From: Pen-L Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Sun Mar 25 2007 - 10:16:17 EDT
Quoting Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU>: > Fred, > What Marx is saying is simple: "In writing up my tables, I assumed > that the value transferred from the used up means of production was > proportional to the cost price of the used up means of production but > since we now know that the means of production had to have been > purchased at market prices regulated by prices of production rather > than value, I really don't have a way of determining the value > transferred in each branch from the cost price of using up of means > of production, but we should not assume that the value transferred is > proportional to (or can be identified with) the cost price of the > used up means of production. I also assumed that wage goods were > bought at value but as they probably sold above or below value, fewer > or more workers could have been hired with the advanced v than I > assumed, and the rate of surplus value was accordingly lower or > higher than I had assumed. Now that I have introduced the > understanding of the difference between price of production and > value, I should revise my transformation tables so that I do not > identify the value transferred from the means of production with the > manifest cost price of the used up means of production, but I have no > way of determining from what is available to me in a fetishistic > economy--that is, price data--what the exact respective values of the > used up means of production were, but it also does not really matter > to the logic of the transformation as we know the total new value > added will tend to be distributed to equalize profit rates on the > basis of differences in the cost prices of the various sectors. " Rakesh, as both of us know, you and I have very different interpretations of Marx’s theory of prices of production. I interpret this theory as moving from aggregate prices to industry prices (and from total money surplus-value to industry average profit). And you interpret this theory as moving from prices back to labor-times (which you have called, following my suggestion if I remember correctly, an “inverse transformation problem”). I think we are going to have to leave it at that for now. Comradely, Fred ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
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