But the productiveness of Labour pales into insignificance compared to the productiveness of Capital (defined as Property) and NEITHER is independently "productive".

ie as said elsewhere, it is the relationship between Labour and Capital which is productive.

Property rights, and private ownership, are key of course. Capital consists of "Property" in all its forms, and particularly "Intellectual Property".

I don't believe in private ownership. Nor do I believe in State ownership.

When we distinguish the Public and Private sectors we are in fact referring to Private as "owned by a Joint Stock Limited Liability Corporation".

A Corporation is of course a legal claim - as is debt -over assets and production. The difference between these two forms of "Finance Capital" - as Marx had it - is that one is permanent and the other temporary and they are irreconcilably conflicting claims.

But both are obsolete IMHO. I am pointing out that the existence of the "Open Corporate" - of which the UK LLP is the first example - allows a new "enterprise model" - neither Public nor Private but both - whereby assets are held in trust on behalf of "the People"/ the Community, and Users of these assets, and Investors in these assets, share the production.

Using an "Open Corporate" as a "wrapper" we are able to encapsulate the entire property relationship in a new and optimal way, thereby synthesising Equity and Debt as a contnuous class of what I call "Open Capital".  

The increasing primacy of Intellectual Property - the "Value" it constitutes, and its nature as productive "Capital" - is a challenge for Marxists in a not dissimilar way to the challenge the "ownership" of Knowledge represents for muslims.

The Islamic prohibition on "ownership" of the Commons ie Water, Fire and Pasture would surely have been extended to "ownership" of Knowledge had the Prophet been alive today.

Equally, if Marx had been alive he would have had to completely re-visit his thinking.

http://www.opencapital.net/papers/Valueknowledge-based.pdf

was presented to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Lancaster University, and I guess I was one of the few
not coming from a Marxist perspective.

Marx's concept of Surplus Value was a great achievement and much of his analysis, as far as I understand it, was pretty accurate.

But his basic assumptions were faulty. The Sun of Capital does not go around the Earth of Labour.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson