Gil had written:>>> … what if they can, as in the case where firms
engage outside contractors to perform specific tasks, and pay them if
and only if those specific tasks are performed? In that case, what
would be the value of the services thus transacted? That said, I agree
with you it isn't the *labor* that's transacted for, even in this
case--it's the concrete labor service, i.e. the thing *accomplished*
by the labor. But Walt's question still arises with this amendment.<<<
me: >> In that case, we're not talking about a pure
capitalist/proletarian relationship.<<
Gil:> But as I understand Walt, to assert this is to beg exactly the
question that Marx begs in question 6.<
According to the Wikipedia, >In logic, begging the question is the
term for a type of fallacy occurring in deductive reasoning in which
the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in
one of the premises. For an example of this, consider the following
argument: "Only an untrustworthy person would run for office. The fact
that politicians are untrustworthy is proof of this." Such an argument
is fallacious, because it relies upon its own proposition—in this
case, "politicians are untrustworthy" -- in order to support its
central premise. Essentially, the argument assumes that its central
point is already proven, and uses this in support of itself.<
Marx may be begging _Gil's_ question, but he's not begging his own
questions. (Nor is he engaged in deductive reasoning. So this business
of "begging the question" is fallacious; I don't have time to look up
which fallacy it is. A category error?) On what he was asking, see
above. I'm not begging Gil's question. Again see above.
What law of society or nature requires that a "pure" [what does this
term mean? is it a synonym for "ideal"? - GS] capitalist /proletarian
relationship must be based on the purchase of [just] labor power? Or
is this simply definitional? And if it's simply definitional, then why
does Marx insist that this is an *implication* of his assumption of
commodity exchange at value? Especially since it doesn't in fact
follow from this premise?<
First, it is I, not Marx, who uses the word "pure."
Second, no, "pure" is not the same as ideal. Pure carbon has no other
elements in it than just carbon (fitting with the first definition in
my WEBSTER'S 9TH NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY, i.e., "unmixed with any
other matter"). It is not ideal or idealized. Pure capitalism lacks
non-capitalist modes of production. It's far from ideal.
To me, "pure" refers to the "shared characteristics" of
something.[***] Just as the shared characteristics of a commodity are
use-value and exchange-value, capitalism (the subject of Marx's book,
CAPITAL) has certain shared characteristics, which are defined as the
book progresses.
Contrast this with the ideal markets of NC economics. Imperfect
information (e.g.) is a shared characteristic of all markets (and
indeed all of life). But the NC economists abstract from it, producing
an unreal vision of markets. Marx and classical economics (Smith,
Ricardo, etc.) didn't abstract from it. They never even considered the
idea of perfect information, since their benchmark was the empirical
world rather than some Debreuvian ideal.
Is Marx engaged in definitional thinking? Yes and no. I don't think I
have time to explain Marx's style of reasoning to you. Perhaps you
should look at Ollman's book, ALIENATION. Mike Lebowitz has a good
book or two, also.
I don't think that Marx argues that pure capitalist social relations
("it" in the last sentence above) is an "implication" of his
assumption of exchange at value. Where does Marx "insist" such a
thing? Again, Gil knows chapter and verse much better than I do.
[***] The "shared characteristic" of something is sort of like the
idea of its "essence." But I interpret "essence" to be like Plato's
forms, idealized: every horse is simply a distorted version (a
incomplete vision) of an idealized horse which perhaps exists in the
Mind of God. Shared characteristics, on the other hand, refer to
_empirical_ characteristics, as with the genes that allow fertile
interbreeding of a species. The species of horses (Equus caballus) is
defined by their ability to breed with each other, generally producing
fertile young. This, of course, abstracts from the heterogeneity of
horses, just as Marx abstracts from the heterogeneity of use-values in
volume I of CAPITAL.
Gil:> Suppose we leave this "pure" world behind and get back to the
empirical one. [always a good idea! -- JD] As a matter of both
theoretical possibility and empirical fact, capitalists needn't always
gain access to value-producing workers by engaging (merely) labor
power. They sometimes loan money at interest to workers and get their
surplus value that way; they sometimes contract for specific labor
services. <
see above.
me:>> Instead, we're talking about either simple commodity production
(by independent contractors) or a "gray area" between
capitalist/proletarian employment relations and simple commodity
production, a mixture of these two types of social relationships.<<
Gil:> I agree we're not talking about "simple commodity production",
because the scenario at hand [to him] is one where the *only*
commodity being provided is the labor services that capitalists would
otherwise extract in production if they only hired labor power. And
again, calling this a "gray area" begs exactly the same question that
Marx is begging in Ch. 6. It *assumes* that purchase of labor power is
the relevant norm. But why? It doesn't follow from Marx's argument in
Ch. 6. That, to me, is what makes Walt's question apt.<
see above on question-begging.
Gil:> I understand that one could argue on empirical grounds that
capitalist purchase and subsumption of labor power is the typical
(although clearly not universal) basis for the circuit of capital. But
exactly because this is an empirical statement, it doesn't support
theoretical judgments as to the "purity" of given relationships, and
thus can't support the corollary that non-typical relations are
"impure" or in a "gray area."<
My judgment is that Marx's decision to start with a relatively pure
version of capitalism made a lot of sense during his era (see above)
and was very productive. I wish he hadn't _insisted_ on dying before
he finished volumes II and III (and the book on Wage Labor).
me:>> Gray areas are important: the empirical world often deviates
from abstract theory, being instead overdetermined.<<
Gil:> My point is that Marx has not validly established purchase of
labor power as the "pure" case of the modern circuit of capital, in
the first place. So to call deviations from this case "gray areas," as
if there's something murky about them, is to beg the question at hand.
Capitalists can, and often do, appropriate surplus value on the basis
of these alternative forms of capital/labor exchange.<
I don't think that Marx had to establish the hiring of labor-power as
the pure case. Rather, it was my interpretation of Marx. On the rest
of the above paragraph, see above.
me:>> For example, before capitalist subjection (a.k.a. domination or
subsumption) of labor applied generally, there was
"proto-subsumption," which represented a mixture of usurer's and
merchant's capital on the one hand and precapitalist methods of
subsumption on the other.<<
Gil:>Agreed, but see above: the methods of surplus value appropriation
respectively corresponding to usurer's and merchant's [putting-out]
capital persist under the capitalist mode of production, so it is an
open question what if anything constitutes the "pure" case of surplus
value appropriation. My response to Walt's series of questions is that
Marx has not established, in his Ch.6 argument …, that capitalists
must purchase [and subsume] labor power as the "pure" case of surplus
value appropriation.<
sure, usurer's and merchant's capital persist under full-scale
capitalism. So what? They exist in a society dominated by "pure"
capital. They use other kinds of subjection, as with usurers who hire
thugs to beat up debtors. In many ways, it is just a different kind of
capitalist relations, a bit like Marx's discussion in volume I, ch.
15, section 8, of how the rise of machinofacture leads to
pauperization of factories still using simple competition and the
division of labor, leading to intensified efforts to "squeeze" workers
(going beyond the then-prevalent norms of exploitation).
--
Jim Devine / "You need a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
