From: Dogan Goecmen (Dogangoecmen@AOL.COM)
Date: Mon Dec 04 2006 - 05:02:51 EST
_Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM_ (mailto:Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM) : I think that his presentation of the law of the tendency for the general rate of profit to decline (LTGRPD) is implicitly a critique of Smithian doctrine. But, I admit that there isn't textual evidence to show that Marx intended the LTGRPD in part to be a critique of Smith. Hi Jerry, I have been reading in Capital and Grundrisse on this. I agree with you on this and there is textual edidence. But I think Marx intends to develop his theory of the tendency for the general rate of profit to decline (LTGRPD) to criticise the whole of political economy - even of his days'. As to the textual evidence please compare the fourth paragraph in the chapter XIII in the volume 3. He says: "Simple as this law appears from the foregoing statements, all of political economy has so far had little success in discovering it, as we shall see in a later part. [K. Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert. K. Marx/F. Engels, Werke, Band 26, Teil 2, S. 435-66, 541-43. — Ed.] The economists perceived the phenomenon and cudgelled their brains in tortuous attempts to interpret it. Since this law is of great importance to capitalist production, it may be said to be a mystery whose solution has been the goal of all political economy since Adam Smith, the difference between the various schools since Adam Smith having been in the divergent approaches to a solution. When we consider, on the other hand, that up to the present political economy has been running in circles round the distinction between constant and variable capital, but has never known how to define it accurately; that it has never separated surplus-value from profit, and never even considered profit in its pure form as distinct from its different, independent components, such as industrial profit, commercial profit, interest, and ground-rent; that it has never thoroughly analysed the differences in the organic composition of capital, and, for this reason, has never thought of analysing the formation of the general rate of profit — if we consider all this, the failure to solve this riddle is no longer surprising." K. Marx, Capital, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971, pp. 213-214. Alternatively: _http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm_ (http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm)
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