From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 06 2002 - 12:51:45 EDT
Chris A writes in 7597 > >The fundamanetal value relation is >Value of a commodity is a function of livinglabour + dead labour >[labour in susbsistence goods appears nowhere here; all the dead labour is >in means of production] >Then it is realised hence >Value = c + added value >v appears nowhere here. It only appears when we ask what happens to the >added value >Value = c + v + s >But this is ex post derivation. To read this as a determination of Value is >a horrendous error of vulgar economy Marx polemicised against. I am in fundamental agreement with this and attempted to make something of a similar point with my respective formulations for value's determination (dead labor + current labor) and resolution (Value => c+v+s) >ESSENTIALLY v is not advanced, it is produced (regardless of when wages are >actually paid; tho' it is worth recalling Marx stresses the workers always >give credit to the capitalist.). But this is the important implication which I did not underline. I find myself in enthusiastic agreement with what Chris says in this post. Yours, Rakesh > >Now if we turn to V2 this seems to depict a circuit where M is shown to >purchase factors including LP. But of course just because it is a circuit M >cannot be taken as given; it is in fact identical with Mprime as is obvious >in two of the circuits and obvious if one grasps what a circuit is. In a >circuit it makes no sense to speak of advances. Everything is both before >and after everything else. Of course there are orthogonal flows into and >out of the circuit, expenditures and receipts; but this makes little >difference. >More seriously, the circuit depicts already constituted capital as such a >cycle of expenditures and receipts and in this way completely mystifies the >essential relations. Although it is mid-way between the essentialities of >V1 and the illusions springing from the profit form of V3 it is closer to >the latter in being - like it - at the level of appearances (albeit >objective appearances). An intelligent bourgeois like Schumpeter could no >doubt accept the circuit as an accurate description while still rejecting >V1. >a) the truth that delta m is a function of SL appears nowhere in this >circuit; to the contrary delta m appears to result from all the purchased >factors operating together - >b) the truth that workers produce their own wages appears nowhere in this >circuit; on the contrary the depiction of the circuit hides the fact >workers give credit to capitalists. - >c) if one makes a violent abstraction from the reality of the circuit and >breaks in at M then the placing of the purchase of labour power appears as >an advance; but this is seriously misleading for all the above reasons. >(btw what did Marx say about the 'wage fund'??) > >The appearances, in other words, distort the essential relations.
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