Verlander and Taco Bell: Marketing at its Best!

I wonder how much Taco Bell payed Justin Verlander to publicly announce the he ate their crap before every start in last year's Cy Young winning season?
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/justin-verlander-reveals-secret-success-conan-taco-bell-155538696.html
Anyone who actually eats Taco Bell 30 plus times a summer would; best case scenario look like me, and worst case scenario be dead. 
Oh well...Product differentiation through advertising remains important in the non-neoclassical world of fast food. 

Surplus and Conditions of Existence.

The following is just a short piece that I posted in response to a common oversight by students in my current Marxian econ course. 
I figured I would share it with all of you as well.

The surplus value in the equation C+V+S=W
is necessary for capitalist growth and expansion, as many of you have written.
I want to add that there are many other conditions of existence of our modern capitalist society that are also fulfilled out of the surplus. 
Many (in fact a majority of) workers in a modern society are not productive (of surplus value).  Managers, service industry people, merchants, bankers, even myself, do not produce surplus, as we are not creating commodities (although the case could be made for education as a commodity). 
All of the value in society has to come from productive activity (by definition) and the rest of us who fulfill necessary conditions for the reproduction (and growth) of the system live off the surplus of the productive workers. To paraphrase the old man in dramatic fashion; we are the vampires of capitalism. 

The Lingering Effects of Ideological Indoctrination

The greatest challenge in terms of material so far in my online Marxian economics course this winter has been the preconceived notions of communism held by many students.

I don't blame my students at all, and yet find it hard not to get frustrated reading discussion post after discussion post along the lines of "the workers getting equal shares of the surplus" when defining communism. 
The concept of apprpriation prior to distibtuion of surplus can be complex, yet...

I cannot help feeling that ideas of a homogenous, drab, poor, "equal" society haunt the consciousness of many of us in this society still.  I guess that is why so many fear Obama being a "socialist"? 

Fighting ideology with ideology remains the mission, the battle remains uphill. 

(As an aside, I am amazed at the sophistication of thought of many of the students in this course.  Teaching introductory level economics is great, but this course has been incredibly invigorating for me so far). 

Briefly on Epistomology (answer to a student's email)

The dialectic was not invented by Hegel but he did a lot to develop the idea. 

The Historical Materialism of Marx was based upon Hegel's dialectics (things influence each other). 
Overdetermination as used by Resnik and Wolff is a step further than Marx's historical materialism. 
Overdetermination is a complete rejection of rationalism and empiricism.  Under overdetermination there is no absolute truth.  Everything is relative and constituted by everything else.  Entry points can be picked to allow analysis and theories fall into order, but there is no standard of truth external to the knower. 

Overdetermination is not so much a way to discredit classical epistemology, but rather intended  to destroy it.
 
Overdetermination is a form of post-modern, aka, post-structuralist, aka, anti-determinist way of thinking about things.  There is a lot of examples of post-modern thought out there if you care to look. 

As it relates to our purposes, this kind of epistemology has the implication that the economy and class are entry points but not causes.  Traditional Marxism states that if you take away the private property and free markets of capitalism, it will cause other aspects of the society to become socialist/communist.  Under a post modern perspective society is far more complex, as is the road to communism.