Marx wasn't very clear about his purposes in CAPITAL (and the THEORIES OF SURPLUS
VALUE), beyond the general purpose of limning the laws of motion of the capitalist
mode of production. I don't know what his purpose in developing the concepts of
(un)productive labor was. To some extent, he was simply responding to Ricardo's and
Smith's concepts: he was developing a "law of value" in response to their labor
theories of value and since they -- and other classical economists -- talked about
(un)productive labor, he had to do so too, within the context of his "law of value."
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Carrol Cox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I wonder if everyone (on both sides) responding to this topic (not only
in this thread, but in published works on the topic) is not assuming
that Marx in his stumblings around this issue was trying to answer the
same questions that "economists" try to answer.
