re 4601 >On 2 Dec 2000, at 23:12, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote: > >> Again, this cannot be. Marx cannot simply take C and V as given. You have >> simply missed my argument here! Marx has to stipulate that the input >> means of production and means of subsistence are bought at prices EXACTLY >> proportional to their full value. Only this way can he ensure that the >> only source of surplus value is the consumption of labor power (if >> leather sells below value, the surplus value embodied in boots could be >> due to the self valorization of the leather, not the exploitation of the >> proletariat); correlatively, only by stipulating exchange at value can he >> ensure that live labor does indeed produce surplus value (if the prices of >> leather or awls are taken as given and happen to sell above value, dM >> could be swallowed up by M). > >Hi Rakesh, > >All these 'stipulations' seem a million miles from Marx to me. At >any rate, your interpretation flatly contradicts the Marx's discussion >in ch. 5 and ch 6, vol 1 of CAPITAL, where Marx goes on at length >that he need not assume price=value and where he claims to >establish that SV has its only source in labour power / labour. > >Thanks, > >Andy Andy (B), you are right about this. Marx certainly says that whether exchange is of equivalents or not, exchange itself cannot yield surplus value (which brings us back to the Roemer-Skillman critique). But Marx does then say that he takes as his starting point the exchange of equivalents (capital 1, p. 268, vintage). He does say that throughout vol 1, he is assuming that prices = values (p. 329). And he does stipulate that labor power, like all other commodities, always sell at its full value (p. 431); postulating this rule in his gedankenexperiment of of the exchange of labor power always at its full value gives capitalists little option but the production of relative surplus value. That is, postulating the rule of exchange at full value eases the logical transition from absolute to relative surplus value. Are you denying that in vol 1 that Marx does stipulate that that there is no foreign trade or relation with non capitalist modes, that the value of money is constant, that there are only two classes? Do you think these stipulations are a million miles away from what Marx is doing too? Yours, Rakesh
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