Re: public health (was: reparations)

[Roger Odisio <rodisio@xxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:

> Roger O writes:
> >Public health spending does not come out of surplus value, or the surplus
> >product, as you put it.  It, like education costs, e.g., is 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.
>
> this is true in terms of the _benefits_ of investment in public health
> (which is what I was talking about). However, to finance that investment
> (draining a swamp, e.g.), some of the surplus-product must be used. The
> swamp, once drained, provides the benefits of "producing, developing,
> maintaining, and perpetuating" productive labor as a class -- and
> nonproductive labor, too.

Yes. The individual capitalist firm that sells health care services produces
surplus value.  I was talking about aggregates--what is remaining after the
necessities of productive labor are provided for.  The subsistence of
unproductive labor, btw, comes out of surplus value. By definition, it's not part
of the subsistence of (productive) labor, i.e., that labor which produces surplus
value for capital.  I know that makes quantification, or just the ability to
understand what you see, that much more difficult, but it's important to be clear
about these things conceptually.  To get behind the numbers to try to understand
the contradictions facing capital.

Some of the potential surplus value a health care firm produces is typically
taxed away and used to provide part of labor's necessities, including health
care, eductation, etc., through public means. That is, some of the potential
surplus value may be redistributed to labor in the realization process.  But I'm
getting way ahead of myself.

> >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).
>
> right, but isn't the reproduction cost of labor-power a variable? This
> complicates the analysis. If workers get used to not having a lot of their
> babies die (low infant mortality), then this becomes part of the moral &
> historical component of the value of labor-power.

No question.  Social subsistence is a conceptually precise and empirically
difficult term.  Necessities are historically specific.  They change not only
over time (luxuries can turn into necessities), but also vary across different
socities (social settings), and e.g., with different climate conditions.

Marx simply asserted that everyone knows what social necessities are.  Which was
largely true then.  It's a much more difficult determination now.

>  >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?
>
> There are situations where capitalism exists but no exploitation occurs. In
> a general strike, nobody is working for pay, so there's no surplus-value.
> In a severe depression, capitalists don't hire anyone, so no surplus-value
> is produced. These are extreme cases (in which capitalism is threatened
> with extinction, especially the first case), but they show that we
> shouldn't put "creation of surplus-value" into the definition of
> capitalism. Capitalism is organized to exploit labor, but it doesn't always
> succeed.

I disagree.  A brief point about your examples.  It's rarely a good idea to
define the economic part of a social system on the basis of momentary conditions
at the time production has stopped, e.g., strikes.  A depression, even a severe
one, is not a time when no surplus value gets produced; it's a time of reduced
production and surplus value.

As to how capitalism functions as a system, it is easy to think about individual
firms that make no profits for a while (and some of the new internet companies
are not pushing that envelop and testing the role of profits in the system in
interesting ways).  It's possible to think of capitalism as a system without
profits in the short run.  That's a system with distinct limits to growth.
Replenishment of the means of production can occur (remember profits are a
calculated number, equal to cash flow minus depreciation in accounting terms),
but there are no profits with which to expand.

But capitalism is impossible without surplus value (profits being only one form
of realized surplus value).  Exploitation--the unequal labor market exchange
where labor gets its subsistence and capital accumulates surplus value--is the
difference between labor and labor power, which, once constant capital is
accounted for, defines and measures what surplus value is.  That's why Marx
called s/v the rate of exploitation.  The amount of exploitation divided by the
cost to reproduce the labor's that produced the surplus value.

So when you say no exploitation occurs in the marxian sense you mean literally no
surplus value exists.  But without surplus value there can be no capitalist or
capitalism.  Not only investment (accumulation), but all capitalists'
consumption, necessities or luxuries, comes out of surplus value.  As does the
subsistence of unproductive labor.  And other things too.  It's important to
understand that in a round of production everything that remains after the
reproduction cost of productive labor and the means of production are accounted
for is surplus value.  Everything.  And that surplus value appears to us in many
different forms.

So not only *should* we put the creation of surplus value in the defintion of
capitalism, it's the heart of that definition.  Capitalism is defined by the way
surplus value is created--by the exploitaion of labor by capital.

> Jim wrote:
> >>The lower infant mortality rate seems mostly a result of government
> >>investment in public health (rather than relying on the market).
>
> Doug writes:
> >But greater wealth and scientific progress - both of which are products of
> >capitalism - are what made government investment and the science of public
> >health possible. Obviously they're not enough, or I wouldn't be an
> >anti-capitalist, but it's pointless to deny that capitalism has something
> >to do with lower infant mortality and longer lifespans.
>
> I wouldn't say that wealth and scientific progress are products of
> capitalism as much as products of workers and scientists under capitalism.
> It's true that capitalism seems to be much more able to produce a
> surplus-product than previous modes of production (including that which
> dominated the old USSR). This only represents the _potential_ for
> investment in public health. Whether the surplus-product is allocated to
> such investment or not depends on the factors I listed (the "Engels effect"
> (ruling-class fear of working-class diseases), worker struggle for better
> living standards, fear of the USSR, etc.)

I agree, and I don't think you're really disagreeing with Doug's point, limited
as it was.  The vast expansion of labor's productiviety under capitalism has
created mucho potential surplus value.  But in what form that sv gets realized
depends on a menu of forces, including capitalist appetites to spend/invest/waste
it and the class struggle with labor.

RO