Jim, how would you calculate the reproduction cost of a 2 year old computer, even in theory? Yes, you are correct that you can use the theory even without measurment.
Devine, James wrote:
Michael Perelman writes: >... we have no way of calculating the abstract labor values of already installed constant capital unless we have a scientific means of measuring depreciation.<
there is more than one way to measure depreciation, but there is a way to measure the value of already-installed constant capital, i.e., at reproduction cost (measured in value terms). This may be difficult in practice, but in principle it could be done.
Even it something can't be measured doesn't mean that we can't use a theory in order to understand the stuff that can be measured. That theory may involve magnitudes ("intervening variables") that can't be measured. Science is more than measurement.
More importantly, at least for how I interpret Marx's law of value, it's only new value (value-added) that counts. The key to value theory is not some relationship between prices and values (the so-called transformation problem) but instead the relationship (1) between total new value and the same magnitude in price terms and (2) between total surplus-value and total capitalist property income. JD
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Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
