[OPE-L:90] Re: Marx's Goals

jones/bhandari (djones@uclink.berkeley.edu)
Wed, 20 Sep 1995 23:34:12 -0700

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> Volume 1
>talks about value all over the place and explicitly abstracts from
>departures of production prices from labor-time values.

I agree with PaulZ. It must be emphasized that this is a legitimate
abstraction; for Vol I is concerned with the basic production relation
between capital and labor, and labor-power is not a product of capitalist
production and hence does not have a price of production. In other words,
this 'abstraction' is legitimate in terms of Marx's method of successive
approximations, as Grossmann would put it. However, I do not agree with
what PaulZ takes to be the 'fundamental concern' of the law of value. This
will come out later, I am sure, but I will say here that I think that
Moishe Postone's dynamic interpretation of the law of value better captures
Marx's project.

Oops. I erased the rest of PaulZ's post but he goes on to say that Marx's
proof of exploitation is the fundamental concern of value theory.

Rakesh Bhandari