At 23:04 +0100 3-11-2000, Fred B. Moseley wrote: >On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, riccardo bellofiore wrote: > >> At 6:24 +0100 3-11-2000, Fred B. Moseley wrote: >> >I would like to raise again the issue of what Volume 1 is about - whether >> >labor-values only or money-quantities determined by labor-values - in >> >response to some very interesting comments by Andrew K. in recent posts >> >(thanks, Andrew). >> >> Neither one or the other. I would guess it is on the process of >> *production* of capital. >> >> r.b. > > >Hi Riccardo, > >Two quick questions of clarification of your very cryptic response: > >1. What do you mean by "capital"? the production of surplus value for the capitalist class as a whole, i.e. the objectification of abstract living labour including a portion of surplus (and unpaid) labour > >2. What questions are analyzed in the theory of the "process of >*production* of capital"? capitalist production as the production of surplus value, i.e. the origin of gross profits > >Are there no quantitative variables determined? yes, total living labour and total necessary labour: i.e. the total exploitation time of the working class, and the total labour time embodied in the goods left available to <orkers (the 'subsistence'). 'macro' magnitudes which are independent from the rule governing 'micro' exchange-ratios. this class relation cannot be analysed without a vision of the capitalist process as a sequential monetary process. This must be done in vol. I with simple (money) prices expressing labour values. This is why I see as questionable the tendency to cancel 'labour values' in Marx's theory, as well as the redefinition of necessary labour in terms which denies that in vol. I this category was used by Marx as identical to the labour required to produce the means of subsistence. This is not against the fact that variable capital was a money magnitude, as long as the exchange relationship between the money commodity and the other commodities is regulated by 'simple prices'. There is an ambiguity in Marx's text on these points, and any reading that cancel this ambiguity is problematic. But all this you know very well before my answer. r.b. Riccardo Bellofiore Office: Department of Economics Piazza Rosate, 2 I-24129 Bergamo, Italy Home: Via Massena, 51 I-10128 Torino, Italy e-mail bellofio@cisi.unito.it, bellofio@unibg.it tel: +39 035 277545 (direct) +39 035 277501 (dept. secr.) +39 011 5819619 (home) fax: +39 035 249975
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