[OPE-L:4506] Re: Re: What is Volume 1 about?

From: Rakesh Narpat Bhandari (rakeshb@Stanford.EDU)
Date: Sun Nov 12 2000 - 14:05:19 EST


re 4503

>
>Rakesh claims that deviations of cost-price from the value of the used-up
>means of production and consumption are offset by deviations of aggregate
>profit from aggregate surplus-value.  I know of ABSOLUTELY NO textual
>evidence that supports this claim.  It is simply a consequence of his
>adherence to the physicalist dogma that the value of constant capital
>cannot differ from the value of the means of production.
>
>
>Andrew Kliman

Andrew,

constant capital has different meanings in the determination and 
resolution of value.

In the determination of value, constant capital is the value of the 
means of production as they are consumed and reappear in the final 
product. This is then added to newly produced value to arrive at 
total value which multiplied by the monetary expression of labor 
value yields total price.

That total value or price (which is its monetary expression) is then 
broken down into or resolved into cost price (k) plus surplus value 
(s). In the determination of cost price, we have the money sums which 
the capitalist has laid out as constant and variable capital.

Marx had initially assumed that the value of the means of production 
as they are consumed and reappear in the final product is the same as 
the money sum laid out for the means of production.

However, once we transform the inputs,  this can no longer be the case.

But in the transformation of the inputs, we are only completing a 
change in the outward price expression of the one and same value 
system. This means nothing in the equations of value determination 
has changed or can change in the transformation.

So the complete transformation procedure effects changes in the 
resolution of value, not the determination of value.

If we resolve more or less of total value or price into cost price 
upon the transformation of the inputs, we simply have to resolve more 
or less of total value or price into surplus value.

Since the  point of the completed transformation is to modify cost 
price on the basis of the transformation of the inputs, the point of 
this exercise must also be to to figure out how the mass of surplus 
value changes as well.

Anyone who thinks that the mass of surplus value can remain the same 
as we modify the cost prices simply has not understood Marx. This 
means that Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Catephores, and countless others have 
not understood Marx.

When recognizing the need to transform the inputs and modify cost 
price, Marx is not asking:

  Can a "value scheme" be transformed into a complete "price of 
production scheme", inputs and outputs included, while stipulating 
three invariance conditions:  total value=total price, the value rate 
of profit=the price rate of profit and the sum of surplus value=the 
price sum of profits?


Marx is rather asking: How would the modification of cost price upon 
the transformation of the inputs from simple money prices to prices 
of production change the available mass of surplus value which is 
distributed in the form of a uniform rate of profit   and thus compel 
correction of the initial determination of the output prices of 
production in terms of a profit rate now calculated on the basis of 
the modified sum of surplus value/ the modified cost prices?

Once the correct question is asked, then an answer does easily 
follow, and the transformation debate disappears.

Yours, Rakesh



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