Re: [OPE-L] Che Guevara and the Sraffian notion of profit

From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Wed May 09 2007 - 09:35:38 EDT 

Iagree with what you say about the real wage.
What I worry about here Ajit is how one models the process by which
things like fossil fuels are transformed into wastes.
From the standpoint of capitalist accounting, there is no problem,
in that fuel below the ground is free and only costs due to the
labour required to extract it. Thus from the standpoint of 
a critique of neo-classical economics it is just fine for 
us to ignore this. 

But from the standpoint of the long term rational use of natural
resources, it should be possible to model this in some way.

Paul Cockshott

www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc



-----Original Message-----
From: OPE-L on behalf of ajit sinha
Sent: Wed 5/9/2007 1:59 PM
To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Che Guevara and the Sraffian notion of profit
 
--- Paul Cockshott <wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK> wrote:

> Sraffas wholism is certainly more advanced than the
> Hegelian version,
> but with respect to the idea of unifying matrix
> mechanics with
> Sraffas formalism, the big problem is that Sraffas
> matrices, unlike
> Heisenbergs, are not unitary, and as such do not
> express conservation
> relations.
________________________
I think if we take a purely natural science point of
view then the notion of surplus must meltdown. One way
to look at the system would be to specify subsistence
wage per unit of labor service in terms of goods and
put it on the side of inputs. These inputs produce the
total labor service as output and thus account for all
the labor in the system. Now the net output of the
system can be interpreted as conversion of resources
that are economically free such as air, water, sun,
etc. I think they could be modeled in the system with
zero prices. We can define wages as anything above the
given subsistence and work out the distrbution of
"free natural resources" between wages and profits.
This way we could maintain the conservation principle.
What do you think? Cheers, ajit sinha
>
> To make them unitary you would have to include as an
> input and
> output of the coal industry for example 'coal in the
> ground'.
> The operation of the production system would then be
> conservative
> since it would not appear to make matter appear from
> nowhere.
> Of course, from the standpoint of classical PE coal
> in the ground
> is not a commodity and has no value, and Sraffa was
> concerned
> only with the commodities that enter the production
> process.
> A socialist planning system on the other hand ought
> to consider
> the coal in the ground as an input to the process if
> it was
> to rationally project future states of the economy
> based on
> exhaustion of physical resources.
>
> Paul Cockshott
>
> www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: OPE-L on behalf of ajit sinha
> Sent: Mon 5/7/2007 12:02 PM
> To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
> Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Che Guevara and the Sraffian
> notion of profit
>
> --- Paul Cockshott <clyder@GN.APC.ORG> wrote:
>
> > Ajit recently emphasises how, in the Sraffian
> > system, the profitability
> > of the economy is determined by
> > the standard system ( formally as the inverse of
> its
> > principle
> > eigenvalue ), this idea that profitability is
> > a structural property of the system as a whole is
> > clearly quite distinct
> > from the Austrian concept
> > of profitability as being locally generated in the
> > individual enterprise.
> >
> >
> > Reading the following passage from MAtinez
> article:
> >
> > Le concept de planification socialiste dans le
> > système de Guevara est
> > étroitement lié au concept de rentabilité du
> système
> > productif entier.
> > L'efficacité de l'économie socialiste n'est pas
> les
> > résultats de
> > l'addition mécanique 'entreprises individuelles.
> Un
> > équilibre positif
> > dans la somme arithmétique des profits individuels
> > est possible dans le
> > système capitaliste pendant les temps d'expansion,
> > bien que cela
> > devienne négatif dans les tems de récession.
> > Indépendamment du fait, que
> > le système productif socialiste ne connaît pas la
> > récession ou les
> > crises, le système productif socialiste montrent
> les
> > taux de croissance
> > les plus grands non pas parce que l'accumulation
> > arithmétique de
> > rentabilité individuelle s'élève à un équilibre
> > positif. L'avantage du
> > mode socialiste de production sur le capitalisme
> se
> > trouve dans le
> > caractère projeté de l'économie, que l'état
> > socialiste est dans une
> > position pour décider à l'échelle du système
> > productif entier, non la
> > coordination de producteurs individuels, mais le
> > règlement du flux de
> > travail parmi les entreprises socialistes. Tandis
> > qu'il st d'une
> > importance primordiale que l'unité productive soit
> > le plus profitable au
> > moyen de la réduction maximale des dépenses de
> > production, l'efficacité
> > de l'économie doit être évaluée dans l'ensemble.
> >
> >     ' Puisque ce système est basé sur le contrôle
> > central de l'économie,
> >     l'efficacité relative d'une entreprise
> > deviendrait juste un index;
> >     ce qui importe vraiment est la rentabilité
> > totale du système
> >     productif entier ' (Che Guevara, op. cit. dans
> '
> > des Considérations
> >     sur les Dépenses, p. 48. Traduit de
> l'Espagnol.)
> >
> >
> > I was struck by the similarity of the concept here
> > to that in Sraffa.
> > Probably both have the same origins, in the
> insights
> > engendered by
> > the early efforts of Gosplan to construct systems
> of
> > material balances
> > for the economy as a whole.
> _______________________
> This is an interesting speculation. However, on 26th
> of November 1927, Sraffa in a note entitled
> 'Metaphysics', wrote: "I foresee that the ultimate
> result will be a restatement of Marx, by
> substituting
> to his Hegelian metaphysics and terminology our own
> modern metaphysics and terminology. ..." You can see
> an exchange between de Vivo and myself on this note
> in
> 'Contributions to Political Economy' 2006. Even
> Gragenani has a long footnote against de Vivo's
> interpretation in his 2005 paper in EJHET. In any
> case, after my recent discovery of the idea of equal
> rate of profits in Sraffa's scheme, which happened
> only in early last February, I'm beginning to
> understand the direction of thought Sraffa might
> have
> started to take as early as late 1927. Though Marx
> talks about wholism in an Hegelian language, when it
> comes to making economic arguments, he had no way of
> carrying it through and thus had to revert back to
> the
> classical notion of newtonian mechanics, which was
> part of classical economics. Sraffa, in a way,
> reestablishes the notion of wholism in terms of
> modern
> metaphysics and terminology. Cheers, ajit sinha
>
>
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