The failure to understand the point that value has no meaning outside a generalized commodity economy based on market exchange led the Soviets to some disastrous early economic experiments based on attempting to plan on the basis of value. Something like it underlies the silly idea to remunerate labor in a nonmarket context terms or chits for labor time -- Marx actually takes this silly notion on somewhere, I used to know, but it doesn't come to mind, Shane? anyone? -- it's not a new idea. And it won't go away.
Although not officially accepting value theory, Parecon offers a version of this form of compensation which betrays the misunderstanding of the fact, expressed in Marx's value theory, that it is the labor market as part of a generalized system of commodity exchange that enforces an objective meaning on a unit of labor time as socially necessary.
I don't even believe in value theory, why should I have to explain this point to its advocates?
Anyway, can we PLEASE stick to the question: does the distinction between productive and unproductive labor have meaning IN CAPITALISM, especially advanced post-industrial finance capitalism like in modern America, and if so, what meaning does it have?
--- Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 14, 2008, at 10:13 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski
> wrote:
>
> >
> > --- Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
>
>
> Look, this discussion is completely meaningless.
> The productive/
> unproductive disjunction is meaningless outside of
> the
> Marxian theoretical system based on the
> comprehension of "value"
> as socially necessary labor *time* and of surplus
> value as the labor
> time represented by the consumption-accumulation
> fund appropriated
> by the capitalist ruling class in the form of
> profit/interest/rent.
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and
> does not consent to
> be called Zeus."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
>
>
>
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>
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