Re: [OPE-L] Why aren't non-labourers sources of value?

[Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx]

Hi Ian,

A quick response to a point you made.

> Because if this is the crucial distinction then it appears to follow
> that human workers in a dictatorial economy of state-owned firms that
> commands and directs what jobs they perform and pays them not in cash
> but in real goods are not the cause of surplus-value; hence are not
> exploited and have no grounds for complaint; after all the
> wage-capital relation, which on this definition is constituitive of
> the production of surplus-value, has been abolished, therefore
> surplus-value is not pumped out of the producers.

Your hences do not follow.  If a class does not produce surplus
value it does not follow that they are not exploited.  A class can
produce a surplus _product_, rather than surplus value, and still be
exploited.  Wherever there is a class society, there is class exploitation.
Certainly feudal serfs produced a surplus product and were
exploited.  This doesn't mean, though, that the *form* of  their
exploitation was the same as that for wage-workers or that the
surplus product that they produced took the *form* of surplus
value.

In solidarity, Jerry