>Jim writes: > >> >> >>(2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1) >>the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the >>OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward >>equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices of production >>(POPs) that differ from values. Maybe you're thinking of Ricardo, who saw >>exactly this kind of result from his analysis but assumed that the value/POP >>correlation was "good enough for early 19th century British political >>economy work" (embracing what historians of economic thought call the 98% >>labor theory of value [i.e., of price]). For Marx, the connection between >>prices and values is macroeconomic in nature, with total value = total price >>and total surplus-value = total property income, with the macro structure of >>accumulation limiting and shaping the microprocesses that make up that >>totality. (Charlie Andrews' recent book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY, is >>good on this.) > > >I agree with the focus on totality here. but it is a peculiar focus, >and I am going to make an outlandish guess as to why.
I just want to add a simple point here which echoes Yoshie's point from the capitalist point of view, and I think it says better what I was trying to say very early this morning. For Marx, only once one has discoverd the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole can one discover the limits to the profit that any one capitalist can make. No matter whether an individual capitalist beats off the fall in the average rate of profit at the expense of other capitals, the fall in the average rate for the capitalist class can plunge the system into the crisis. As GA Cohen may put it: that the only a few can fit through the escape door (micro) before it shuts can only be clarified by understanding the situation of the capitalist class itself (macro). Despite the strictures of methodological individualism, it seems to me quite precisely accurate to speak of the fate of the supra-individual entity of capital, which again is itself a concrete individual unlike say a generalized concreted abstraction like boats-as-a-whole (row boats, aircraft carriers, tugboats). rb
