I am glad we agree on the first point. On the second I have my doubts. Some of these are expressed in my skepticism about value theory as saying really anything more than "we don't need capitalists to make the economy run; they are superfluous/" Analytically an important issue/problem/objection to reading more into it is something than that is something that sometimes comes out in our intermittent discussions about "productive" (of value) vs "unproductive" labor. I'm not persuaded that this classification will bear the weight value theory, especially the vulgar version (that all profits represent (realized) surplus value understood as embodied abstract labor), must place on it. I just don't think you can sort out what work is value producing and what isn't. Thus I'm doubtful that we can say that, for example, financial labor, raising capital, for example, isn't value producing (in a non-tautological sense), and certainly that it isn't profit producing. Financial, legal, accounting, advertising, etc. work is no less work and no less necessary to the operation of the economy than screwing together widgets on the assembly line. Actually, your taxi driver example is a good marginal case in its own right.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 10, 2006, at 11:19 PM, andie nachgeborenen
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Isn't "parasitism" the whole point of the "vulgar"
> > labor theory of value, that value is exhaustively
> > constituted by accumulated labor? And isn't the
> charge
> > of parasitism the real point of value theory, not
> in a
> > moralistic sense, although also) in an ethical one
> --
> > that, as a matter of scientific fact, capitalists
> qua
> > capitalists contribute nothing essential to the
> > economy, and thus are parasites?And hence they
> have no
> > claim of right to any property rights to capital
> or
> > from income deriving from its use?
>
> Yup, which is why I object to the moralizing tone of
> Patrick's (and
> David Harvey's) comments on finance - it starts to
> sound populist/
> Veblenesque in opposing virtuous industry to evil
> finance, when the
> whole point of the capitalist set up is to suck
> value out of workers,
> either very directly (e.g. a NYC cab driver, who
> starts his day about
> $100 in the hole and has to work for 8 hours just to
> break even), or
> very indirectly (a portfolio manager cashing a $2m
> bonus check).
>
> > And at the risk of opening a firestorm about value
> > theory that I really don't want to participate in,
> I
> > am surprised to hear you, Doug, asking rhetorical
> > questions suggesting an uncritical (or even a
> > critical) acceptance of the notion that it is
> absurd
> > to suggest that profits might have an origin in
> > something other than something that happens at
> "the
> > point of production."
>
> I don't think the attempt to put numbers on value
> theory makes any
> sense, but as an abstract model of the organization
> of capitalist
> society, it can't be beat. So yes there are profits
> made in finance,
> but they do not originate in finance. They come from
> interest and
> other payments by participants in production -
> workers paying off
> their mortgages, or shareholders collecting their
> dividend checks.
> Profit, interest, rent = the phenomenal forms that
> value takes in a
> world where there really is only money.
>
> Doug
>
>
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