Value isn't profits, it has to be realized to be profits, and anyway only the part left over after wages, taxes, maintenance of the meance of production, etc., and depreciation (surplus value) is profit.
Leaving those aside there is a relationship of some sort between value and profit, but what it is is vexed, whether the two quantities have to be transformable into one another, as used to be widely thought, or not, as is now argued in some circles. In addition value is not wealth -- it is not the wealth of the rich, which is realized SV, post tax profits.
Nor is it social wealth, in the sense of something valuable. Guns, tobacco, toxic sludge all have value in the Marxist sense, while some "valuable things" that don't require labor to produce them (e.g., air) don't. Nor do useful things, things with use-value, that operate outside a commoditified market economy.
I think Marx thinks that productive labor is value producing and specifically that which is protentially surplus value producimg, thus necessary for the reproduction of the capitalist economy as such. Why that doesn't include all the labor that is "indirectly" necessary for the reproduction of the capitalist economy, such as the labor of government official, legal and accounting professionals, I am not clear. Or indeed in what sense the labor of a lawyer defending the property rights of an auto company is more indirectly necessary to the survival of capitalism than that of an autoworker screwing bolts onto cars that will be governed by the property rules to which the lawyer contributes and which are determined by laws made by government officials.
Maybe I can be enlightened here. However, the point of the distinction is not, govt bad and parasitical, labor and private enterprise good and productive.
--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Yoshie:
>
> > Taxes and user fees. Where do taxes and user fees
> come from?
> > Profits created by workers in the private sector.
>
>
> I think you are quite wrong on this. Taxes come
> mainly from individuals in
> the form of income and social security taxes which
> account for nearly 60% of
> total tax revenue. Taxes on "profits" (I.e.
> corporate income) account for
> about 7% and taxes on assets - 3%.
>
http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=84&FirstYear=2
> 003&LastYear=2005&Freq=Qtr
>
> RTFM. Wages are NOT profits or paid by profits.
> Profits are NOT the major
> source of tax revenues, earnings are. Earnings are
> remuneration for services
> performed regardless of the ownership (public or
> private) of the entity that
> produced and sold the product of these service.
>
> But more importantly, I do not really understand
> what you are trying to
> argue here. That the private sector creates wealth
> and government consumes
> or rather wastes it? I can hear that bullshit from
> Rush Limbaugh and an army
> of conservative pundits every day - so I do not
> really need someone on this
> list telling me that, especially if one cannot get
> one's facts on this issue
> straight. Or is it something else that I missed.
> Please do tell.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
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