In reference to a message that I sent to Andrew, and that he
kindly forwarded to OPE-L, Allin wrote in OPE-L 3586:
> > It is true that Engels suppressed the passage where we
> > have the "non-dualistic" definitions of value and production
> > price...
> As Andrew notes, Alejandros English is very clear. But I
> wonder if this might be a "linguistic" matter: it seems to
> me very odd to speal of Engels "suppressing" this or that
> aspect of Marxs thought. Of course, it fell to Engels to
> present to the world, in as coherent a form as he could,
> those parts of Capital which Marx did not live to complete,
> and which Marx left in the form of a mass of notes. Engels
> became Marxs editor not by choice but by necessity. It
> might therefore be less prejudicial, and more appropriate,
> to speak of his "omitting" rather than "suppressing" this or
> that passage from Marxs notes.
>
> Allin Cottrell
I agree with Allin. It is better to describe this situation as
an "omission". Frankly, my English is very poor and I am not
able to express clearly my ideas in this language. I also think
that the task of editing the "mass of notes" left by Marx was one of
the biggest intelectual challenges that one could imagine.
However, I wish to remember that, in my message, I also said that,
in my opinion, this omission had been in some way "compensated" by
the inclusion of the single-table, probably by Engels himself. The
single-table includes, by means of a "practical" example the
omitted definitions of value and price of production. In this
sense, Engels "recovered" the essential of the manuscript.
The problem is that the modern interpreters practically have ignored
this single-table example. If one reads the extensive literature on
the transformation, one could think that the single-table example is
"invisible" for the many people who, supposedly, have thoughtfully
studied Marxs texts, and "demostrated" that he is wrong. It seems to
me that, for the "dualistic paradigm", to find one example of the
transformation (precisely in Vol. III, Ch. 9) in which there is only
ONE table is a kind of "anomaly" that it is better to skip and try to
forget.
In any case, I kindly asked Allin to read my ulterior elaboration of
this, contained in OPE-L 3590. In fact, now I think that the omission
of the paragraph is not very relevant, IF WE READ CAREFULLY the text
published by Engels. Of course, it is illuminating to confrontate
Engels's version with the "main manuscript", now available.
Alejandro Ramos