Comments on: Questioning the Falling Rate of Profit:

By: Keith

Keith — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:37:51 +0000

I appreciate your comments and the reading suggestions, negative potential.

Perhaps, I wasn’t clear in my initial comments.

Heinrich’s understanding of the falling rate of profit is mistaken. That is clear when he writes:

“If abstract labor remains the substance of value, then it is not clear why labor time can no longer be its intrinsic measure, and it’s not clear why “production based on exchange value” should necessarily collapse.”

When socially necessary labor time is zero or close to it then value (abstract socially necessary labor time) ceases to be the form that wealth must take. If socially necessary labor time is reduced to zero or close to it as is “implied in the fragment on machines” the law of value is overcome. There is no substance of value at this point there are only use values.

Heinrich seems to miss the point that reductions in socially necessary labor time act back retroactively on previously produced values. If socially necessary labor time is zero then the value form is abolished. The existing machines are simply use values.

By: negative potential

negative potential — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:57:51 +0000

P.S. Also, not to be rude, but did you actually read the piece? Because you actually get completely wrong the works and manuscripts Heinrich counts as being part of Marx’s first project, and the ones that are part of the second project. And honestly, that’s pretty remarkable, considering he actually creates a table indicating which manuscripts are part of which project.

By: negative potential

negative potential — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:43:47 +0000

Anybody who talks about the labour “embedded” in a commodity is a Ricardian who has not understood the first thing about Marx’s theory of value, and what distinguishes him from classical political economy (I’m not saying that to be a dick, but rather to point out that any further discussion is pointless if your conception of “value” is that of a Ricardian physiological substance).

I would suggest to go back and read chapter one of Vol. I of Capital very, very closely to understand the distinction Marx makes between concrete labour and abstract labour, how the latter is not a physiological substance, but rather a social abstraction consummated in societies of generalized commodity exchange. It goes without saying that Heinrich’s book is very helpful in this regard if you need supplementary literature (it has the advantage of also providing quotes from Marx’s revision manuscripts that are otherwise not yet available in English).

Also, the argument underlying the machine fragment of the Grundrisse was explicitly rejected by Marx in Vol. I of Capital when he introduces the concept of relative surplus-value, noting that Quesnay used to torment the classical political economists for the apparent contradiction that labour is the substance of wealth, yet capitalists strive to reduce the socially necessary labour involved in the production of a commodity. The category of relative surplus-value resolves this apparent “contradiction”: what interests the capitalist is not the socially necessary labor time required for the production of a commodity, but rather the surplus *beyond* that level of social necessity.