---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 07:50:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Karl Marx <Karl_Marx@highgate.uk>
To: Gerald Levy <glevy@pratt.edu>
Subject: Re: assumptions, assumptions, assumptions
Dear Jerry:
Thank you for forwarding OPE-L posts to me. I have been following your
discussions with great interest.
I would like to thank Comrade Kliman for quoting me as follows:
"When the political economists treat surplus-value and the value of
labour-power as fractions of the value-product - a mode of presentation which
arises, by the way, out of the capitalist mode of production itself ...they
conceal the specific character of the capital-relation, namely the fact that
variable capital is exchanged for living labour-power, and that the worker is
accordingly excluded from the product. Instead of revealing the
capital-relation they show us the false semblance of a relation of
association, in which worker and capitalist divide the product in proportion
to the different elements which they respectively contribute to its
formation."
I believe that Comrade Kliman expresses above exactly why I feel that the
v = 0 assumption is not accurate as an interpretation of my work _Das
Kapital_, i.e. it "conceal(s) the specific character of the
capital-relation, namely the fact that variable capital is exchanged for
living labor-power...".
I look forward to receiving future communications from you regarding
OPE-L. Please forward this message to OPE-L along with my best wishes.
Totus tuus,
K.M.