I asked: > 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?
Shane responded with some quotes from Marx (none of them from volume I of CAPITAL, but contrary to what I said, one of them from volume II). Due to formatting problems, his response is very difficult to read. (I had read the quotes before.) [please use "Plain text" formatting if there's any problem of this sort.] The key point is that I wasn't rejecting Marx's concept of unproductive labor (i.e., labor that doesn't produce surplus-value). Of all the theories I've read, Marx's makes the most sense. However, I do doubt the concept's _relevance_ to the real world of capitalism. Marx's discussions of the subject are criticisms of Classical discussions, but he never gets to how the concept is relevant to understanding the progress of accumulation over time. There are three ways to treat the wages/salaries of unproductive labor (U) in calculating the rate of profit, none of which I've seen in Marx. The first, seen for example in the work of Anwar Shaikh or Fred Moseley, is to include U as part of the numerator and thus akin to surplus-value, so that r = (S + U)/(V + C).[*] I don't see how that rate of profit has any effect on accumulation, so it should be dropped. A second, more common it seems, view is that U should be counted as being like (productive) variable capital, as a cost of production, so that r = S/(V + U + V). The third definition is Shane's (as far as I can tell) in which U is counted as if it were constant capital, which gives exactly the same rate of profit r = S/(V + U + C). Since these formulas are the same, I don't see any reason to debate one versus the other. -- Jim Devine / "When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth." -- Aldous Huxley [*] This is the common flow/flow definition of the rate of profit, with V and C being the flow expenditures on (productive) variable capital and constant capital (and S is the flow of surplus-value). I'd prefer the flow/stock definition, which in this case would be approximately (S+U)/K, where K is the value of the stock of fixed means of production. Circulating capital (which roughly corresponds to C + U + the value imported raw material) drops out of this formula. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
