Rakesh, thanks for bringing the Aoki article to my attention. I hadn't known about the 1933 MS of Keynes's theory, and found Aoki's discussion of the overlaps and contrasts with Marx quite interesting. But for what it's worth, so far as I can see nothing Aoki wrote suggests a refutation of my earlier comments on the applicability of Sraffa to Marx, **at the level of abstraction at which Sraffian analysis engages Marx's analysis.** Aoki notes that both Marx and Keynes understand money to play a more complex role in a capitalist economy than simply serving as a medium of exchange, and that this more complex role allows for the possibility of capitalist crisis. But first, none of these more complex aspects of money are at issue in the portion of Marx's analysis under discussion with Gary and Fred, roughly corresponding to Marx's argument in KIII, Ch. 9. I might add, in anticipation of what follows, that nor are these more complex aspects of money at issue in Marx's analysis of the "contradictions" in the circuit of capital in KI, Ch. 5. If you allow Marx to abstract from these complexities at this stage, then it seems to me a similar latitude should be allowed to the Sraffian framework when it addresses the same set of questions at the same level of generality. Second, I see no evident impediment to incorporating the more complex functions of money in a Sraffian framework if this is called for in some more all-encompassing abstraction of capitalist processes, and see no reason to believe that doing so would reverse the valid indictments of Marx's analysis made possible by the Sraffian framework. > My argument with Gil has been that Marx is not attempting a logical > transition from simple commodity production to wage labor relations of > production in chapters five and six. It would be pointless to re-engage this argument, but I will just note for the record that contrary to your claim here I never argued that Marx is attempting such a logical transition. My main point is that (whether or not you understand Marx to be positing a fully elaborated capitalist economy at every step of his argument in KI, Part 2), Marx explicitly developed logical basis for invoking *price-value proportionality* (i.e. the analytical hypothesis that commodities exchange at their respective values) as the necessary theoretical starting point for analyzing surplus value is (1) evidently invalid, involving a fallacious inference about necessary conditions from a premise concerning sufficient conditions; (2) contradicted by at least one version of the circuit of capital that meets all of Marx's conditions for the existence of surplus value; and (3) essentially misleading about the systemic conditions that make it possible for capitalists to appropriate surplus value. But other than noting what my real argument on this point is for the record, I don't mean to pursue this critique further in this forum. There is a very different set of questions at stake in the exchange between Fred and Gary. Gil
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