IMPORTANT: If you cite this message, OPE-L policy
requires you not to reveal the identity of the author.
In the section below I think Kuruma badly misunderstands
Grossman's argument (as do Fred, Michael Heinrich, Ernest Mandel,
Michael Lebowitz and many others).
Marx did succeed not in finishing the book on capital in general
only but showing the place of forms and functions in the totality of
the capitalist mode of production as a self-reproducing system, aimed
at the expansion of value. Marx succeeded in finding the places and
functions of and integrating the study of wage labor and landed
property as elements of a self reproducing totality. Which is to say
out of the constraints of such a tightly controlled study there are
indeed many other significant things to say about wage labor and
landed property. But to understand how wage labor and landed property
are integrated in the three volumes of Marx's Capital we won't make
headway unless we understand that Marx was not working in terms of a
six book plan.
The source of inspiration here for the idea of totality was
not Hegel but Quesnay. In other words, what Marx completed
was not part of the original six book plan but based on a different
plan altogether which resulted from the *slow* assimilation of the
methodological significance of the Physiocratic model of reproduction.
It's not that Marx did not know of the Physiocrats when he wrote the
six book plan.
But this
problem cannot be dealt with merely by indicating the carelessness of
Grossmann. We need to advance further by providing a solution to the
problem itself. That is to say, we need to consider whether the
discussions of wage labor and ground rent in Capitalrepresent
the special discussion of "wage labor" and "landed
property."
The key to solving this problem should of course be sought within
Capitalitself. If we look at the crucial sections of the first and
third volumes of Capitalregarding this, we can in fact come
across the following passages. First, in part six ("Wages") in
volume one, Marx writes:
Wages themselves again take many forms, a fact not recognizable in the
ordinary economic treatises which, exclusively interested in the
material side of the question, neglect every difference of form. An
exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study of
wage labor, not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental
forms must be briefly worked out here.
According to this, the explanation of the various forms of wages
clearly lies outside the framework of Capital, belonging
instead "to a special study of wage labor" (in die spezielle Lehre
von der Lohnarbeit). (Regarding wages, we can also see pages...in the
third volume of Capital.
In the presentation of ground rent in volume three, we find the
following:
The analysis of landed property in its various historical forms is
beyond the scope of this work. We shall he concerned with it only
in so far as a portion of the surplus-value produced by capital falls
to the share of the landowner?cFor our purposes it is necessary to
study the modern form of landed property, because our task is to
consider the specific conditions of production and circulation which
arise from the investment of capital in agriculture. Without this, our
analysis of capital would not be complete. (Capital, vol. 3,
ch. 37)
One of the big contributions of Adam Smith was to have shown that
ground-rent for capital invested in the production of such
agricultural products as flax and dye-stuffs, and in independent
cattle-raising, etc., is determined by the ground-rent obtained from
capital invested in the production of the principal article of
subsistence. In fact, no further progress has been made in this regard
since then. Any limitations or additions would belong in an
independent study of landed property, not here. (Capital,
vol. 3, ch. 37)
The interest on capital incorporated in the land and the improvements
thus made in it as an instrument of production can constitute a part
of the rent paid by the capitalist farmer to the landowner, but it
does not constitute the actual ground-rent, which is paid for the use
of the land as such-be it in a natural or cultivated state. In a
systematic treatment of landed property, which is not within our
scope, this part of the landowner's revenue would have to be
discussed at length. (Capital, vol. 3, ch. 37)
We can
find other similar passages, but from the passages cited above alone,
we can see that various problems concerning "landed property" were
not "within our scope" in Capital, and that separate from
the study of ground rent in Capital there is an "independent
theory of landed property" and that the "systematic treatment of
landed property that is outside the realm of the plan" in
Capital is preserved within a plan for the future.