[OPE-L:978] Re:

Gilbert Skillman (gskillman@mail.wesleyan.edu)
Wed, 7 Feb 1996 09:04:48 -0800

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I generally agree with Paul M's recent post, except where he states:

>. Only in vol. III do internal
> differences between capitals and kinds of capital come into play.
> So I would say that [in Vol. I--GS] Marx is abstracting from the relation
> between price and value.

But at the end of Ch. 5, Marx is asserting something something *much
stronger* than a simple abstraction from price-value disparities: he
is saying that any case of capitalist exploitation is isomorphic,
i.e. systemically equivalent, to a case in which prices and values
are equivalent.

This conclusion does not follow from the arguments given in the
chapter, and is not true either in analytical terms (as demonstrated
by John Roemer's investigations) or historical terms (as demonstrated
by Marx's own analysis in Vol III, the Grundrisse, the Resultate, the
Economic Manuscript of 1861-63, etc.), *unless* one adds special, and
previously unemphasized, caveats about the interpretation of "price."
But Marx does not any such caveats in Ch. 5.

In solidarity, Gil