Note that the definition of value in vol 1 is done in abstraction from changes in technology over time. In vol 1 a change in technology changes values, but there is not systematic treatment of the effect of a continuous rate of change of technology on the definition of commodity values. It strikes me as illegitimate to try and reconcile prices of production computed on a temporal basis with value defined on a non temporal basis. Once you deal with continuous rates of change of labour productivity then you are stepping outside the theoretical space on which the original theory of value was based. Samuelson attempted do deal with this problem of continuous change in labour productivity and its implication for labour values in his paper 'A new labour theory of value for rational planning through the use of the bourgeois profit rate' Paul Cockshott paul@cockshott.com > Rakesh wrote > This is not true. As I noted to Allin who did not reply, Marx is > already investigating in ch 9 why the prices of production in a > particular sphere are undergoing changes of magnitude (see capital 3, > p. 265ff. Vintage; see also p. 270-1 where marx refers to the rise of fall > of the portion of cost price which represents constant capital in a given > sphere of production; note also p.271-2 where Marx analyzes the impact of > rising productivity). So there is no reason for the stricture that the so > called transformation problem has to be solved on the assumption of input > prices of production=output prices of production. Of course if this > assumption is dropped as it should be for a temporal > sequential approach (and why can't an exercise in logic include time > subscripts), then there no longer need be a discrepancy between total > surplus value and total profit that has to be arbitrarily accounted > for by postulating revenue expenditures of exactly the right size. Of > course one can say that within a static framework such revenue > expenditure could account for the inequality between total surplus > value and total profit; that is, this can be offered as an escape > hatch if one confines herself for the sake of argument to a static > (or more accurately replicating) world in which input prices have to > be output prices.
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