Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
> Hi,
> Because there is a lack of equivalents, Rivero says that one cannot say
> that something "produces more apples than the meat it consumes," whereas
> one can say that something "produces more grain that it consumes." But how
> is it that we understand that cows must consume so much more grain (food)
> than the meat they produce (food)? Because we are able to measure food in
> terms of volume, calories, weight, all sorts of quantification terms.
> Because meat is determined by the money value and not the amount of food
> it produces, the profit motive determines that cows are produced at a loss
> of food volume. Similarly, we can calculate how labor can produce more
> than it consumes: because the money-value the laborer consumes in
> reproducing her labor is less than the money the laborer produces in
> money-value. To use Rivero's example, a worker who consumes X amount of
> meat worth Y amount of dollars can produce Z amount of apples worth more
> than the X amount of meat. As Alejandro must see, his argument fails: it
> makes just as much sense to talk in terms of something producing more
> apples than the meat it consumes because both meat and apples are measured
> by the same quantification terms, in this case money-value.
If money value is one of the fundamentals of the theory, then I resign.
Money must be a deduction: Capital ownership drives to bartering, and
bartering
against additive objects drives to money. Your counterexample is
CONFUSE:
you invite people to think of capital as money, which it IS NOT.
> argument. So, evidently, we have not solved the problem at all: making the
> definition of surplus consistent is to make it circular.
>
> First, it should strike us that Alejandro has (not very subtly) set up the
> problem as a catch-22. He says first that it only makes sense to say that
I was trying to show that you seem to define capital as the accumulation
of surplus, and surplus as the origin of capital. So the catch-22
should not strike you, as it was a purposeful play. Only a minor
correction;
in:
> something "produces more grain that it consumes," and that saying that
> something "produces more apples than meat it consumes" does not make any
> sense. We have shown that saying that something "produces more apples than
> meat it consumes" makes perfect sense. But putting Alejandro's first error
> aside for the moment, Alejandro *now* claims that saying something
> "produces more grain that it consumes" is circular, since it has the form
> of "produces more capital than it consumes." Over the course of two short
> paragraphs Alejandro has contradicted himself.
the first "it" was meant to be "grain". For instance, a field produces
more
grain than the quantity of grain needed to grow the new plants. So no
circularity here, no need to abstract grains to "capital".
> > The whole point is that the benefit of the owner is not linearly related
> > to any measurable quantity attached to labour.
>
> The point is that the quantity of labor contained in a commodity is the
^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^
> one substance than all commodities share - since they differ in shape,
^^^^^^^^^
Hmm even Aristoteles' physics is better for this task.
> size, material, composition, function, etc. - and that therefore it is the
> labor substance that is exchanged, since what is common to all becomes the
> common measure. Understanding common measure prevents fundamental logic
> errors found in such assertions as 'something cannot produce more apples
> than the meat it consumes.'
Claiming the existence of a common measure is only that, a claim. Would
you
be so kind as to propose an actual experiment showing the existence of
such substance? If you can not, I'd beg you to avoid to use the
word "empirical" in any follow-up of this discussion.
> > I like this concept of "expanding" capital, from there it is clear that
> > no conserved object lies under it, and then you dont need the concept
> > of surplus to make capital to increase.
>
> How is capital to expand if its animation does not produce more than it
> costs to replace the capital used up in production? The concept of surplus
> is essential to understanding how capital expands, since it is a surplus
> of capital (generally in the form of commodity-capital) that adds itself
> to capital existing, causing capital to expand.
Pity, so here you really think that capital "adds", ok, not "expands".
Expansion
is very different of addition.
> As Alejandro should realize by now, if all labor does not produce surplus,
> then the term "surplus" is an absolutely necessary qualifier, since it
> refers to a particular sort of labor and not all labor. "Necessary" and
> "surplus" in relation to labor are not "buzzwords," but empirical facts to
> be described and explained. Since if humans do not eat they will die, and
> this will extinguish their labor, it is necessary for them to eat so their
> capacity to labor will be restored. And since they can produce more than
> they consume, which is true because of the empirical fact of surplus, then
> labor produces more than is necessary. Alejandro, in his zeal to vanquish
> "revolutionary propaganda" has denied features - the most basic features -
> of empirical reality!
The empirical facts in your parragraph are the ones related to humans:
They
will die if they do not eat, etc. But you put the label "empirical" to
the
most theoretical concept in your discussion. Well, that is really
propaganda
if I saw one!
The two last parragraphs are more interesting, so I'll split discussion
here.
Alejandro