From: ope-admin@ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu
Date: Sat Mar 10 2007 - 15:46:11 EST
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:03:56 +0100 To: OPE-L <OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU> From: Riccardo Bellofiore <riccardo.bellofiore@unibg.it> Subject: Re: [OPE-L] What is most important in Marx's theory? At 10:58 -0500 10-03-2007, Pen-L Fred Moseley wrote: >Quoting Jerry Levy <Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM>: > >>>The title of the book is Capital. Capital is defined as "money that >>>makes more money" i.e. M . (M + dM). This is the main phenomenon to be >>>explained in Marx's theory, which he highlights and emphasizes in >>>Chapter 4 of Volume 1. >> >>Hi Fred: >> >> Capital is not "defined" as "money that makes more money". Capital >> represents a set of specific SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, some of which >> are expressed quantitatively. > >"The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains intact > while in circulation, but increases its MAGNITUDE, adds to itself a > surplus-value, or is valorised. And this movement converts it into > CAPITAL." (C.I. 252; emphasis added) Hi Fred. Would you object, in defining capital not only as *money in process* (and I agree), but also as *value in process*, and as such (value AND money in process), capital? A *process* in which *commodities* and *moneys* are *mere* forms? Commodities and money only in certain *specific* social relations of production become capital. And this is what the *process* above refers to, IMHO. Money begetting money may come out from mere rapacity. It becomes a systematic process only with those social relations of production. There is no need of a sophisticated theory to know that M-M' because of rapacity. The point is to understand how and why this happens *systematically*. >>What Marx is trying to do in posing what seems to be a puzzle -- >>what is the source of dM? -- is to explain how this dM is an expression >>of SURPLUS VALUE. Surplus value represents a SOCIAL >>RELATION: class exploitation is QUALITATIVE but the character >>of the COMMODITY-FORM means that this QUALITATIVE relation >>comes to be expressed QUANTITATIVELY. Thus, value and >>surplus value have BOTH qualitative and quantitative dimensions. It >>is a a VERY serious mistake, imo, to think that the quantitative is the >>"most important dimension" of Marx's theory because it mystifies and >>obscures the central importance of the qualitative social relations which >>he seeks to explain. > >I don’t think that we disagree too much on this issue (maybe you do). >The difference is more a matter of emphasis. I certainly agree that >Marx’s theory of surplus-value proves the exploitation of workers. But >I emphasize that a quantitative theory is necessary in order to do this. "Proves" does not seem to me the appropriate term here. The real point is to show that any new value produced comes ONLY from the objectualisation of *living* labor in monetary form: from the exploitation as the USE of labor power. This requires an argument, which is this: the capitalists have all the money, and the commodities (means of production, means of subsistence); without putting the workers (as 'free' individuals compelled to sell their labour power) to work, *no* value produced, hence no surplus value, and even no transfer of value from constant capital. And this is not granted ex ante, before the actual production process, because of the *specific* nature of labour power, a commodity whose use value is inseparable from the seller: according to the "right" of commoditry production, that use value pertains to who has bought that labour power; at the same time it is clear that the workers have any reason to be interested in what is done of the use value which can be extracted from the commodity they have sold, because it is THEIR body and minds that capitalist have to *use* when they extract living labour. This, btw, has NOTHING to do with the ahistoric feature that labour is active, and nature or means of production etc passive (that's why I cannpot agree with the train of thought of Diego, and of all those who in my view are regressing to Smith). It has to do with the specific social relation of capital. Once you have in mind this argument, you do NOT have to *prove* exploitation in your sense, as the fact that surplus value refers to some notion of *surplus* labor. Because at this point this is true as a consequence of the founding argument relating the new 'value added' to living labor. If all the new value is living labour "objectualised" in the period, of course any surplus of the money receipt over the capital advanced CANNOT BUT BE surplus labor. > >>>I am not saying that other questions are not important. I am just >>>saying that the production is the most important feature of capitalism, >>>and therefore the most important question in Marx's theory of >>>capitalism. >> >> I strongly disagree with this formulation as well. >> Sorry, I misspoke. What I meant to say is that “the production OF > SURPLUS-VALUE is the most important feature of capitalism” (consistent > with my preceding paragraphs), not just production per se. The production of surplus value is by definition also production of value, and value does *not* exist if the commodity is not sold. Probably you mean the production of surplus value as a *latent* magnitude. > I also emphasize that circulation is a necessary and important part of >capitalism. Marx’s analytical framework is the circulation of money >capital, which begins in the sphere of circulation, with the advance of >money capital (M) to purchase means of production and labor-power. >This is one of the reasons that I argue that this initial money capital >in the sphere of circulation is taken as given in Marx’s theory. Yes, as a quantitative conceptual determinatiion, but not as the *specific* amount, because it depends on ruling exchange ratios, and exchange ratios has yet to be fixed theoretically. So nothing is said about a fixity of the SAME magnitudes across volumes. Btw: - since, as you know, in vol. I clearly Marx very often refers to necessary labor as the labor required to produce means of subsistence (labour contained in those commodities), which is the same as the labour bought (commanded) by the money wage if exchange ratios are simple prices but *not* if exchange ratios diverge from those simple prices (e.g., prices of production) - and since vol III was written before vol I - and since Marx was again and again obsessively rewriting his economic work (even on fundamental categories) - and since the vol. III we have is constructed by Engels from the drafts by Marx it is clear (at least to me!) that: - there IS a logical problem to be dealt with(I am not saying it cannot be dealt within the Marxian labor theory of value) - it cannot be resolved using the authority of vol. III to re-read vol. I. I think we should start recognize that there does not exist, because it CANNOT exist, THE right interpretation about Marx, meaning the definitive and final. We are forced to go on in an uncertain terrain, assuming our responsibility, in developing *our* prolongation of an unfinished business. otherwise, we will look more and more similar to the true believers who make battles of quotes about the Bible, or the Koran, or Keynes' General Theory, or Mises' Human Action. riccardo PS: if I am wrong, why Marx in the several editions of Vol. I didn't put a very simple footnote saying the following: the exchange ratios of the elements of constant capital and variable capital are not supposed to be transformed? Instead, he wrote in the footnotes, more or less: the exchange ratios assumed here are simple prices, i. e. not immediately capitalist prices; this creates a problem, to determine prices of production, which I'll do in vol. III.
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