From: Andrew Brown (A.Brown@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Wed Feb 15 2006 - 05:29:20 EST
Allin, You wrote " The total available labour time determines the total available _production_ time only on condition that there are fixed labour coefficients in all production processes." I reply: The full condition is that labour input is in general necessary for the duration of any social production process (because labour initiates and organises social production) and the amount of labour available in any relevant time period is limited becaues labourers cannot work 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. You continue: " And if there are such fixed coefficients, one might say that the situation is symmetrical: total production time is also determined by total available _machine_ time. (Given plasticity of the coefficients one might run the machines longer for a given amount of labour applied, or vice versa, hence varying "production time" and "labour time" somewhat independently.)" I reply: If any *specific* machine gets used up, or is able to be left running without any labourers to oversea it (and none can be forever), then labourers can initiate and organise production elsewhere. The converse does not hold because even the most sophisticated of machines (say, robots) cannot, in general, initiate and organise production. So total available production time to society is affected by a specific machine cost only in so far as labourers have to be allocated to production processes that reproduce the machine in question. Many thanks Andy
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