Re: [OPE-L] Capital in General

[Fred Moseley <fmoseley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, A.B.Trigg wrote:

> Fred.
> Sorry for the delay in replying (have been away for a few days). I was
> not so concerned in my comment with fixed capital as such. The
> possibility theory of crisis, alluded to in the quote I gave from
> Capital II, is more abstract than this, based on the separation of purchase from
> sale. This is not something for a more concrete volume of work
> post-Capital. It is Marx's theory of crisis at its most abstract.
>
> In answer to the question you ask me: my main concern is that you seem
> to be setting the pror level of total surplus value in production,
> stripping exchange out from the picture - there is a hint of Grossmann
> about this.Yet even at the most abstract level, at the start of Capital
> I, Marx starts with the circulation of money. Sorry if this is a
> misinterpretation....


Andrew, I am not "stripping exchange from the picture".  I always
emphasize that Marx's analytical framework is the circulation of capital:
M - C  P  C' - M'.

But I argue that, although Marx emphasized the
potential difficulties of realization due to the separation of purchase
and sale, in this theory of the production of surplus-value in Volume 1
and the distribution of surplus-value in Volume 3 (e.g. equal rates of
profit and prices of production in Part 2), Marx assumed that the
circulation of capital "proceeds smoothly" without problems of
realization.  And that the total amount of surplus-value is determined in
the Volume 1 theory of the production of surplus-value and taken as given
(predetermined) in the Volume 3 theory of the distribution of
surplus-value.  This does not "strip exchange from the picture", but it
does relegate exchange to a secondary role in the theory of the production
and distribution of surplus-value.

Andrew, do you agree with this?

Comradely,
Fred