Jurriaan Bendien wrote: > I think Marx really did intend to prove that "in the simplest case", a > system of expanded reproduction of capital could occur such that the > distribution of prices and values matched up, and profit rates were > equalized; ...
In volume III, unless I missed something, I don't see any discussion of the expanded reproduction of capital as part of the so-called "transformation problem." I think it was Bortkiewicz (or maybe Sweezy) who added the idea that volume II reproduction schemes were part of the TP. Now, if we don't insist that the conditions for expanded reproduction actually apply, you could say that Marx's discussion of the TP could concern a growing economy. But almost all of the attention is to inter-industry equilibrium (equalized profit rates, rates of surplus-value).[*] In volume II, it's pretty clear that Marx thought that the anarchy of production means that capitalism does not normally obey the reproduction schemes. It's only by accident that "disproportionalities" are avoided. To my mind, the conditions for expanded reproduction should be seen as "harmony conditions." In very simple terms, when they are met, capitalism is growing steadily without any economic crisis (i.e., with harmony). When they aren't met, the economy was "out of whack" and a crisis of one type or another was either happening or about to happen. The existence of credit allows the economy to not meet the conditions for expanded reproduction without it meaning an immediate crisis, delaying the problem. > I don't think it is very easy to prove, that there exists or does not exist > a tendency for profit rates to level out, since there exists no reliable > data comparisons that could definitely adjudicate the issue.... Mark Glick and (I am sure) others, have presented econometrics indicating that there is a tendency for average sectoral profit rates to equalize between sectors. That does not mean that they do so, of course, since the relentless search for super-profits leads to changes in each sector's average profit rate, disrupting any equilibrium. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. [*] IMHO, Marx was much more interested in showing that prices _could not equal values_ under capitalism (due to the profit equalization tendency) than he was in showing that prices could be derived from values. That said, Ed Ochoa and others have shown that there's a strong empirical correlation between prices and values if the latter are measured correctly. But that's another question. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
