Hi Jim,
Jim Devine wrote:
> I call them "conservation principles." In Marx, total price (the sum of
> {price * quantity for each good or service}) should equal total value
> (sum of {value * quantity for each good or service} for all
> newly-produced commodities) because value cannot be created in exchange
> (but is instead created by labor). Similarly, the sum of all property
> income should equal the sum of all surplus-value, since surplus-value
> has to be created by surplus labor. ......
>
> Given these conservation principles, price/value differences
> "redistribute" income rather than producing it:
There is no need to have the total surplus value equal the total profits
(both measured in financial terms). The theory of the redistribution of
surplus value because of price/value deviations can proceed quite nicely
without this.
The point is that the total surplus value and the total profits are equal
in material and value terms, and differ only in financial terms. This
difference is precisely the value/price (or price/value) deviation of the
total amount of commodities purchased with the profits or surplus value.
It depends on how far the organic composition of this total mass of
commodities differs from the average organic composition of the economy as
a whole. It is illogical to assume that there is a price/value deviation
for individual commodities, but not for a package of commodities that is
only part of the total output of the economy.
Jim Devine wrote, with respect to the transformation problem:
>
> The so-called "New" solution of the TP (Foley, Duménil, Lévy) promises a
> simple answer.
The New Solution is based on trying to maintain that the total surplus
value and the total profits are the same in financial terms at all costs.
This leads it into insolvable problems.
> A better way to think of it is that values represent the abstract
> social essence (i.e., shared characteristics) of commodities, whereas
> prices represent their concrete, specific, phenomenal appearance. ...
Marx lays great stress on the distinction between abstract and concrete
labor. But both price and value represent abstract labor.
For example, Marx says that labor in different spheres of work differs
concretely, but when they are equated quantitatively (which is done by
either price or value), these concrete differences are lost. It's this
labor which differs in different spheres of work which is concrete labor.
It is labor which is taken to differ only quantitatively which is abstract
labor.
"The labour of individuals in the same branch of work, and the various
kinds of work, are different from one another not only quantitatively but
also qualitatively. What does a solely quantitative difference between
things presuppose? The identity of their qualities. Hence, the
quantitative measure of labours presupposes the equivalence, the identity
of their quality." (Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of
Political Economy (Rough Draft), Translated and with a Foreword by Martin
Nicolaus, "The Chapter on Money", pp. 172-3)
Or again, Marx deals with this issue with reference to dead or
crystallized labor, that is manifested in products. He says that:
"If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities, they
have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But
even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If
we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the same
time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a
use-value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other
useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put of out sight. . .
. there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to
one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract."(Capital,
vol. I. , Chapter I, section 1, pp. 44-45, Kerr edition.)
Both price and value involve an an "abstraction...from the material
elements and shapes" of thing. "There is nothing left but...human labor in
the abstract."
> The
> value of a commodity is determined by society as a whole (i.e, what's
> "socially necessary") while its price is determined by individual
> markets. ....
Only from the most narrow-minded viewpoint of free-market economists is
price determined simply by individual markets. In reality, the price in
individual markets is determined by what happens in the entire society.
The supply, the demand, the possibility of more production and at what
cost, the possibility of substituting another commodity, etc etc are all
determined by what happens in society as a whole.
If this weren't true, it would be saying that value had no relation to
price at all.
>
> We go from essence toward appearance (from the whole to the parts) as we
> move from the abstract capitalism of volume I (which is all about
> Abstract Capital exploiting Abstract Labor) to the less-abstract
> capitalism of volume III (in which the competition among concrete
> capitalists is introduced). (In CAPITAL volume III, labor is still
> abstract.)
Really? So that huge mass of concrete material in volume I of "capital" is
all just about "abstract capitalism"?
Furthermore, as far as proceeding from abstract labor to concrete labor,
this already proceeds quite far in volume II of "Capital". In volume II,
Marx points out that, if one is looking at what happens in the economy as
a whole, one cannot restrict oneself to abstract labor -- to the simple
quantitative measurement of economic goods. One has to distinguish between
what exists in different fields of production. One has to distinguish, for
example, means of production from means of consumption. He raises that it
doesn't suffice, when one considers the economy as a whole, for there to
be a sufficient amount of goods measured in money for production to
proceed: there has to be the right amount of means of production, and the
right amount of means of consumption. Moreover, it's clear that this
analysis can be extended further to the right amounts of the various
different kinds of things, including the right amount of different kinds
of living labor.
>From this consideration, Marx develops an important rudimentary form of
the method of material balances, and uses it to great effect.
-- Joseph
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