Paul Phillips said: "The fact that human capital is tracked by class is not really rellevant. Does one tract physical capital by class? Does a backhoe owned by a working class person have less value than the backhoe owned by GW Bush? "
It's not the notional class of the person which counts, it's the usage; if the backhoe is used in the accumulation of surplus value (by anyone) then it's a capitalist means of production. If the same backhoe used is used purely to rework the flower beds on GW's ranch or by a subsistence farmer, it's not a capitalist means of production. Just as W's ranch is not a capitalist enterprise if its primarily a residence/second home, rather than a productive (in the capitalist sense) ranch. "I came from a working-class family who had the goals of educating all their children to escape from being working class, not because they were anti-working class (they were all radical socialists, union activists, political activists) but because they saw that the only way we were to escape being wage-slaves was to become educated (i.e. accumulate human capital) that would not only alow us an element of independence, but also to get "a return to our investment" in education." I suggest that most well-educated people are still members of a "working class" (but not the manual/blue-collar working class) because they are still wage-earners in the strict sense of the term (even if one is a middle manager whose job it is to embody capital in the workplace). "George Bush did not get a return to education (human capital) but to the power of priviledge -- i.e. to a monopoly of power." Probably true. And? "What you are in effect saying is that GWB got where he did because he worked harder (i.e. his return was greater than those who had equal human capital.) This, I would suggest is crap." I don't think Michael did say that and I think this exposes the problem with attributing concepts like "human capital" to nebulous. immeasurable things like education; it's like saying that a backhoe owned by a capitalist is worth more than an identical one owned by a subsistence farmer or proletarian, living next door (which would be true if the capitalist forced someone to buy it at gunpoint, or if some speculator bought it because it had been owned by a prominent accumulator like GW Bush.) As far as I can see, "human capital" _in_the_orthodox_Marxian_sense_ is simply labour power, bought and sold by capitalists for capital-productive purposes. e.g. "One of the modes in which the nobles have turned their human capital was to hire them out, or to allow them, on payment of an annual sum (obrok), to travel about and gain a living as they pleased. This custom suited admirably both the purses of the nobles and the roving character of the Russian serf. It was one of the chief sources of income to the former." (Marx, 1858, "The Emancipation Question". http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/12/31.htm ) I think that to use it (or terms like "social capital", "cultural capital" etc) is (probably inadvertently &/or ironically) derogatory either of (1) human beings, or (2) Marxian economics because (1) immeasurable human qualities are being reified as monetary things, &/or (2) it makes Marx et al. out to be dunderheads for not recognising these issues. regards, Grant.
