From: Gil Skillman (gskillman@mail.wesleyan.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 09:38:24 EDT
Was: Re: Re: Re (etc) Rakesh, you write >Now are you continuing to defend the inclusion of the gold industry in the >transformation process? Or are you neither defending nor criticizing such >inclusion and moving on to fiat money? As I see it, it isn't a question of "defending the inclusion of the gold industry" in Marx's transformation analysis (or correspondingly in the Sraffian price of production equations). The relevant questions are rather (a) whether Marx intended to categorically exclude gold from his K.III Chapter 9 analysis on the sort of historical grounds raised by Fred, despite Marx's earlier announcement that he intended to abstract from such historically specific considerations, and (b) whether it is logically possible to maintain Fred's/Marx's claim about the prior determination of the rate of profit *given* capitalistically produced commodity money. On (b), as far as I can tell, no one has disputed my demonstration that *given these conditions* there is an inconsistency in the claim that the rate of profit is determined analytically prior to prices of production. The question is whether this demonstration is relevant to Marx's, and thus Fred's, analytical project, which brings us to (a). Since Marx is dead, we have no way of settling the matter, so I won't bother trying. Marx does not clarify the matter either way in Ch. 9, and presumably neither side of this discussion pretends to be able to go back in time to read Marx's mind or to recall him from the dead to figure out the answer. But the discussion has at least given rise to a new (or at least not previously obvious) theoretical insight about the economic conditions under which Marx's/Fred's conclusion do and do not hold. My original intention upon joining the discussion between Gary and Fred was to begin with the scenario of commodity money and then move directly to that involving fiat money. But in light of discussion prompted by the first scenario, I think it's necessary first to ask Fred about the ground on which he advances (or understands Marx to advance) the theoretical conclusions we're discussing. So I'll wait for Fred before moving on to the case of fiat money. Gil
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