>On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote: > >> >The obvious problem is that if "cost-price plus" is a proper statement >> >of Marx's view then "double divergence" is nonsense: there is one and >> >only one source of divergence between price of production and value, >> >namely the discrepancy between surplus value and (equalized) profit. >> >> Allin, >> I think that it should be noted that while this is obvious, I was the >> first to point it out. > >Actually, that's not so. There was a long discussion of just this >point on ope-l a few years back, between Fred, Alejandro, myself and >others. Most of the relevant posts are in the archives for October >and November 1996, and have numbers from the high 3500s through the >3700s. I made the same point at that time. Allin, You are absolutely correct. Thanks for the correction. I probably had got the idea from you. And you made additional important points. You suggest that Marx is not talking about the average commodity when he mentions double divergence in Capital 3; he is explicitly says he is summarizing previous findings. It is obvious to me at least that the subject heading "2. The Production of Commodities of Average Composition" should be placed above the final paragraph of p. 309 since as you correctly say Marx is until that point discussing the general case, not a commodity of average composition. But there is another point to be made here: not only does double divergence rule out Alejandro's formula for value determination, it may rule out your charge that Marx left the inputs in values. For if Marx's underlining of error on p.265 is to be made consistent with what the second reason for divergence on p. 309, one cannot say that in his transformation tables Marx had left the means of production inputs in values but that he had assumed the value of the means of production embodied in and transferred to the commodity output was proportional to the cost price which had been paid for them--AS ALREADY REPRESENTED IN THE TRANSFORMATION TABLES. I will have to strengthen the point, but it seems to me this point about double divergence reinforces my interpretation of an inverse transformation problem--which means that Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Meek, Dobb, Samuelson, Steedman, Desai, Laibman and Ajit S and many others have invented a false problem. On the really important point, Paul M Jr, Fred and Alejandro seem to have made the breakthrough. Yours, Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Mar 01 2001 - 14:01:39 EST