From: Fred B. Moseley (fmoseley@mtholyoke.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 22:09:12 EST
Paolo, thanks for your comments. My repsonses below. On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Francisco Paulo Cipolla wrote: > Dear Fred, > For purposes of volume III we could take total surplus value as given, that > is, for purposes of the analysis of its division, without this total surplus > value being given from anywhere. Yes, this is logically possible, but wouldn't it be better if the total surplus-value that is taken in Volume 3 were already determined by the theory of surplus-value in Volume 1? Wouldn't that be a stronger theory than just taking the total surplus-value as given, without a theoretical determination? In any case, that is what Marx said he was doing - that the total surplus-value taken as given in Volume 3 has already been determined by the theory of surplus-value in Volume 1; i.e. by surplus labor. For example, from Part 7 of Volume 3: "We have thus an *absolute limit* for the value component that forms surplus-value and can be broken down into profit and ground-rent; this is determined by the *excess of the unpaid portion of the working day over its paid portion*, i.e. by the value component of the total product in which this *surplus labor* is realized. If we call *this surplus-value whose limits are thus determined* profit, when it is calculated on the total capital advanced, as we have already done, then this profit, considered in its absolute amount, is equal to the surplus-value, i.e. it is just as regularly determined in its limits as this is. It is the ratio between the total surplus-value and the total social capital advanced in production. If this capital is 500 ... and the surplus-value is 100, the absolute limit to the rate of profit is 20 percent. The division of the social profit as measured by this rate among the capitals applied in the various different spheres of production produces prices of production which diverge from commodity values and which are the actual averages governing market prices. *But this divergence from values abolishes neither the determination of prices by values nor the limits imposed on profit by our laws... This surcharge of 20 per cent ... is itself determined by the surplus-value created by the total social capital*, and its proportion to the value of this capital; and this is why it is 20 percent and not 10 percent or 100 percent. The *transformation of values into prices of production does not abolish the limits to profit, but simply affects its distribution among the various particular capitals of which the social capital is composed* ..."(C.III: 998-1000; emphasis added) We can see that the total surplus-value (the "absolute limit") is determined by surplus labor, as in the theory of surplus-value in Volume 1. This total surplus-value is then divided among the individual industries in such a way to equalize rates of profit. But this division of the total surplus-value does not affect the total amount. > In any case, conceptually at least, the > analysis of its repartition between classes require abstracting from possible > variations between total surplus value produced and total surplus value > divided. But Marx said many times (e.g. the passage just quoted) that there *is no variation* between the total surplus-value produced and the total surplus-value divided, i.e. that total surplus-value = total profit. > This abstraction is what we mean by given. No, taking the total surplus-value as given in Volume 3 does not mean that we abstract from differences between the total surplus-value produced and the total surplus-value divided. As just argued, Marx stated many times that there are no such differences. Instead, the total surplus-value that is taken as given in Volume 3 is the total surplus-value that has already been determined in Volume 1. > Well, this does not > require restricting Vol I to the determination of a certain quantity of > surplus value. In Marx own words his objectives seem to be a "little" broader > than that: "In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of production, > and the conditions of production and exchange corresponding to that mode" > International Publishers, 1967, p.8. And two pages later: "It is the ultimate > aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society" > (idem, p.10). How can the discovery of the law of motion be reduced to the > quantitative determination of surplus value? I am not arguing that Volume 1 is *only* about the determination of the total surplus-value, but rather that the determination of the total surplus-value is one of the things Volume 1 is about (I would say the main thing, but we could disagree about that), so that that total surplus-value taken as given in Volume 3 is that which is determined in Volume 1. As discussed in previous posts, Volume 1 is about the total class relation between the capitalist class as a whole and the working class as a whole. The most important aspect of this total class relation is the production of surplus-value by workers for capitalists. Therefore, the theory of surplus-value in Volume 1 applies to the total surplus-value produced by the working class as a whole for the capitalist class as a whole. Then in Volume 3, this total surplus-value produced by the total surplus labor of workers is then divided among individual capitalists - like "hostile brothers dividing up the booty of other people's labor." Comradely, Fred
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