[lbo-talk] re: Getting Straight On The Labor Theory of

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Fri Dec 24 16:50:40 PST 2004


Citizen Schwartz wrote: You're pretty annoying yourself, and extremely condescending. I'm a bit too old and tired too put put with smart-assery from a half-educated knowitall. Sorry if I speak bluntly. But you are reasonably intelligent, and if you can be civil, I will be happy to exchange ideas with you. Except about market socialism.

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How old are you?

You do sound tired.

For a life without exchange-value, Mike B)

P.S.

Found this yesterday:

The worker therefore sells labour as a simple, predetermined exchange value, determined by a previous process—he sells labour itself as objectified labour; i.e. he sells labour only in so far as it already objectifies a definite amount of labour, hence in so far as its equivalent is already measured, given; capital buys it as living labour, as the general productive force of wealth; activity which increases wealth. It is clear, therefore, that the worker cannot become rich in this exchange, since, in exchange for his labour capacity as a fixed, available magnitude, he surrenders its creative power, like Esau his birthright for a mess of pottage. Rather, he necessarily impoverishes himself, as we shall see further on, because the creative power of his labour establishes itself as the power of capital, as an alien power confronting him. He divests himself [entaüssert sich] of labour as the force productive of wealth; capital appropriates it, as such. The separation between labour and property in the product of labour, between labour and wealth, is thus posited in this act of exchange itself. What appears paradoxical as result is already contained in the presupposition. The economists have expressed this more or less empirically. Thus the productivity of his labour, his labour in general, in so far as it is not a capacity but a motion, real labour, comes to confront the worker as an alien power; capital, inversely, realizes itself through the appropriation of alien labour. (At least the possibility of realization is thereby posited; as result of the exchange between labour and capital. The relation is realized only in the act of production itself, where capital really consumes the alien labour.) Just as labour, as a presupposed exchange value, is exchanged for an equivalent in money, so the latter is again exchanged for an equivalent in commodities, which are consumed. In this process of exchange, labour is not productive; it becomes so only for capital; it can take out of circulation only what it has thrown into it, a predetermined amount of commodities, which is as little its own product as it is its own value,...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm#p307

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