[OPE-L:7934] Re: relation of value to organic composition of capital

From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@lubs.leeds.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 06 2002 - 12:19:24 EST


Simon, Jerry and all,

Re 7930:

I could live for a hundred years and never put it as concisely and 
clearly as does Simon....

One point of interest that may help you out Jerry and may or may 
not be of interest to Simon:

The reason I did not mention constant or current prices is that I had 
in mind the 'static' case where one is considering the 
transformation problem as in ch.9 of 'Capital',  Vol 3.

In this case we consider capitals with different OCCs (Marx's 
example considers 5 capitals). We start without equalised profit 
rates and then we equalise them. This is a logical rather than 
temporal change to the system.  We can then show that the 
resulting prices (with equalised profit rates) are not proportional to 
values, but we obtain the two well known aggregate equalities. 
Why? Because it is the *OCC* we are dealing with and the OCC 
does *not* change unless the TCC changes. The TCC has not 
changed. So nor has the OCC. I.e. the age old claim that Marx has 
failed to transform the inputs is entirely misguided. Marx is working 
with the OCC hence it does not change. (Note that Marx works 
with the per cent form of the OCC in his example in ch.9).

Many thanks,

Andy


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