Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 20:56:23 +0200
From: Hinrich Kuhls <kls-AT-unidui.uni-duisburg.de>
Subject: M-TH: Speaking of misrepresentation and representation


At 06:00 27.05.97 -0400, Gerald Levy wrote:
 
>
>Next: what is the "law of value"? 
>

What about this:

The law of value is the summarizing general expression of the distribution
of social labour within the bourgeois society. This law is not a law of
Nature, it is a historical law. It is the summary of the terms of both the
relations of production and the relations of distribution of the bourgeois
formation of society.

The economic quality of labour-products, or their value, is only an
expression of a certain historic social relation: value is the objective
reflex of a particular kind of social labour, or form of representation of
a particular form of social spending of labour.

The task of "Capital", i.e. the critique of political economy, is to
develop how the law of value is generally established within the bourgeois
society.  Hence the starting point is not labour, but value, in order to
develop the dominant relation of production of this specific social
formation, i.e. the relation of capital and labour.

This is the core of the Marx quotations  [Capital vol. 3, chapter 51:
Distribution Relations and Production Relations] I sent in my previous post.

Lew, you are right in summarizing the Preface to the first German edition:
By developing the law of value in Capital Marx layed bare the *economic law
of motion of modern society*. No misrepresentation, no reading to much into
the quotation.

My dear Levy, I am sure, we - on this list - will only see your
schoolmasterly interrogations, but we will never get a representation of
your view on both the theoretical and political implications regarding the
point you are only indicating but - once more - not outlining:

>To begin with, Marx doesn't tell us much about the meaning of "this work"
>in the "Preface to the First Edition."  He does say earlier in the preface
>that: "What I have to examine in this work is the capitalist mode of
>production and the relations of production and forms of intercourse that
>correspond to it." But, he doesn't tell us whether "this work" means V1,
>*or* all of _Capital_, *or* all 6 books of "Economics" in the original
>6-book-plan.



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