Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 08:42:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: albania and state capitalism


 
But doesn't understanding exploitation of labor under bureaucracy as not
being a form of capitalist exploitation by virtue of absence of a labor
market miss the point? My understanding of Marx is that exploitation in
capitalist relations takes place at the point of production, and this is
what makes capitalism so much different than other modes of production,
which have their exploitative moment at the point of exchange. It is not
the exchange of labor power commodity with capitalists that defines
capitalist relations, but rather the expansion of labor power into surplus
production in a wage relation? If workers are given incentives to work
harder is this not permitting them a share of the surplus production in
order to motivate them to produce even more surplus? And if a bureaucratic
elite appropriated the surplus for their enrichment, doesn't this
represent a form of (state) capitalist exploitation? Moreover, Marx was
operating under assumptions of a free market. Under monopoly capitalism,
state monopoly capitalism and other forms of corporatism (including
fascism), the operation of the law of value as has been reckoned in these
posts is considerably transformed, and in many sectors diminished or
eliminated--but we don't consider these to be non-capitalist forms. 

AA




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