From: ajit sinha (sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Wed Sep 22 2004 - 09:02:57 EDT
--- Allin Cottrell <cottrell@WFU.EDU> wrote: > On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, ajit sinha wrote: > > >> This seems to me an egregious confusion of the > >> thought object with the > >> real object. Ricardo articulated a theory of the > >> effects of market > >> competition: he did not invent such competition. > > ____________________ > > Allin, the idea that an idea does not come into > being > > before the material conditions for it is ready is > an > > aspect of historical materialism; and Marx uses it > to > > suggest that why Aristotle could not come up with > a > > theory of value in a slave society. > > There may be something in Marx's observation on > Aristotle. But so far > as Smith vs Ricardo is concerned, it seems to me you > are proposing a > very radical point of view, that would need a lot of > supporting > argument. That is, the "standard" Marxian/Ricardian > view is that > Smith's "adding up of incomes" theory of value is > incoherent, and > Ricardo's is a definite scientific advance -- an > advance in > understanding what was going on at the time, and > what had been going > on for some lengthy history. Do you really want to > argue that Smith's > theory was correct for economies prior to the 19th > century? ____________________ Now, what was going on prior to the 19th century and where is a question of economic history and don't know much about it. On Smith I do think that people have got him wrong--that does not mean that he was right. I intend to write something on Smith, so i won't say much on him right now except that on my reading, Smith does not consider profit as surplus. Only rent is surplus in his scheme. profit is a necessary cost of production and this cost is conventionally determined. He is very close to Physiocrats and preclassicals on many accounts. I know, what I'm proposing will be controversial. _____________________ > > >> I would require a lot of historical evidence > before > >> I concluded that > >> people prior to the 19th century were perfectly > >> happy with "customary" > >> returns and did not seek out opportunities for > >> betterment, at least > >> over the long periods that Paul was talking > about. > > ______________ > > I don't remember the context of Paul's post. I'm > only > > reacting to what I had said... > > The context of Paul's post was an interesting and, > so far as I know, > original observation about pre-capitalist societies. > > That is, supposing that calculation of economic > advantage may have > been less sharp in such societies, and supposing > that mobility of > labour may have been less (neither of which > propositions can be taken > for granted as abolute historical fact), nonetheless > the relatively > slow pace of technological change prior to > capitalism means that > the gravitation of price towards labour value would > have much longer > periods to work itself out, compared with modern > society where > technological "disturbances" to this process are > endemic. _________________ But all this assumes that economic rationality dominates human behavior in all societies. This is a highly questionable assumption. Secondly, in precapitalist societies the owners of goods are not necessarily the workers who produced them--labor-time as the cost of production may not be relevant to them in their calculation of exchange. I think it will be very hard to find a precapitalist society dominated by something like a scp mode of production, and so mixing the theoretical problem with the scp model with the real historical systems may create a lot of muddle. Cheers, ajit sinha > > Don't be so quick to dismiss interesting ideas! > > Allin. > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
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