I noted with dismay that this topic "disappeared" from the first page of the list of topics without having drawn a single response. "Embarrassing," as Dekker said in Blade Runner. So...
Marx pointed out that he did not discover nor originate the LTV. His contribution was to find the answer to the conundrum presented exchange value: if commodities exchange a their values what accounts for profit? what is the source for expansion, accumulation? Marx's answer is not simply "labor" but labor specifically expressed as labor-power, a commodity that has use-value for the laborer as a value to be exchanged for the value of the means of subsistence necessary for its reproduction. That time of "necessary" labor is less than the time of the laborers working day, and thus yields a surplus labor time, a surplus value. In correspondence Marx put it this way: > > 2) That the economists, without exception, have missed the simple point > that if the commodity has a double character – use value and exchange > value – then the labour represented by the commodity must also have a > two-fold character, while the mere analysis of labour as such, as in > Smith, Ricardo, etc, is bound to come up everywhere against inexplicable > problems. This is, in fact, the whole secret of the critical conception > (M to E 8 Jan 1868) The revolutionary impact is that Marx's analysis identifies the "law of value" not as a self-generated/generating ahistorical commandment, but rather as a social condition of labor, of laborers-- a social relation between classes. Repeatedly in his manuscripts Marx chides the bourgeois political economist for never questioning how labor is forced to present itself as a commodity to be exchanged. And this is the critical point of convergence for Marx's critique of capital with his historical materialism, a point that leads from political economy to class struggle. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#35118): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/35118 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/111057829/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
