Intellectuals vs. activism / labor theory of value

[Justin Schwartz]

> > >...
> > >Note that Marx's argument, which rests on the principle of  value 
>creation
> > >- he who creates value should own and control it; workers are sole
> > >creators of value under capitalism, ergo: workers should own and 
>control
> > >all output of capitalist production -
>
>Justin Schwartz:
> > I have written another paper explaining why this is a misunderstanding 
>of
> > Marx: What's Wrong with Exploitation, Nous 1995.
>
>I was recently involved in a discussion of the labor theory
>of value in which one of my interlocutors asserted that it
>was used in a purely normative manner, i.e. as above, the
>wokers _ought_ to _own_ the means of production because it
>is created by their labor.  This seems like a very Lockean
>argument to me, what with the oughtings and the ownings,

Absolutely. MArx will have none of that. He calls justice talk "dir alte 
Dreck," the old shit.


>and I'm surprised to see it in the work of the father of
>Communism, even with a big C.

It's not there. The LTV in Marx plays a purely positive role, as opposed to 
a normative one. It's supposed to explain why commodities exchange at stable 
values, how long term prices tend to fluctuate around certain values, and 
most importantly, why exploitation occurs, how, that is, it is possible that 
capitalists take profits (the price form of surplus value) if labor power 
(like all commodities) exchanges at value--that is, the wage.

What does a Communist care
>about such bourgeois values and relations?  I had had the idea
>that the exploitation of labor's power to create value led
>(theoretically) to the crisis of overproduction.

The LTV is also supposedto help explain crises, but Marx lacks a coherent 
crisis theory. The notes Engels worked up into CIII contain several stabs at 
one, but not properly developed one.

Marx does have a normative account: he thinks that exploitation involves 
unnecessary unfreedom, in (1) the coercive structure of the wage relation 
itself, (2) in the domination involved in productioon  in the "real 
subsumption of labor to capital", and (3) in alienation, ther denial of real 
freedom.

I explain this in more detail in What's Wrong with Exploitation, Nous 1995, 
readable online in a near-final version in the spoons Marxism list archive.

jks

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