From: Ian Wright (wrighti@ACM.ORG)
Date: Sat Oct 14 2006 - 12:35:01 EDT
Hi Ajit > Ian, I don't want to revive the debate. OK, I understand, please do not feel obliged to reply. I intervened because your statement "capital cannot be measured by direct and indirect labor-time" does revive our debate. > But my basic > point is that you have created a system of subsistence > economy--you are not the first one to confuse simple > reproduction with the subsistence economy because > subsistence economy is one example of simple > reproduction. Any Sraffian open economy with an undistributed surplus maps to a family of equivalent closed economies with a distributed surplus. To compute prices Sraffa must close his surplus equations -- and he does so by specifying the nominal income distribution. But that is half a closure. To compute labour-values Sraffa must also specify the real distribution of income. He doesn't do that. But one can. Adopting a full closure of the economy does not transform a surplus producing economy into a subsistence economy. We are simply fully distributing the surplus. > Your whole argument about money sector > etc. is a mathematical smoke and mirrior, which is > hiding this simple fact from you. The real test of > your accounting principle would be its application in > an expanding reproduction scheme. If your accounting > system breaks down in this case then you will realise > that my criticism was right all along. And again, if > your accounting scheme breaks down in the case of > expanding reproduction then it of course it couln't be > Marx's accounting procedure as you cannot claim that > Marx's accounting was designed only for simple > reproduction of the capitalist system. So apply the > test and see what happens. If your accounting passes > this test, then you may have something! Cheers, ajit > sinha Yes, let's move on to discuss expanded reproduction. But first let's get agreement on the simpler case of simple reproduction. The point is that Sraffa's labour-value accounting system does not pass the test of simple reproduction. It does not measure replacement costs. I invite contradiction on this point, particularly as it is a relatively straightforward matter of logic and simple arithmetic (e.g., the low-dimensional corn economy in the appendix to my working paper: http://65.254.51.50/%7Ewright/realCost.pdf ). Do you appreciate the problem that exists with Sraffian labour-value accounting in the context of simple reproduction? Best wishes, -Ian.
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