File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-07-31.000, message 142


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


     ------------------

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005