Suppose that you are looking at the value circulating in the economy today.
How would you value the constant capital values found in the commodities
produced? That will depend on whether the constant capital will turnover in 1
year or 10 years.
In my opinion to calculate the total world social capital and that portion of it allocated to constant capital as opposed to living wages, one would have to use the data from the evolution of social production under capitalist relations. Specifically, points of demarcation would indicate each quantitative line of demarcation in the course of the completion of the unity of the world market.
This is to say that the ratio between what portion of capital is allocated to living labor and what portion to constant capital only exists as a qualitative definition after the completion of the unity of the world market and the emergence of a new qualitative feature that indicates that no qualitative growth can take place in the expansion of the market under capital. Generally speaking the ending of the era of colonialism and neocolonialism, as a principle force in capital accumulation indicates the qualitative unity of the world market. The was fundamentally completed by the 1980s, although the exceptions to the rule prove the rule.
Quantitative and qualitative measurements are given life based on a specific trajectory that outline the historical process. The starting point is the formation of scattered commodity production under feudalism in transition to capitalist commodity production and the determination of price as a manifestation of the laboring process.
I don't assert that price is a form of value but rather a manifestation of value as it assumed the manifestation of exchange under specific historical conditions. To determine the magnitude of value in the production of the total world of commodities one must incorporate the fact of the entire world population being converted into proletarians, with no property other than the sell of their labor power and the absolute impossibility of the world social total of labor power being deployed to expand capital.
This was not the case in the time of Marx. What potion of the world total labor power is deployed to produce what commodities? What potion of the total labor power is deployed in the actual production of commodities versus the cost of the administration of production compared to 10 years ago; 50 years ago; 100 years ago? What are the population figures of the world in which the capitalist market operated 50 years ago or 100 years ago?
In my opinion the framework is not hard to solve, but someone has to sit down and do the actual computations that incorporate the various stages in the qualitative and quantitative growth of capitalist production relations.
Within this framework value as socially necessary labor in the product of commodities come to life. Me? Such an undertaking is honrable, but outdside my inclination.
Hey, where is Cornel West email address - anyone?
Melvin
