Shane wrote: > This is not Marx, it's Adam Smith. Marx (especially in Theörien) > points out that Smith fails to understand that the value of a commodity > consists of c+v+s, not v+s, and by removing c Smith sends us "from > pillar to post." And GDP, of course, does not consist of "value added" > but of the value of all final products. And since all final products' > values consist of c+v+s, GDP likewise is nothing but the sum of those > values.
Shane, I do not decide on the national accounts. The statistics are what they are. You either use them or not. That said, "Smith's Dogma" is irrelevant here. Clearly, s < v + s, for any positive value of v. What does "Smith's Dogma" have to do with that? As for "Smith's Dogma," I know what Marx wrote. And I respect Marx's opinion. But in all fairness to Smith, what Smith was noting (I believe) was, not that c is not part of the value of existing wealth, but rather that c can in turn be reduced to c_1 + v_1 + s_1, and then c_1 to c_2 + v_2 + s_2, and then c_2 to c_3 + v_3 + s_3, etc. Or at least that's how I read Smith. If my interpretation is correct, then Smith's point is no different from Passinetti's "vertically integrated labor coefficients," Leontief's (I-A)^(-1) matrix, etc. At the end of the day, the means of production can only be reproduced with *living* labor. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
