Andrew wrote in [OPE-L:3203]:
> In his [Marx's, JL] analysis of the immediate
> process of production, however, chapter after chapter examines a SINGLE
> capital.
Yes ... and those chapters were in VOLUME 1. This is NOT a minor point.
The level of analysis in V1 is NOT the same as that in V3.
> Moreover, the Ch. 9, Vol. III transformation shows that none of the
> results of that analysis need to be modified when one takes multiple branches
> and competition into account.
The transformation was not intended, I believe, to show that none of the
"results" of his analysis needed to be modified when one takes multiple
branches of production and competition into account. Rather, the analysis
of these subjects was a necessary step in the analysis of capitalist
production as a whole. This was not simply a matter of examining whether
the "results" of V1 also hold when one considers more concrete categories
related to understanding the bourgeois mode of production. The analysis
*following* the transformation *also* examines multiple branches of
production and competition -- and one can not simply return to a more
abstract and simple level of analysis once the previous "results" are
explained and developed on a more concrete and complex level.
> Clearly, both Jerry and Steve are right that the answers to models are
> affected by the number of sectors. For instance, quantitative price/value
> differences will affect lots of things. But in the present phase of
> discussion we are not examining behavior or structural models. We are
> examining relations of determination, accounting principles, invariances,
> etc. by means of particular examples.
If the examples are to grasp the nature of the subject under
investigation, then those examples need to be located within a particular
level of abstraction -- in this case, where there are multiple branches of
production and competition. This is not a minor point. How, for example,
can we take surplus profits and the redistribution of surplus value into
account in a 1-sector sans competition model? Yet, in my view, this
question is *very much* related to the questions associated with the
LTGRPD, accumulation, and the Okishio Theorem.
In Solidarity,
Jerry