[PEN-L:3097] Re: RE: Re: Aztecs

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re:
>
>Is the whip used to force laborers to produce
>exchange value different from the one used to
>make them produce use-values?
>
>> . . .
>
>curious,
>mbs

well, Louis P. does have a point.

Consider the comparison of Erich Honecker and Ferdinand Marcos. Erich
Honecker exploits the East German people, and manages to get some nice
dinners, a pretty big house, some servants, and... a deer park. That's the
most he gets out of them in the way of surplus value because he takes it
out of his people in use-values.

By contrast, Marcos gets... $3 billion. He can use the international
financial architecture to take it out of his people in exchange-values.

I think that the point is incomplete because it neglects the impact of the
social system on human productivity. Where labor power is effectively free
to the boss, the boss has no incentive to make sure that the labor power is
used productively.

Someone once wrote something about the bourgeoisie being a "most
revolutionary class" that awakened productive powers that no one before had
ever imagined slumbered in the lap of social labor. Capitalism gives you
higher productivity to go along with its higher rate of surplus value as
well. But if you are enslaved in the mines of Pitosi, capitalism is no
bargain. (Of course, if you have your heart torn out still beating in
Tenochtitlan, not-capitalism is no bargain.)


Brad DeLong