In reply to OPE-L 4931.
Yes, Fred, you wrote posts. You may even have written a post
beyond the point at which I gave up out of frustration. I don't
know. My computer crashed and I lost everything prior to OPE-L
1061, so I can't check this out now.
I still think it is accurate to characterize your response to Alan
Freeman's demonstration as a non-response. He showed that, when
technology is changing, all variants of the *physicalist* prices
of production and profit rate FAIL to constitute the center around
which prices and the average profit rate fluctuate, despite the
common claims to the contrary.
Your "response" was that your prices of production and profit rate
aren't "Sraffian," because your "logical method" is different.
But Alan's demonstration referred to all variants of the
physicalist prices of production and profit rate, yours included.
That's one reason why I say your response was a non-response. You
haven't confronted the demonstration and the fact that it does
apply to your interpretation.
The only ways to confront Alan's demonstration are either (1) to
acknowledge that he is right, or (2) to come up with alternative
NUMBERS, generated by means of your interpretation, in which
market prices and associated profit rates do indeed fluctuate
around your prices of production and equilibrium profit rate when
technology is changing. "Logical method" has nothing to do with
it.
I know you think your prices of production and profit rate aren't
physicalist, i.e., aren't functionally determined by physical
quantities (input-output and real wage coefficients). What I mean
by functionally determined is that, to each set of input-output
and real wage coefficients, there corresponds a unique set of
production prices and a unique uniform profit rate. Notice that
this definition says NOTHING about physical quantities being
"fundamental givens," initial data, or anything of the sort.
But you're wrong about your prices of production and profit rate
not being physicalist. Because you adhere to simultaneous
valuation, defined here specifically as the postulate that
(output) prices of production must equal the associated input
prices, your prices of production and profit rate ARE functionally
determined by physical quantities.
I've demonstrated this numerous times in numerous ways. But you
always find fault with the demonstration -- like the time you
disqualified my use of an IDENTITY in an algebraic proof!
Remember that? So I've asked you, time and again, to produce some
NUMBERS of your own, NUMBERS in which your prices of production
and/or equilibrium profit rate differ at different moments
although the physical quantities are the same. (Is there any
other way to DEMONSTRATE that your prices of production and profit
rate are not functionally determined solely by physical
quantities? I think not.)
Notice that I have NOT asked you to *begin* with physical
quantities as "fundamental givens," initial data, or anything of
the sort. Start with your macro-monetary aggregates "determined
in Volume I" for all I care. Just somehow, in the END, produce
some NUMBERS for the unit prices and the physical quantities.
If I'm not mistaken, I have asked for such NUMBERS for five years
now. But you still have not produced any. That is the other
reason, and the main reason, why I say your response to Alan's
demonstration is a non-response.
Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman
Dept. of Social Sciences
Pace University
Pleasantville, NY 10570 USA
phone: (914) 773-3968
fax: (914) 773-3951
Home: 60 W. 76th St. #4E
New York, NY 10023 USA
"The practice of philosophy is itself theoretical. It is the
critique that measures the individual existence by the essence,
the particular reality by the Idea."
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