Nathan wrote:
> Fred: I suspect Julio would argue that the basic marginal analysis is in
> physical terms and, as you so convincingly argue in your papers, surplus
> value under capitalism is measured in money/ the money of account.
The point I tried to make at the end of my reply to Fred is precisely
that if money can express value (and surplus value) is because
physical objects are equiparable in human terms. We make them so, not
by thinking about them, conceptualizing them, or doing calculations
about them. No. We make them equiparable by producing and
reproducing ourselves, by eating, drinking, walking, breathing,
fucking, raising our kids, voting or not, scratching our bellies, etc.
They are equiparable, because they mean something to us, because we
necessarily rank their relative importance to us ("value") all the
time, by action or by omission. This "reduction" (I'm embracing this
ugly verb) of all physical objects (reproducible objects, that is) to
a single "substance" takes place -- says Marx -- behind our backs (in
markets, and partly behind our backs in the legal and political
systems) whether we are aware of the process or oblivious to it.
So, if we argue that Marx runs into no contradiction, because in his
framework surplus value is monetary, which allows for apples-to-apples
addition, subtraction, comparison, determination of profit rates,
etc., we are doing Marx no favor, as we're just begging the question
of why and how money can express and equate things that are so diverse
by nature. Do we really believe that the "neoclassicals" don't note
that money makes the difference between profits, wages, or any other
monetary flow a merely quantitative difference? Because they do.
They just don't care about what that substance really is.
Understandably so, as focusing on it leads to very disturbing
implications. The question they rather obsess about is how specific
quantitative proportions are determined (relative prices, wage rates,
profit rates, etc.), not why and how all of these proportions are just
chunks of one and the same substance. And in that, they are much more
specific and much more logically consistent than we give them credit
for.
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