Rod Hay wrote:  
 >James I will stop playing and make my point clear  
 > Marx said value = c + v + s  
 >  
 > and if s is positive then there is exploitation.  
 >  
 > Where c = constant capital  
 > v = variable capital  
 > s = surplus value.  
 >  
 > You said that if value is not equal to v then there is exploitation  
 >  
 > These are not the same."  
  
I'm glad Rod has made his point clear.  But he misunderstands me.  As   
the quote I reproduced from Marx's own Theories of Surplus Value (Part   
I, p. 82) shows, Marx says that profits, rent, and interest are all   
deductions from what could have been paid to labor.  Indeed, Marx makes   
this point after quoting Adam Smith's view of rent as a deduction from   
revenue:  
  
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the   
landlords like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed [the   
quote loved by Roger Sandilands and Warren Samuels, in defense of Henry   
George's land-rent tax proposal], and demand a rent even for its natural   
produce ... He (the labourer) must give up to the landlord a portion of   
what his labour either collects or produces.  This portion or, what   
comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent   
of land."  
  
Marx simply extends Smith's argument to all other categories of income,   
namely, profits and interest, in his theory of exploitation.  This is   
why Marx puts capitalists and landlords on the side of the exploiters   
whiles labourers are the exploited.  Thus, I don't think I have   
misrepresented Marx's argument, as Rod alleges.  True, I have now   
included congealed labor in constant capital as part of the withholding   
from labor.  But that's just taking a dynamic view of the "exploitation"   
process, the type of analysis Rod earlier wished I would do instead of a   
"static state" version.  
  
James Ahiakpor