The distinction between the phenomenal forms (interest, profit, rent) and the origin of these is surplus value is already "special equipment". It is by no means self-evident from the surface appearance of things (especially since profit, roughly speaking, is proportionate to capital, not to labour inputs). Doug makes light of this conceptual schema, but if it were stated clearly to any contemporary student of social theory they would at once recoil in horror at the 'essentialism' of Marx's 'surplus value', denouncing it as a grand narrative.
In message <v04011713b39599c09414@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Bourgeois measures of profit in the U.S. economy show a peak in the late
>60s, a fall into the early 80s, and a rise through 1996, and a modest
>falloff since. You can translate that into a very important political
>story, explaining the troubles of the 1970s followed by the capitalist
>counteroffensive followed by a restoration of capitalist power. What
>different story do the Marxian measures tell?
I think they tell the story that accumulation is the independent variable, and wages the dependent. The origins of the crises of the seventies are not labour disruption, but over-accumulation. It was common coin amongst reformists that the labour movement had put the squeeze on the bosses profits and that all that was needed was more militancy. Poor analysis, poor strategy.
In message <v0401170fb3956021959a@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>It's hard enough, it seems, to define "productive" labor. But leaving that
>aside, what's the point of the category?
What's the point of productive labour? What's the point of capital accumulation? As long as social production is subordinate to production for profit, the distinction between productive and unproductive labour asserts itself, whether or not we distinguish them in theory.
A similar point is the recent attempts to redefine GDP to include domestic labour. This fundamentally is based on a moral confusion. As if including the unpaid work of women in the home in the statistical record was any kind of recompense for the fact that it was not vauled in fact, on the market.
-- Jim heartfield