At 07:55 AM 04/18/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>In fact surely the entire burden of Marx's thesis in all 3 vols of Cap +
>TSV and indeed in all his mature economics writing, is that profits MUST
>be explained and CAN ONLY be explained on the basis of EQUAL commodity
>exchange, not for eg according to Physiocratic notions about wheat
>harvests or mercantilist mysticism or whatever. The passages Jim Devine
>cites below exactly encapsulate this central idea. And this is a separate
>question anyway from the equivalence (or not) of values and prices, no?
I'd say that profits can only be explained in these terms within Marx's
framework. However, they still exist once we drop the equal exchange
assumption. Then the question comes up of the origin of individual
capitalists' profits -- and differences of profitability amongst individual
capitalists. That can't be explained in terms of equal exchange, though of
course the initial equal-exchange framework that Marx started with tells us
where the profits of these capitalists come from originally (exploitation
of workers).
BTW, I think it's possible to develop a Marxian theory of the origins of
profit without equal exchange or even the "law of value." Marx starts with
a societal perspective, with "capital as a whole" in vol. I of CAPITAL and
moves in the direction of dealing with individuals and individual
differences. But I think one can develop of Marxian theory of exploitation
even starting from an individualistic, neoclassical perspective, and then
moving toward the societal perspective. (See my "Taxation without
Representation: Reconstructing Marx's Theory of Capitalist Exploitation."
In William Dugger, ed. _Inequality: Radical Institutionalist Views on Race,
Class, Gender, and Nation_. Greenwood Press, 1996.) I don't think this
would have been possible without Marx's work, however. Unlike Roemer, who
simply jettisons Marx's methodology and reduces Marx's theory of
exploitation to a static and formalistic theory of scarcity rents, I think
that Marx's dialectical method is absolutely necessary (though hardly
sufficient).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
