Re: Re: Re: Suppression of Marx
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 5:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L:23465] Re: Re: Suppression of Marx ___ Dear Melvin, before becoming a researcher, I was a worker and an Union leader, like you. And I believed in historical materialism, too. I believed in it, because having not yet visited history by myself, I trusted Marx and Engels about the progressive evolution of society, the consciences, productive forces and superstructures altogether. But after more than 25 years of research, I know, now, that Marx and Engels had been mistaken. Like anybody in their century, they were impressed by the exploding productive forces of Industrial Revolution. And they concluded that if the development of productive forces was a cumulative process, so was the social development too. But it was a pure metaphysical reasoning, out of any historical material. Nevertheless, they got an important intuition: the intuition of something irreversible in human economy, the intuition of entropy. Rosa Luxemburg has begun to give this intuition an explicit expression, by showing the strictly exogenous origin of accumulation. The expansion within space (the geographical one and the sociological one) is concretely attested by historians from the very beginning of the known history, whatever be the mode of production. The motor of this expansion is always the asymmetry of exchanges between the places of accumulation and the periphery of raw-material extraction and working-force exploitation (see Immanuel Wallerstein: The modern World system, and Guillermo Algaze: The Uruk World System). That explains expansionism, imperialism, inter-imperialist competition, first and second world wars, then today's emergence of a single occidental imperialism and of its globalization. The asymmetry of exchanges are reflected by a systematically negative balance of trade of the pole of accumulation. That is attested for Athens, Rome, 16th century Europe, England, France, Germany, then today's USA, that is for all imperialist poles of accumulation. Such is reality, and not a class struggle that has never been so deliquescent than now. Soviet Union has imploded. New Russia has become a source of raw material for the occidental empire. China, a source of cheap working force. All communist parties have been recuperated by social-democrat ones, or atomized. Marxism-Leninism is an historical defeat, because its theoretical base was wrong. We have to admit that, in order to understand the world. Is accumulation endogenous or exogenous? That is the question. Marx's surplus value (the absolute one) postulates an endogenous accumulation. As it is included in the revenue per capita, it enables capital to endlessly make profit without any crisis other than wage earners going on strike. But that does not explain overproduction crises, expansionism, colonialism, imperialism. Actually, this so called surplus-value is not a surplus-value. It is indeed a tribute paid by labour force, but it is already included in the investment, as Keynes demonstrated it. It enriches the capitalists, but does not take any part in global accumulation of capital. That is to say globally cumulative profit comes from the multiplication of labour force, not from the individual exploitation. And then can be explained expansionism, etc. Marx and Engels have come up against a contradiction between their intuition of the limit and their theory of accumulation that is nothing but the classical-economy one which depends on the good will of the saver. Rosa Luxemburg surpassed this contradiction, but Lenin did not. Don't trust people who continue talking about class struggle that they never experienced and that they only met in the books. Salute and brotherhood, Romain Kroës
Re: Re: Re: Re: Suppression of Marx
In a message dated 3/5/2002 6:14:29 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dear Melvin, before becoming a researcher, I was a worker and an Union leader, like you. And I believed in "historical materialism", too. I believed in it, because having not yet visited history by myself, I trusted Marx and Engels about the progressive evolution of society, the consciences, productive forces and superstructures altogether. But after more than 25 years of research, I know, now, that Marx and Engels had been mistaken. Like anybody in their century, they were impressed by the exploding "productive forces" of Industrial Revolution. And they concluded that if the development of productive forces was a cumulative process, so was the social development too. But it was a pure metaphysical reasoning, out of any historical material. Nevertheless, they got an important intuition: the intuition of something irreversible in human economy, the intuition of entropy. Rosa Luxemburg has begun to give this intuition an explicit expression, by showing the strictly exogenous origin of accumulation. The expansion within space (the geographical one and the sociological one) is concretely attested by historians from the very beginning of the known history, whatever be the "mode of production". The motor of this expansion is always the asymmetry of exchanges between the places of accumulation and the periphery of raw-material extraction and working-force exploitation (see Immanuel Wallerstein: "The modern World system", and Guillermo Algaze: "The Uruk World System"). That explains expansionism, imperialism, inter-imperialist competition, first and second world wars, then today's emergence of a single occidental imperialism and of its "globalization". The asymmetry of exchanges are reflected by a systematically negative balance of trade of the pole of accumulation. That is attested for Athens, Rome, 16th century Europe, England, France, Germany, then today's USA, that is for all imperialist poles of accumulation. Such is reality, and not a "class struggle" that has never been so deliquescent than now. Soviet Union has imploded. New Russia has become a source of raw material for the occidental empire. China, a source of cheap working force. All communist parties have been recuperated by social-democrat ones, or atomized. Marxism-Leninism is an historical defeat, because its theoretical base was wrong. We have to admit that, in order to "understand the world". Is accumulation endogenous or exogenous? That is the question. Marx's surplus value (the "absolute" one) postulates an endogenous accumulation. As it is included in the revenue per capita, it enables capital to endlessly make profit without any crisis other than wage earners going on strike. But that does not explain overproduction crises, expansionism, colonialism, imperialism. Actually, this so called "surplus-value" is not a surplus-value. It is indeed a tribute paid by labour force, but it is already included in the investment, as Keynes demonstrated it. It enriches the capitalists, but does not take any part in global accumulation of capital. That is to say globally cumulative profit comes from the multiplication of labour force, not from the individual exploitation. And then can be explained expansionism, etc. Marx and Engels have come up against a contradiction between their intuition of the "limit" and their theory of accumulation that is nothing but the classical-economy one which depends on the good will of the "saver". Rosa Luxemburg surpassed this contradiction, but Lenin did not. Don't trust people who continue talking about "class struggle" that they never experienced and that they only met in the books. Salute and brotherhood, Romain Kroës "Is accumulation endogenous or exogenous? That is the question." For me personally this is a difficult question, whish I cannot grasp as stated, although I understand or rather imagine I understand the inner logic of what is being asked. The question is reformulated in my mind, perhaps incorrectly, because my political posture is dogmatic or rather rigid, or cloaked in the mythology of the "philosophic" method of how I understand Marx approach. "Don't trust people who continue talking about "class struggle" that they never experienced and that they only met in the books" is my rule of thumb in discussions about the perception of the various currents in modern society. Every cry or conflict over injustice, violence or abuse is not necessarily the "class struggle" in my opinion. Actually, I have never experienced what I understand to be the meaning of class struggle in my life, but rather various currents in society struggle against their perception of injustice and this struggle unfolding within the "space" of the political environment, conditioned by "endogenous or exogenous" forces of accumulation. I do agreed the Leninism is primarily a political doctrine of insurgency born under conditions of a war
Re: Suppression of Marx
MARX AND HIS POSTERITY Admittedly the founder of what has been the working-class movement shares some responsibility in the confusion of the thought that is meant to be Marxist or Marxism-related. But he did not deserve to get zealots completely lacking of critical judgment as heirs. Marx experienced as a genuine intellectual the throes of the contradiction that let its work unfinished fourteen years before his death. As soon as he came up against it, far from denying it as his epigones today do, and despite a lot of other sufferings, he looked for resolving it, while refusing to publish anything as long as it would not be overcome, going as far as hiding his manuscripts from his close relatives and friends. Engels's and Lafargue's accounts are in this respect quite definite. Only Rosa Luxemburg, another great intellectual, was not afraid of confronting this contradiction, while opening moreover a track to its solution. Then, Marxism was made up of two intellectual streams, each of them issuing from one term of the contradiction. One of them was based on the metaphysic of absolute surplus value. The other one, without formally rejecting that metaphysic, took root in the scientific part of Marx's work, the trending profit rate to fall, which the so-called absolute surplus-value plays no part in. The so-called absolute surplus value, issuing mysteriously from the work of each wage-earning, suggests a mechanism of endogenous accumulation that a priori excludes any limit to the process. In other words, capitalism could be considered as being enabled to regenerate by itself indefinitely. What lead, within the surplus-value stream, to a break between a reformist secondary stream and a revolutionary one, the one concluding that socialism had to fit into the scheme of an almost eternal capitalism, the other that it had to put an end to capitalism, and that the only way of doing it was the subversion of the bourgeois political power. The first ones have kept, until today, the appellation of social democrats, the second ones the appellation of Marxists-Leninists. As for her, Rosa Luxemburg, although she hoped and prayed for the proletarian revolution, had understood that the accumulation could not be endogenous and on the contrary needed an expansion within space, what was attested by colonialism. She logically concluded that this expansionism was necessarily to come up against a deadline, should it be in last resort the planetary one. In other words, capitalism was necessarily to one day enter a crisis of which it could not getting out. This thesis had to experience a censorship and a purgatory that are continuing. First, social democrats pilloried it after its printing. After what the Leninists took over them. Today again, the ones and the others maintain Rosa Luxemburg's main work (Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, 1913) under a burden of ignorance, of silence and of contempt. This attitude is quite coherent with the vocabulary that gathers now the enemy brothers: development, progress, democracy, fight against inequalities, citizenship. A vocabulary which is quite out of step with reality, but which can be understood as being an exorcism against the fear of future. And this infantilization of thought does not allow neither social democrats, nor residual Leninists to admit that history has agreed with Rosa Luxemburg, against them. Social democrats saw a stable world in which democracy and progress should settle all conflicts. As for him, Lenin saw a world forever divided by the conflicts of interests between the various empires, continuing at the planetary scale the class conflicts of within each of them, and that only the dictatorship of the proletariat was able to unite and pacify. For her part, Rosa Luxemburg saw an indistinct imperialism relentlessly continuing the colonizing process, out of necessity. A necessity from accumulation. Between this two conceptions, history has decided. The dictatorship of proletariat is a failure and a persistent after-tragedy, and the USA have put an end to the conflicts between imperialists, by exerting a leadership with which all of them have agreed totally (except general de Gaulle's interlude) and have even demanded. Finally, under IMF's management, the globalization is restoring the colonialist subjection and even extending it, as a trend, to all countries. But of the two original Marxist streams, it is the weakest, the most disconnected from reality, which today continues Marxism. Really, the author of Capital deserved another posterity. Romain Kroës
RE: Suppression of Marx
There is a difference between making an unconvincing argument of logical inconsistency and claiming a logical inconsistency without any attempt to demonstrate it (By the way, I never understood the Sraffian argument against the LTV as in general based on logical inconsistency--I thought it was that the LTV was redundant and therefore unnecessary--an argument I do not buy, by the way) mat
Re: RE: Suppression of Marx
There is a difference between making an unconvincing argument of logical inconsistency and claiming a logical inconsistency without any attempt to demonstrate it (By the way, I never understood the Sraffian argument against the LTV as in general based on logical inconsistency--I thought it was that the LTV was redundant and therefore unnecessary--an argument I do not buy, by the way) mat That's right about the Sraffan critique It's unfortunate that Andrew feels obliged to regard my comment on his views as an attack on him They are no so intended They are a criticism of his views and his tone, but he's an intelligent and thoughtful economist--just a little bit thin-skinned Not that I am always to equable all the time (I once called Carrol a bucket of shit because I thought he'd accused me of being the internet equivalent of a police provacateur, not either of our finest moments, I think), but I apologized and we are friends now; Hell, even Charles knows that my criticism of his views, which are much harsher than mine of Andrew's, are not a personal attack, and I don't take Charles' robust ripostes personally either We like each other, we just disagree sharply about a lot of things jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorermsncom/intlasp;
Re: RE: Suppression of Marx
Was Sraffa a Sraffian/neo-Ricardian; did he ever go beyond critiquing neo-classical garbage? On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 10:07:16AM -0600, Forstater, Mathew wrote: There is a difference between making an unconvincing argument of logical inconsistency and claiming a logical inconsistency without any attempt to demonstrate it. (By the way, I never understood the Sraffian argument against the LTV as in general based on logical inconsistency--I thought it was that the LTV was redundant and therefore unnecessary--an argument I do not buy, by the way.) mat -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Suppression of Marx
In a message dated 3/4/2002 7:17:33 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: MARX AND HIS POSTERITY Admittedly the founder of what has been the working-class movement shares some responsibility in the confusion of the thought that is meant to be Marxist or Marxism-related. But he did not deserve to get zealots completely lacking of critical judgment as heirs. Marx experienced as a genuine intellectual the throes of the contradiction that let its work unfinished fourteen years before his death. As soon as he came up against it, far from denying it as his epigones today do, and despite a lot of other sufferings, he looked for resolving it, while refusing to publish anything as long as it would not be overcome, going as far as hiding his manuscripts from his close relatives and friends. Engels's and Lafargue's accounts are in this respect quite definite. Only Rosa Luxemburg, another great intellectual, was not afraid of confronting this contradiction, while opening moreover a track to its solution. Then, Marxism was made up of two intellectual streams, each of them issuing from one term of the contradiction. One of them was based on the metaphysic of absolute "surplus value". The other one, without formally rejecting that metaphysic, took root in the scientific part of Marx's work, the "trending profit rate to fall", which the so-called absolute surplus-value plays no part in. The so-called "absolute surplus value", issuing mysteriously from the work of each wage-earning, suggests a mechanism of endogenous accumulation that a priori excludes any limit to the process. In other words, "capitalism" could be considered as being enabled to regenerate by itself indefinitely. What lead, within the surplus-value stream, to a break between a reformist secondary stream and a revolutionary one, the one concluding that socialism had to fit into the scheme of an almost eternal capitalism, the other that it had to put an end to capitalism, and that the only way of doing it was the subversion of the bourgeois political power. The first ones have kept, until today, the appellation of "social democrats", the second ones the appellation of "Marxists-Leninists". As for her, Rosa Luxemburg, although she hoped and prayed for the "proletarian revolution", had understood that the accumulation could not be endogenous and on the contrary needed an expansion within space, what was attested by colonialism. She logically concluded that this expansionism was necessarily to come up against a deadline, should it be in last resort the planetary one. In other words, "capitalism" was necessarily to one day enter a crisis of which it could not getting out. This thesis had to experience a censorship and a purgatory that are continuing. First, social democrats pilloried it after its printing. After what the Leninists took over them. Today again, the ones and the others maintain Rosa Luxemburg's main work (Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, 1913) under a burden of ignorance, of silence and of contempt. This attitude is quite coherent with the vocabulary that gathers now the enemy brothers: development, progress, democracy, fight against inequalities, citizenship. A vocabulary which is quite out of step with reality, but which can be understood as being an exorcism against the fear of future. And this infantilization of thought does not allow neither social democrats, nor residual Leninists to admit that history has agreed with Rosa Luxemburg, against them. Social democrats saw a stable world in which democracy and progress should settle all conflicts. As for him, Lenin saw a world forever divided by the conflicts of interests between the various empires, continuing at the planetary scale the class conflicts of within each of them, and that only the dictatorship of the proletariat was able to unite and pacify. For her part, Rosa Luxemburg saw an indistinct imperialism relentlessly continuing the colonizing process, out of necessity. A necessity from accumulation. Between this two conceptions, history has decided. The dictatorship of proletariat is a failure and a persistent after-tragedy, and the USA have put an end to the conflicts between imperialists, by exerting a leadership with which all of them have agreed totally (except general de Gaulle's interlude) and have even demanded. Finally, under IMF's management, the "globalization" is restoring the colonialist subjection and even extending it, as a trend, to all countries. But of the two original Marxist streams, it is the weakest, the most disconnected from reality, which today continues Marxism. Really, the author of Capital deserved another posterity. Romain Kroës Karl Marx "Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy," states the following: "Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction
Re: Suppression of Marx
Please, to all concerned, try not to make this personal. Drewk wrote: In his latest attack on me, Justin Schwartz leaves out and does not respond to the following (I wrote it in response to him yesterday): I think that the use of the term, suppression, is a problem. I don't think much of Robert Lucas's economics. I say that I don't agree with him or that he is wrong. Is that suppression? I don't agree with Romer, but as Jim D.? observed, he probably caused more people to take a look at Marx. If some of these people read Marx with intelligence, so much the better. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
RE: Re: Suppression of Marx
Michael Perelman I don't agree with Romer [Roemer], but as Jim D.? observed, he probably caused more people to take a look at Marx. If some of these people read Marx with intelligence, so much the better. it's important to be careful with spelling here, since there are at least two economists named Romer. Anyway, it was Justin who said that Roemer probably caused more people to take a look at Marx or something like that. I don't know if that encouraged people to read Marx with intelligence. Instead, I think that there was a lot of orthodox tut-tutting about finally, here's a Marxist who speaks our language. It's about time some of them came around. Others decided that Roemer's method was a better way to understand the world than Marx's. Morishima's work had a similar effect. (Phil Mirowski has a great book review of Morishima in AGAINST MECHANISM.) Jim Devine
RE: Re: RE: Suppression of Marx
The usual. The followers -- the Sraffians or neo-Ricardians -- weren't as good as their Master (Sraffa). As Joan Robinson made clear, the standard Sraffians wage/profit frontier model was only good for critiquing, since it described equilibrium states that couldn't persist. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 8:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23464] Re: RE: Suppression of Marx Was Sraffa a Sraffian/neo-Ricardian; did he ever go beyond critiquing neo-classical garbage?
Re: Re: RE: Suppression of Marx
Was Sraffa a Sraffian/neo-Ricardian; did he ever go beyond critiquing neo-classical garbage? No we wasn't one, and no he didn't Personally, I have some reason to think he was a Stalinist When I was at Cambs I was friends with a grad student of his who said that in his rooms he had Stalin's collected works totally read to shreds, marked up on every page and line, annotated slips of paper stuck in every other page When he died, my college, Kings, which has these wonderful irreverent obits for every member or graduate of the college (it's good to know that someday I may have one, though of course i won't be hear to read it), had a long one on Sraffa This was shortly after the Blunt affair, and the writer recalled a discussion with S at the time when thepresswas talking about The Fourth Man but before Blunt had been publically blown Sraffa was asked, Were you the Fourth Man? He made anindescribable Italianate wave of his hands,: and replied, I forget which number I was S was a friend of Gramsci's and Wittgenstein's, W acknowledges him in thepreface to the Investigations I heard him lecture, he was astounding, talked the opposite of his laconic writing; he was effusive and charming, very Italian, only the density and brilliancy of his speech was like his writing jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photosmsncom/support/worldwideaspx
Re: RE: Re: Suppression of Marx
Anyway, it was Justin who said that Roemer probably caused more people to take a look at Marx or something like that I don't know if that encouraged people to read Marx with intelligence Wasn't me, but I think it's true As far as his effect on economists, I can't say He made _me_ read Marx a lot more closely, for sure, found I agreed with Marx more than him jks _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobilemsncom
RE: Re: RE: Suppression of Marx
I think that the answer to Michael's question is yet to be fully answered. Sraffa's papers were for many years not available to most people. I have made the argument that there is a difference between Sraffa and the Sraffians myself, or at least that Sraffa is open to other interpretations, but the former is not an easy argument to make for a few reasons. One is that clearly three of Sraffa's closest students were Garegnani, Bharadwaj, and Schefold--all neo-Ricardians. While the argument about other legitimate interpretations of Sraffa is aided by both the fact that he published so little and his writing style, one must deal with the fact that Sraffa was alive during the publication of lots of the neo-Ricardian core work and in close contact with the authors (including cited for thanks for comments in many of the key papers). So it is hard to imagine that he was strongly opposed to the way the neo-R's developed his ideas... By the way, the argument that Sraffa's own work was wholly negative (criticizing others) is not true. He did also offer positive contributions. -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 10:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23464] Re: RE: Suppression of Marx Was Sraffa a Sraffian/neo-Ricardian; did he ever go beyond critiquing neo-classical garbage?
Re: Suppression of Marx
CB: In Engels' day, and in Lenin's, even if there was a global limit , there was no need to wait for that limit to have the world revolution. Today, we may not even approach the limit really. First, there is no global limit in marxist-leninist theory because, according to it, endogenous accumulation is possible, so that capitalism can be endless, like in social-democrat theory. The only difference between these two therories is, that the one leads to the conclusion that capitalism must be cancelled by a revolution, while the second one concludes that socialism must be constructed within capitalism. But the very theoretical base is the same. Second, we do approach really the limit, whose name is globalization. Third, not only there is no need to wait for that limit to have the world revolution, but waiting for it will allow capitalism to bring the whole civilization with him to grave, as it is doing before our very eyes. Additionally, this argument was never put forward by Rosa Luxemburg. It was one of the Marxist-Leninist forgeries to ban Luxemburgian thought. RK
RE: Suppression of Marx
Hi Charles, I'm not sure which article of Michael Perelman's you are referring to. But he's on this list, of course, so perhaps the best way to clarify matters is for Michael to indicate whether there's anything in my account he disagrees with. Andrew Kliman -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 3:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23215] Suppression of Marx Suppression of Marx by Drewk 24 February 2002 20:51 UTC This is a reply to Charles Brown's pen-l 22901. (I hope to respond to Tom Walker's question in pen-l 22893 soon.) Andrew, Thanks for taking the time to give that summary of your thinking. I want to note that I got the take on the transformation issue that I posed from reading Michael Perelman's article on devaloration. Charles
Re: Suppression of Marx
In a message dated Sun, 24 Feb 2002 3:44:11 PM Eastern Standard Time, Drewk [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is a reply to Charles Brown's pen-l 22901. (I hope to respond to Tom Walker's question in pen-l 22893 soon.) Charles asked me Is it your position that the 'transformation problem' is a bit of a misnomer, because Marx's point was that prices deviating unsystematically from value is what capitalism must do because of exploitation ? So, that from the Marxist standpoint the failure to find a mathematical functional relationship between value and price is a confirmation of Marx, not a 'problem' for Marx's theory ? The law of value is like a 'state' law. It is the violation of it by prices that results in crisis as a 'punishment' for being out of line with value proportions, the law. I agree with a lot of what you say, Charles. But, no, this isn't really my position. My position is that (a) the transformation problem is a NON-EXISTENT problem, because (b) the allegation of internal inconsistency in Marx's account of the transformation (of commodity values into prices of production) has never been proven, and (c) indeed the alleged proof of internal inconsistency has been disproved. I'll substantiate this below. But first, let me continue with your question. Certainly, *one* point of Marx's was that prices deviating unsystematically from value is what capitalism must do -- because of exploitation, and because of other things. One of these other things is that, owing to competition, businesses that exploit a lot of workers do not tend to rake in a higher profit per dollar invested than businesses that exploit few workers. Marx's account of the transformation in Ch. 9 of Vol. III of _Capital_ deals specifically and only with this latter issue. Thus, I fully agree with your statement that, according to Marx's theory, the violation of [the law of value] by prices ... results in crisis as a 'punishment' for being out of line with value proportions I also think this is a very important issue. However, this issue is not dealt with in Marx's account of the transformation in Ch. 9. Ch. 9 doesn't deal with the relationship of prices to values *in general*, but only with the relationship of *prices of production* to values. (Prices of production are hypothetical prices that would result in equal profit rates.) You suggest that there's been a failure to find a mathematical functional relationship between value and price. I agree that a function relating values to prices *in general* is an impossibility -- prices can differ from values in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons. But, again, Ch. 9 deals only with the relationship of values to prices of production, and it isn't the case that no functional relationship between values and prices of production has been found. In Ch. 9, Marx himself presented a precise functional relationship between them. He didn't regard deviations of prices of production from values as any confirmation of the law of value. Indeed he recognized that the deviations *appear* to violate the law. What he regarded as a confirming the law of value was precisely the functional relationship between prices of production and values that he presented in Ch. 9. Their functional relationship is such that, *notwithstanding* the fact that prices of production deviate from values in any particular industry, there is no deviation at the economy-wide level. Total price equals total value; total profit equals total surplus-value; and the level of the general (economy-wide) rate of profit is not affected by the fact that commodities exchange at prices which differ from values. Thus, it remains the case that, as he had said earlier in _Capital_, the level of the general rate of profit is determined in production, before exchange and independently of exchange. It depends only on the amount of surplus-value that capital has succeeded in pumping out of the workers, as well as the amount of capital-value invested in production. These equalities between price and value magnitudes, not any deviations between prices of production and values, are what Marx regarded as confirming the law of value -- in the context of Ch. 9. (I agree that, in a different context, the punishment of backward producers for producing at higher-than-average value is another confirmation of the law of value.) Now the problem, of course, is that Marx's precise mathematical relationship between prices of production and values was declared invalid, owing to an alleged internal inconsistency. His account of the transformation was thus deemed in need of correction, and the corrected procedures all imply, in one way or another, that the law of value does NOT hold true in reality; Marx's equalities cannot all be true, if one accepts the corrections. Now keep in mind that the *only* rationale for
RE: Re: Suppression of Marx
Dear Melvin P., Could you go slower, please, and fill in the gaps for me? I don't understand your references. Could you give examples? I did get the point about Southern cotton production being (capitalist) commodity production, even though Black slaves, not free workers, produced the cotton, and how economists could not (and cannot) understand this because the phenomenon didn't conform to the pure theoretical abstraction. I agree with you. Ciao Drewk
