Understanding Marx: a reconstruction and critique of Capital

247 Pages·1985·9.139 MB·English

by  Wolff, Robert Paul;Marx, Karl

UNDERSTANDING MARX
STUDIES IN MORAL, POLITICAL,
AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY
* * *
General Editor: Marshall Cohen
UNDERSTANDING
MARX
A Reconstruction and Critique
of Capital
Robert Paul Wolff
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1984 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom:
Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
will be found on the last printed page of this book
ISBN 0-691-07678-2
ISBN 0-691-02231-3 (pbk.)
This book has been composed in Linotron Palatino and Cartier
Qothbound editions of Princeton University Press books
are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials
are chosen for strength and durability.
Paperbacks, although satisfactory for personal collections, are not
usually suitable for library rebinding
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press
Princeton, New Jersey
For Toby and Patrick
in the hope that their world
will be better than ours
*

CONTENTS
*
PREFACE ix
INTRODUCTION 3
ONE THE CONCEPT OF REPRODUCTION 8
:
1. The Concept of Reproduction in General 8
2. A Preliminary Analysis of Material Reproduction 9
Two: ADAM SMITH AND THE CONCEPT OF NATURAL PRICE 17
THREE: DAVID RICARDO AND THE LABOR THEORY OF
NATURAL PRICE 39
1. The Essay on Profits 39
2. The Theory of the Principles 42
3. Land and Labor 74
FOUR: MARX'S THEORY OF EXPLOITATION AND
SURPLUS VALUE 89
1. The Theoretical Presuppositions of Volume One
of Capital 89
2. Surplus Value and the Critique of Capitalist Exploitation 97
3. Labor as the Substance of Value 107
4. Abstract Homogeneous Socially Necessary Labor 111
FIVE: MARX'S THEORY OF NATURAL PRICE 117
1. The Quantitative Determination of Surplus Value 117
2. Prices and Values: The Mystification of Capitalism 122
3. Is Marx Right? 137
Six: BALANCED GROWTH AND THE CONSERVATION OF
SURPLUS VALUE 141
1. Why Did Marx Believe That Total Profits Equal
Total Surplus Value? 141
VII
-*• CONTENTS *
2 The Conditions of the Validity of the Principle of
the Conservation of Surplus Value 146
Technical Afterword to Chapter Six A Numerical Example 158
ENVOI SOME DOUBTS ABOUT MARXS THEORY OF
VALUE AND EXPLOITATION 163
APPENDIX A A FORMAL ANALYSIS OF RICARDIAN AND
MARXIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY 179
APPENDIX B AN ANALYTICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF
MARXS VALUE CATEGORIES 207
BIBLIOGRAPHY 222
INDEX 227
VHI
PREFACE
This book is, in a manner of speaking, a return to the traditions
of my youth. My grandfather, Barnet Wolff, was a leader of
the Socialist Party in New York City at the turn of the century,
and one of the seven socialists who were elected to the New
York Board of Aldermen in 1917.1 grew up thinking of myself
as a socialist, and as an adult came to define myself as a radical,
but it was not until six years ago that I began to study Karl
Marx's political economy seriously. Rereading volume one of
Capital forced me to revise my unreflective view of Marx as
merely a philosopher of the human condition, and to construe
him instead as a theoretical economist before all else.
Fortunately for me, at the moment when I undertook to re
think Marx's political economy, I found myself teaching at
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which has the
finest faculty of radical and Marxian economists in the United
States. Indeed, the entire university is virtually unique in this
country as a center of serious radical thought. Senior faculty,
junior faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates all have
contributed to my study of Marx. Most valuable has been the
opportunity to talk with, and learn from, a number of members
of the Economics Department, including Samuel Bowles, Robert
Costrell, William Gibson, Herbert Gintis, Stephen Resnick, and
Richard Wolff. My acknowledgments to them in the footnotes
do not begin to record my debt to them.
At an early stage in my study of Marx, I had the good
fortune to attend a graduate seminar on classical, Marxian, and
neoclassical value theory taught by John Eatwell of Cambridge
University. It was his lectures, more than anything else, that
pulled the subject together for me and gave it a shape. I doubt
IX