Re: [OPE-L] email fault

From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Wed Feb 22 2006 - 07:10:03 EST


Andrew Brown wrote:

> Hi Paulo,
>
> That's not how they come out on my system. Must be incredibly annoying
> for you (and I wonder how many others are in your situation?). Not
> sure what I can do about it. Advice anyone?
>
/ suspec that you are preparing your emails using a system that has line
wrapping like
a word processor. You can not assume that all mail reading programs will
handle
wrapped lines intelligently.
It is better to put in new lines after every 60 characters or so.
/

> Andy
>
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From: OPE-L on behalf of Francisco Paulo Cipolla
>         Sent: Tue 21/02/2006 10:20
>         To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
>         Cc:
>         Subject: Re: [OPE-L] price of production/supply price/value
>
>
>
>         Andrew,
>         why is that only your posts come intermonably horizontal all
> the way to he infinite?
>         All others are well behaved in columns.
>         Why is it?
>         Paulo
>
>         Andrew Brown wrote:
>
>         > Hi Ian,
>         >
>         > One of the key aspects of your argument, as I understand it,
> is expressed as follows:
>         >
>         > " I do not think you have explained why the presence of
> technical change is necessary for
>         > the quantitative identity of labour-value and price."
>         >
>         > and, again,
>         >
>         > "Your interpretation of Marx  ...[involves]... the
> relationship between
>         > labour-value and the value-form under dynamic conditions of
> technical
>         > change. But to consider this a full response to  the modern
> TP you
>         > need to better explain why quantitative identity does not
> and should
>         > not hold under the conditions of the problem. I do not think
> you have
>         > done that."
>         >
>         > Let me answer your questions. The reason why the two
> aggregate equalities *do* not hold in the static case that you analyse
> is that profit is equalised on the size of capital advanced,
> regardless of the composition of capitals into the value creating 'v'
> and the value preserving 'c' . Marx's own analysis makses this quite
> clear (it is a myth that it is inferia to the Sraffian calculation or
> logically flawed), as does a Sraffian calculation. The various lines
> of attack on the Sraffian calculation, including those you have
> raised, do not significantly threaten this basic point. However, the
> deviations from the aggregate equalities are *random* through time
> because OCCs have no structural relevation with relevant categories of
> goods. This conclusion stems from examining the OCC and wage goods,
> 'luxury' goods and means of production, examining the real things
> referred to, their content or real structure. *Only* if you abstract
> from this content, can you conclude that it is arbitrary to consider
> their relation random. This is why I refer to formal logic, which
> abstracts from content, and dialectical logic which does not. If you
> like, over a century of debate over the TP has been mired in an
> inablity to actually examine the qualitative content of the variables
> with which it deals - it has been stuck in formalism.
>         >
>         > You ask why I think the two aggregate equalities *should*
> not hold together in the static context. Well I think they *should*,
> and *do*, if one analyses the relevant static case, where the OCCs and
> the relevant categories of goods are recognised to be in a random
> relationship. I can add one point that may be helpful, in response to
> your following argument. You wrote:
>         >
>         > "Whether the relationship is "strong" or "weak" is
> irrelevant. The
>         > point is that, once you admit logically that the presence of
>         > capitalist profits *alters* the quantitative identity between
>         > labour-value and price, no matter whether the alteration is
>         > quantitatively small, large, weak, strong, only happens once
> in a
>         > while etc., then it follows that there must be either *another*
>         > determinant of the value-form other than labour-time, or
> perhaps that
>         > labour-time is *not* the determinant at all. Labour-time
> therefore
>         > cannot be *the* substance of value in capitalism."
>         >
>         > The answer is that the deviation is the result of the
> peculiarities of the value substance. Abstract labour does nothing at
> all directly (because it is abstract) but only via mediation,
> eventually entailing the anarchic complexities of price of production
> and everything else we see in Marx's 'Capital'. This is an important
> qualitative point because the long run quantitative negligiblility of
> the average deviation is just that, long run.  The ability of other
> factors to have significant effects on the average deviation in the
> short run is the quantitative manifestation of the fact that the
> abstractness of the value substance has no analogy in the natural
> sciences or elsewhere (except Hegelian idealism)  - which may be why
> it affronts your intuitions. But these other factors are not differing
> OCCs, they are the factors that lead to crises, the factors of boom
> and bust.
>         >
>         > Many thanks,
>         >
>         > Andy
>
>


--
Paul Cockshott
Dept Computing Science
University of Glasgow



0141 330 3125


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