From: Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Sun Oct 23 2005 - 09:20:44 EDT
On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, A.B.Trigg wrote: > Fred. => I agree that Marx was examining the conditions for a normal course. > But what about this quote from Capital, volume 2, where Marx examines > ‘conditions for the normal course of reproduction, whether simple or > on an expanded scale, which turn into an equal number of conditions for > an abnormal course, possibilities of crisis, since, on the basis of the > spontaneous pattern of production, this balance is itself an accident’ > (Marx 1978, p. 571). Isn't it part of Marx's approach in Capital that he > undermines the basis for these normal conditions? > Andrew, thanks for your comment. I agree that fixed capital poses special difficulties for balancing S and D, and that Marx considered this to be important. However, in Marx's theory of prices of production in Vol. 3, Marx continued to assume equal rates of profit across industries, and thus assumed that S = D. I think Marx would have returned to the difficulties caused by fixed capital in his theory of cycles at a lower level of abstraction. Marx mentioned several times the effect of the reproduction cycle of fixed capital on the "industrial cycle'. The point I am emphasizing is that, in Marx's theory of prices of production in Vol. 3, Marx assumed that the general rate of profit is determined prior to prices of production and is determined by the ratio of the total surplus-value to the total capital invested, with the total surplus-value determined by the prior theory of the production of surplus-value at the level of abstractions of capital in general in Vol. 1. Andrew, do you agree with this? Comradely, Fred
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