Consider the following passage from Varro's De Re Rustica Quote: "With regard to the number of slaves required, Cato has in view two bases of calculation: the size of the place, and the nature of the crop grown. Writing of oliveyards and vineyards,60 he gives two formulas. The first is one in which he shows how an oliveyard of 240 iugera should be equipped; on a place of this size he says that the following thirteen slaves should be kept: an overseer, a housekeeper, five labourers, three teamsters, one muleteer, one swineherd, one shepherd. The second he gives for a vineyard of 100 iugera, on which he says should be kept the following fifteen slaves: an overseer, a housekeeper, ten labourers, a teamster, a muleteer, a swineherd. 2 Saserna states that one man is enough for eight iugera, and that he ought to dig over that amount in forty-five days, although he can dig over a single iugerum with four days' work; but he says that he allows thirteen days extra for such things as illness, bad weather, idleness, and laxness. 3 Neither of these writers has left us a very clearly expressed rule. For if Cato wished to do this, he should have stated it in such a way that we add or subtract from the number proportionately as the farm is larger or smaller. Further, he should have named the overseer and the housekeeper outside of the number of slaves; for if you cultivate less than 240 iugera of olives you cannot get along with less than one overseer, nor if you cultivate twice as large a place or more will you have to keep two or three overseers.
This is clearly a discussion of abstract labour requirements measured in terms of the numbers of slaves requirred. ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Angelus Novus [[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 1:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Ingo Elbe Between Marx, Marxism, and Marxisms, Part I.3 Paul: > I find it significant that in order to make the point draft documents > rather than final ones are cited. Actually, the passage quoted **does** come from a final version, namely, the French translation of Volume I that Marx himself oversaw. He incorporated the material from the revision manuscripts into the French version: "L'égalité de travaux qui diffèrent toto coelo [complètement] les uns des autres ne peut consister que dans une abstraction de leur inégalité réelle, que dans la réduction à leur caractère commun de dépense de force humaine, de travail humain en général, et c'est l'échange seul qui opère cette réduction en mettant en présence les uns des autres sur un pied d'égalité les produits des travaux les plus divers." Source: http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-I-4.htm And with that, Marx himself states conclusively and definitively that abstract labor is a relationship of social validation constituted in a society of generalized commodity exchange and production, and not a trans-historical property of human labor as such. As to why Engels did not incorporate these passages into the 4th German Edition, that is a good question. Perhaps Engels understood exactly where his historicist reading was at odds with Marx's? _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
