Reply to OPE-L 3917. Rakesh: "Well, what do you think of the possibility that the rate of accumulation can speed up even as the rate of profit falls?" Possible. Rakesh: "This kind of dynamic is in the Bauer scheme which Grossmann extends. If I remember correctly, you thought this to be an *absurd* feature of the extended scheme" What I say was absurd was breakdown due to excess demand. I *also*, separately, said that the FRP has nothing to do with the breakdown -- the scheme mechanically projects rates of growth of C & V without regard to the rate of profit. Rakesh: "(you have had only the most disparaging things to say about my hero)," False. Please retract. You fail to distinguish between a person, a book, and a scheme (due to someone else, that G. doesn't necessarily endorse). This is what's wrong with academic Marxism and the academic left -- the refusal to distinguish between the demolition of an argument and an attack on a person. The academics act like a bunch of merchants -- everyone has a right to hawk his wares. So the destruction of an argument is taken to be like coming to your stall and smashing your watermelons. That's why they have conferences at which no one confers, discussants who do not discuss -- they're just there to display their wares; and it isn't *nice* to steal away another vendor's business or attack his/her product. How many times have I been told that conferences are not a place to discuss ideas??!! So what do they do in response? Take *personal* offense at a critique that has no personal implications, and then launch a counterattack against the PERSON who made the critique -- talk about how awful a person s/he is, impugn his/her motives, and even lie about him/her and try to destroy his/her reputation. Thankfully, the law in the U.S. has somethat better standards about such matters. (The latest issue of the URPE Newsletter contains a personal attack against a single person as its response to 19 different individuals' criticisms of RRPE *policy*. Supposedly that one person is an Antichrist who managed to hoodwink 18 other very stupid, very gullible, very ignorant, people into signing and even writing (!) documents they did not understand.) "but then what do you make of Capital 3 Penguin, p.375?!" Never said coincidence of rising rate of accumulation (esp. physical accumulation) and FRP was absurd. I also note that the argument there is non-causal. Rakesh: "While no new value is created in exchange, this does not mean that the value substance is not altered in and through ex-change." Diversionary. My original comment was this: "In Marx's theory, value cannot be altered in exchange, so total price in the market is constrained to equal the total value already produced." Obviously, this deals with the *magnitude* of value. I had written: "Rakesh seems to deny that Marx's theory holds that the magnitude of value cannot be altered in exchange. I must say I'm surprised. What is Ch. 5 of Capital I about? What is Ch. 9 of Capital III about? What about the numerous other instances in which Marx says just what I cited?" Rakesh's reply: : Of course what is Capital I, part one about if not the necessity of : money or, to put it another way, money as the necessary form of : appearance of value? This is non-responsive and diversionary. It also confuses exchange and money. In Marx's view, things have a money price BEFORE they come into the market. Rakesh continues: : In my reading, the value substance is : transformed in and through ex-change from potentiae to actuality. : Marx speaks throughout here of metamorphoses and conversions in : ex-change which should be recognized as a more dynamic process than : treating it simply as the medium in which value is conserved would : allow. Marx's metaphors here are from life processes not physical : ones, e.g., laws of conservation. The exchange process is a moment of : metamorphosis or alteration not of value as quantity but of value as : actuality. : : : Value or valorisation is a monetary process through and through and : thus has to be studied with money at the bookends (M-C-M'). Value : simply is not actualised outside this money form, so if we are : interested in the transformation from value to price of production we : must then begin with sums of money, not technical conditions, plus : the real wage. : : I understand Alejandro to be following Fred on this point, and I : wholeheartedly agree. I think this is still off the point. What does it have to do with whether Marx's theory holds that the magnitude of value cannot be altered in exchange? Then Rakesh makes comments that disgress even further. I'll skip them. Then: Rakesh: : doesn't Marx deduce the equilibrium condition for : interdepartmental exchange as necessary for not only for the : realisation of the produced surplus value but also for the continuing : reproduction of capital? How is the repro scheme analysis not : structuralist as you have defined it? The purpose is not to deduce any properties of or changes in the system from the "requirement" of reproduction. Finally, a point of apparent agreement about which comment is unnecessary. Andrew Kliman
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