andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> > Why did Marx think the labor v. labor
> > power distinction was so crucial?
> Because it is useful in explaining the origin of
> profit and the operation of the fcatory sstem. Its
> moral significance lies in its intersection with the
> value of freedom: coercion through deprivcation of
> property subjects workers to dominatuon on the fcatory
> floor, thus enhancing alienation. Theft and property
> rights have nothing to do wuth it.
(Side remark: "Because it is useful . . .factory system"? I would prefer Because it explains the separation under capitalism of act and motive" -- though without insisting this is _the_ 'correct' construal. Your formulation, "origin of profit," points away from "critique of political economy" to "economics." This is a side remark because I suspect pursuing it might lead us to the black hole of debate over market socialism.)
>
> If workers' labor creates no special claim
> > over labor's product,
> > why does this distinction matter?
>
> See above.
Marx's own formulation seems sufficient here. Workers' labor creates no special claim over the product because workers have already sold their actual product -- their labor power. If I sell Mike B my shirt, then it is up to him to decide what to do with it. If I sell him my labor power it is up to him to decide what to do with that labor power. The only disputable point is the length of time over which that labor power is to be expended. Where rights are equal, force decides. Morality has nothing to do with it. I didn't sell my "power to weave cotton" or "my power to sell brushes" or "my power to generate algorithms." What I sold was my abstract labor power, which is separate from me as a concrete historical person. (As Portia notices, I can't sell my flesh because it isn't separable.) So "labor's product" is _not_ the worker's product, it is the product (as Locke claimed) of the capitalist who purchased that labor power.
This discussion also gives some material content to a bit of traditional Marxist terminology that I've always avoided, "Petty Bourgeois Ideology" and "Petty Bourgeois Individualism." (Though it's probably best to use English: Petty "Producer.") The petty producer thinks for herself, makes her own decisions on what and how to produce (or 'serve' in the case of independent physicians, accountants, etc.), and is absolute master of her product, for which she deserves proper recompense from that world of strangers out there.
Carrol