Jim Devine wrote,
>I think Marx is referring to later in CAPITAL, toward the end of vol. III
>(which I don't have here so I can't cite it exactly). He talks about how the
>capitalist is important to the process of production as a director rather
>than simply as an owner. . .
That would be pages 289-292, 386-387 & 880-881. No, that's not it. Marx's
parenthetical remark alludes to the role of the capitalist in the process of
production. But the two sentences that follow talk about something else.
Something that Marx doesn't analyze in vol. III or anywhere else.
>Further, for Marx, the notion of "productive" labor is
>linked to capital's viewpoint: productive labor _produces_ surplus-value
>(and thus allows the appropriation of profits, interest, & rent). So the
>role of the capitalist director as "productive" is justified totally in
>capitalist terms, even if there is no justification when we look at it from
>a more objective viewpoint.
It's futile to talk about a "more objective viewpoint" unless and until we
understand capitalism from capital's viewpoint. Then, and only then, can we
critique that viewpoint. Jim, writing in 1998, effortlessly erases two lines
written by Marx over 130 years earlier. What would it take to get those two
lines back? Thanks to the magic of electronic data storage I can retrieve
those two lines:
"We are concerned here only with capital within the immediate process of
production. The other functions of capital and the agents which it employs
within them form a subject to be left for later."
A subject to be left for later, indeed. I can testify that I have tried to
bring up that subject-to-be-left-for-later in any number of ways for 20
years in any number of forums. I have encountered such systematic
incomprehension that I can think of only two possible explanations: I'm
stark raving mad or "the subject left for later" creates such anxiety that
people can't even think about it (cognitive dissonance). In other words, the
riddle of the Sphinx.
I'll try a question (careful, it may be a trick question!):
Is the market a commodity?
Sixty points for the correct answer.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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