At 19:15 29/11/2006, Jim Devine wrote:
I'd avoid the word "essence." Instead, I'd say that surplus-value is a
_shared characteristic_ of industrial profits, commercial profits,
interest, and rent. It's invisible but it's there. Without the
exertion of surplus-labor (the production of surplus-value), those
types of income could not be received except as pure redistributions.
The word "essence," unfortunately, has idealist connotations. On the
other hand, "shared characteristics" focuses on the real-world,
empirical, phenomena without seeing them as mere reflections on
Plato's cave wall. There is something in the real world that is shared
by these real-world phenomena.
But Marx, when talking about the
relation between surplus value and
profit/interest/rent (or value and price)---
which is the relation relevant to
'transformation' issues--- is not talking about
'shared characteristics' (which implies
coexisting on the same level); rather, he is
explicitly talking about 'invisible essence' and
surface forms--- which cannot exist on the same level:
"Surplus-value and the rate of surplus-value areĀ
the invisible essence to be investigated, whereas
the rate of profit and hence the form of
surplus-value as profit are visible surface phenomena" (Marx, 1981b: 134).
If you were to say simply that profits
and interest have a shared characteristic, well
of course I'd agree. They are forms of surplus
value (their, um, 'invisible essence') but that
surplus value does not appear as such--ie., exists only as outer forms.
m
PS. thanks, Angelus.
I'm tired, so I won't try to emulate Engels by bringing in an analogy
from chemistry.
--
Jim Devine / "Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge
or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and
race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological -
resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul." --
Barbara Ehrenreich
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
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