[OPE-L:5784] Re: Reply to fred - B extra

From: Fred B. Moseley (fmoseley@mtholyoke.edu)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 12:43:42 EDT


On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Christopher Arthur wrote:

> A philological point relating to my previous post.
> I complain that in the FN against CPE Marx seems to start with a different
> point than that in the text without notice. Part of the explanation is that
> in the first edition of C the FN occurs in what might be thought its
> natural place, at the very end of what would become section 3. Then for the
> second edition he seems to have thought: why not collate together the crits
> of CPE? and just transferred the FN without thinking over the consequences,
> namely as Fred naturally did taking the FN as expansion of the text.


I argued in my last post that there is no inconsistency between the text
and the footnote.  The only inconsistency is between your interpretation
of the text and the footnote.

The translation of Chapter 1 in the first edition that I have (the
Dragstedt translation, which you sent me years ago!), unfortunately does
not have this footnote (or any other footnotes; what a poor
translation!).  Chris, would you please tell me which paragraph this
footnote is attached to in the first edition?  Thanks.

Although I couldn't find this footnote, I did find the following very
interesting and important sentence at the very end of the "third section":  

"What was decisively important, however, was to discover the inner,
necessary connection between value-FORM, value-SUBSTANCE, and
value-AMOUNT; i.e. expressed conceptually, to prove that the value-FORM
arises out of the value-CONCEPT."  (emphasis in the original)

This seems to me to be another clear statement that Marx derived the form
of value from the substance or the content of value (which is of course
what Marx did in Section 3), not the other way around.

Thanks for the interesting discussion.

Comradely,
Fred



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