From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 05:53:31 EDT
Andrew Brown wrote: > > Ajit has also argued (not on OPE-L though) that Sraffian theory is > fundamentally limited due to the fact that any two Sraffian systems > are incommensurable. The difference between the two systems > need only be the presence of a commodity in one system but not > in the other, that is enough to disallow any comparison of value > betwen the two. No doubt I have Ajit's argument wrong, but the > above argument regarding commensurability is what I think, at > least. Such incommensurability severely limits Sraffian economics > in two respects: at a more abstract level, the nature of value is > presupposed but not elaborated upon; at a more concrete level, it > is difficult to work out how Sraffian analysis can be developed to > enable concrete explanation. I think this overstates the incomessurability. I am pretty confident that if someone chose to work on it, you could establish approximate metrics relating closely similar i/o matrices. One would proceed by a process of aggregation forming composite commodities until one had a one to one mapping between outputs of the two tables. -- Paul Cockshott Dept Computing Science University of Glasgow 0141 330 3125
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