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

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Dear Rakesh,
I take "value" to be a social relation of production: so it does speak to the specific finished form of value. Value in the abstract is defined by discipline of labour of production through market competition but it takes on more specific forms such as wage labour for capital etc. The phenomena you mention are all more concrete, modified forms of wage-labour for capital. On a straight empiricist methodology, we would all have throw our hands up and accept that nothing general can be said (surplus value isn't essential either, since plenty of firms operate at a loss for a period). I employ a methodology of Marxian-Galilean abstraction: given this, the points you make about varying empirically encountered features (the way the wage is paid etc) doesn't really affect the defining feature of wage-labour for capital, although, of course, it is important to note that it can sometimes take a form intermediate between its classic case and slavery, as in tenant farming in the post Civil War US South.
Cheers,
Ian

At 8:10 AM +0930 4/15/05, Ian Hunt wrote:
Dear Rakesh,
You introduce a number of other reasons why slaves and machines might not get on: my primary point though is that a master can dictate what slaves consume, whereas under wage labour for capital, capitalists can limit workers' consumption only though a surplus labouring population that maintains competition between labourers in the free market for labour, as accumulation continues.


Dear Ian,
I don't know if the only works here. What then of wage and price controls? What of the history of maximum wage laws? And I am not clear about how this difference between slave and wage labor (note that Banaji defines wage labor in such a way that it includes some forms of slavery; the wage can be paid in provision lots, in use values, scrips, etc., though not everyone paid in such a form is ipso facto a wage laborer) speaks to the question of value.
Yours, Rakesh


This requires persistent "downsizing" of the workforce,
Cheers,
Ian

At 2:21 PM +1030 4/14/05, Ian Hunt wrote: 
Dear Rakesh,
I think you have not understood my point- sorry for not expressing it
clearly. I agree there is conflict between slaves/serfs and their
masters. I agree that in slave commodity production, surplus value is
produced. Labour time also plays a role. However, the drive for
relative surplus value present in capitalism, with a salient role for
labour displacing technical change, would not be part of the dynamic
of slave commodity production. Capital in this form can afford to be
technically lazy, since necessary labour time is set at the master's
command, not through competition between labourers in the market
place.

Dear Ian,
Yes, yes, you had not mentioned the concept of relative surplus value, and I certainly see the logic of this argument that the transition from absolute to relative surplus value depends on the attainment of the civic equality of labor; however, we should check this argument against the history of technical change on the plantations. For their time, they may not have been technological laggards. Why would a plantation owner have been more reluctant to carry out mechanization where this was possible and could be profitable. If mechanization rendered redundant slaves that had already been paid for or were inherited gratis as progeny, those slaves could be sold or forced to purchase their freedom through commodity production as independent peasants. Were slaves more likely to mishandle machines than free wage laborers (as Cairnes and Olmstead suggested)? Charles Post convincingly argues that there is no reason why with the right mixture of coercion and incentives slaves could not work machinery as effectively as free wage laborers. Slavery may not have fettered mechanization.

Whether indentured, slave or free wage labor had been used, there may have simply been limited possibilities of mechanization in the cleaning of tobacco leaves, the picking of cotton seeds and the harvesting of sugar. In other words, slavery was resorted to exactly because mechanization was difficult, the demands for labor were high and the treatment of labor terrible in these agricultural activities (so free labor would not do it).

Moreover, the eventual lag in the industrialization of the American South vis-à-vis the Northeast was probably in part the result of the plantations using the child and female labor on which early industrialization depended. Children and women were not as extensively used in the kind of farming practiced in Northeast and Midwest.

Thanks for the clarification.

Yours, Rakesh

 Obviously, I did not mean for you to extrapolate from my words
that there is a more fundamental difference between industrial
capitalism and others forms of capitalism based on slavery, merchant
or financial capital than the above.
cheers,
ian

At 11:47 AM +1030 4/14/05, Ian Hunt wrote: 
If  can chip in here too. It is not clear that in total
mechanization, labour time would retain its significance: as Chris
suggests, the issue is that of a conflict of interest between
labourer and capitalist, when both have a formally equal social
standing. Machines, no matter how ingenious or creative, would have
no interests in potential conflict with capital unless they had lives
of their own and consciously pursued their own interest in those
lives. If they did and had formally equal social standing, then the
social relations of capital would have a place. On the other hand, if
they were persons but lacked equal social standing, we would have
slave or feudal commodity production: labour time no doubt would play
a role here but not the same as under capitalism.


I don't understand this--there is no conflict between slaves/serfs
and masters? Why is equal standing necessary for there to be a
conflict of interest? Why must there be a conflict of interest among
people of equal (juridical?) standing for surplus value to be
produced, and to be the aim of production. Certainly surplus value
can be produced even if people do have equal juridical standing, but
this does not prove that they must for it to be produced.
rb



--
Associate Professor Ian Hunt,
Head, Dept  of Philosophy, School of Humanities,
Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy,
Flinders University of SA,
Humanities Building,
Bedford Park, SA, 5042,
Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784



--
Dr Ian Hunt
Associate Professor in Philosophy,
Dept of Philosophy ,
Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy,
School of Humanities,
Flinders University of SA,
Humanities Building,
Bedford Park, SA, 5042,
Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784



--
Dr Ian Hunt
Associate Professor in Philosophy,
Dept of Philosophy ,
Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy,
School of Humanities,
Flinders University of SA,
Humanities Building,
Bedford Park, SA, 5042,
Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784

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