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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (10616)	2/2/2006 11:24:16 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541933

Years of labor should also be treated as capital in the business. Surprisingly enough, it's you I disagree with here. Firstly, I disagree with the tenet (from which this seems derived) which basically underpins much of Marxist economics, attributing the value of goods to the labour input without regard to the market, nor necessarily to the relative values of different labour input. The mud-pie/cherry-pie example is sufficient to dismiss that. More relevantly, however, those years of labour are already paid for by the business. Why should they be additionally treated as capital in the business? Sure, workers might be entitled to shares in a business as a part of their contract, but this would be stated and probably taken into account: I don't see why they would be entitled to a chunk of the business under other circumstances?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (10616)	2/2/2006 11:50:53 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541933

This doesn't happen often but thames_sider pretty much covered my response. The workers have been paid for their labor. why should it also be considered a capital investment. The workers didn't risk their own wealth to work for the company. Also capital is a word with a definition. You might argue that paid labor should be treated the same as capital, but it isn't capital. Redefining the word to fit your agenda might be useful but it leads to confusing debate and perhaps sloppy thinking. Even if compensated labor deserved to be treated the same as capital, and was called something like "the moral equivalent of capital" (and I think that is a silly and unreasonable, even unjust and unfair idea) it still would not be capital. Tim