====================== HES POSTING =================== Michael Williams claims that "a surplus over the socially specific reproductive requirements of labour is a perfectly well-defined" notion. I don't see how this could be possible once the subsistence wage cannot be "perfectly defined". Surplus too would become something "vaguely" determined. Besides, in talking on this topic, we can't forget all the problems related to Marx's (and Ricardo's) labor theory of value. Think of Sraffa: he had to abandon the notion of subsistence wage and defined the surplus only in physical terms or in price terms, certainly not in labor terms. Claudio Sardoni Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]