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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