Re Allin's 4037 > >No, that's a totally gratuitous complication. There's no >increase in productivity. The same hours of labour are >performed each "period", producing the same physical >outputs. (The actual quantities of the outputs are >immaterial.) Gratuitous, you may say, but you certainly haven't objected to it on grounds of realism! Let's just see where it takes us. > >If we can't work this out on the simplifying assumption of no >tecnical change, there's little hope of working it out with >ongoing technical change superimposed. Well, let's see.... > > >There's a problem though. The iteration has stabilized (there's >> >no further tendency for the numbers to change when the algorithm >> >above is re-applied), but we can't give the table a coherent >> >economic interpretation. Try cross-referencing the entries in >> >the "price" column and the column totals for c and v. >> > >> >Dept I has an aggregate price of output of 420.00, yet the >> >purchases of its output come to only 405.00. >> >> No, no! The $405 represents the money sum invested to buy >> means of production as inputs at prices of production (t); >> the $420 represents the money sum which is needed to buy *a >> greater physical quantity of means of production* as outputs >> at their prices of production (t+1). > >This line won't help you. Here was my last table: > > round: 46 > c v profit price pvratio > I 243.00 81.00 96.00 420.00 1.1200 > II 108.00 108.00 64.00 280.00 0.9333 > III 54.00 81.00 40.00 175.00 0.8750 >Tot. 405.00 270.00 200.00 875.00 1.0000 > >On the interpretation you're proposing, how are you going to >write the next table? You'll have to put 420.00 at the foot of >the "c" column and 280.00 at the foot of the "v" column as these >"greater quantities" of output are put to use. Correct. > If you write 200 >for aggregate profit, you've then got an aggregate price of 900, >not equal to total value. Why would I write 200 for aggregate profit for the next period? Instead maintain r as 1.3, then aggregate value or price in the next period is 910, profit or sv is 210. It would be unreasonable for it not to increase since more labor time will now be embodied in the final product. For we now have 300 wage goods in physical units, suppose that each ten buys a working day. So we have 30 full time workers. In the previous period we had 286 wage goods in physical units, so only 29 full time workers. A working day produces roughly the same total value in both periods--30 (30/910; 29/875). the rate of exploitation rises slightly. 29 workers produced $200 profit, now 30 workers produce $210 in profit. Again, no unreasonable changes. Actually the kind of change which should be a mark in favor of Marx's method! The introduction of time subscripts or the treatment of the transformation as one period in a realistic sequence (Carchedi) renders Marx's value theory logical enough that it can be tested against reality. Is this really something you want to fight against? All the best, Rakesh ps, I am dropping a lot of objections to which I shall return. I haven't checked the numbers because I have to go just now. But I think the point is clear.
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