[OPE-L:7430] Re Aoki on K and M on money

[Gil Skillman <gskillman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rakesh, thanks for bringing the Aoki article to my attention.  I hadn't
known about the 1933 MS of Keynes's theory, and found Aoki's discussion of
the overlaps and contrasts with Marx quite interesting.  But for what it's
worth, so far as I can see nothing Aoki wrote suggests a refutation of my
earlier comments on the applicability of Sraffa to Marx, **at the level of
abstraction at which Sraffian analysis engages Marx's analysis.**  Aoki
notes that both Marx and Keynes understand money to play a more complex
role in a capitalist economy than simply serving as a medium of exchange,
and that this more complex role allows for the possibility of capitalist
crisis.

But first, none of these more complex aspects of money are at issue in the
portion of Marx's analysis under discussion with Gary and Fred, roughly
corresponding to Marx's argument in KIII, Ch. 9.  I might add, in
anticipation of what follows, that nor are these more complex aspects of
money at issue in Marx's analysis of the "contradictions" in the circuit of
capital in KI, Ch. 5. If you allow  Marx to abstract from these
complexities at this stage, then it seems to me a similar latitude should
be allowed to the Sraffian framework when it addresses the same set of
questions at the same level of generality.  Second, I see no evident
impediment to incorporating the more complex functions of money in a
Sraffian framework if this is called for in some more all-encompassing
abstraction of capitalist processes, and see no reason to believe that
doing so would reverse the valid indictments of Marx's analysis made
possible by the Sraffian framework.


>  My argument with Gil has been that Marx is not attempting a logical
> transition from simple commodity production to wage labor relations of
> production in chapters five and six.

It would be pointless to re-engage this argument, but I will just note for
the record that contrary to your claim here I never argued that Marx is
attempting such a logical transition.  My main point is that (whether or
not you understand Marx to be positing a fully elaborated capitalist
economy at every step of his argument in KI, Part 2), Marx explicitly
developed logical basis for invoking *price-value proportionality* (i.e.
the analytical hypothesis that commodities exchange at their respective
values) as the necessary theoretical starting point for analyzing surplus
value is (1) evidently invalid, involving a fallacious inference about
necessary conditions from a premise concerning sufficient conditions; (2)
contradicted by at least one version of the circuit of capital that meets
all of Marx's conditions for the existence of surplus value; and (3)
essentially misleading about the systemic conditions that make it possible
for capitalists to appropriate surplus value.

But other than noting what my real argument on this point is for the
record, I don't mean to pursue this critique further in this forum.  There
is a very different set of questions at stake in the exchange between Fred
and Gary.

Gil