On May 7, 2012, at 1:21 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
Shane Mage wrote:
... Even if instead of GDP
you use NDP (excluding capital consumption as well as indirect
business
taxes) you still are left with the
c component, in the form of the cost of unproductive labor--for
Marx a
basic category and one which he insists must be paid out of the
aggregate
product.
Another of the reasons why GDP and NDP are irrelevant to calculating
changes in profit rates is that both include non-wage incomes, a very
large statistical aggregate that forms no part at all of the model
whereby Marx derived the Law of the Falling Tendency.
if the wages of unproductive labor are "a basic category" for Marx,
why doesn't he discuss them at any length in volume I of CAPITAL?
Capitalist production is not merely
the production of commodities, it is essentially
the production of surplus-value...That laborer alone is productive
who produces
surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-
expansion of capital.
If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of
material objects,
a schoolmaster is a productive laborer when, in addition to
belaboring the heads of
his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school
proprietor. That the latter
has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a
sausage factory, does not
alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive laborer
implies not merely a
relation between work and useful effect, between laborer and
product of labor,
but also a specific, social, relation of production, a relation
that has sprung up
historically and stamps the laborer as the direct means of
creating surplus-value. (v.I, p.558) (Kerr ed.)
the point: only productive labor gives rise to surplus-value.
The general law is, that all these expenses of circulation which
only arise from
changes in form of commodities, add no value to the latter. They
are merely
expenses required for the realization of value or for its
conversion from one form
into another. The capital laid out for these expenses (including
the labor employed
by it) belongs to the faux frais [unproductive but necessary
expenses] of capitalist
production. Its replenishment, must be carried out from the
surplus product and forms,
from the point of view of the entire capitalist class, an
abatement of the surplus-value
or surplus-product, just as, for a laborer, the time required for
shopping for his means
of subsistence is lost time. (v. II, p. 169)
the point: overhead expenses form no part of variable capital or
surplus value.
These costs constitute additional capital, but they produce no
surplus-value. They must
be made good out of the value of the commodities. For a portion
of the value of the
commodities must once more be converted into these circulation
costs; and no
additional surplus-value is created thereby. So far as this
concerns the total capital
of society it means that a portion of it must be set aside for
secondary operations that
are no part of the process of creating value, and that this
portion of the social capital
must be continually reproduced for this
purpose. (v. III, p. 365)
the point: the capital laid out for overhead expenses is part of the
non surplus-value-creating circulating capital, ie., constant capital.
In a capitalist society, this surplus-value is divided among the
capitalists as a
dividend in proportion to the percentage of the total social
capital held by each.
In this shape the surplus-value appears as the average profit
which, in its turn,
is separated into profit of enterprise and interest and which, in
this way, may fall
into the hands of different kinds of capitalist...the landlord, in
his turn, pumps a
portion of this surplus-value, or surplus-product, out of the
capitalist in the form of rent.
Hence, when speaking of profit as that portion of surplus-value
which falls to
the share of capital, we mean average profit (profit of enterprise
plus interest) which
has already been limited by deducting the rent from the aggregate
profits (identical
in amount with the aggregate surplus-value). Profits of capital
(profit of enterprise
plus interest) and ground rent are merely particular constituents
of surplus-value,
categories by which surplus-value is distinguished according to
whether it falls into
the hands of capital or of private land. This classification does
not alter its nature
in any way. If added together, these parts form the sum of the
social surplus-value. (v. III, p. 955)
in sum: empirically, the total surplus value, the numerator
in any calculation of the Marxian rate of profit, comprises total
statistical property incomes plus (what in the 1860's was "a
new swindle") the total of corporate executive (above the level of
direct operational management) salaries. Labor incomes
represent expenditures of variable (for productive workers) or constant
(for unproductive workers) circulating capital.
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
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