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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is socialism? (on exploitation)
Message-ID: <358@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 12:33:29 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.358
Posted: Thu Mar  7 12:33:29 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Mar-85 04:59:03 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 91

JoSH writes:
> ...the Capitalists have provided that without which the 
> production would have been impossible: namely Capital.  Have you,
> Carnes, or any of you other love-a-tree-and-seize-the-means-of-production
> types out there ever tried to make so simple an object as a gear,
> without the proper machines?  

So it was the capitalists who invented and built the machines!  But
someone who designs or builds things, as long as he does so, is a
worker.  A capitalist, as capitalist, receives income solely by
virtue of his *ownership* of machines and factories.  To say that the
capitalists "provide" the means of production is like saying that
someone who has stolen your car "provides" you with a car by selling
or leasing it back to you.

> Under Communism, exploitation takes the form of selling grain 
> abroad to improve your balance of payments, while tens of millions
> starve at home (Russia); [etc.]

Yes, these societies are exploitative.  I'm not a Leninist,
Stalinist, Trotskyite, Maoist, or Pol Pot-head, nor do I see how the
above paragraph demonstrates that capitalism is not exploitative. 

> Capitalism differs from non-capitalistic modes of production in that
> someone who makes a deal that allows you to make hundreds of times
> as much as you could before, is seen as exploiting you because he
> asks--in advance--for a 5% share in the proceeds.

No, that's not what I (or rather Himmelweit) said.  She said that
capitalism is exploitative because the capitalist class appropriates
wealth that another class produced.  The deal described above has
nothing to do with the capitalist production process.  For instance,
it doesn't include wage labor.  

>> The surplus in the capitalist mode
>> arises from the specific character of its production process and,
>> especially, the manner in which it is linked to the process of
>> exchange.
>
> This is pure bullshit.  Surplus in any industrial economy, planned
> or free, is due mostly to the capital (meaning here machines and
> knowhow) that allow the same people to make more of the same resources
> than they did before. 

Himmelweit is talking about where the surplus originates in
capitalist production and how this process works, not about the causes
of the increased productivity of labor.

>> But "profit-making" is just capitalist exploitation.  
>
> But "taxation" is just theft...  Haven't we heard all this before?

But this is just quotation out of context.  The article is trying to
explain what Marx meant by "capitalist exploitation."

> Funny; Adam Smith thought that the secret he had discovered was
> that the great productivity he saw was due to division of labor--
> a process which, if I understand correctly, was anathema to Marx.

No, it wasn't anathema to Marx.  Marx greatly admired Smith and
adopted and further developed Smith's insights on the division of
labor.  If you don't understand Marx's position on this subject,
let's talk about something else.

>>... rate of profit [s/(c+v)] measures surplus value as a ratio of the
>> total capital advanced, constant and variable [variable capital
>> refers to that paid out in the form of wages, constant capital is all
>> other -- RC], the measure of interest to individual capitals, for it
>> is according to the quantity of total capital advanced that shares of
>> ...
>
> I really had the strongest feeling of deja vu when reading this--
> and then I realized what it was.  One of my physics profs once showed
> me his "nut file"--letters sent in by people claiming to have a whole
> complete new theory that explained all phenomena and disproved the
> theory of relativity (one guy even went so far at to disprove Newton...)

It is hard to respond to something which is apparently not an
argument but just a form of name-calling.  The strongest feeling I
get from reading JoSH's response is that at this point he is not
interested in making an honest effort to understand Marxian and
socialist thought.  If he wishes to persuade skeptics like me that
libertarians are thoughtful and well-informed people, this is not the
way to do it.  A common denominator of libertarians on the net, even
the economically sophisticated ones, is that they have absolutely no
notion of what Marx said and thought.  Either they're interested in
learning or they're not, but we can only have a meaningful discussion
when the participants on various sides genuinely try to understand
the others' points of view.  

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes