[OPE-L:6742] [OPE-L:215] Re: Re: Re: Re: Chapter 1
Ajit Sinha (ecas@cc.newcastle.edu.au)
Mon, 26 Oct 1998 11:35:16 +1100
>>________________ajit c'ments
>>
>>Though I might have disagreement with almost every second line of your
>>above post, my general sense is that your position is moving in my
>>direction. For example, when you say at the end, "The relation between
>>capital and labour is logically prior to that between capital and capital
>>...". You have conceptually accepted that logically the book *Capital*
>>begins with Part two, and not Part one, which simply does not have a
>>category of wage labor to begin with.
__________
Chris replies:
>
>Not exactly because I need all the stuff in Part One on the forms of value
>and money. At the beginning of Part Two Marx writes "If we disregard the
>material content of the circulation of commodities and consider only the
>economic forms brought into being by this pocess we find its ultimate
>product is money."
>In my reconsruction of Part One this disregarding is exactly what I would
>do. Marx gives us lots of useful stuff on forms but is in too much of a
>hurry to jumpt to the content. I would go to the content when facing the
>puzzle of the origin of surplus value.
>Chris
_________
AS:
My point is that there is a logical sequence in *Capital* that goes as
follows: commodity to value to money to capital (i.e. capital-labor
relation). This sequence, now it seems we all agree, has serious problem.
We could easily begin with a discription of capitalist mode of production
and establish an exploitative relation between capital and labor in terms
of necessary and surplus labor time before even bothering about the notion
of 'value' and 'prices'. Most of the 'good stuff' of part one can be placed
in various appropreate places and mostly foot notes.
________
>I have tried to establish this point
>>in my paper, "A Critique of Part one of *Capital vol one: The value
>>controversy revisited", Research in Political Economy vol. 15, 1996. I
>>would urge you to please take a look at this paper. And if you don't have
>>the journal in your library, then let me know I'll send you a copy of it.
>
>I would be grateful if you would send a copy. Most unfortunately our
>Library does not have Research in Political Economy and I am in no position
>to require it. (The same request goes to others who have mentioned in a
>post any paper they have published there.)
>Chris
________
Done! Cheers, ajit sinha