[was: RE: [PEN-L] Estimating the surplus - Turkey (Cem Somel)] Assuming that we're still interested in changing capitalism, I would argue that Marx's categories help us to understand how the imperatives of profitability and capitalist growth operate, in theory and in practice. That is sufficiently large enough payoff (intellectual or otherwise) for me.
Ahmet Tonak ------------------- I don't understand this. Why should the wages & salaries of unproductive labor-power (U) be included as part of surplus-value (S)? didn't Marx once say that S corresponded to profits+interest+rent (with the latter being phenomenal forms of the former)? that excludes U. from the point of view of the capitalist class, isn't U part of _costs_? is it possible for the capitalists to accumulate based on U? or must they accumulate based on S, net of U? If they can't use U for accumulation (any more than they can use the wages & salaries of productive labor-power for accumulation), why not focus on S, net of U? Fred Moseley has argued that the changes in the "Marxian rate of profit" (measured counting U in the numerator) helps us understand changes in the "conventional rate of profit" (with U as part of costs). That makes more sense to me (on the abstract level). But, in the end, isn't it the conventional rate of profit (CRP) that's important to the laws of motion of capitalism? and in the determination of the CRP, isn't the mathematical role of U _exactly the same as_ the mathematical role of the wages & salaries of _productive_ labor-power (V)? Put in a different way, it's often assumed that (all else constant), surplus-value production is proportional to V, i.e., S/V = s'. Thus, if U/V rises, all else equal, the rate of profit falls, since S/(V + U) = s'/(1 + U/V) falls. But why can't s' rise to accomodate the rise in U/V? In fact, Moseley and others who measure U and count it as part of surplus-value show that S/V does rise rather than being constant. So the rate of profit need not fall as a result of the rising U/V. In other words, why not assume, for example, that S/(V + U) is constant (as a first approximation)? Adam Smith had a different theory (one that he didn't articulate much at all), i.e., that spending on U was a substitute for investment in capital goods that promote the productivity of productive labor-power. But that's not what Shaikh and Tonak are talking about. Jim
