Re: (OPE-L) Ajit's paper

From: ajit sinha (sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2004 - 04:08:30 EDT


--- Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> At 5:19 AM -0700 6/3/04, ajit sinha wrote:
> >--- Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
> >>  Just to clarify quickly.
> >>
> >>  Ajit, you write:  "[Ricardo] found that the
> effect
> >>  on the money
> >>  commodity of a change in wages implies that even
> if
> >>  the net output
> >>  has been kept constant in physical terms a
> change in
> >>  its distribution
> >>  between wages and profits could
> >>  very well change its size when measured in...
> money
> >>  terms"?
> >>
> >>  Now you don't deny that this change in size
> depends
> >>  on the assumption
> >>  that money is not only a commodity but a
> commodity
> >>  the production of
> >>  which should yield the average rate of profit
> >>  enjoyed in most
> >>  branches of commodity production.
> >>
> >>  This is why I have asked you to specify all the
> >>  assumptions that are
> >>  being made about the money commodity if the
> curious
> >>  effects that you
> >>  yourself mention above are to obtain. What must
> >>  money be like if this
> >>  curious effect can obtain?
> >__________________
> >
> >There is no hidden assumption here. If money is a
> >commodity, the same rules apply.
>
> Which rules? Be clear and understandable.
_________________
Rakesh, I do not have time to teach you the basics of
political economy. So this is going to be my last
response to you for sometime--I'm looking forward to
some more interesting discussions emerging with
others. But you should know this basic fact, which
should solve many of your questions relatin to this,
and that is: any commodity, which is not a standard
commodity will be affected by the changes in income
distribution.
___________________________
>
>
>
> >  But keep this in
> >mind, even if money commodity did not yield a
> general
> >rate of profits as other commodities, its price
> will
> >be affected due to price affects in other
> >commodities--
>
> money does not have a price, as Fred has argued.
_______________

Fred can argue whatever he wants. But the fact of the
matter remains that price is a relative concept. It is
not very profound to say that the price of something
in its own terms is always equal to one.
_____________________
 And
> the relative
> rate of profit in the money sector obviously cannot
> be affected if
> one sets up simultaneous equations by which the rate
> of profit in au
> production is stipulated to be the same as same rate
> of profit in
> other commodity producing sectors.
_________________
Isn't this a proof that you don't know much about
things you think you know so much about? Who is
telling you all this rubbish? What is relative rate of
profit, any way? And why when wages rise in all the
sectors this relative profit in the money sector can
obviously not change. And what it has to do with
Sraffa's point that in general the money commodity
will be affected by the changes in income
distribution?
___________________
> >in this case you simply have additional
> >burden to prove why and how a commodity will be
> >produced in the capitalist system which does not
> yield
> >profits.
>
> You don't understand the first thing about what is
> being argued, and
> has been discussed on this list already.  No one has
> doubted that
> gold is produced for profit or at least gain. One
> question is whether
> the profit rate in gold production can be reasonably
> assumed to
> approximate the average rate of profit--remember
> Bortkiewicz assumed
> so in his solution to what he incorrectly claimed
> was Marx's
> transformation problem.  Naples has argued against
> this assumption
> for a specific reason, I for another.
____________________
Rakesh, your heros are mostly zeros for me, so why you
keep throwing these names unnecessarily? As I told you
above, all this business about average rate of profits
go nowhere. Both Ricardo and Marx understood this
after trying it out. If a commodity is not a standard
commodity, it will be affected by the changes in
distribution.
________________________
>
>
>
> >  You gain nothing but you lose a lot.
>
>
> What are you saying?
>
>
> >___________________________
> >>
> >>  You have not even attempted to answer this
> question.
> >>
> >>  As for your criticism of the infinite regress in
> >>  which TSS is
> >>  trapped, do note that Freeman anticipates your
> >>  criticism in the very
> >>  volume from which the above quote from you is
> taken.
> >>  See Freeman on
> >>  pp. 103-104 in Westra and Zuege. I won't type
> out
> >>  all of it for you
> >>  as I suppose you have the volume.
> >______________
> >I don't think Freeman is anticipating anything. He
> has
> >known my criticism (along with many other critisms)
> >first hand for years now. His verbal answers to me
> has
> >been unsatisfactory. I'll read the paper you
> >mentioned, once I get a little time. Cheers, ajit
> >sinha
>
> Yes read the people whom you are criticizing.
> Especially when they
> appear in the same volume in which you have been
> published. It's a
> good course to follow.
_________________
Rakesh, I don't need to read Freeman. I never comment
on most of this kind of literature in my publications
because I'm simply not interested--they are not
serious enough for me. I do it only for ope-l
chit-chat. But let me tell you something to follow. Go
and read Freeman's paper in 'Ricardo, Marx, Sraffa'
volume. I read it long time ago. There Freeman
criticises Sraffa's 'dated labor concept' by
interpreting it as Sraffa is saying that labor content
of a commodity should be measured by going back in
dates to collect labor time used up in producing
successive rounds of commodities (right now I don't
have the book to quote to you verbatim). Now, anybody
who knows Sraffa even a bit would know that Alan
apparently did not even bother to open the book before
publishing his criticism (and that too of Sraffa!).
The chapter on dated labor is not more that 4 pages in
big type prints. And they are your teachers on Sraffa.
And I'm supposed to respond to their criticisms of
Sraffa?
____________________
If I follow you, You think
> that labor values
> can only be derived from technical conditions if we
> assume their
> identity on both the input and output side
____________
Labor values can be derived without any reference to
prices. So I don't know what you mean by "their
identity on both input and output side".
____________________
(you of
> course resist the
> conclusion that labor values are redundant even if
> we can go straight
> to prices from technical conditions and a
> distributional parameter).
> But while this can give us a determinate answer to
> the question of
> unit values on the basis of an explanans (technical
> conditions) that
> is not itself contained in the explanandum (unit
> values), it is a
> spurious clarity as it is absurd to assume (however
> mathematically
> necessary) unit labor value is the same on the input
> as on the output
> side.
__________________
The value part of the used up constant capital is
measured by the labor time it takes to replace the
used up capital. There is no two time period involved
here. Value is well defined for any given point in
time. Cheers, ajit sinha
__________________





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