Hi Riccardo, Thanks for your (4494). I finally got around to reading your paper you sent me recently, and rereading your paper gives me hope that we have broadly similar interpretations of Volume 1. Not entirely the same, to be sure, but at least similar in the respect that surplus-value is defined by Marx in terms of money (i.e. as dM) and that he main question in Volume 1 is the determination of this monetary surplus-value. In your paper you say: "As a CONSEQUENCE of SURPLUS LABOR, the capitalist SURPLUS VALUE sees the light of day." (emphasis added) This sentence, and other parts of your paper, seem to suggest: (1) that surplus-value is something different from surplus labor (surplus-value is the effect and surplus labor is the cause), and (2) that surplus-value is defined in terms of money. Do I understand you correctly? I sure hope so, because this is what I have been saying. More precisely, I have argued that the relation between surplus-value (dM) and surplus labor (Ls) is the following: dM = m Ls Aside from our disagreement about the precise definition of necessary labor and surplus labor (which we will get to soon), do you agree with the general form of this equation, and that this equation expresses what Marx's theory of surplus-value, as presented in Chapter 7 of Volume 1? And, if surplus-value is defined in terms of money, then so are constant capital and variable capital, right? Comradely (and hopefully), Fred
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