Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 11:18:37 +1000 From: Steve.Keen-AT-unsw.EDU.AU Subject: Re: Labor, surplus value Dear Donna, I look forward to hearing from you again after you have read the papers. In the meantime, a quick observation on your post, where you said that, "as I understand the dialectic between use-value and exchange value, it is the discovery of that contradiction within the commodity itself which enables a solution to the problem that surplus value must be found both within and outside of the circulation process. That problem is resolved by the special commodity of labor-power--its consumption as a use value, i.e., the actual process of labor, is more productive of value than its exchange value. In other words, Marx's distinction between labor-power and labor. This distinction allows Marx to isolate the source of surplus value and to hold independent it of the many forms in which it appears:profit, rent, interest." Basically, my papers argue that the first half of the argument as you put it is correct: this is indeed how Marx derived the source of surplus value in Capital. In this, he was using a technique which he first developed in the Grundrisse, of deriving the labor theory of value from the concept of a dialectic between use-value and exchange-value. If you read, for example, _Wage Labor and Capital, 1847, Progress Publishers, Moscow, p. 85, you will see that prior to this, he derived the source of surplus simply from the "special commodity of labor-power": "The worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labor-power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labor, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed." However, in Capital, his argument was that: "The past labor that is embodied in the labor power, and the living labor that it can call into action ... are two totally different things. *The former determines the exchange-value of the labor power, the latter is its use-value.*" (1867, Capital I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, p. 188) The latter argument was infinitely more sophisticated than the former. However, it also uncovers a logical flaw in the labor theory of value, which is the subject of my 2 papers. Cheers, Steve Keen ------------------
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