andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> John Thornton <jthorn65 at mchsi.com> wrote:
> [clip]
> By the way, when the capitalist keeps his promises, he
> steals. It is not an either or proposition. Why is that
> so hard to understand? Exploitation is theft.You know
> this. What exactly is it you're trying to say?
>
> Well, long aho I wrote a paper arguing that this claim that
> exploitaion is theft exactly misses Marx's point
It (seeing exploitation as theft) so totally misses Marx's point that it baffles me that it should have to be argued: "The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible. . . .and the labourer maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antimony, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence it is that . . .the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working class" (Capital, I, 225). If John is taking an anarchist (or Proudhonist) position is claim is coherent and we simply disagree. Usually on this list I don't argue from an explicitly Marxist position, and do not quote Marx as an authority. But here I do. It seems to me that to reject Marx here is to fail completely to understand capitalism. Exploitation is a technical relationship, not theft.
Carrol