In CI, the thing Marx is most interesting in explaining and clarifying is the source of profits is everything, including labor, trades at value, understood as SNALT (sociallly necessary abstract labor time, multiples of unskilled labor necesasry to produce the typical commodity or total set of commodities). The answer he gives is that the value of labor power, the worker's commodity, is the wage, but this is less than the value (SNALT) embodied in the stuff the worker makes and the capitalist sells if he can. This explains profits, the money form of SV, and lots of things about the way the ecinomy works and the the workplace is structured.
Now, my point is that you can say most of these things without the stipulation that all taht stuff is properly measured as SNALT and without the distinct stipulation that labor is the only cource of value. Value can be measured by whatever you like -- purely subjectively, as in marginalist theory. And profit can have other sources, like the ones I named. And the ones Marx names in the chapter in Rent in CIII. (Monopoly of technical advantages.)
We can still stay that ob average and in the long run most profit derives from the exploitation of labor, with the attendant results for workimng life and for the economy. The LTOV and the LV are at best idealizations of this fact. They are not strictly true, and Marx knew it. (That is why I say he uses rthaer than advocates value theory.) They are not really necessary for the results socialists and indeed Marxists.
I think Marxists have futher and unnecessarily marginalized themselves by fetishizing the LTOV and the LV -- the worst examples are people who spend their lives putting epicycles on a theory that at its best is a slightly archaic heuristic, a vivid way of saying that profits come mainly from exploitation. It may feel good to have a cozy little circle of friends who like these ritual chants, but if you take them too sesriouslt you will go blind and mad.
--- T Fast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
> Andie writes:
> > I don't know hoe much productivity growth is due
> to
> > R&D and investment in new plant and equipment, as
> well
> > as building up necessary cash reserves and
> acquiring
> > long term assets liquid and other, but isn't that
> the
> > modern equivalent of "abstinence," where dividents
> and
> > executive jets are indulgence?
> >
> This is a total misunderstanding of the Marx's
> argument. The question is
> about what is origin of surplus value not about how
> that surplus value is
> spent whether that be on Jets, R&D, hookers or is
> saved. In your model
> investment in R&D is for example paid by thrift,
> what Marx wants to know is
> what is the source of that revenue that the
> capitalist can exercise thrift
> over. Brad's farmers will not generalize to your
> argument.
>
> Travis
>
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