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
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