At 07:47 17/04/00 -0700, Jim Devine wrote:
>At this high level of abstraction, the price of production of any
>commodity equal its value (while the market price of the commodity equals
>its price of production), if we measure prices and values using the same
>metric. I could also find the footnote where Marx admits that he's making
>an assumption, but all my copies of volume I are at work. (The
>no-realization-crisis assumption is in the preface to the section on
>accumulation.)
I could not find the footnote, but Marx uses the word "assume" in the sense
in which Jim uses it, in volume I Chap XII, The Concept of Relative Surplus
Value, para 11:
"It is not our intention to consider, here, the way in which laws immanent
in capitalist production, manifest themselves in the movements of
individual masses of capital, where they assert themselves as coercive laws
of competition, and are brought home to the mind and consciousness of the
individual capitalist as the directing motive of his operations."...
"Nevertheless for the better comprehension of the production of relative
surplus value, we may add the following remarks, in which we *assume*
nothing more than the results we have already obtained."
There follows a passage translating one hour's labour into sixpence.
He then states "The real value of a commodity is, however, not its
individual value, but its social value; that is to say, the real value is
not measured by the labour-time that the article in each individual case
costs the producer, but by the labour-time socially required for its
production."
These passages BTW help to explain the superficiality of looking to falls
in the monetary price of shares on stock exchanges as the trigger of
qualitative political change. The marxist analysis of the law of value
shows how the system is largely self-perpetuating and self readjusting, in
part by the periodic destruction of uncompetitive capital.
True a stock market crash could trigger a financial crisis which could
trigger an economic crisis particular if US consumers stop consuming as if
they never had to save. However only a general political crisis could shift
the balance of forces to bring about a qualitative change. There are some
signs of that emerging now.
Chris Burford
London
