At 05:42 AM 6/18/97 -0700, Andrew Kliman wrote:
>A reply to Ajit's ope-l 5289:
>
>Ajit: "The quotation from Marx, which I interpreted, does not support
>your interpretation. There Marx is not talking about revenue being larger
>than the surplus value."
>
>Of course Marx is talking about revenue being larger than surplus-value. x =
>surplus-value, and he notes that, if it costs an additional sum a > 0 for
>capitalists to attain the same standard of living, and they do so, then they
>spend x+a as revenue. Therefore revenue is larger than surplus-value.
>Algebraic symbols don't lie.
________________
The big problem with you Andrew is that you don't understand plain English.
Go and read the passage you had quoted from Marx again, and this time real
slow. There Marx is talking about a total surplus value equal to x. A part
of x goes into capital accumulation and another part goes into capitalist
consumption. So revenue is less than x to begin with. Now if it becomes
easier to produce the capitalist consumption goods, then let's say "a"
amount of labor is released after the system has produced same amount of
goods and services it had produced in the previous case. Now this "a" amount
of labor can be used in two ways: either it could go for increasing the rate
of accumulation or increasing the capitalist consumption (or a bit of both
is also possible). "Conversely", if it becomes difficult to produce
capitalists' consumption goods, the the situation is reversed. This time to
maintain the same rate of accumulation and the same amount of capitalists'
consumption, x+a amount of surplus would be needed. But since there is only
x amount of surplus in the system, either accumulation must go down by "a"
amount or the capitalists' consumption go down by the "a" amount (or a bit
on both sides adding up to "a"). So x+a in Marx's example is not revenue.
Marx is not talking about a situation where even simple reproduction will
not be possible. I think you would develop a good critique of your own
theory if you started to read Marx a bit closely. Cheers, ajit sinha