From: Phil Dunn (pscumnud@dircon.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 24 2003 - 02:05:46 EST
clyder wrote:
>Quoting Philip Dunn <pscumnud@dircon.co.uk>:
>> This is why I go for _complete_ equality. The value of the produced
>> commodity
>> is identical with the labour embodied in it and equal to its absolute price.
>
>What do you mean by an absolute price?
>
>Presumably price is measured in units of currency not hours of labour
>so must be dimensionally disinct at least, an more generally would
>be some scalar multiple of value.
Absolute price is nominal price multiplied by the value of a nominal unit
of money (or divided by the MELT). It is measured in hours.
> > This abolished price-value deviations even at the disaggregated level.
>
>One can so define words as to indicate that by prices one means the
>same thing as values, but that does not mean that you have abolished
>the empirical dispersion of market price ratios against value ratios.
I do not mean the same thing. Price is a sum of money. Money has
intrinsic value. The commodity sold has an intrinsic value. This
embodied labour value is equal to the value of the money paid for the
commodity. The empirical dispersion is not abolished. It is pushed
backed into the valorization process.
>
>> Value
>> is always conserved in circulation. The valorisation process then becomes
>> non-deterministic.
>
>Explain this in more detail please.
>
>> There is a deviation between actual value added as
>> recognised in the product market via absolute prices and potential value
>> added
>> as recognised by wages in the labour market.
>
>What have wages to do with this, unless you are using them as
>a proxy for labour time expended?
>
In empirical work labour time is often weighted by relative wage rates.
But this proxy can be given a value-theoretic justification. It starts with
Farjoun and Machover's real wage ('real' as in Adam Smith's real price,
to be distinguished from the usual meaning in economics).
I will use the term 'labour-power value'. The producer commodity
possesses labour-power value in much the same way as the produced
commodity possesses embodied labour-value. This is not the same as
Marx's 'value of labour-power'. There is a further distinction between
relative and equivalent labour-power value. Equivalent labour-power
value is simply the amount of labour-power bought as measured on the
clock. Let total equivalent labour-power value be N. Then the real
value of the total wage-bill is N, since total equivalent labour-power
value is N. In other words, the real value of money is its power of
command over labour-time when buying the producer commodity.
The total real wage-bill measures total relative labour-power value, a
real value as opposed to the absolute relative value of the produced
commodity. Total relative labour-power value is equal to N.
Disaggregating now, let n be the amount of equivalent labour-power
value bought by a firm and n' be the corresponding relative
labour-power value. n' is equal to the firm's real wage-bill.
It is a bit more complicated for the produced commodity because of
the constant capital transferred. It turns out that the produced
commodity does not have any equivalent embodied labour value:
it only possesses relative embodied labour-value. To simplify,
assume the MELT is constant in time and equal to 1. Let l' be
relative embodied labour value added as measured in the product
market, ex post. l' is equal to the firm's sales revenue minus its
non-labour costs. There are analogues for n and N, l and L. It can
be shown that l=n and L=N but l'<>n'.
I call the ratio of l' to n' the valorisation ratio. It is a random
variable. There are more details in my paper _On the Identity
of Labour and Value_ on my web site:
www.pscumnud.users.dircon.co.uk
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