[lbo-talk] Marx and Justice

james daly james.irldaly at ntlworld.com
Sat Jul 28 02:13:10 PDT 2007


On 27/07/2007 18:22:57, Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari at berkeley.edu) wrote:

****************** R.B. -- James wrote:

"This is an example of what Marx calls "obsolete verbal rubbish". Buying and selling labour power is an economic transaction which has no connection with morality. That it is a just and free transaction is lying bourgeois ideology."

Of course James has simply misquoted Marx who uses that expression in the Critique of the Gotha Program to mock the reliance on justice, fairness and right in the formulation of socialist demands!

The very moral basis James wants to give socialism!

There is no lying that the wage relation seems ideally marked by an exchange of equivalents.

***************

J.D. -- The trick Marx exposes has been so successful that it is still wreaking havoc on lbo-list.

When I said Allen Wood misquoted Marx by leaving out quotation marks (unintentionally, no doubt) I could point to the evidence. Rakesh cannot. He is seriously and very regrettably misusing words. What he probably means is that the (properly quoted) words do not apply to his theory.

But in fact they do. Whether you say the wage exchange is fair or unfair, that is "obsolete verbal rubbish" according to Marx, because the whole transaction is (bourgeois a-moral) economics, not a moral relationship.

I do not wish to give socialism a basis of fair exchange.

By the way, I am saying the bourgeoisie lies, not Rakesh. But he should avoid their ideology. It does wreak havoc.

James



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