc.
>This is really a serious
>problem for capitalism, and it shows how fundamentally contradictory
>capitalism is, because, as Tom Warren was just pointing out, it is precisely
>the need for double income in households and the recruitment of women to
>...
Maybe not. Capital likes profit opportunities. New opportunities are created in
processed food, day care, etc. by this. Plus, labour can be imported and is
currently imported as a result of slower population growth.
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