At 12:25 PM 06/11/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 6/10/00 5:51:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
><< My reading of the discussion of the waterfall -- and Marx's theory of rent
> in general -- is that the waterfall "creates" surplus-value _for the owner
> of the waterfall_ but not for society as a whole. One of Marx's major
> points is that the different kinds of property income (profits, interest,
> rent) do not come from physical commodities (capital goods, money, land)
> but from exploited labor. Those who receive rent get it because they
> control resources giving them special advantages that allow them to capture
> part of society's surplus-value, but the latter springs from the
> surplus-labor done by workers in production.
>
> >>
>Apart from the distinction between SV "for the owner of the waterfall" and
>"for society asa a whole," a distinction that would have to be explained,
I did explain this distinction, but here I go again using different terms:
I am distinguishing between the _appropriation_ of SV (which the owner of
the waterfall does because he or she has a special advantage). and the
_creation_ of SV, which requires the exploitation of labor (which requires
an actual production process, which the waterfall-owner may or may not
organize). The key point is that the owner of the waterfall can appropriate
SV for him or herself _even without_ directly organizing the exploitation
of labor. It's similar to the way in which a burglar, a toll-collector, or
a bandit can get a chunk of the SV without organizing the production of SV,
though for the waterfall-owner, it works through the market, because prices
are not equal to values, which redistributes parts of the SV to those who
sell commodities above their value.
>I don't undertand Jim's distinction that is supposed to get Marx out of
>the problem. Value is value, SV is SV, it's not "for one" vs "for all";
>once created, it is there to be distributed in circularion.
I was talking about distribution through circulation. I said that "the
waterfall 'creates' surplus-value _for the owner
of the waterfall_ but not for society as a whole" deliberately putting
quotations around "creates" because I was referring to the fetishized
_perspective of the waterfall-owner_. As Marx points out in the very
important (but usually ignored) chapters at the end of vol. III of CAPITAL,
the participants in the capitalist system (and the orthodox economists)
suffer from the "illusions arising from competition," so that they see
"rent" as springing from "land," "interest" as springing from "money," etc.
But as he argues, that ignores the social context, i.e., where rent,
interest, etc. come from (exploited labor).
>the
>rest of this is question-begging.
yes, given your lack of understanding.
>Sure, Marx usually proceeds on the
>assumption that all value is produced by workers, but need he maintain it?
It's not an _assumption_. Marx argues very clearly that SV cannot be
created in circulation, in volume I of CAPITAL. However, I will treat it as
an assumption here, since I don't want to get into that argument again.
>Moreover, in the face of differential rent, can he maintain it?
There's nothing about differential rent that contradicts Marx's conclusion
that all value is produced by workers and that none is produced by the
circulation process (i.e., merely by buying and selling). Differential rent
-- a phenomenon that occurs in almost all sectors, not just in agriculture
by the way -- is associated with the distinction between the individual
value of a commodity and its social value This distinction shows up very
early in volume I of CAPITAL (and did not show up in Ricardo, as far as I
know, which is why most Ricardians miss the point). An incompetent worker
who produces X in 10 hours does not produce more value than the deft one
who produces X in 8 hours. The value of X is not determined by the
individual labor that the worker puts into producing his or her commodity,
but by the social average. The advantage of the deft one is similar to the
capitalist who owns the waterfall, just as the disadvantage of the
incompetent one is similar to the capitalist who doesn't own a waterfall.
>But ownership of the waterfall is not a circularion question; it is a
>matter of differential control over the means of production. It's just in
>this case, the value-producing aspect of the means of production is not
>that it is operated by labor that is explaoited, but that no one else has
>it. It is exploitation of capiatls, if aything--somethging that Roemer was
>shown is mathemetically possible.
Roemer's theory of exploitation is flawed at its roots as should be
discarded (see Devine and Dymski, Economics and Philosophy, vol. 7 (2),
October 1991: pp. 235-275). For example, his basic theory is simply that SV
is a scarcity rent, but he simply assumes scarcity along with a totally
unrealistic, i.e., Walrasian, vision of the economy. (Roemer's fundamental
problem is that he confuses mathematical proofs with economics, i.e., study
of the world.) Roemer's response to Gary's and my critique mostly involved
admitting that we were right. Since then, he's escaped into purely
normative economics, where his idealist approach is more appropriate.
Differential control over the means of production is _not_ sufficient.
What's needed is capitalist domination over society (the proletarianization
of labor, including the separation of labor from ownership of the means of
subsistence and the existence of a reserve army of labor or some other way
to coerce workers) and capitalist domination of the production process. I
would add that workers' willingness to accept capitalist rule is also
necessary (though this is implicit in Marx, so I guess I'm really not
adding it). See my "Taxation without Representation: Reconstructing Marx's
Theory of Capitalist Exploitation." In William Dugger, ed. Inequality:
Radical Institutionalist Views on Race, Class, Gender, and Nation.
Greenwood Press, 1996.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine/AS
"From the east side of Chicago/ to the down side of L.A.
There's no place that he gods/ We don't bow down to him and pray.
Yeah we follow him to the slaughter / We go through the fire and ash.
Cause he's the doll inside our dollars / Our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash
(chorus): Ah we blow him up -- inflated / and we let him down -- depressed
We play with him forever -- he's our doll / and we love him best."
-- Terry Allen.
