From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 05 2002 - 11:23:44 EDT
Gil writes in 7604: > (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... 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. This is not a matter of a seance but rather analytical argument. Your attempt to say that this matter of interpretation cannot be approached through rational argument seems to me a cop out not to engage the matter. That is, your approach here is dismissive rather than analytical. At any rate, we don't have to read Marx's mind; the point is whether the good reasons are on the side of inclusion or exclusion. In 7574-5, I have given three reasons for exclusion even on the assumption that gold is produced exclusively by capitalist firms; you haven't engaged the reasoning. Fred has offered even more reasons. You haven't responded to his analytical argument. As Michele points out Marx does have a theory of absolute rent; it would seem to apply in the case of precious metals. It's not a matter of reading Marx's mind but reading him and thinking for oneself. > 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. As I have noted, reasons for the exclusion of gold had been provided by David Yaffe and Michele Naples. Their reasoning had been ignored. I added a reason--a condition of possibility for the tendential realization of prices of production is the sensitivity of the supply of a commodity to variation in output decisions (see my 7542 and 7528). Rakesh
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