Paul Cockshott wrote: >> If it is not a theory of price determination what is it?
me: > I see [Marx's] value theory as a macro-theory (so the so-called > "transformation problem" is much the same as the familiar aggregation > problem). Individual commodity-producers contribute labor to the aggregate > flow of value. Because value usually does not equal price (even when > converted into the same units) some commodity producers are able to claim > value (in a Smithian phrase, "command labor") that's not proportional to > their value contributions. But total new value = total claims on new value > (when the two sides of the equation are in the same units) and total > surplus-value = total property income (ditto). Paul C. >> He certainly uses it as a theory of price determination in his analysis of >> the production of relative surplus value. me: > in that volume I discussion, he's talking about an average sector of the > economy, for which values and prices correspond. Paul Cockshott answered: > No this is not tenable for the theory of surplus value at all. For the theory > of relative surplus value to work a saving in the labour time to produce wage > goods must result in a proportional fall in their price and thus in > subsistence wages. This is inherently an inter sectoral process.< right. But in the main narrative of volume I of CAPITAL (after chapter 3), Marx abstracts from the technical differences among different sectors (and what use-values are produced), focusing instead on the class relationship between "capital in general" and "labor in general." This means that value = price on the micro-level (as inter-sectoral differences in the composition of capital are abstracted from), even though this equality is true only on the macro-level and for an average industry (with the average composition of capital).[*] Under this assumption, if labor productivity rises (on average), the average commodity's value falls and so does that of the workers' consumption commodities. [*] He also assumes that value = price in volume II. On the first page of volume II: "In order to conceive these forms in their pure state, one must first of all discard all factors which have nothing to do with the changing or building of forms as such. It is therefore taken for granted here ... that the commodities are sold at their values... Likewise disregarded therefore are any changes of value which might occur during the movement in circuits." -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
