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A Critique of Moseley's Money and Totality
Abstract
In his macro-monetary interpretation of Marx's theory of value, Fred Moseley claims that Marx's prices of production should be considered as the long-run equilibrium condition of capital reproduction under the assumption of given technology and given capital distribution. Moseley's methodological interpretation depends on the claim that the general rate of profit is completely predetermined in the first two volumes of Capital. I argue to the contrary that though Moseley shows the inadequacy of the Standard Interpretation, he fails to provide a convincing description of Marx's category of prices of production. The production of the new total value and total surplus-value cannot be considered as simply determined by the initial conditions of production; if we want to describe how prices of production are formed and the role they play in the social reproduction of capital, we should recognize that in social reproduction this process develops temporally through an intertwined relation between the production, circulation and distribution.
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The book reflects on the contributions of the New Interpretation (now labeled Single-System Labor Theory of Value) (Foley 1982, 1986, 2000; Duménil 1980, 1983–1984; Duménil and Foley 2008; Mohun 1994; Lipietz 1982; Glick and Ehrbar 1987), the Temporal Single-System Interpretation (TSSI) (Kliman and McGlone 1988; McGlone and Kliman 1995; Kliman 2007; Freeman and Carchedi 1995), Monetary Circuit Theory (Bellofiore 2002, 2004), Shaikh's iterative interpretation (1977, 1984), Single-System Iterative Interpretation (SSII) labeled by Moseley as the Rethinking Marxism Interpretation (Wolff, Roberts, and Callari 1982; Wolff, Callari, and Roberts 1984), the Organic Composition of Capital Interpretation (Fine 1983; Saad-Filho 1993, 1997, 2002; Fine, Lapavitsas, and Saad-Filho 2004). See also (IJPE 2017).
As Moseley writes in his introduction to Marx's Economic Manuscript of 1864–1865: Marx did not “fail to transform the inputs” because the inputs (the cost prices) are not supposed to be transformed (as is commonly alleged), but are instead supposed to be the same magnitude (K) in the determination of both values and prices of production. (Moseley 2015, 15–16; emphasis in the original)
Other scholars, mainly from the TSSI camp, have put forward other methodological criticisms; see, for example, Freeman (2019).
The debate on the analysis developed by Moseley in his Money and Totality is still ongoing and very passionate; I address Moseley's interpretation after a general reconsideration of Marx's transformation of values into prices of production in a forthcoming book.
“[I]f the productivity of labor and the real wage remain constant, then prices of production would also remain constant” (Moseley 2016, 290; italics in the original).
I owe the understanding of this aspect to the long discussions I had with Giovanni Mazzetti.
Only to mention some Perez ([1980] 2018), Wolff, Roberts, and Callari (1982), Wolff, Callari, and Roberts (1984), Callari, Roberts, and Wolff (1998); Freeman and Carchedi (1995); Kliman and McGlone (1988); McGlone and Kliman (1995); Ramos-Martínez and Rodríguez Herrera (1995); Ramos-Martínez (1998–1999); Kliman (2007).
“[This process was examined in Chapter Four of Marx's 1865 manuscript for what he called ‘Book Two’ of Capital. When Engels published Book Two as Volume II in 1885, this chapter became ‘Part Three’. Translator.]” (Marx [1864–1865] 2015, 49).
From the translator's note of Marx's Economic Manuscript of 1864–1865:Passages of Marx's manuscript included by Engels in his edition of Capital Volume III are enclosed by the symbols < and >. Passages that fall outside these brackets were either not included at all by Engels in the published version, or they were modified by him very substantially before inclusion. In other words, where a passage begins with > and ends with < it was either left out by Engels or substantially modified and has been published here for the first time in its original form. (Marx [1864–1865] 2015, xi)
See Bellofiore (2018, 370), Burns (2016, 3), and Fineschi (2013, 80–81).
See also Moseley (2016, 90; emphasis in the original):Marx's theory of prices of production and the equalization of profit rates is based on the premise that the general rate of profit itself (to which individual rates of profit are equalized) is determined logically prior to the determination of prices of production, and is taken as given in the theory of prices of production.
Actually, this distinction between the prices of commodities employed as inputs and obtained as results of the production process is not introduced by Marx in Chapter 9 (Engels's edition). In this chapter, Marx refers only to total advanced values and total prices of production, right because, I suppose, he is not yet arrived to include in his analysis market prices that are discussed in Chapter 10, the chapter obliterated by Moseley.
Although it can suffice for the rebuttal of the charge of logical inconsistency.
Laibman (2018a, 32), more on this below.
See also Marx ([1864–1865] 2015, 249).
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Laibman, in his introduction to the transformation problem, instead of summarizing the problem of the Ricardian labor theory of value inherited and tackled by Marx, simplifies his exposition ruling out the presence of fixed capital and resorts to a model with only one good (Laibman 2018a, 22–25).
The fluctuations of market prices are considered part of “a lower level of abstraction not dealt with in the three volumes of Capital” (Moseley 2016, 7, note 7).
Fineschi (2013, 81, notes 32 and 34) quotes two passages from Volumes I and II of Capital (Marx [1890] 1976, 710; [1893] 1978, 109). See also Tony Burns (2016, 3) and Tony Smith (2002, 150).
For example:We have seen that the rate of profit, within the production process itself, does not depend only on the surplus-value but on many other factors besides. It depends, for example, on the purchase prices of the means of production, on methods that are more productive than the average, on economizing on constant capital, and so on. And, quite apart from the price of production, it also depends on the state of the trade cycle, and in each individual business deal it depends on the greater or lesser cunning and perseverance of the capitalist, whether he sells above or below the production price and thereby appropriates a greater or lesser share of the total surplus-value within the circulation process. (Marx [1864–1865] 2015, 476; emphasis in the original)
In the following table, I determine the MELT with a simple ratio; however, more thorough development of this point would require a deeper discussion, see Freeman (2007).