--- Michael Dawson <MDawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Well, the argument was not really over whether wages
> and profits are legally
> correct under capitalism. Nobody disputes that.
> The argument was over
> whether paying wages for work-time while capitalists
> keep the surpluses
> created by wage laborers is exploitation.
Of course it is, that's almost definitional.
In other
> words, whether
> capitalist property is stolen
That's not "in other words." What's wrong with exploitation might be a lot of things other than theft. Marx thought it was unfreedom, not theft. It might even be (as I think) injustice but not theft.
> and unethical.
Well, we all agree that exploitation is bad.
>
>
> Eub and Andie, meanwhile, seem to want to rescue
> Marx from himself, also
> because you can't numerically prove the LTOV.
Well, not exactly. Sweezey and Borktewicz showed that you can "prove" the LTOV, that is, derive values from prices under certain idealized conditions like constant returens to scale, etc. The real question is what milage that gets you. What work it does.
Following the neo-Sfraffians, my own view is that value (SNALT, socially necessary embodied labor time) is a fifth wheel, it doesn't add anything to things you already say just using price talk and sociology.
I mean, it's heuristically useful to talk in value terms to make certain points, but I don't thgink it is any more than that. Ia lso think, heretically, that Marx didn't think it was any more than that.
>
> I believe that, despite his scorn for Proudhon's
> "all property is theft"
> line, which may seem to imply that Marx thought _no_
> property was theft,
> pointing out that capital is stolen property was the
> central aim of Marx's
> work.
And you think this because? You actually haven't said, just that you're appalled that I disagree.
jks
>
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! http://my.yahoo.com