Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 06:00:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gerald Levy <glevy-AT-pratt.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Speaking of misrepresentation


Lew wrote:

> Marx didn't say it was the "law of value" (in inverted commas), I did.
> The first quotation Hinrich gave is the one Popper misquoted; it comes
> from the 1867 Preface to _Capital_. However, read in the context of that
> Preface I think it is clear that, by the "economic law of motion of
> modern society", Marx did mean the law of value. Why do you think this
> is a misrepresentation?

I think it's reading too much into the quotation.

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.

Next: what is the "law of value"?  

Jerry



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