tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post4530347723341363097..comments2024-03-28T11:04:16.315+00:00Comments on Boffy's Blog: Theories of Surplus Value, Part I, Chapter 4 - Part 16Boffyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-90083474331042697822017-03-23T08:49:46.636+00:002017-03-23T08:49:46.636+00:00Hi Harrison,
I think you are referring to Henrich...Hi Harrison,<br /><br />I think you are referring to Henrich's comments about the Law of The Tendency for the Rate of Profit To Fall, not Theories of Surplus Value, which Marx developed originally as a major historical excursus to sit alongside the corresponding elements of the three volumes of Capital.<br /><br />As Engels himself says, had Marx written and published Volumes II and III, they would have been different books. But, he didn't. He only left manuscripts, and notes in various conditions, which he told Engels to "make something of", and which Engels then saw as placing a responsibility on hims to put in an unadulterated, but readable form.<br /><br />As Engels says, had Marx published Volume II, then he would undoubtedly have written far more about the process of development of the average rate of profit, and the transformation of exchange values into prices of production, within which the role of the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, by determining the allocation of capital, so as to form an average rate of profit plays a decisive role, i.e. competition to secure the highest annual rate of profit drives capital into those areas of production where the organic composition of capital is lowest, and where the rate of turnover of capital is highest. <br /><br />But, as I've written at length - <a rel="nofollow">The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall</a> I think that much of the understanding of that Law if wrong. It confuses the Rate of Profit/Profit Margin with the Annual Rate of Profit, and consequently General Annual Rate of Profit, for example.<br /><br />Consequently, I think the question of whether Marx was moving away from the Law or not is at best moot, and more importantly wrong headed. Moot because Marx never gave it the role in being a cause of crisis that some have claimed for it - rather Marx sees the mechanism behind it (rising social productive reflected in rising organic composition of capital) as the means by which capital resolves crises of overproduction, which come down to capital expanding faster than the supply of labour-power, causing wages to rise, and rate of surplus value to fall, as described in Chapter 15 - and wrong headed, because the Law sits behind the process of formation of the average rate of profit, and allocation of capital, and marx certainly did not think that process was outdated, though in the closing chapters of Volume III, he does describe how this is manifest via competition and monopoly in practice, and particularly in relation to socialised forms of capital.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6263577133333272085.post-47325313609242571222017-03-22T12:03:25.834+00:002017-03-22T12:03:25.834+00:00Hey Boffy, what do you think of Heinrich's int...Hey Boffy, what do you think of Heinrich's interpretation of Marx. Specifically his views on ToSV being outdated and something Marx moved past. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01733326304927122323noreply@blogger.com