Hi Rakesh. You remind us of some good points Marx made about Ricardo's world view, but I was talking more narrowly about the concept of the "use-value" of a machine. Duncan >re 5231 > >> So they try to find measures of the "qualitative improvement" of >>capital. (The new machine, which costs the same as the old one, can >>shape twice as many pieces of metal or execute twice as many >>instructions.) This is completely foreign to the Marxian/Classical >>(and even /Sraffian) way of looking at capital, and, as far as I >>can tell, just adds confusing noise to the macroeconomic data. If, >>as Marx argues, the use-value of a machine to the capitalist is the >>amount of wage cost it saves, changes in the concrete performance >>of the machine are irrelevant. >> >>Duncan > >Hi Duncan, >It seems to me that Marx is not so exclusively interested in the >value surplus at the expense of use value. For example, Marx >criticizes Ricardo for only being concerned with net revenue (pure >profit), the value surplus of price over costs, and not gross >revenue, i.e., the mass of use values necessary for the subsistence >of the working population. Marx criticizes Ricardo precisely for >only figuring these use values as costs which are to be pushed down >as low as possible. So for an employer who makes $2000 profit on a >capital of >$20,000--10%--it is utterly irrelevant whether his capital sets 100 >or 1000 people into motion...as long as in all instances profit does >not fall below $2,000. Since as you say above anything other than >this value surplus is, as you say above, noise to the macroeconomic >data, Marx writes: "By denying the importance of gross revenue, i.e, >the volume of production and consumption--apart from the value >surplus--and hence denying the importance of life itself, political >economy's abstraction reaches the peak of infamy." > >Moreover, as I suggested in my last post, the expansion in the mass >of use values in which a given sum of value is represented is indeed >of great INDIRECT significance for the valorization process. For >example, with an expanded mass of the elements of production, even >if their value is the same, more workers can be introduced into the >productive process and in the next cycle of production these workers >will be producing more value. > >There is indeed for Marx a dialectic of use value and value in more >than just the consumption of labor power. Steve credits Rosdolsky >for rescuing this key element of Marx's theory. But if Steve were to >study the footnotes of Rosdolsky, he will find that he is drawing >from Grossmann's work. In both HG's magnum opus and dynamics book >there is attention to said dialectic. > >Yours, Rakesh -- Duncan K. Foley Leo Model Professor Department of Economics Graduate Faculty New School University 65 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212)-229-5906 messages: (212)-229-5717 fax: (212)-229-5724 e-mail: foleyd@cepa.newschool.edu alternate: foleyd@newschool.edu alternate: dkf@ultinet.net webpage: http://cepa.newschool.edu/~foleyd
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