Did Marx drop his law of profitability as a theory of crises?

Did Marx drop his law of profitability as a theory of crises?

In a letter to Engels as late as 1868, over ten years after he first developed the law, Marx said that the law “was one of the greatest triumphs over the asses bridge of all previous economics”.?

But many Marxist critics reckon that Marx dropped this law as relevant as he did not seem to refer to the law after he expounded it in the late 1860s and looked more at the role of credit in crises (as Keynes and modern heterodox economists now do). Moreover, Engels, in editing Marx’s manuscripts after his death into Volumes 2 and 3 of Capital, made far too much of Marx’s law; indeed distorting Marx’s views on this.

Back in 1978, Jerrold Seigel had a look at the manuscripts. Yes, Engels made significant editorial changes to Marx’s writing on the law as in capital Volume 3. He divided it into three chapters 13-15; 13 was ‘the law’; 14 was ‘counteracting influences’ and 15 described the ‘internal contradictions’ (the combination of the tendency and countertendencies). Engels shifted some of the text into Chapter 13 on the ‘law as such’ when in Marx’s manuscript they came after the counteracting factors in Chapter 14. But in doing so, Engels does not overemphasise the importance of the law – on the contrary, Engels actually makes it appear that Marx balances the countertendencies in equal measure with the law as such, when the original order of the text reemphasises the law after talking about counter-influences. So, as Seigel puts it: “Engels made Marx’s confidence in the actual operation of the profit law seem weaker than Marx’s manuscript indicates it to be.” (Seigel, Marx’s Fate: The Shape of a Life, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1978, p339 and note 26).

I see you have encountered Michael Heinrich's new reading of Marx.

This basically goes as far as you care to take it in normal conditions. Are you more interested in Marx's thoughts on his own theories, or are you are you interested in the theories themselves? Even if Marx abandoned the law of the rate of profit that does not tell us if the law is coherent and useful or not. Perhaps it wasn't useful for what Marx had wanted to use it for, but it may yet be useful for understanding capitalism.

Please respond
I keep hearing people arguing that Marx wasn't sure and that counteracting tendencies balanced it out indeterminately

It seems to me, the counteracting tendencies have bounds. You can only push down the cost of labor until that becomes the overall chat if labor power, for example.
Whereas the tendency for organic capital to increase relative to labor seems inexorable and inevitable

Yeah, but so what?

Doesn't Heinrich also reject the LTV?

I quoted a different author than Heinrich in the OP, the author of which is in total disagreement with Heinrich

No. Heinrich says the Labor Theory of Value isn't' Marx. Rather, Marx is working with a Monetary Theory of Value, money being that socially governing objectification of individual, private labours connected only through the market place.

Value is never determined in reference to production conditions under one firm. It is socially determined on the marketplace and immediately appears in money-form.

Interesting. Link to an article by him on that or anything?

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Bump.

As for Heinrich: From what I gathered from interviews and snippets of his stuff (haven't read his book though) he seems to make a trival mistake when parsing his prophets when they say something like:
He seems to argue as if this logically followed from that:

When you present a blind person two clips from two different movies, the only way that person can distinguish the two is by sound. Therefor, if you want to distinguish movie clips, you must have functioning ears and be blind. And if there ever is a universal cure for blindness, all movies will become silent movies. Duuuude.

Maybe the German word "realisieren" has something to do with that fuck-up. It can mean either getting aware of something or making something real ("eine Idee realisieren" = turning an idea into reality). The market is where value gets "realisiert".

Again, I admit I haven't looked deeply into his stuff, so maybe I'm just talking out of my ass here, but the little reading I did of him gave me the impression that he has no truck with logic.

Actually, I was reading something unrelated to this, but that made a point about this, and it actually makes sense to me now.

Socially necessary labor time is only a category of capital, and it is measured only at the point of market realization in the sale. Prior to that we indeed do not and >cannot< know what the value of the object added by labor is.

You are literally making the same mistake as Heinrich, and posting that in a reply to a post that explains the mistake.

It's not a "mistake". Marx wants to assume that the labor determines value apriori, before a sale is made. Then there is an issue of "realized" value, when logically all you need is to recognize that labor's value is determined retroactively by its realized value. There is no need to invoke value as such and say there is a problem of realization. You either have value, or you don't. Labor itself does not determine what value it has produced.

That it takes time to make stuff is the case regardless of whether society got capitalism or any other -ism. That it takes time is the case regardless of whether we pour much effort and thought into measuring that time precisely or not. It is even the case for a lone person stranded somewhere and isolated from human contact that it matters how long it takes to do this or that task. This banal fact doesn't go away when you close your eyes whenever you pass a clock.

And it has ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOTHING to do with the ultimate determination of the ECONOMIC values of things. Prices and values REVEAL how how much labor time you spend ACTUALLY is worth, and therefore it's REAL value. It has to do with how much society on average values the labor that went into something regardless of how easy, hard, short or long it is. The FACT that you can work like a mule on something and end up going broke because people aren't willing to pay enough to keep you going is proof that your labor is not valued enough to warrant your production. It's not that the market failed to realize your labor's value, it's that your labor is not valued.

Labor cannot apriori set its own ground price. There is a necessary bottom level of price that one must meet in order to allow for the reproduction of a commodity cycle, but this is decided in exchange and not in the market. It's how fucking garbage like bottled water can sell for literally dozens of times more than its actual cost. People value it that much out of ignorance, but they buy it droves, so hey, that's its value.

I know you're a virgin because:
a) You've said as much
b) Posts like these

If I ever have a gf she won't be stopping me from indulging my interests.

Socially necessary labour time as a regulative category for production (meaning that firms that fail to competitively decrease socially necessary labour time will disadvantaged in later runs through capital circuits) is something specific to capital–especially when we recognize that socially necessary labour time in its capitalist form is always in the form of money. It's not time that directly represents the value of commodities, its money.

Heinrich is critiquing a notion of value that reduces it to the amount of labour-time within a particular commodity. This ignores that the determination of value is a social determination, that value prior to the sale of the commodity is indeterminate as regards its magnitude.


A particular labor does not determine value. But the comparison of multiple particular labors on the market does.

Yep. All value is labor. Not all labor is value.

The whole issue you guys are having is taking Marx to say:

Labour→labour time-→value

When Marx actually says:

labour→labour time→money

That labour, and particularly labour time, take the form of money (you don't pay for things in labour units, you pay for it with money) is the totality of value. Value is not a thing.

It posits itself in things in its various moments but its a movement, a social relation.

The category of >socially necessary labor time< ONLY comes up after the appearance of separate capitals competing with each other, proving the point that it is NOT production's labor time that determines price, but the realization as price in the competition of the market which retroactively reveals what the value of labor, socially necessary abstract labor time, really is.

Marx invokes the LTV >prior< to developing the theory of competition, which makes no sense since any single capital there is no SNALT at work yet, there is no market competition to force prices to their "natural" bottom, and thus the actual value in exchange at that point is whatever people are willing to pay.

Even though you use English words, it looks like you have your own private language with a dictionary that is vastly different from that of anybody else.

I invite anybody who isn't A.W. to tell me whether they believe they understood what he means there.


No. It even applies to a Robinson Crusoe.

It's a typo, an obvious one at that. I clearly meant


How retarded are you, mate?

How long it takes to produce the same thing using different methods is relevant for which method is chosen, whether the thing is produced in capitalism, a planned economy, or by a man stranded on an island producing for his own consumption.

Yeah, sure thing,

STALIN

I see.

… you do realize that the modern notion of standardized universal time DID come about with capitalism, right? That modern notions of labor discipline and the work day came about due to capitalism, right? That prior to capitalism trade was so sparse in most of the world that market pressures didn't really exist such that anyone saw a "hand of the market" or even thought about some abstract labor (it's never been concrete labor) as being the source of value, right?

Goddamn, read a book.

Time exists whether humans are measuring it precisely or not.

Why don't you read Marx? He made the point about Crusoe.

Grow some theoretical chops, son.

Jesus fucking christ, not this shit. Time does NOT exist. Time is the absolute negativity of space, and time only matters to beings that think and remember.

Pack it up, commies. Game over. Marx blown the fuck out by A.W. because time doesn't exist. Welp, I guess that means Marxism is on its deathbed. (Luckily, it won't die, because that would be a process and processes require time. Phew!)


So, time doesn't matter for you because you can't think?

Even if you polished your writing, you wouldn't convince people, because your solipsistic outlook is too silly. Whether something exists or not is not the same question as whether that thing matters to this or that person or anybody. Eg. your penis exists, but it doesn't matter.

No conceptual derivation given against my own.


Still doesn't answer it. Processes do nkt happen in time you dumbfuck, they happen because of time, because of relation of space external to itself.

Doesn't matter if you don't get it.

Weak physics education. A true product of the burgerstan education system.

Don't fall for it.

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Oh yeah. The board looks way less faggy after hiding that tripcode

That's an almost exact quote of Marx from the Grundrisse.


Thanks for trying your best against the ignorant shitheads on here. There are better places to discuss Marx though, especially on facebook.

Was Marx a physicist?

Yes. If only ignorant shitheads like that German speaker, who disagrees with the namefagging attention whore's True Understanding of Marx based on skimming tumblr posts about translations of secondary literature by petit-bourgeois contrarian obscurantists in a bizarre and pointless competition to differentiate one's brand from that of other autistic petit-bourgeois "Marxist" one-man islands at any cost, including the loss of making any fucking sense, a competition in a parasitic academia-within-academia world of pseudo-scientific jargon and posturing deserving another Sokal, though maybe that has already happened since how would you tell the difference between satirical nonsense and the earnest one, a world that might as well be another planet with twice of this galaxy's size of a vacuum between itself and this world, if not for the fact that nobody hears you scream IN PRINCIPLE COMPATIBLE WITH STRUCTURAL ANTISEMITISM in space, and bullshit like this seeps into Earthrealm's proper leftwing news every once a fortnight or so from the Outworld of you unbearable faggots, were more educated, then the shitheads would see the infinite wisdom of the True Answer of Understanding to a question about the falling rate of profit that consists of mumbling time doesn't exist lawl; though seriously, one can offer help to a man to pull his head out of his ass, but one should give up if the head turns out to be another ass with an ass inside of it and so on and so on, or one becomes a Sisyphus of asspulling, and this might be finally a compelling argument that time doesn't exist for anybody who wants to teach A.W. a fucking thing.

Wew, lads! Get a load of this moron. He thinks ontological objects are derived from dogmatic experience.

Physicists don't know SHIT about ontology. Only a truly ignorant STEM lord seriously believes that empirical science is true in anything but functional sense.

bump