[OPE-L:7899] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chris Arthur's "Alfredo on VFT"

From: clyder@gn.apc.org
Date: Mon Nov 04 2002 - 17:18:39 EST


Quoting Allin Cottrell <cottrell@wfu.edu>:

> On Sat, 12 Oct 2002, Christopher Arthur wrote:
> 
> > It seems to me that talk of individual value simply collapses value
> > into concrete labour time. Value represents abstract labour time
> > measured according to that time socially necessary i.e. value is
> > identical in all commodities of a particular sort...
> 
> But doesn't this skirt the issue of how "socially necessary" is
> defined when technology is changing?  E.g. is the socially necessary
> labour time some sort of average, or is it the minimum according
> to best practice (even if only one or a few producers are using the
> best practice at a given point in time)?
> 
> Allin Cottrell.
> 


Could one get a purchase on this by asking whether the best
practice was generalisable to the industry as a whole with 
current stocks of means of production.

To the extent that it is not, the mean is a good estimate
of what is socially necessary.
> 


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