I wrote that Marx (1) said that exchange of equivalents must be assumed, not because surplus-value cannot arise otherwise, but "IN ORDER TO OBSERVE the phenomenon of the formation of capital on the basis of the exchange of commodities IN ITS PURITY..." (my emph.)
and (2) said that this must be the starting point of analysis because the implications of the contrary assumption reduce to those of the exchange of equivalent values, and thus the contrary assumption doesn't move the analysis forward. Gil Skillman responded: "I know he said this. And I pointed out that the argument on which he bases this claim is logically invalid." First, I object to the term "pointed out." What you did was (a) *assert* logical invalidity and (b) offer an *interpretation* under which his argument seems to be logically invalid. So what is at fault? The text? Or your interpretation? It seems to me, and to basically everyone who has thought about interpretive adequacy, that when a text seems not to make sense, the "initial presumption" (as Georgia Warnke puts it) must be that the critic has misunderstood it. The value theory debate would generate more light and less heat if Marx's critics would respect this point and practice a little humility. Instead of saying one has proved this error, pointed out that claim to be logically invalid, etc., one could simply say that one has not yet succeeding in reading the text in such a way that it makes sense. That would invite others to work together to try to read text in such a way that it does makes sense. Of course, one advances one's career by drawing attention to others' insufficiencies, not by drawing attention to one's own. But if one's goal is to further knowledge, not advance one's career, the less spectacular but more objective and modest way of putting things is preferable. Gil's interpretation of the "argument on which [Marx] bases" his allegedly invalid claim is presumably that "price-value disparities are not of themselves *sufficient* to account for the existence of surplus value." I have a different interpretation of the argument (in _Capital_ I, Ch. 5). As I interpret Marx, he is not (merely) saying that "price-value disparities are not of themselves *sufficient* to account for the existence of surplus value." He is saying, as I've already put it, that the implications of unequal exchange (for the problem at hand) *reduce to* those of the exchange of equivalents. Thus analysis leads us back to the exchange of equivalents. It is owing to this regression that the exchange of equivalents is the necessary starting-point of the investigation. I believe that under my interpretation, the argument is not invalid. Andrew Kliman
