[OPE-L:5416] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: turnover time and surplus value

From: Paul Cockshott (paul@cockshott.com)
Date: Wed Apr 25 2001 - 07:35:40 EDT


On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, you wrote:

> 
> >   What
> >are the workers employed by the slow-turnover capital supposed to be
> >doing, while the workers for the high-turnover capital are
> >periodically churning out saleable output?  They must be "building
> >something big", that is accumulating an inventory of work in progress.
> >(Marx refers to the example of railways later in the chapter.)
> 
> 
> Yes but that inventory even if it embodies new direct labor need not 
> raise the value of the capital stock relative to variable capital 
> since that stock of unfinished goods may not have any potential value 
> at all.

In some cases it may have no potential value, but these will
be exceptional. When we are dealing with the average of an
industry, the unfinished - or more to the point unsold but
warehoused - goods do have value.  When considering overall
changes in profitability we have to look at the average firm
producing goods which are destined to be sold.



-- 
Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
0141 330 3125  mobile:07946 476966
paul@cockshott.com
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/
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