Re: Re: reparations

[Roger Odisio <rodisio@xxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:

> I wrote:
> >>another comment: the above suggests that perhaps capitalism has _never_
> >>produced a surplus-product. Rather, all of the surplus that was spent on
> >>capitalist accumulation and rich people's luxuries and the like was
> >>simply the result of _redistribution_ from other people.
>
> Brad writes:
> >Then why is infant mortality these days so low?
>
> The lower infant mortality rate seems mostly a result of government
> investment in public health (rather than relying on the market). (This fall
> in the infant death rate also has a distributional aspect: it's lower in
> Berkeley or Marin County than it is in East Oakland (all in California).
> But I'll ignore that for now.)
>
> Nonetheless, that says that an actual surplus-product was produced (rather
> than redistributed), so that some of which could be invested in public
> health. That settles my Marxist conscience, which insists that capitalism
> produces a surplus-product (unlike, say, Jim Blau (sp?), who seemed to
> being saying otherwise, blaming profits totally on redistribution).
>

Jim,  Brad,

Public health spending does not come out of surplus value, or the surplus
product, as you put it.  It, like education costs, e.g., are part of labor's
social subsistence.  According to Marx:  subsistence is that bundle of goods
and services necessary to "produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate"
productive labor as a class.  Thus subsistence includes not only that of the
worker, but also the nurture of offspring to "perpetuate" labor.

Think about it .  There is nothing "surplus" about health spending; it's a
necessity.  And it doesn't matter whether the health care is provided privately
(which a worker must buy with part of his wages), or free by a public agency
funded through taxes.  Surplus value is that product remaining after labor's
social necessities are provided, and replacement of the means of production
(rougly depreciation of capital) is accounted for.   In other words surplus
value = total product - (reproduction cost of capital + labor).

And Jim:  your discussion about whether or not capitalism produces a surplus
product makes no sense to me, since capitalism is *defined* by capital's
exploitation of labor--called surplus value, which is the difference between
what workers produce (labor) and the reproduction cost of labor power (roughly
corresponding to what labor is paid) and the means of production.  Could Jim
Blau or anyone else think otherwise?

Note to Carrol:  Please note the inclusion of education as part of labor's
necessities as defined by Marx.  That debate you had with Phil Ferguson (?) on
Lou's list (which you posted here, or was it LBO, a week or two ago), was based
on the false premise that education was funded out of surplus value.  When you
realize that education is part labor's necessities (it is mentioned
specifically by Marx as part of subsistence, btw, if an appeal to "authority"
matters to you), the whole question changes, doesn't it?  Not that it was a
very interesting question, at least as posed by Phil (?).

RO