Nicky, thanks again very much for your latest post and this very stimulating discussion. My responses below. On Tue, 29 May 2001, nicola taylor wrote: > You request a summary interpretation of Marx's passage. Difficult since, > imho, no passage or chapter in Marx can be interpreted in isolation from > it's place in the whole of Capital, or in isolation from the debate on > Marx's method. However... > > >"Political economy has indeed analysed value and its magnitude, however > >incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms. > >But it has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that > >particular form, that is to say, why labour is expressed in value, and why > >the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of > >the value of the product." > > ...From a VFT perspective, the fundamental question posed by Marx is why > content (eg use-value/concrete-labour) is 'concealed within' or has > 'assumed' particular forms (eg value/abstract-labour).. Nicky, I think you are fundamentally misinterpreting Marx's meaning of the term "content" in this passage. You interpret content to mean "use-value / concrete labor". But Marx's meaning of content in this passage is not concrete labor; rather it is ABSTRACT labor. Marx's use of the terms content and form in this passage (and elsewhere) refer to the content and form OF VALUE. Marx's theory of the content and form of value abstracts altogether from use-value and concrete labor. I think this meaning of content is clear from the passages in Chapter 1 that I reviewed in my previous post (5664). Section 1 of Chapter 1 derives abstract labor as the "content" or the "substance" of value. Section 2 elaborates further the distinction between abstract labor, which is the content of value, and concrete labor, which is not. Section 3 derives money as the necessary form of appearance of value, from the presupposed content of value, i.e. from the presupposed characteristics of abstract labor (qualitatively equal and quantitatively comparable). The passage we are debating is from Section 4. Presumably Marx's meaning of content in this passage in Section 4 is the same meaning of content in Sections 1 through 3 - i.e. the content of VALUE, or abstract labor. Marx's critique of political economy in this passage (and elsewhere) was that it never asked why the content of abstract labor assumes, or is expressed in, the form of appearance of money and prices. Marx's critique of political economy in this passage was NOT that it never asked why concrete labor and use-values assume the form of exchange-values and abstract labor. The necessity of money, which political economy was unable to explain, follows abstract labor; it does not follow from concrete labor. For Marx, abstract labor was the content of value, not the form of value (as you suggest). Therefore, I do not see how this passage supports the VF interpretation of Marx's theory as you (and Chris) have suggested. (Chris, do you have the same interpretation of this passage as Nicky, or a different interpretation? If different, please explain. Thanks) > Given the concept > of form determination, as I have described it above, this question is not > concerned with a splitting of value and price into essence/content and > appearance/form as autonomous entities between which causal relations can > then be established. I think I have shown in my previous post that Marx's own logic in Chapter 1 (and I would argue beyond) is indeed concerned with "splitting of value into essence/content and appearance/form as autonomous entities between which causal relations can be established." The causal relations are derived as necessary connections between the autonomous entities of abstract labor and money. I have presented key passages in which Marx said precisely that, and I would be happy to discuss Chapter 1 in greater detail. Therefore, if systematic dialectics does not allow such autonomous entities and quantitative causal relations, then I would have to conclude that Marx was not doing systematic dialectics, at least not in Chapter 1. Comradely, Fred
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