> >Now my interpretation makes sense of why Marx could have used the >formula k + s for the determination of the value of any and all >commodities at some point in his logical presentation (as you and >Alejandro show). > >My interpretation ALSO makes sense of why Marx could then later >point to double divergence. > >So now I save all of Marx's text. It's just a superior >interpretation of Marx's text. You have already conceded that with >your interpretation you have to give up double divergence, though >Marx points to it twice. Fred, Just to underline the point: you, Alejandro and Allin all have Marx talking gibberish or slipping into logical incoherence on p. 309 of Capital 3. My interpretation shows that there need not be any contradiction between double divergence and the example with the average commodity. It can't be too much to ask that we consider an interpretation in which no such blatant contradiction arises. In my interpretation, Marx can indeed be reasonably interpreted as laying out the formula for value determination as k + s on p. 264 (including in the missing paragraph), but this is before he explains why this cannot (strictly speaking) be the general formula because as (we now finally recognize) the value of the means of production could not have been proportional to their flow price and since it's the value thereof that enters into the determination of the value of the commodity output, we can no longer assume that k + s is the general formula for the determination of value (though again total value or the value of the average commodity can indeed still be represented as k + s). In fact, we can now easily see that there is not one but two reasons why the value and the price of production differs--not only the difference between p and s but also the difference between (a) value of the input means of production which enter into the value of the output and (b) the price of production of the input means of production which enters into the determination of the cost prices on which the price of production of the output is calculated. There you have it. It's very simple. One does not have to do away with double divergence and have the same Marx whom you have lauded for conceptual precision falling into obvious incoherence. And since you have poor old Marx doing just that in your interpretation, I am just at a loss why you and Alejandro won't simply agree that my interpretation is correct. Allin is too busy to reply to me, but I hope that he recognizes as well that Marx need not be caught in a logical contradiction. You know, I get the feeling that these critics of Marx's errors sometimes imagine themselves (and here I obviously don't include all of you) to be like Michelson and Morley who however conducted an actual experiment to disprove aether and didn't simply play equation games with a highly stylized example. At other times, I get the feeling that the critics think they are like Russell writing to Frege about the paradoxes of set theory; of course they think that if Marx had been alive to take in Bortkiewicz's critique, he would have honorably folded his cards like Frege did, but we dogmatic doltish Marxists just don't have the intellectual integrity of a Frege (or the integrity Marx would have displayed upon realizing that the two equalities overdetermine any set of transformation equations). All in all, I think that these critics of Marx have a pretty delusional sense of the quality of their purely logical criticisms. That is, they have very little understanding of why they are taken seriously. Yours, Rakesh
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