[lbo-talk] New Imperialism or New Capitalism?

Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu
Tue Dec 28 10:26:31 PST 2004


But you are the one missing the point, Jonathan. Marx mentions socially necessary abstract labor as the unit of value because he knows he has to account for why capitalists can't jack up their profits by merely making their workers put in more hours on products. Translated into reality, all he's saying is that he knows that the spread of technology and the sales price of finished products set limits on the exploitability of labor.

The point is that you are misplacing your concreteness. The underlying essence of capital is not socially necessary abstract labor. It is cold, hard, sweaty, and all-too-real labor.

But, of course, if that's true -- poof, there goes your paper!


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Jonathan Nitzan
> Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 1:05 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] New Imperialism or New Capitalism?
>
> Sure, Marx saw capital accumulation as a transformation from money to
> commodities to more money. But the underlying unit in which this
> transformation was measured was abstract labor, a unit that no one has
> ever seen and that is logically impossible. Although Marx understood the
> process of financial capitalization better than most, he also believed
> that, in the final analysis, this process oscillated around the path
> charted by the the production of surplus value. This is where we get the
> notion that finance can get "delinked" from production -- but then how
> can you get delinked from a quantum you do not and cannot know?
>
> Charles Brown wrote:
>
> > What about the fact that in Vol. II of _Capital_, Marx characterizes
> > capitalist accumulation as accumulation of money,i.e. finances, not
> > capital - M-C-M', not C-M-C' ? Not ownership of variable and
> > constant capital in the form of control of material activity in the
> > form of labor power expressed or means of production, but of filthy
> > lucre ?
> >
> >
> > CB
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >___________________________________
> >http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list