Rakesh writes [OPE-L:4814] >here is another disagreement. I was convinced by Andrew K on this >issue. I don't think Marx thinks there is a real tendency towards >stationary prices in the long term. There is a powerful tendency >towards the equalisation of profit rates along with a >counter-tendency for the search for surplus profit (Grossmann, >Mandel). I'm absolutely with Rakesh on this one -- see, crucially, the passage from Marx's Notes on Mill which Alan F has cited in a number of his works: I haven't the text (or a specific ref) to hand, but it's in the Penguin Early Writings volume. Marx is very specific here that any equality of demand and supply is purely evanescent and accidental and that to emphasise the law-like and regular aspect of exchange and de-emphasise the chaotic and chance-like aspect is one-sided and dogmatic. More generally, I have reading closely Glick's thesis, and one thing that appears in his presentation of these matters is that it is the role of value as an attractor for prices of production that is the primary gravitational attractor, and that the tendency to profit equalisation is a secondary phenomenon dependent on the first. I wonder if other OPE members concur in this reading? Also on this, it appears (from an electronic search of the Electric Books CD version of the Aveling translation) that Marx *never* uses the word "orbit" in connection with either prices or the rate of profit. This seems to be entirely an innovation of Glick's -- unless someone can think of an example of this elsewhere (e.g. the Grundrisse)? Marx talks about price fluctuations *within* spheres of production both balancing out over time, and being simultaneously counter-balanced by fluctuations in other sectors: CIII, Ch 9---224 "The suddenness, multiplicity, and different duration of the fluctuations in the individual spheres of production make them compensate for one another in the order of their succession in time, a fall in prices following a rise, and vice versa, so that they remain limited to local, i.e., individual, spheres. Finally, the various local fluctuations neutralise one another. Within each individual sphere of production, there take place changes, i.e., deviations from the general rate of profit, which counterbalance one another in a definite time on the one hand, and thus have no influence upon the general rate of profit, and which, on the other, do not react upon it, because they are balanced by other simultaneous local fluctuations." This image of (counter) balancing is a static one (and thus the idea of balancing out over time seems a somewhat confused metaphor), Glick's "orbiting" metaphor seems to be inspired by CIII, Ch 10 -- 236 "The assumption that the commodities of the various spheres of production are sold at their value merely implies, of course, that their value is the centre of gravity around which their prices fluctuate, and their continual rises and drops tend to equalise." However, although the notion of orbiting, as a gravitational process, seems genuinely dynamic, it seems to me that Glick (unlike Marx, here) muddles the metaphor. For Marx, *value* is the attractor and *prices* are what fluctuate (just as masses attract and the co-ordinates of planets fluctuate). For Glick the rate of profit is the dimension which measures both attractor and attractee, which seems nonsensical in the case of physical effects. Julian
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