From: Christopher Arthur (cjarthur@waitrose.com)
Date: Fri Oct 25 2002 - 09:50:32 EDT
>Chris wrote in [7840]: > >"In my opinion now snlt should be understood to reflect modal lt. The >difference may not be great empirically but is huge conceptually. >The average notion fits embodied LT theory like a glove. Every commodity >sold has an individual value for which all LT counts and then social snlt >is the average, and there is a transfer of value from the less efficient to >the more efficient (see Carchedi for a typical reading). This means that >the idea of unnecessary time really becomes trivial since the only case is >unsold commodities. The time in all the sold ones counts for value en bloc. >I am sure Marx originally thought of something stronger. >If snlt is determined by modal lt, there are two cases. In old-established >industries with a big tail of inefficient firms modal lt will be lower than >average. This means that those less efficient firms that have sold >commodities have unnecessary labour in them, so this is much stronger then >the trivial case of unsold commodities. <snip, JL> ". > >You refer twice in the paragraph above to the "trivial" case of unsold >commodities. Yet, you offered no reasons for why you believe this "case" >(which in any dynamic theory typically and necessarily occurs for >extended periods, indeed it is a manifestation -- a necessary form >of appearance -- of the contractionary phase of the cycle) is "trivial". >Why trivial, Chris? > >In solidarity, Jerry Trivial in the definitional sense. Of course it is not a trivial matter for a capitalist that the goods cannot be sold, and the dynamics of the cycle are important. But I was thinking of the part one context in which it appears that by definition any unsold commodities embody labour that failed to be socially validated and hence the labour was not socially necessary. I recall Marx also deals with the case where a glut is sold but at a lower price. "Caught together - Hung together" he says and argues that this proved unncessary labour had been expended . Chris 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
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