From: Philip Dunn (pscumnud@DIRCON.CO.UK)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 14:04:45 EST
Quoting Paul Cockshott <wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK>: > > Phil: > Suppose nominal value added totals 2 million dollars. Then the > _absolute_ value of money is 0.5 hours per dollar. > To get from a nominal price to a price measured in hours just > multiply by the absolute value of money. > > For simplicity I will assume that the real and the absolute values of > money are constant in time. > > Marx's 'value of labour-power' is gone. Instead there is > labour-power value. The actual, recognised labour-power value of a > clock hour of labour-power is equal to the real wage paid for it. > The value creating power of labour-power is identically this real > labour-power value. Also there is a potential-for-recognition for > this actual labour-power value. This is the natural real wage. > ------------------------------------ > Paul: > > > I don't quite follow this. > You seem to have gone from a distinction between labour and labour > power to a distinction between absolute and real values of money. > > How is this an advantage? > ---------------------------------- Phil: Hi Paul "The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer." [CI ch 6] If Marx's labour incorporated theory of the value of labour-power is rejected, a new idea is needed of what the intrinsic value of the producer commodity is. The recognised value of the produced commodity is identical to its embodied labour and equal to the absolute value of the money it sells for. In analogy, the recognised value of the producer commodity is identical to its labour-power and equal to the real value of the money it costs to buy. This real labour-power value is quite different from the absolute embodied labour value of the produced commodity. They cannot be compared quantitatively. This means that the rate of surplus value cannot be formulated as e = s/v. It can be expressed only in money as the profit wage ratio. So e = profits/wages. It does not matter whether profits and wages are measured in dollars or absolute money hours or real money hours. The ratio is the same. Since the value of the producer commodity is identical to its labour-power, and its labour power is value-creating power then the value of the producer commodity is identical to its value-creating power. > > To measure it we need to do a least squares fit to price data: > > minimize with respect to x the square of (y - Mx) > > where x is a vector of hourly natural real wage rates, y is a vector > of recognized labor activity, measured by money, expressed in hours. > > In other words y is equal to a vector of firms' absolute value added > (nominal value added in dollars times the absolute value of money). > M is a matrix. The element M(f,t) gives the hours worked in firm f > by workers of skill type t. We need to have the number of firms much > greater than the number of skill types to get a good fit. > > The dimensions of y and M are hours. x is dimensionless -- wages > measured in money hours divided by clock hours. > > ------------------------------------------------- > Whatdo you expect these xs to be, >1 or <1? Phil: I would expect them to be dispersed around a mean of 1, but I have not tried prove that yet. Phil Philip Dunn
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