I'm on the road, three short remarks without any reference to the literature:
1) negaitve potential wrote:
>There is no "Marxist economics" or "Marxist economic
analysis".
>There *is* a Marxian *critique* of political economy,
a critique of the social form of labor in capitalist
society.
That's the basic statemente of quite a lot of german literature on Marx, starting in the 70s (e.g. Hans-Georg Backhaus) and
systematized in a popular form at the end of the 80s by Michael Heinrich. The soruces are threefold: a) a quite light handed critique of labor movement and its reading of Marx, coming out of the students movement. The hard core example was the so called "Marxist Group", accusing the labor movement of misreading Marx and that's why mistaken. b) a emphasis on the so called "logic of capital" - first looked for in the hegelian roots of Marx, later on people tried to build such a "logic" from scratch, Heinrich and others. Problem is, that this was and is from the beginning to the end a "logic" in quotation marks, speaking about "essence", "form" and so on, instead of explaining and using these terms in there language. c) The critique, starting with a special interpretation of the Transformation problem, revived by the discussion on Sraffas "Production of commodities by means of commodities". The problem with this critique is, that it is fas more hostile towards Marx then Sraffa was (see: Ricardo Bellofiores articel from spring 200 7, Titel "Sraffa after Marx" ore something similar.) One question of Marx - and Sraffa ! - was, how to explain the magnitude of the surplus, the substance of profit. Marx answer is: Surplus value, made by surplus labor, in quite normal science empirical way, based on a concept of Value not only as a form, but having a content too.
There is research based on this idea (Kenneth May, Nobuo Okishio and so on). It is not too difficult to show, that in a linear production model the surplus, to be distributed between labor and capital, so forming the substance of profit and surplus-wage (wage in sraffina sense, excluding subsistence) strictly depends on the length of the labor day.
2) There is no much difference in the concept of value as an empirical, in principle measurable magnitude between the Marx manuscripts of the 1860s and the later ones of the 1870s. The big, chaotic text on the mathematical treatment of the rate of surplus and the rate of profit dates back to 1875. Marx never solved the problems involved here because of his - and his advisers - bad math. But there is no chronological
border, with the "labor value theory" Marx before, and a "value form" Marx afterwards. (See the remark on the clock in measuring labor time in the 1st volume.)
Marx critique of political economy was planned to be ad once an theoretical critique of bourgeois theory of political economy and of the real existing basic structure of bourgeois society. He tried give an explanation about the course of capitalist development. May be, he did not succeed. (The falling rate of profit was quite important to him, but you cannot prove, what's not true.) But we should not reduce his great project.
3) The chapters on Credit in Vol. III are quite sophisticated, but seldom used. May be, because the issue seemed to be far away from "class struggle" - through the contrary is true. May be because of the erratic structure of the argument ond the lacking "finish". Marx tried to change quite a lot in all the three volumes planned, and never came to an end. On example: A the end of his live Marx was not so sure any more, if England was really the "classical case" of capitalist economy. But he could never finish his studies on the US, and so left quite a lot of research to be done. The proof of the pudding is in eating.
Sebastian (I'm on the road and will have access to a computer only from time to time.)
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