Fred, I lost the offlist message which you sent me. I have cc'ed my reply to the list. Won't have my computer back on line until mid next month, I suppose. You re-raised the point that the same cost price is used for the determination of value and price of production, but as you know I reject the idea that cost price (c + v) enters into the determination of value at all, though total value (or the value of the representative or synechdocal individual commodity) can be resolved into or represented as c + v + s. I also reject the neo Marshallian idea of short term and long period analysis. Mattick Sr rejects the idea that Marx was even interested a theory of production prices; he argues that Marx was more interested in showing that the value concept was not invalidated by the formation of an average rate of profit; Marx's value theory is meant not to analyze relative prices but to theorize the effects of the ongoing depreciation of commodity values by means of techno-organizational change on the basic social relations of production and exploitation. Indeed you will find that Mattick Sr quotes Korsch to this effect, see also Mattick Sr 1959. Mattick Sr also critiques Rubin's equilibrium interpretation in a footnote to Marxism: last refuge of the bourgeoisie. As for the independent existence of abstract labor, I also reject this idea. I have been trying to argue that abstract labor, like say position in quantum mechanics, has only a latent or potential existence outside of money measurement; that is money measurement causes a collapse in the commodity state. So I am with the VF school on this one. So we have many points of ongoing disagreement, which we can revisit in a month or so, but it seems that we already have a very clear sense of what our disagreements...and agreements... are. So maybe we have exhausted the potential of our exchanges on these topics; I hope being offline will give me time to read new material and write on new aspects of the problems which concern us. I will check in with interest on this discussion of the small farmer, as the topics of subsidies and protectionism interest me quite a bit. best, rakesh
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