On Sun, May 12, 2002 at 07:44:53PM -0700, Brad DeLong wrote:
> >I don't know about what Marx thought on some deep level, but his
> >writings never
> >suggested a material basis for value. Instead, he insisted that value was the
> >social relation. The transformation problem has occupied some academic
> >economists who wanted to make Marx's economics more academically
> >"respectable".
>
> For "some academic economists" read "Engels":
>
> "According to the Ricardian law of value, two capitals employing
> equal quantities of equally paid living labour all other conditions
> being equal, produce commodities of equal value and likewise
> surplus-value, or profit, of equal quantity in equal periods of time.
> But if they employ unequal quantities of living labour, they cannot
> produce equal surplus-values, or, as the Ricardians say, equal
> profits. Now in reality the opposite takes place. In actual fact,
> equal capitals, regardless of how much or how little living labour is
> employed by them, produce equal average profits in equal times. Here
> there is therefore a contradiction of the law of value which had been
> noticed by Ricardo himself, but which his school also was unable to
> reconcile. Rodbertus likewise could not but note this contradiction.
> But instead of resolving it, he made it one of the starting-points of
> his utopia. (Zur Erkenntnis, p. 131.) Marx had resolved this
> contradiction already in the manuscript of his Zur Kritik. According
> to the plan of Capital, this solution will be provided in Book III.
> Months will pass before that will be published. Hence those
> economists who claim to have discovered in Rodbertus the secret
> source and a superior predecessor of Marx have now an opportunity to
> demonstrate what the economics of a Rodbertus can accomplish. If they
> can show in which way an equal average rate of profit can and must
> come about, not only without a violation of the law of value, but on
> the very basis of it, I am willing to discuss the matter further with
> them. In the meantime they had better make haste. The brilliant
> investigations of the present Book II and their entirely new results
> in fields hitherto almost untrod are merely introductory to the
> contents of Book III, which develops the final conclusions of Marx's
> analysis of the process of social reproduction on a capitalist basis.
> When this Book III appears, little mention will be made of the
> economist called Rodbertus..."
>
> And also read "Marx": Capital, volume III, part 1...
>
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu