In response to this comment by Steve K., >> ... leads me to reject the premise that labor is the only source of surplus value, the >> whole transformation problem debate--from T-B on to TSS--is an irrelevance for me. Paul Z. writes: >Steve, may I ask why you bother with this list, which has Marx's theory of >the capitalist mode of production as its foundation? If you don't see >labor as the source of value, I think you are really talking to another >crowd (social class?). I'd like to take a swing at this. It may not be Steve's answer--and I don't assume it is--but it does suggest one logically coherent way of looking at Paul's question. Let's proceed via a series of hypotheticals. 1) Suppose you had a "theory of the capitalist mode of production" that defines a social condition of "exploitation," as Marx does, in labor flow magnitudes, but entirely sidesteps the question of whether there were any systematic connection between commodity labor values (however defined) and commodity prices, and thus entirely avoids issues dealing with the "transformation" of values into prices or vice versa; with the possibility that aggregate commodity prices equal aggregate commodity values or not; with the definition of values in "simultaneist," "temporalist," "classical," "new," or other terms; with the question of whether price-value proportionality constitutes the "pure" case of commodity exchange or not; and the like. Suppose further that given the real historical class conditions posited by Marx in Volume I of Capital, this hypothetical theory yields the implication that the working class is exploited if the capitalist class accrued positive profits through (but perhaps not solely due to) relationships of exchange, in the sense posited by Marx near the end of Ch. 5 of Volume I. Would you say that embracing this hypothetical theory is tantamount to rejecting "Marx's theory of the capitalist mode of production"? If so, why? If the theory affirms Marx's central claim that capitalist profit is based on systematic exploitation of the working class (including the dynamic aspects of Marx's argument, let's say) without needing to introduce an additional theoretical entity--commodity labor values--and analyze its possible connection to another entity--commodity prices---couldn't this be viewed as an advance in, rather than a rejection of, Marx's theoretical project, in something like the same way that Copernican cosmology represented an advance over its predecessor, in part because it dispensed with the cumbersome apparatus of Ptolemaic epicycles? 2) Now let's tweak the scenario in (1) a little. Suppose our hypothetical alternative theory
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