Sandwichman: I would challenge the implicit assumption that surplus value is first produced and then redistributed. It might seem "intuitively obvious" that you can't redistribute something that doesn't exist yet but of course you can. You just distribute claims on future wealth creation. That's what capitalization is about.
So I have in mind a model where profit, interest and rent come first and then the imperative is to extract the surplus value corresponding with those claims. Of course the process is circular, so it would be difficult to point to a specific unit of surplus value going to a specific rent, interest or profit claim. ===== This, in particular the "Of course the process is circular," fits in with my enthrallment with the first long section of Volume II -- which catches up so beautifully this endless circle, and the way one 'element' merges into another. 128 pages of one repetition after another of a tautology, yet by the end of those pages the vast difference between capitalism and other social orders emerges forcefully. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
