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. . . pumps a definite quantity of surplus labor out of the direct producers, or laborers; capital obtains this surplus labor without an equivalent, and in essence it always remains forced labor—no matter how much it may seem to result from free contractual agreement” (Capital, Vol. III, Tucker, p. 440).

Now on the view we are examining, since Marx did not think that the capitalists rob the worker according to the capitalist conception of justice, he must have meant that they rob the workers in some other sense. Moreover, since Marx condemned slavery and feudalism in much the same terms, this other sense presumably belongs to a conception of justice that holds generally. That is, it must be one that applies to the basic structure of most if not all societies, and so it is in this sense non-relativist.

Thus those (e.g. G. A. Cohen) arguing that Marx did condemn capitalism as unjust saw that: since Marx did not think that, by the conception of justice adequate to capitalism, capitalists steal or rob, he must have meant that they steal or rob on some other, non-capitalist conception of justice: for to steal or to rob is to take what rightly belongs to another; and hence to act unjustly. Any economic system said to be based on theft must be viewed as unjust (on Cohen’s view).

§4. Relation to Marginal Productivity Theory of Distribution

1. I think this view, that of Geras and Cohen and others, is correct. I try suggesting a particular form of it. One way to begin doing this, and to illustrate the aim of Marx’s labor theory of value, is to conjecture how Marx would have replied to the marginal productivity theory of distribution. To be sure, although this theory was being developed at the time of his death (1883), he wouldn’t have known of it; but what he would have thought of it is clear from many things he says.

This theory has sometimes been used to argue that under free competitive conditions, the distribution of wealth and income under capitalism is just. Such an argument, seldom heard now,12 was not uncommon in the late 19th century, soon after the marginal productivity theory was developed by the neoclassical economists. They introduced the ideas of marginal utility

12. [This part of the lecture was written in the early 1980s, when the assumptions behind political and academic discussions regarding distributive justice were quite different than they are today. —Ed.]

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and marginal productivity into the theory of price. Very roughly, the idea is that each factor of production—labor, land, and capital—contributes its share in producing society’s total output. In accordance with the precept, to each person according to that person’s contribution, it is just that those who contribute their land and capital should share in the output along with labor. Adam Smith said: “. . . rent may be considered as the produce of those powers of nature, the use of which the landlord lends to the farmer.

. . . It [rent] is the work of nature which remains, after deducting or compensating everything which can be regarded as the work of man.”13 To which Marx in effect replies: since Mother Nature is not around to collect her share, the landlord comes to claim it in her stead.

2.Marx says the following (Capital, Vol. III, International Publishers, p. 824): “These means of production are in themselves capital by nature; capital is merely an ‘economic appellation’ for these means of production; and so, in itself land is by nature the earth monopolized by a certain number of landowners. Just as products confront the producer as an independent force in capital and capitalists—who actually are but the personification of capital,—so land becomes personified in the landlord and likewise gets on its hind legs to demand, as an independent force, its share of the product created with its help. Thus, not the land receives its due portion of the product for the restoration and improvement of its productivity, but instead the landlord takes a share of this product to chaffer away or squander.”

Of course, the last words here, “to chaffer away or squander,” are a distraction and they obscure, as Marx’s expressions of contempt often do, his main point. This point is not that the landlord may be a spendthrift and lead a life of idleness and luxury; for many landlords are conscientious and take care of their estates. (Recall Levin in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.) Rather, the point is that the landlord receives a return solely as an owner; that is, the landlord receives a rent from the land that measures the marginal contribution of the land: a unit of land receives a price according to what it is worth to a producer of grain, say. Marx is not talking about what a landlord receives in return for the management of the estate: what capitalists and land-

13.Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1937), Bk. II, Ch. V,

pp. 344f.

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lords receive as the wages of management is not counted as the extraction of surplus value.

What counts as extracted surplus value is what the capitalist or landlord receives above any wages of management—that is, what they receive simply as owners of scarce factors of production which are in demand on the market. In Marx’s view, it is the social system of capitalism that grants to certain classes the strategic position of ownership of the means of production, which allows them to demand returns in the form of profit, interest, and rent.

Note that when Marx talks about the land becoming “personified in the landlord,” this somewhat mystifying mode of speech refers to the fact that it is the landlord, as an economic agent who owns the land, who steps forward on the market to receive payment for the use of the land. The system of markets with its various categories of agents existing over time makes the various kinds of payments—profit, interest, and rent along with wages—seem perfectly natural and to have existed “from time immemorial.”

3. Let’s look at the long paragraph (third from the end) of Chapter 48 (The Trinity Formula) in Capital, Vol. III, International Publishers, p. 830:

In capital-profit, or still better capital-interest, land-rent, labor-wages, in this economic trinity represented as the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations into things, the direct coalescence of material productive relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted and topsy-turvy world . . . [yet] it is . . . natural for the actual agents of production to feel completely at home in these estranged and irrational forms of . . . illusion in which they move about and find their daily occupation . . . This formula [the trinity formula] . . . corresponds to the interests of the ruling classes by proclaiming the physical necessity and eternal justification of their sources of revenue and elevating them to a dogma.

Earlier Marx has referred to the trinity formula as presenting “a uniform and symmetrical incongruity” (Vol. III, International Publishers, p. 824). I believe that what he means by this is that the trinity formula presents cap-

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ital, land, and labor as three co-equal partners in the process of production; and as co-equal partners each deserves to receive its share of the output according to its contribution. The formula presents the three factors of production as on a par—it presents them uniformly and symmetrically. The formula is an incongruity because, as we have said, on Marx’s labor theory of value, labor is viewed as a special factor of production. From a social point of view, the total output of the production process is to be ascribed to past and present labor. The surface appearances of capitalist institutions conceal the extraction of surplus value and its conversion into profit, interest, and rent.14

It is important to keep in mind that Marx is not saying that, in the high period of capitalism when it is serving its historical role, the general belief in the justice of profit, interest, and rent is the result of deception, that is, a belief which arises as a result of clever manipulation of public beliefs by certain persons backstage who stand to gain from the misconceptions of others. Rather, Marx’s view is that the widespread belief in the justice of profit, interest, and rent is perfectly natural—an illusion (as opposed to a delusion)—given the situation of economic agents in the system of capitalist institutions as a system of personal independence. This belief is part of a capitalist conception of justice adapted to the requirements of the capitalist mode of production. It characterizes the ideological (false) consciousness of capitalist society and is shared by workers and capitalists alike. It is an illusion which Marx’s Capital hopes to dispel, now that capitalism has served its historical role.

14. Marx says in Capital, Vol. III, Ch. 48, part III, p. 825 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), also in Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977): “. . . the respective part played by the earth as the original field of activity of labor . . . and the other respective part played by the produced means of production (instruments, raw materials, etc.) in the general process of production, must seem to be expressed in the respective shares claimed by them as capital and landed property, that is, which fall to the share of their social representatives in the form of profit (interest) and rent, like to [just as in the case of] the laborer—the part his labor plays in the process of production is expressed in wages. Rent, profit, and wages thus seem to grow out of the role played by the land, produced means of production, and labor in the simple labor-pro- cess, even when we consider this labor-process as one carried on merely between man and nature, leaving aside any historical determination” (McLellan, Selected Writings, p. 501).

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