This is a response to Gil's (1643). I think I understand our differences
better now (see #2 below).
1. One of the main disagreements between Gil and I continues to be whether
or not Marx's assumption stated at the end of Chapter 5 - that individual
are equal to their values - is essential to Marx's theory of surplus-value,
and hence to his derivation of the necessity of labor-power in Chapter 6. I
am not going to rehash all the arguments on this issue made in previous
posts. Gil's argument depends primarily on a simple interpretation of "what
Marx actually said." I have argued that the meaning of this assumption
stated at the end of Chapter 5 can be understood only within a general
interpretation of Marx's logical method in Capital, and have presented a
macro "capital in general" interpretation of Volume 1, in terms of which
Marx's provisional assumption in Volume 1 that the prices of individual
commodities are equal to their values, plays no essential role in Marx's
theory of the aggregate amount of surplus-value. This interpretation is not
an elaborate, ad hoc justification to explain the meaning of this one
sentence at the end of Chapter 5, but is instead a general interpretation
that I have been putting forward for the last 5 years or so, which is based
on considerable textual evidence, and which is based on earlier work by
Rosdolsky and Mattick, and also to some extent on Foley's work on the
circuits of the aggregate capital (Duncan of course bears no responsibility
for these remarks; he can speak for himself).
2. But the main point I wish to emphasize in this post is that I now
realize more clearly that Gil and I have significantly different meanings of
"actually existing capitalism", so that our apparent agreement that Marx's
subject at the beginning of Capital is "actually existing capitalism" turns
out to be only partial. We agree that Marx's subject at the beginning of
Capital is not "simple commodity production", as a hypothetical or actual
historical mode of production. However, we disagree about whether or not
"actually existing capitalism" includes, besides the capitalist mode of
production, also other non-capitalist modes of production that coexist with
the capitalist mode of production within modern capitalist society (such as
workers' cooperatives). This point is crucial to the interpretation of
Chapters 5 and 6, so I want to explore it further.
The main issue here is not the precise definition of the term "actually
existing capitalism" (which is not Marx's term), but whether or not the
subject of Marx's theory at the beginning of Capital includes only the
capitalist mode of production or also includes non-capitalist modes of
production. I would be happy to accept Gil's definition of "actually
existing capitalism", but I would continue to insist that THE SUBJECT OF
MARX'S THEORY FROM THE BEGINNING OF CAPITAL IS SPECIFICALLY AND SOLELY
THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION. I have been trying to argue this ever
since my first post on the Chapter 5 debate (1126), but I guess I have not
been clear enough. I hope I am being clear enough now.
There is much textual evidence to support this interpretation that Marx's
subject from the very beginning of Capital is the capitalist mode of
production, specifically and solely. In the Preface to the First Edition of
Capital, Marx said explicitly:
What I have to examine in this work is the capitalist mode of production,
and the relations of production and forms of intercourse that correspond
to it. (C.I. 90)
The phrase "and the relations of production ... that correspond to it"
indicates that what Marx meant by "the capitalist mode of production" is the
mode of production based on the specific capital / wage-labor relation.
In addition there are a number of passages throughout the various drafts of
Capital in which Marx said explicitly that the commodity he analyzes in
Chapter 1 of Volume 1 is a product of the capitalist mode of production and
that the "simple commodity circulation" that he analyzes in Part 1 is an
abstract sphere of the capitalist mode of production, thereby clearly
indicating that his subject from the beginning of Capital is the capitalist
mode of production. Everyone is familiar with the first sentence of
Chapter 1, in which the commodity is introduced as the form of the product
of the capitalist mode of production. A less well-known passage is the
following from the "Urtext", the draft of Chapters 2 and 3 of Volume 1 which
Marx wrote in 1858, immediately after finishing the Grundrisse (published in
English for the first time in 1987 in the Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol.
29, pp. 430-507):
At this point, however, we have nothing to do with the historical
transition of circulation into capital. The simple circulation is,
rather, an abstract sphere of the bourgeois process of production as
a whole, which through its own determinations shows itself to be
a moment,
a mere form of appearance of some deeper process lying behind it,
even resulting from it and producing it - industrial capital.
(MECW.29. 482)
Later, in the 1861-63 manuscript, Marx wrote:
We start from the *commodity*, this specific social form of the product,
as the foundation and prerequisite of capitalist production. ... [T]he
*prerequisite*, the *starting-point*, of the formation of capital and the
capitalist mode of production is the development of the product of the
product into a commodity ... It is as such a prerequisite that we treat
the commodity, since we proceed from it as the simplest element of
capitalist production. On the other hand, the product, the result of
capitalist production, is the commodity. What appears as the element is
later revealed to be its own product. (TSV.III. 112)
We have started with money as the converted form of the commodity.
What we arrive at [at the end of volume 3; fm] is *money as the converted
capital* [i.e. interest-bearing capital; fm], just as we have perceived
that the commodity is the precondition and the result of the production
process of capital. (TSV.III. 467)
Later still, in the "Results of the Immediate Process of Production"
manuscript, written in 1864, Marx discussed at length the fact that the
commodity with which he began in Chapter 1 is the "elementary premiss" of
capitalist production.
On the first page of Part I of this manuscript, Marx wrote:
[I]f we consider societies where *capitalist production* is *highly
developed*, we find that the commodity is both the constant elementary
premiss (precondition) of capital and also the immediate result of the
capitalist process of production. (C.I. 949)
And a little further:
The *commodity* that emerges from capitalist production is different from
the commodity we began with as the element, the precondition of capitalist
production.
And later in this manuscript:
We began with the commodity, with this specific social form of the product
- for it is the foundation and premiss of capitalist production. ... We
regard the commodity as just such a premiss and proceed from the commodity
as capitalist production in its simplest form. On the other hand, however,
the *commodity* is a product, a result of capitalist production. What
began as one of its components turns out later to be its own product. Only
on the basis of capitalist production will the commodity become the general
form of the product. (C.I. 1059-60)
Finally, in one of the Volume 2 manuscripts, written in the 1870s, Marx
commented on Adam Smith's logical method and on the appropriate logical method:
The commodities Smith is dealing with here are commodity capital from
the start (and therefore include surplus-value as well as the capital value
consumed in production), i.e. they are commodities produced in the
capitalist manner, the result of the capitalist production process. This
last should therefore have been the object of prior analysis, together with
the process of valorization and value formation that it involves. And
since the very presupposition of this is in turn commodity circulation, its
presentation also requires, therefore, an independent and prior analysis
of the commodity. (C.II. 465)
Therefore, throughout the various drafts of Capital, Marx was consistently
clear that the commodity which he analyzes in Chapter 1 is the premiss and
the product of the capitalist mode of production.
On the other hand, there is NO textual evidence to support Gil's
interpretation that Marx's subject at the beginning of Capital included
non-capitalist modes of production.
3. From the above understanding of the subject of Part 1 of Volume 1 -
the abstract sphere of circulation of the capitalist mode of production -
it follows that Marx's theory of surplus-value introduced in Part 2 has to
do with the surplus-value produced within the capitalist mode of production,
and is not concerned at all with non-capitalist modes of production as
possible sources of surplus-value. Therefore, Gil's criticism of Marx's
argument in Chapter 5 - that Marx failed to consider the possibility of
capitalists appropriating surplus-value from other modes of production - is
invalid. Marx's prior specification of the subject of his theory - as
documented above - ruled out by assumption the possibility of appropriating
surplus-value from non-capitalist modes of production. His theory is
concerned solely with surplus-value produced and appropriated within the
capitalist mode of production. Under this specification, Marx's argument
that "the capitalist class as a whole cannot defraud itself" is valid.
Individual divergences of prices from values do not affect the total amount
of surplus-value produced and appropriated within the capitalist mode of
production and hence can be ignored in an analysis of this total amount of
surplus-value.
Similarly, Gil's criticism of Marx's argument for the necessity of
labor-power in Chapter 6 is also invalid; i.e. Marx's argument is valid.
Gil's criticism is that labor-power is not the ONLY possible source of
surplus-value and that Marx failed to justify his exclusive focus on
labor-power in Chapter 6 and beyond. However, we have seen above Marx's
prior specification of the subject of his theory as the capitalist mode of
production has already ruled consideration of other possible modes of
production and other possible sources of surplus-value. Marx's argument is
completely valid: considering only the capitalist mode of production and on
the assumption of the labor theory of value introduced in Chapter 1, the
only possible source of additional value, and hence of surplus-value, is
labor-power or the capacity for additional labor.
4. In sum, Gil's criticism of Marx's arguments in Chapters 5 and 6 hinges
critically on Gil's interpretation that Marx's theory is these chapters is
concerned with "actually existing capitalism", which he defines as including
non-capitalist modes of production. Gil's criticism is essentially that,
after having included non-capitalist modes of production in the subject of
his theory, Marx failed to rule out the possibility of surplus-value arising
from these non-capitalist modes of production. But I have presented
considerable textual evidence to support the opposite interpretation: that
MARX'S THEORY FROM THE BEGINNING IN CHAPTER 1 IS SPECIFICALLY AND SOLELY
ABOUT THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION. This simple but fundamental point
renders Gil's criticisms invalid.
In solidarity,
Fred