Re: [OPE] Reply to critics

Gerry I think that if you look at Marxs repproduction schemes you will see that the particular mobility of money capital that you suggest really is impossible. There is just no way that the profits arising in department III can be converted into capital. For this to occur they would have to transform into c or v, but as the reproduction scheme shows, there is simply no remaining surplus
product in depts I and II available.
S1 + s2 have already exchanged against c3 + v3, so there is no investible surplus product remaining.
It would would require a miracle of transubstantiation to turn the surplus physical output of dept 3: Rollers, Gucci handbags, little black numberrs from Harvey Nichols, and fine fowling pieces into the elements of constant capital, or into the wage fund.
You are falling prey, in the inverse manner, to the illusion that Marx ridiculed when criticising the abstinance theory of profit.
--- original message ---
From: "GERALD LEVY" <gerald_a_levy@msn.com>
Subject: Re: [OPE] Reply to critics
Date: 18th October 2010
Time: 1:40:45 am

> OK, let's analytically separate the process of surplus-value creation
> for the moment --- which again must be understood from the standpoint of
> the capitalist economic system and not an individual agent --- and focus
> on Marx's ideas on unproductive consumption (let's call this the
> 'consumption angle'):
>
> The point of my example is of course that the 'servant workers', while
> they may produce goods and profits for their employer, are as
> unproductive as the 'servants' when you take Marx's argument to the
> entire economic system. And this would include a lot of production
> activities that at first were not apparent in his discussion.

Hi Dave Z:

Regardless of where it was created, surplus value can be
productively consumed. I.e. because surplus value takes the money-form,
it can be used (regardless of the branch of production where it originated)
to invest in c + v in any branch of production.

Consider your 'servant workers' employed by a capitalist firm: the profit
takes the form of money capital and it can be:
i. unproductively consumed;
ii. re-invested in the same firm and branch of production;
iii. invested in any other branch of production.

The same is true elsewhere in other branches of production.

Aren't you implicitly assuming the lack of mobility of money capital
and hence excluding the possibility of iii.?

In solidarity, Jerry
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Received on Mon Oct 18 03:28:30 2010