Rod Hay wrote:  
  
"It true that in Marx's account constant capital does not produce value.  
But then neither does variable capital. Labour (in the sense of human  
productivity activity) produces value. Surely James can make a  
distinction between labour and wages. As he should also distinguish  
between labour as an activity and the people who preform that activity."  
  
I do indeed distinguish between labor (exertion) and wages.  But if   
people were not hired for wages, their potential human productive   
activity would not be realized.  Thus, I find little violence to   
understanding by associating variable capital -- used to pay wages --   
with surplus-value creation.  I'm inclined to believe that readers on   
this list, at the very least, would understand that.  
  
Rod continues:  
  
"To quote from Marx's initial static state model and draw dynamic   
conclusions is simply a mistake. Read past the undergraduate textbooks   
into volume two of Das Kapital."  
  
I think it would have been more helpful (at least to me) if Rod had   
shown how my inference from Marx's "static state model" is mistaken than   
merely to have asserted that.  I do, indeed, read Marx in the original   
-- Capital, Theories of Surplus Value, and some others.  See, for   
example, chapter 2, pp. 24-5, in my "Classical Macroeconomics: Some   
Modern Variations and Distortions" (2003).  There I quote Marx arguing:  
  
"Like industrial profit proper, rent on land is only a part of the   
labour which is added by the labourer to the materials and *which he   
gives up*, hands over to the owner of the land without being paid for   
it; hence, only a part of the surplus-labour performed by him over and   
above the part of the labour-time contained in his wages ... Another   
form in which surplus-value appears is interest on capital, interest on   
money" (italics [*] in original).  
  
As I'm pretty sure Rod is aware, the guy (Marx) wrote a great deal, with   
considerable repetition, to boot.  Thus, I don't see that using textbook   
summaries of his work is something one should feel ashamed or bad about.   
  In the end, much of what Marx has to offer contributes precious little   
towards economic or human societal development, to put it kindly.  Isn't   
it remarkable that practically everywhere revolutions or policies have   
been undertaken with Marx's inspiration, it's more misery that the   
masses have suffered instead?  This is why I can understand a French   
socialist being quoted as having prayed to be delivered from Marxism (I   
wish I were in my office right now to produce the full quote.)  Of   
course, theoretical Marxists keep disavowing the practitioners.  There   
must be something fundamentally wrong with one's writings when people   
keep "misusing" it, as theoretical Marxist claim on Marx's behalf.  
  
Finally, Rod writes: "I am not really interested in your political   
preferences but rather your misrepresentation of what other economists   
have written."  
  
I say, show me.  I have been writing about Keynes's misrepresentation of   
classical economics for the last 15 years or so.  It's about time   
someone showed me how I've been misrepresenting "what other economists   
have written" for a change.  
  
James Ahiakpor