Re: [OPE-L] The Accountant in End Times

From: Philip Dunn (pscumnud@DIRCON.CO.UK)
Date: Mon Oct 03 2005 - 07:35:29 EDT


Hi Jerry

The original attachment was a Unix file. The one here should have shorter
lines.

Quoting Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM:

> Hi Phil,
> 
> I don't accept the premise "since aggregate value must equal aggregate
> labour."    

A small correction I wrote:
Since aggregate *value* added must equal aggregate labour.


If  new output equals zero, then _whatever the inputs in the
> form of  circulating capital and labour_, the value of the new output must
> equal zero.  This must be the case since without any commodity product
> the use-value must equal zero and hence the value must equal zero.
>

Agreed, the value of output (and of closing stocks) is zero. 


> While I don't want to take the materialization of labour too literally
> and corporally,  there is a physical dimension to commodity output,
> whether that output is in the form of corn,  etc. or services.  Without
> any output, there is no physical or social corpus that can represent
> value.  If and when the value of the output is less than the value of the
> inputs in the form of  C + V,  this is a consequence of the risk and
> uncertainty associated with the production and circulation of
> capitalist commodities. Simply because labour is expended in a
> productive form is not a sufficient condition for the actualization
> of value.

Again agreed. There no output.  C'=0. 
> 
> I can see your point, though:  an accountant would express such a
> situation as a debit with a negative sign: i.e. on the balance sheets
> this type of situation would appear as if it were "negative value."
> This is not, through, primarily an accounting issue: it is a question
> over what is constitutive of value.
> 

Are you saying that use-value is constitutive of value in the sense that an
invisible value tag is tied to the use-value with non-material string?  And
that the magnitude of value so attached is fixed for ever? That would seem to
make value a property of the use-value.


Philip Dunn





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