From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Wed May 26 2004 - 19:05:52 EDT
In reply to Andrew T >Rakesh. >Where has it been demonstrated that money hoarding is inconsistent >with a Sraffian system? As I read it, the Sraffian price equations >are established with quantities given. That giveness, that reification of course is a mistake in my opinion as it effaces the source of the output quantity and the surplus; outputs are never given but result from on the ongoing struggle over the length and intensity of the working day. The output quantity is an index of the battle over the working day, and thus cannot be conceptually divorced from labor value. Marx after all criticized Ricardo for forgetting that though the technical means for surplus labor may exist, that does not make surplus labor exist in reality. "For this to occur, the labourer must be compelled to work in excess of [necessary] time, and this compulsion exerted by capital. This is missing in Ricardo's [and Sraffa's workrb] and therefore the whole struggle over the regulation of the normal working day." TSVII, p. 406 I think this quote has been unduly ignored. The technical conditions (or a blueprint thereof) do not themselves yield a surplus--only the possibility thereof; for that to occur there must be unpaid alienated living labor time and labor values have to be brought in to understand the real process, as Shaikh puts it. http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/ope-l/2002m06/msg00089.htm > This leaves open the way in which the quantity of output is >determined, depending upon aggregate demand and money. If money is >hoarded this will impact upon aggregate demand and generates the >possibility of criss, as developed by Marx in Theories of Surplus >Value. The numeraire may be something of a red herring. >Andrew (Trigg) I don't agree that the emphasizing of the difference between money and numeraire is a divagation. A condition of possibility of a general crisis is that economy be a monetary one; a monetary economy is not a numeraire economy. The difference between money and numeraire has to be articulated if one wants to establish the conditions of possibility of a general crisis. I agree, as Edward Nell has said, that the Sraffian price equations are not committed to full employment and that they are compatible with Keynesian unemployment equilibrium. But this does not mean that they actually establish the possibility thereof in the structure of an economy which is modelled after all without money and thus without capitalist exchange and without monetary uncertainty. I believe that Paul Davidson over on the post keynesian list serve reached the same conclusion a long time ago. He had some tussle with Gary Mongiovi in that part of cyber space. Marx's labor theory of value is not a pure production model; it has what he calls a qualitative side or what Fred M and others call a value theoretic explanation of the necessity of money, of what money has to represent in a commodity producing society. As John Weeks and others have shown, Marx theory of labor value and theory of money are intrinsically intertwined. This is only one way in which Marx represents a rupture from the classical economists. Moishe Postone has explored others. Max Adler too but his analysis of the value form has yet to be assimilated into Anglo Marxism. I understand the thrust as follows: Adam Smith recognized that objects exchange due to the division of labor. Marx then asks not only why did this division of labor arise but also whose labor is it that is divided. To the latter question Marx answered that it society's labor that is divided. So then we understand that while Smith argued that exchange of commodities is an exchange of equal quantities of labor, Marx analyzes the situation further to show that this labor is not personal or invididual labor but a social substance, some aliquot of the labor at the disposal of a society. So what does it mean to say that social labor is a substance? It means that individuals producing in society is the starting point, that production by a Robinsonade individual outside society is just as much an absurdity as the idea that language could develop without people living and speaking together. It is a recognition that men must associate and depend on each other and more to the point depend on social production. Man is in short a zoon politikon. This is the starting point (it may even be understood as a transcedental condition as Max Adler argued). It is thus society that has labor time at its disposal and that depends on social labor for its reproduction just as the individual depends on society for her consciousness, individuation and reproduction: the individual activity of every single person is only a mode of functioning of the species, and it is this social and abstractly general labor time that is expressed by way of its products in the exchange relationship. Yours, Rakesh
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