From: Ian Wright (wrighti@ACM.ORG)
Date: Wed Feb 08 2006 - 20:18:12 EST
Hi Paul > At the very least one should ask 'is M's theory an acceptable > approximation to the truth'. > As far as I am aware nobody has explicitly tested it. The literature > comparing prices of production to values empirically, compares > fully transformed prices to and values to market prices and to > one another. > Do you know of anyone who has tested M's procedure against > real data? > One would have to first compute labour values, then using these > do an estimation of prices of production without transforming > intermediate inputs. I don't think Marx's unfinished/incomplete transformation procedure can form the basis for empirical investigation. My interest is in understanding better the theoretical claim of conservation of value in price. A better understanding of that may or may not have consequences for operationalising the labour theory of value. Your empirical results on price/value correlation and organic composition/profit-rate really do undercut the N-R critique from another angle. F&M also did a great thing binning determinism. But I am still intrigued about why simultaneous determination and uniform profits should cause our value theory so much trouble. In the past I have felt that's maybe because the "special case" is not a reachable fix-point in a dynamic theory of capitalism. But now I am beginning to think that there's a conceptual error hidden in the TP itself, which is why I'm mulling it over. Best, -Ian.
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