re Jerry's 5393 > >> MOREOVER, MY INTERPRETATION >> DOES NOT HAVE MARX LAPSING >> INTO LOGICAL CONTRADICTION AS >> YOUR INTERPRETATION DOES. > >This isn't a convincing argument -- in fact, I >don't think it is an argument at all. To begin with, >there is the assumption that the interpretation of >Marx which shows that he did not make a >mistake WINS. This is a very dangerous way of >looking at any text -- including those by Marx. Jerry, it is however the way Fred has been looking at the text. He has emphasized repeatedly the conceptual precision and rigor of Marx's argument, yet he has Marx talking nonsense. So my argument is an appeal to Fred on his own terms. Moreover, as I have repeatedly emphasized, there is a point behind my criticism. Value (transferred) is not the visible flow price of a machine. Value is not in principle observable and directly measurable. In my opinion Fred's (as well as Alejandro's, Alan's, Mino's and Andrew K's) interpretation of the formula for the determination of value violates this fundamental principle which holds due to the fetishistic nature of our social relations. So I have tried to give a reason why Fred's interpretation has to be wrong. > > > >Moreover, let us not forget that we're only >talking about a few sentences in Volume 3 and >that what became Volume 3 under the >editorship of Engels was only a DRAFT. No we are talking about a whole paragraph in Capital 3 and TSVIII. And again there is a deeper reason why I object to Fred's interpretation in that it treats value as if it were not an unobservable, albeit detectable, explanans. But our social labor relations can never appear as what they are, including in the observable flow price of the machine. This is exactly the error to which Marx was pointing. He was wrong to infer the value transferred from the machine from the flow price. That is the mistake in his transformation problems. So not only can I make sense of Marx's comments on double divergence, I make sense of the error (or the way in which Marx had gone wrong) on p. 265. Yours, Rakesh
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