Re: [OPE-L] questions on the interpretation of labour values

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sun Mar 25 2007 - 12:22:59 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.


But that still leaves unaddressed this point: 
you are just asserting--not demonstrating or 
proving--that the prices of production of the mop 
and mos bought with the initial M had to have 
been the same as the
prices of production which you derive with your 
sequential monetary macro method predicated on 
the LTV.

Simply put, there is a difference between assertion and demonstration.

Rakesh


>
>Comradely,
>Fred
>
>
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