[OPE-L:2153] Re: Chapter 5 and before

Gil Skillman (gskillman@wesleyan.edu)
Fri, 10 May 1996 15:54:32 -0700

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Andrew writes, among other things:

>Does the assumption of exchange of equal values first come in Ch 6? Yes,
> it is first employed here. The assumption, however, is first stated and
> explained at the end of Ch. 5.
>
>If one examines the language that marx uses in making this assumption, it
> is exceedingly clear.

I'd only add to this that as of the end of Ch. 5 the condition of
price-value equivalence is something more than a mere assumption--it is a
methodological or procedural stipulation, deduced (invalidly, it turns out)
from a set of antecedent premises. I.e., Marx says that "The transformation
of money into capital *has to be developed*...in such a way that the
starting-point is the exchange of equivalents";
this is half of his "double *result*."

Gil