Re: [OPE-L] Capital in General

From: A.B.Trigg (A.B.Trigg@OPEN.AC.UK)
Date: Wed Oct 26 2005 - 16:19:00 EDT 

Fred. 
Sorry for the delay in replying (have been away for a few days). I was not so concerned in my comment with fixed capital as such. The  possibility theory of crisis, alluded to in the quote I gave from Capital II, is more abstract than this, based on the separation of purchase from sale. This is not something for a more concrete volume of work post-Capital. It is Marx's theory of crisis at its most abstract.
 
In answer to the question you ask me: my main concern is that you seem to be setting the pror level of total surplus value in production, stripping exchange out from the picture - there is a hint of Grossmann about this.Yet even at the most abstract level, at the start of Capital I, Marx starts with the circulation of money. Sorry if this is a misinterpretation....
 
In solidarity.
Andrew.

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: OPE-L on behalf of Fred Moseley 
	Sent: Sun 23/10/2005 14:20 
	To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Capital in General
	
	


	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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