From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Jan 25 2006 - 11:46:05 EST
> >Rakesh writes (in big letters ) > >If the profit rate did not equalize, the value of a commodity would >be represented as >or (more accurately resolved into) c+v+s, what Marx calls simple >price; however given the tendency towards the equalization of the >profit rate, a tendency which grows stronger with the development >of capitalist markets and the mobility of labour, the value of a >commodity is now represented as m[(1+r)(c+v)], m as the monetary >expression of labor time allowing for the translation between price >of production and labor magnitudes. As Fred has argued, m is given >throughout Marx's theory, and depends in the contemporary economy on >the quantity of fiat money. >What evidence do you have that the tendancy towards equalization >of the rate of profit grows stronger over time? > >Do you have any econometric data for this? No. > >Allin and I have published results that show that >the dispersion of profit rates is actually quite wide - >certainly wider than the dispersion of profits/wages - roughly speaking (s/v). Yes of course I know that. And perhaps it is inexcusable that I am ignoring it. I was just interested in the logic of Marx's argument. Thinking through Marx's argument, I began to think that there is no value beyond what it is socially determined to be (even if Marx thinks differently at times), and in bourgeois society value simply as average social labor time to produce a commodity never has any social validation. So that cannot be its value. As Marx perhaps falsely thought, bourgeois society determines value as price of production as supply price. So that IS the value of a commodity, price of production converted into labor time IS the homogeneous social labor time a commodity represents. That would seem to be what a thoroughly social theory of value demands. Rakesh
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