[lbo-talk] Delong puts the smackdown on ol' Whiskers

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Apr 5 14:54:59 PDT 2005


Carl Remick wrote:


>>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>>
>>It's weird - Brad picks a pretty wacko example, admits its kind of
>>wacko, but then claims it's important and conclusive anyway. Why
>>does Marx make smart people do silly things?
>
>Dunno, but I'm inclined to do something silly by
>uncharacteristically saying a good word on BDeL's behalf. I think
>there is something to his conclusion, i.e.: "If you want to make a
>compelling criticism of economic and social relationships, you
>cannot do so by saying that there is Marxian 'exploitation' --which
>exists wherever workers are paid less than the average product of
>labor. You have to, instead, inquire into the origins of the wealth
>and property rights on which the proprietor class's income is based.
>The labor theory of value is simply a red herring."

Yeah there are a lot of Marxist economists who've wasted immense amounts of time on the transformation question and all that nonsense, but the point of the Marxian concept of SV extraction is that, whatever the phenomenal form of excess wealth - corporate profits, interest, executive pay - its ultimate origin is in the unpaid labor of workers. That understanding hardly precludes the empirical invesetigation BdL proposes.

It's perverse proof that Marx really still matters that so many clever people do silly things in an effort to bury the old guy.

Doug



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