At 22:06 17/04/00 -0700, you wrote:
>what I was thinking of can be found at the end of chapter 5 of CAPITAL Vol. I:
...
> average prices do not directly coincide with the values of commodities,
> as Adam Smith, Ricardo, and others believe. <
This argument is why it is unwise to use the term "Labour Theory of Value"
to summarise Marx's economics, since a) this theory was held by the
classical economists, and b) he differentiates himself from them by the
comment above. It is the *social* value of the commodity that is relevant.
Jim D draws attention to Marx's method of abstracting from the fluctuations
to get to the essence of the process of capital accumulation.
We should note in the context of the crisis of world political economy,
that this method of abstraction does not *explicitly* deal with a situation
in which the forces of production are being revolutionised on a daily
basis. Marx deals with that elsewhere and describes the relative surplus
value that a capitalist can achieve by owning a temporary or partial
monopoly of more efficient means of production.
In such a rapidly changing economy, the old forces of production also
suffer from a continual "moral depreciation" ("moral" meaning "social").
This is among other things the fate of the third world countries today, who
are deprived of any chance of building up local or regional surpluses by
the sado-monetarism of the IMF.
Thus the mechanisms by which the imperialist countries exploit the peoples
of the third world are partly hidden.
The anarchists show the courage of their convictions but they muddle the
theoretical basis of their attack on global capitalism by implying that it
is government itself that is at fault.
Chris Burford
London
