I was hoping to avoid more e-mail messages until after my
vacation. But I can't let Gil's message stand as is.
(To paraphrase Peter Burns' famous relative, the best-laid plans
of Marx and men oft gang aglay.)
Gil writes that >>to say that profit is equivalent to an economic
rent is to *deny* the Smithian and neoclassical notion that profits
are essentially a payment for a socially necessary service provided
by capitalists. This denial strikes me as part of the essence of
Marx's critique of vulgar political economy. To put it the other way
around, to *deny* that surplus value is consistent with economic
rent is to *agree* with Adam Smith and the neoclassicals that profit
represents a payment for socially necessary risk-taking, or
correspondingly that interest represents a payment for socially
necessary "abstinence."<<
No, that doesn't follow. Gil's formulation assumes that there are
_only_ two kinds of payments that can be made to someone: a payment
that's needed in order to for a evoke a service and rent. But there
is a third: taxes, which results from coercion.
I argue in a soon-to-be published paper in Bill Dugger's book on
Radical Theories of Inequality that if one wants to use mainstream
language to explain a consistent and coherent Marxian theory of
exploitation (the origins of surplus-value), it's best described as
"taxation without representation." Profits result from the force
applied by the state to preserve capitalist property, the structural
coercion resulting from the reserve army of involuntarily unemployed
labor, and the instrumental coercion of managers (threatening workers
with joblessness, etc.)
(This is _not_ perfectly analogous to taxes, but my paper deals
with that issue. Also, in the case of taxes, whether or not there's
that flow of income actually can be termed "exploitation" -- in
some ethical sense of the word -- depends on how those funds are
used and how decisions are made about their use. The fact that the
capitalists receive their taxes paid by workers (surplus-value)
without the latter being represented in the decisions about their
use suggests that these taxes are indeed exploitative. Actual
state-imposed taxes need not be so, since they might reflect the
popular will of the workers.)
The kind of exploitation that Gil is talking about above ("the
essence of Marx's critique of vulgar political economy," profits as
a result of scarcity rents) is that which Henry George applied to
land-owners, Keynes applied to rentiers, and Roemer applied to
the capitalist class as a whole. These theories aren't wrong as much
as _superficial_ compared to Marx's theory (as I understand it);
that is, they are explained by Marx's theory.
In order to stick to my resolution just a little bit (and to avoid
repetition of stuff that I've posted before), I'll leave it at that,
except to note that Gil's "relative scarcity" corresponds to what
Marshall called "quasi-rents."
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<74267,[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
