A reply to Rakesh Bhandari's OPE-L 4874. He wrote: "doesn't Fred argue in detail that in Marx's derivation of prices of production he does not take the physical conditions of production as given?" Yes, but that's simply irrelevant here. What's at issue here is not Marx's "method." What's at issue here is Fred's claim that, according to his interpretation, "prices of production change if AND ONLY IF there is a change in the productivity of labor somewhere in the economy." To investigate the truth-value of that claim, I postulated "a change in the productivity of labor somewhere in the economy" and asked him to show that his (simultaneously determined) "prices of production change." (He will not be able to do so.) Do you see some other way the truth-value of his claim can possibly be ascertained? I don't. I could, of course, have run the example backward, postulating some constant (simultaneist) prices of production and asking Fred to show that the productivity of labor must likewise be constant. He would not have been able to do that either. If there's a pile of dog doo-doo two steps in front of you, and you take a step with your right foot and then a step with your left foot, you step into it. If you take a step with your left foot and then a step with your right foot, again you step into it. "Logical method" -- i.e., what step one takes first and what step one takes second -- is completely irrelevant here. The same is true with respect to Fred's claim. (The same is also true with respect to the difference between his interpretation and other simultaneist/physicalist ones; the difference pertains only to the *order* of the steps they take, not to their *results*, which are identical.) Rakesh also wrote: "Aren't you in your example here assuming the very ... dualistic point of view which you and/or your cowriter (Alan F, Alejandro or Chris Burford) has criticized, i.e., you begin with a price-free physical system and then try to map it out into a price (of production) system?" Huh? I wrote the post myself. As for the rest of this sentence, I'll just point out again that it is not I, but Fred, who has claimed that he "maps" technology onto prices of production (or vice-versa). I'm just investigating the truth-value of that claim. Andrew Kliman
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