In a message dated 6/11/00 2:14:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< The waterfall reduces the value of the goods. The quantity of labor in
each good
produced with the waterfall is lower. Whether it produces extra surplus
value
would depend on what happens next. If competition drives prices down toward
the
new values, then presumably the workers will exchange a given hour of
abstract
labor for high utilities, possibly leaving total surplus value unchanged. >>
Right, I was wrioting disaster than I was thinking. If we define value as
embodied labor, this is correct. But perhaps we shouldn't. What the waterfall
example shows is that not all profits come from exploitation of labor, thus
from value defined as labor values. That was what I was getting at with my
vague reference to Roemer and the exploitation of corn or iron, which in fact
is not quite to the point, although it is in the neighborhood. The general
lesson would seem to be that value, if we want to account of profits in value
terms, and some of us (like me) might not, ought to be understood as the
property of general commensurability that market economies create, and not
definitionally as SNALT, except for certaina nalytical purposes. --jks
