>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/13/01 03:57PM >>>
labor power is a commodity. that is different than labor power being capital. a
commodity is anything bought and sold in a market. the money used to purchase
labor power is part of the total capital. but labor power is not capital. right?
((((((((
CB: Maybe when the capitalist buys it, it is a factor in the capital social relation
"First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, proper means of subsistence,
machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist
if there be wanting the correlative — the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled
to sell himself of his own free-will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a
social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. "
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 2:25 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:8042] Re: Social Capital
Mat wrote:
>On Jim's comment about Marxian terminology, money capital is required to
>purchase labor-power. So that portion of capital is variable capital, but
>labor
>power itself is not capital. Yes?
for Marx, the meaning of words depends on context (as Ollman makes very
clear in his ALIENATION). In the absence of a mass working-class movement,
labor-power becomes part of capital. That is, it's _treated_ as a mere
commodity even though it isn't really one. That's one aspect of the class
contradiction that characterizes capitalism.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
