Geert, I think the passage Grossman had in mind was the following: "Only in large scale industry has man succeeded in making the product of his past labour, labour which has already been objectified, perform gratuituous service on a large scale, like a force of nature...Ricardo lays such stress on this effect of machinery (of which, in other contexts, he takes no more notice than he does of the general distinction between the labour process and the valorization process) that he occasionally loses sight of the value given up by machines to the product, and puts them on the same footing as natural forces." capital I, vintage, p. 510 Of course Marx spares no praise of Ricardo's impartial analysis of the unemployment effect of machinery (on which Hick's appendix in his economic history seems very good), so there is obviously another context in which Ricardo takes notice of machinery. But it seems to be Marx's point that the change in the concrete labor process from manufacture to machinofacture must be grasped in precise theoretical terms (Rob Beamish's book on the division of labor is very good on Marx's method here) and the consequences of that change on the objective tendencies of capital fully explored (Babbage was important here). So it is interesting that while you criticize Ricardo in terms of his naturalism, Grossman criticizes him in terms of his insufficient materialism. Both criticisms seem to be contained in Marx's work. Yours, Rakesh
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