Rakesh writes, among other things, >At any rate, I find no clear point to Gil's argument. Gil seems to >me a very ungenerous reader of Marx out to hoist him by his own >petard or impale him on his own sword. He seems to have haughily >dismissed anyone who has been convinced by Marx's theory of value as >Ptolemian--it seems that you do not find this as insulting as I do. >Again, if you do look over the exchange, I did not call Gil an anti >semite. I MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT THINK THIS. Gil responded that it >was implied in my criticism that if one criticizes Marx on logical >grounds, he becomes an apologist for the Holocaust. I said that >Marx's theory provides the most solid foundations for the criticism >of common sense notions of the roots of exploitation which has >animated modern anti semitism. I do think this this is true of >Marxian theory. > >I remain not clear at all as to what the ultimate point of Gil's >critique is. 1. I certainly never read Rakesh as labelling me an anti-semite. For my part, it was never my intention to compare value theorists to Ptolemaic epicyclists; the point of the comparison was only to suggest that the possibility of accounting for Marx's theory of exploitation without having to resort to value theory might be counted as a theoretical advance, however necessary value theory might once have been for Marx to achieve his lastingly valid insights. 2. Whether I'm being "ungenerous" to Marx seems to me beside the point, although for what it's worth I go out of my way to accomodate Marx's *historical* argument in the second half of my critique (as yet mostly un-aired on OPE-L, but indicated in print). If an argument or set of arguments of Marx's is logically invalid, it should be recognized as such, whatever one thinks of the other good or important things he's accomplished. 3. Rakesh says my "ultimate point" is not clear, so let me cut to the chase and indicate the ultimate point(s), without attempting to re-establish the basis for these conclusions. The critique has, I think, significant implications for Marxian analytical methods, substantive theoretical claims, and praxis. A) None of Marx's justifications for invoking the case of price-value equivalence (PVE) as the basis for explaining surplus value is valid. The invocation is superfluous given the understanding that surplus value requires by definition the creation of new value rather than the mere redistribution of existing value, and none of Marx's other justifications for invoking this condition is logically or descriptively sound. B) If anything, invoking this condition obscures what is the necessary basis for surplus value, by Marx's own account. This is because surplus value requires capital scarcity, and generically scarcity in any of its guises implies a price-value disparity for the scarce commodity. Thus, PVE essentially misses the point about the capitalist conditions that make surplus value possible. Point (A) indicates that value theory--the notion that there might be a meaningfully systematic relationship between commodity values and prices--is not useful in accounting for the existence of surplus value, and thus capitalist profit. Point (B) suggests that it is moreover worse than useless, since it directs attention away from the true basis of surplus value. Note this point does not of itself indict a labor theory of *exploitation*. C) The fact that capitalists typically buy labor power as a commodity and then extract its use value in capitalist-run labor processes has nothing whatsoever to do with the connection between commodity values and prices. It has very much to do with the fundamental change in strategic (for want of a better word) class conditions that accompanied the expropriation of workers: e.g., capitalists could require collateral for production loans to workers who owned some property, but not once workers became "free" in the second of Marx's Ch. 6 senses. This dichotomy helps to explain how it is that Marx repeatedly affirms historical instances of capitalist exploitation via circuits of usury and merchant's capital extended to value producers ( e.g., loans to Indian ryots in the first case, the putting out system in the latter), and yet insists categorically that capitalists can no longer use these means to exploit workers once the historical conditions of the capitalist mode of production are in place. D) As noted before, the key systemic basis for surplus value is capital scarcity. Marx puts this point even more strongly in Ch. 33 of Volume I: if workers own their own means of production, then the capitalist mode of production is impossible (see pages 933 and 940). This has a number of powerful implications, but note just one: the contrapositive of Marx's claim is that capitalist exploitation can be eliminated simply through sufficient wealth redistribution. Gil
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