> If you want to argue that your conception of
> productive labour is compatible with Marx's,
> it won't do at all to indulge in a lot of airy
> generalities about Marx's method. You actually
> have to go through Marx's work, and pick out
> the passages you think support your argument.
> Furthermore, you have to pick out the passages
> that might contradict your argument, and try
> to square them with one another, see if one
> older analysis is superseded by a newer one,
> etc.
Of course. But even airy generalities about Marx's method are sufficient to refute the view that he held a fixed technical definition of productive labor along the lines you claimed -- namely this:
> labour that sold in the form of a commodity
> (or more correctly, labour that has been
> performed after labour-power has been sold
> as a commodity) to a capitalist
Well, I have picked out one passage in Marx's work that contradicts your claim. How do you square that circle?
I wrote:
> Can you see how Marx's notion of productive
> labor has to be seen as evolving or, at least,
> as conditional upon particular assumptions?
And you replied:
> No, because you have provided zero evidence for
> this claim. You have just engaged in a murky
> disquisition about Marx's method, and actually
> a fairly accurate one in my opinion, but
> ultimately totally irrelevant to your contention
> as long as you don't *show* the passages where
> Marx's notion of productive labour evolves.
You replied to Erik with an Olympic claim that the content of Marx's notion of productive labor was confined to... that thing I just quoted above. You did not subject yourself to the strict rules of argumentation and proof you are demanding from me. Don't you think your norms on how to argue on this list are just a tiny bit asymmetric?
But I disagree. My "fairly accurate" (why, thanks) yet "murky disquisition about Marx's method" is not "irrelevant." It is in fact of the essence. This is why:
The idea (most clearly stated by Carrol) that Marx had a single "technical definition" of productive labor to which he stuck leads of necessity to seeing other (provisional, layered, as I claim) "definitions" of productive labor also advanced by Marx (e.g. the one I linked from marxists.org) as a self contradiction, when in the context of Marx's approach they are complementary. It is akin to the "transformation problem."
I'll reply to replies much later. Now I must take my son to camp and run some errands.