Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 17:30:18 -0400
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: dhenwood-AT-panix.com (Doug Henwood)
Subject: Re: The working class - services & surplus value


At 10:08 PM 4/30/96, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

>As the following quote from Theories of Surplus Value shows, he was
>explicitly critical of the 'tangible commodity' (NOT 'vendible' commodity)
>line.

I just re-read the relevant passages of TSV vol. 1 and Hugh is right and I
was wrong. Very wrong. I usually like to know when I don't know what I'm
talking about, but boy did I blow it this time.

On p. 164 of TSV vol. 1 (Progress edition), Marx writes:

"Adam Smith naturally includes in the labour which fixes or realises itself
in a vendible and exchangeable commodity all intellectual labours which are
directly consumed in material production. Not only the labourer working
directly with his hands or a machine, but overlooker, engineer, manager,
clerk, etc. - in a word, the labour of the whole personnel required ina
particular sphere of material production to produce a particular commodity,
whose joint labour (co-operation) is required for commodity production. In
fact they add their aggregate labour to the constant capital, and increase
the value of the product by this amount. (How far is this true of bankers,
etc.?)"

Marx doesn't answer his final question. A footnote refers to the discussion
in Capital vol. 3; unfortunately I don't have the Progress edition - only
the Vintage - so I don't know what KM said about the "parasitical role" of
bankers on pp. 466-467, 494, 498-500, and 531-533. There are some wonderful
passages in K3 about how the joint-stock company has divided the roles of
owner and manager, and rendered owners useless to production, even though
they still collect tribute in the form of interest and dividends. Since
bankers are even less involved in financing actual production in the U.S.
and the U.K. than they were in the mid-19C, I suspect they are less
productive than even then.

Any thoughts?

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
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