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Previous message: Michael_A._Lebowitz: "[OPE-L:4294] Re: Mandel vs. Baran-Sweezy"
> From: john ernst <ernst@pipeline.com>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <ope-l@anthrax.ecst.csuchico.edu>
> Subject: [OPE-L:4290] Problem in Vol 3
> Date: 06 March 1997 18:53
> > Note that in Chapter 15, Sec. 4 of Vol. III, Engels seems
> to think funds that were used as variable capital can, in
> the next period, be invested in fixed capital without
> even considering how long that investment in fixed capital
> might be used to produce surplus value. This seems to me
> to be, at best, a gross simplification and, at worst, simply
> stupid. Indeed, given Engels' idea here of substituting
> dead labor for living, it forces one to assert that the
> in comparing rates of profit over time, the ratio of
> fixed to circulating capital makes no difference and that
> the durability --social and technical-- of fixed capital
> is irrelevant to the computation of the rate of profit.
>
I would have thought that whether the capital was fixed
or circulating is irrelevant. What matters is the stock
of capital relative to the flow of surplus value in determining
the rate of capital. Whether the capital is in the form of
buildings or in the form of stocks of materials makes no
difference, since it is its exchange value not its use value that
is relevant in calculating a rate of profit.