From: Ian Wright (ian_paul_wright@HOTMAIL.COM)
Date: Fri May 30 2003 - 14:26:05 EDT
I have a basic question that troubles me, which may nevertheless have a very obvious answer that I'm just not getting. Any help on this would be appreciated. When considering simple circulation at the beginning of Capital Vol 1., Marx explains, as I understand it, that if (a) the total money in a closed economy is fixed and (b) exchange is money conserving then (c) average profits are zero (and he therefore concludes that profits cannot arise from circulation). Essentially, any profit is cancelled by another's loss. Let's place the possibility of hoarding to one side. Marx then discusses how the distinction between paid and unpaid labour-time accounts for surplus-value. But the introduction of capitalist exploitation doesn't change the above conditions (a) and (b). So in this situation, consequence (c) still follows and we'd expect average profits to be zero (rather than, say, a uniform positive rate of profit). Is there a flaw in this reasoning? -Ian. _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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