On May 2, 2010, at 5:38 PM, Jonathan Nitzan wrote: > CAPITAL AS POWER: TOWARD A NEW COSMOLOGY OF CAPITALISM > By Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan > Jerusalem and Montreal, May, 2010 > > ABSTRACT > > Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after > centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. > Liberals and Marxists think of capital as an economic entity that they > count in universal units of utils and abstract labor, respectively. > But > these units are totally fictitious: they can be neither observed nor > measured. They don’t exist.
This is a total misreading of Marx. The "abstract jelly" of socially- necessary labor time not only exists, it is totally measurable. I did so in my dissertation on the Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit (Columbia Univ., 1963). Its total is the number of hours worked by productive workers, represented monetarily by the aggregate of productive-labor and property incomes (v+s). The value content of the monetary unit is that monetary total divided by the total hours of productive labor. The domestic capital is measured by the labor- content of the money invested (rather than consumed or invested abroad) by the capitalists in a given accounting period, aggregated (net of depreciation/obsolescence) over time. And they are wrong when they say Marx regards capital as an "economic entity" rather than a social relationship (relationship of power) expressing itself in economic terms governed by the law of value. Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
