[lbo-talk] Missing the Marx

Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu
Tue Dec 28 09:56:28 PST 2004



> Carrol is right.

Carrol is laughably wrong, as you are, too, apparently.


> Marx is saying from the point of view
> of justice, everything is square with the exchange of
> wages for labor power.

I can't believe you can read Marx this way. Saying this misses his entire point!


> There is exploitation, but it
> si not based on unequal exchange.

Of course it is based on equal exchange! But behind the equal exchange is injustice. How in hell can you miss this point? Jesus! It's simply a matter of reading the book.

Here's the argument: Capitalist buy and workers sell workers' labor-power. The fact that capitalists are able to buy and workers must sell this unique commodity is a result of unfair power relationships. The continuation of this arrangement perpetuates the unfairness and harm, since only capitalists get to own the surpluses that only labor-power sellers produce. It's a form of theft that occurs within perfectly legal, purportedly fair exchanges.


> The worker is not
> entitled to the SV he produces merely because he
> produces it.

Astounding claim for a socialist! What, then gives a worker a claim to have a say over surplus wealth? What's wrong with Walmart, from your perspective?


> In fact, value doesn't really exist until
> it is realized, so if there any entitlement these show
> up in the sphere of circulation.

What? So production doesn't matter? That might be your argument, but it ain't Karl Marx's!


> Of course there is
> explaoitation, but what is wrong with it is something
> else.
> Marx is crystal clear and absolutely unambiguous about
> what it is. It is the deprivation of freeom that goes
> into conditions of production under wage labor: the
> worker is coerced because he lacks means of production
> and so must work for the capitalist class; he is
> dominated in the process of production, where the
> factory system is a sort of enslavement by the hour,
> and he is alienated multiply but most crucially from,
> himself, so he cannot determine he own activity and
> enjoy what Marx calld "real freedom." As for justice
> and fairness, Marx is transpaarent (whough in my view
> mistaken) that justice is relative to the mode of
> production.

Marx is not crystal clear on this. This is your weird perversion of what Marx says on the printed page, which is that economic exploitation is primary to the functioning of class societies, all of which deploy forces and frauid to deprive the underlying population of freedom. You are fixated on Marx's general theory of freedom and oppression. That is valid, but there's more to the argument than that.


> This is a very short statement of the argument of my
> What's Wrong With Exploitation. Nous 1995. I can't
> believe it's been a decade since I wrote that.

I read that paper, and found it to be nearly incomprehensible sophistry, and inadequately attentive to Marx, considering you claim to supercede Marx. People give gifts that become property for the recipient, so the labor theory of value is false? The labor theory of value is designed to explain the origins of new wealth, not all conceivable cases of property ownership. At core, it is an ethical category, designed to highlight the fact that class exploitation deprives primary producers of their basic rights. One can attack any theory, if one stretches it beyond its intended explanatory sphere.



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