[lbo-talk] Labor and Productivity, was Doug, on Salon

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 15 14:32:00 PDT 2013


Turbulo: "But his or her profits have nothing to do with his or her "labor" These functions could just as easily be performed for a salary, and are. "

[WS:] This is no different from what I was arguing - that part of the capitalist income is salary on his/her productive input and part of it is rent on his/her position in the system of production. Salary is productive, rent is parasitic so the ratio of rent to salary in capitalist income is a measure of parasitism. I tend to refrain from the term profit because its lack of analytic clarity (per above) and emotive connotation.

I'd rather use "operating surplus" (which I believe is the technical term used in national accounts) or "income" with the understanding that it has the element of compensation for services and the element of rent.

I have another question for you - a big chunk of investment capital today comes from institutional investors which include for a large part savings and retirement funds of millions of grunts who saved their meager earnings for the old age. Does the interest earned on these investments constitute a parasitic capitalistic profit?

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 4:45 PM, <turbulo at aol.com> wrote:


>
>
> Bill: "The core of Marxist theory as I understood it was that all profit
> ultimately derived from labour."
>
> [WS:] Yeah, and this was also a falsehood or reductionism rooted in
> missing the role of productivity in creating value. Labor may be creating
> all value, but how much of that value it creates depends on its
> productivity, and productivity depends on capital investment. In the
> middle ages, surplus value created by labor was extracted by feudal lords
> and either consumed or passed along to lord's offspring. Hence the
> productivity of labor in the middle ages did not change that much and the
> only way to increase surplus was by increasing labor input (more people
> working on more land). Capitalism separated investment capital from
> patrimony, and labor productivity started to improve rather quickly.
> Unlike feudal lords, who were a purely parasitic element of the medieval
> economy, capitalists actually perform labor that produce value inasmuch as
> their labor increases the productivity of all labor. From that pov,
> capitalist is a hybrid of a feudal lord inasmuch as he engages in
> conspicuous consumption and a worker inasmuch as he invests capital to
> improve the productivity of labor. The balance of these two roles of the
> capitalists - parasitic drones engaged in conspicuous consumption and
> worker bee producing surplus value for others - varied among different
> socio-political settings. I'd say that most of the US capitalist class is
> of the mostly parasitic variety, whereas in Asia and parts of Europe it is
> more of the worker bee kind.
>
> *****************
>
> There is no "fallacy" or "reductionism" on Marx's part.
>
> The capitalist may or may not participate in the production process--as a
> worker, a supervisor or manager. But his or her profits
> have nothing to do with his or her "labor" These functions could just as
> easily be performed for a salary, and are. Profits accrue to the capitalist
> in virtue of the fact that s/he is the owner of capital, and nothing else.
> Productivity does not require investment. It is a function
> of the instruments, techniques and natural conditions under which work is
> performed. The fact that these things take the form of capital, and are
> bought and sold under capitalism, has nothing to do with their inherent,
> productivity-enhancing qualities.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
>
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-- Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."



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