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Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> Re Ajit's 3465
> >Furthermore, I think it is simply wrong to think in terms of whether a
> >unit of a
> >particular commodity is been sold or not. Let's say 100 tons of steel was
> >produced. 95 tons were sold and 5 tons were added to the inventory. What is the
> >serious theoretical problem in following the usual practice of counting the
> >inventories as sold by the enterprise to itself? Cheers, ajit sinha
>
> Then anything which has been produced but not sold on the market becomes a
> form of value production, in particular government orders. This procedure
> would erase the distinction between production and capitalist production
> and thereby undercut the theory of the limits of the mixed economy. At any
> rate, inventories are superposed commodities which have not yet been
> collapsed.
>
> Yours, Rakesh
__________________
This makes no sense. Check out Ricardo's Principles page 12 (Sraffa's edition). The
whole of classical economics is clear about what they understand about commodity,
and what kind of products are brough under the purview of their analysis (what
Govt.'s order has got to do with it? By the way, something that is a product of
labor and sold in market may not be considered a commodity for the theory, e.g. a
piece of art). As I see it, your problem is misunderstanding of concepts. At one
level classical political economy, including Marx, distinguish between among broad
category of production as commodity and non-commodity. Once the commodities are
classified, then one does not look at every unit of those commodities and ask
whether it is a commodity or not. Your problem basically deals with the excess
supply of a commodity at any given time. This matter is dealt with by separating the
concepts of market price and the natural prices (or the prices of production). it
does not afferc the concept of value or the measure of it. You need to ask one
question to yourself, and may be your Hegelian friends, does Marx have a theory of
demand? If demand conditions are supposed to be critical in determining
commodity-values, then Marx had to be an idiot not to have given a serious thought
to developing a theory of demand. Where do you find a theory of demand developed in
Marx? Cheers, ajit sinha
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