On Sun, 12 Jul 1998, Rebecca Peoples wrote:
> I just dont see, if one accepts the core of Marx's Capital, how one can
> say that capital can be accumulated through unequal exchange. The very
> acceptance of unequal exchange invalidates the possibility of the
> development of commodity production and circulation.
In general, yes. Marx also makes this argument in Value, Price, and
Profit: "It is nonsense to suppose that profit, not in individual cases,
but that the constant and usual profits of different trades spring from
surcharging the prices of commodities or selling them at a price over and
above their value. The absurdity of this notion becomes evident if it is
generalized. What a man would constantly win as a seller he would as
constantly lose as a purchaser." Marx stresses that in order to explain
the "the *general nature of profits*, you must start from the theorem
that, on an average, commodities are *sold at their real values*, and
that *profits are derived from selling them at their values*, that is, in
proportion to the quantity of labour realised in them."
It is not a case that the capitalist sells his product to the public and
makes his profit by charging them more in money than the value of their
commodity. The source of profit must be generated through a process
internal to production, by producing more surplus-value with the
labor-power at the capitalist disposal than the capitalist has to pay in
reproducing that labor-power, either through paying wages that will
exchange for labor or having to supply commodities sufficient to reproduce
that labor-power (other labor not paid for by the capitalist which
reproduces labor-power, such as domestic labor or working a small plot of
land for subsistence, is put to one side for now).
Andy