Re: [OPE] Reply to critics

> This discussion is just whacky. The entire edifice of Captal Volume 3 is
> based on the idea that a mass of surplus-value already exists prior to
> exchange,
 
 
Hi Jurriaan:
 
The entire edifice of Capital Volume 2 is based on the idea that there is a
unity of the processes of capitalist production and exchange. If that unity
is forcibly broken then this gives rise to a formal possibility of crisis.
 
 
 
> simply because a mass of surplus labour has been worked, a basic
> reality which is a determinant of the mass of profit from production which
> can be distributed.
 
Well, *obviously*, surplus-labor haS to be performed for there to be surplus-
value but surplus-value can not be distributed if it does not fully exist.
Duh! How exactly will capitalists re-distribute surplus value if the commodity
product isn't sold? If part of the commodity product isn't sold that can
affect the magnitude of surplus-value.
 
 
> If that is not the case, however we might decide to
> specify its operational meaning, the theory lacks any explanatory power, it
> is just a tautological description (Jerry's speciality).
 
Of course, the link between money and value and the link between
the creation and actualization of value and surplus value are mere tautologies
for you because you (in the tradition of many of the same Marxists you have so
often decried) devalue the importance of money and exchange for capitalism.
Sometimes your theoretical inconsistencies amaze me.
 

> People know very well that products have
> value, and may even have an approximate assessment of that value, quite
> irrespective of whether they were traded or not, simply because it took a
> known investment of labour effort to make them.
 
 
As a consequence of the problem I alluded to before, you clearly don't
fully grasp the pervasiveness of risk and uncertainty under capitalism.
This risk and uncertainty is a consequence of the value relation itself.
Because the link between capitalist production and exchange is severed in
your understanding you say that people are able to make an approximate
assessment of value: indeed, they can but their assessments are often shown
ex post to be wildly off the mark - especially in a crisis where all of the
fancy and nice calculations and hence expectations of capitalists are burst
asunder.
 
 
> They have known that and
> theorised about that for tens of thousands of years at the very least. That
> knowledge existed, not because of a sentimental attachment to Marx, who
> wasn't even heard of, but because if you didn't know it, you could die.
 
 
what exactly do they know? The overwhelming amount of people know that they
must work for a wage because the goods and services that they need to
sustain life take the commodity-form, i.e. they know that they need money
to survive and that to get money they have to get a job for capital or the
state. Yes, they know that must labor but it is folly to think that this
reality isn't connected to money and exchange or that working people don't grasp
this connection.
 
In solidarity, Jerry
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Received on Mon Oct 4 08:00:28 2010