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On Wed, 16 Aug 2000, Paul Zarembka wrote:
> "Fred B. Moseley" <fmoseley@mtholyoke.edu> said, on 08/15/00:
>
> >A quick comment and question for you to think about. In your latest
> >posts, you do not seem to have answered my question of what exactly
> >Volume 1 is about. I say it is mainly about the determination of dM,
> >which means that the explanation has to be in terms of money, and the
> >concepts employed in this explanation (constant capital, variable
> >capital, and surplus-value) have to be defined in terms of money (which
> >indeed they are).
>
> >Do you agree or disagree?
>
> Fred, except for one brief note, you haven't answered my question in
> regard to your interpretation, beginning with 3602.
>
> See also 3610:
>
> 'When Marx ASSUMES price-value equivalence in Volume 1 there is no mileage
> to be gotten out of reproducing quotes like
>
> ' "the VALUE of the commodity IS x SHILLINGS."
>
> 'It seems to me you have to go to the transformation problem to
> demonstrate whatever it is you are attempting. Otherwise, you can be
> accused of being "on the surface of bourgeois society [in which] the wage
> of the laborer appears as the price of labor, a certain quantity of money
> that is paid for a certain quantity of labor" (first sentence of Part on
> "Wages"). But this is not you. So, I'm out of the loop of knowing what
> is going on.'
>
> Paul
Hi Paul again,
My main point in recent posts to Rakesh and Ajit, as stated above, is that
Volume 1 is mainly about the determination of dM. So, when Marx says
something like "the value of the commodity is x shillings" in Volume 1
(e.g. Chapter 7), the shillings are not a convenient indirect measure of
labor-time (why not use labor-time measures directly?), but are instead
a necessary part of the explanation of where dM comes from.
Let me ask you the same questions I have been asking Rakesh and Ajit
(without much response): What would you say is the main question of
Volume 1? What are the main variables to be determined? How do you
interpret Chapter 7 in which the objective seems to be to explain
"how money is transformed into capital" (i.e. into more money)?
Comradely,
Fred
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