From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Thu Apr 21 2005 - 09:05:18 EDT
> The drawer I would leave open is the one that many Marxists would nail > shut. > The determination of value by ex ante SNLT. All the other drawers, in > aggregate and disaggregate, stay shut. The ex post value accounting > system takes any prices and wages, market prices, production prices and > even very silly prices, and absorbs it all in the differences between the > power to create value and value actually created. > No doubt there is a set of prices and wages which closes even this drawer. Hi Phil: I agree with you that there can be a difference in the magnitude of SNLT ex ante and ex post. The reason for this is that for LT to count ex post as SN, the commodity product must be sold and thereby actualize value and surplus value. Thus, some amount of ex ante value could be destroyed ex post if some proportion of the commodity product was not sold or sold in a timely enough fashion (because use-values would be destroyed, which would mean that some amount of commodities would no longer have exchange value and hence value; I.e. no UV, then no EV and value and s). However, I believe that in the transformation from values to PoP, it is assumed that the entire commodity product is sold and there won't be any difference between the magnitude of value in what you call the ex ante value accounting system and the ex post value accounting system. So, at least at this level of abstraction, you can't solve the system by leaving that drawer open. Also, there are no "silly prices" at the level of abstraction where there are PoP. Once you move to a more concrete level of abstraction then there are quite a few ways in which the tendency for the formation of a general rate of profit can be disrupted. For instance, some proportion of firms may sell their commodities at "silly prices" greatly in excess of their values. This can happen in branches of production in which there is no or very limited competition. I gather, though, that this can't happen from your perspective because value equals price. I would say, rather, that commodities are *assumed* to sell at their value on average in the aggregate. But, I guess we've been over that ground already, haven't we? In any event, thanks for the clarification. In solidarity, Jerry
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