From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Fri Dec 01 2006 - 22:49:05 EST
Hi Ian, I think we may be the only two people on this list who worry that the Sraffian view may depend on metaphysics-the false attribution of timelessly physical or material existence to evanescent technical conditions of production. For only if they are fixed against time is there anything physical or material in terms of which to have prices and profits determined. The theory presents itself as hard headed, more materialist than thou and empiricist; but its basic data dissolve in one's hands in the course of dynamic analysis. There is nothing there but a detour into Platonic realm of ideal technical conditions of production, frozen against the passage of time. The Sraffian theory of value seems in fact to be metaphysical in a way that Marx's theory of value is not. It's metaphysical because it depends on an alchemical transformation of something which is evanescent (the technical conditions of production) into something that is timelessly material and physical. Those who eliminate time should not throw around the charge of metaphysics! As for the corn theory: as even Amartya Sen has suggested, it would have to lose sight on how it is that there is surplus of this or any other commodity. But of course much more needs to be said about this. Ajit wrote: >Now, the proposition >Marx is making is not that empirically profits and >surplus labor are observed to go together but rather >the *cause* of profit lies in surplus labor. This >proposition is simply asserted but never proved by >Marx. Again this is not what Marx intended to do as any reading of the first six chapters of Capital I should make clear. Marx *deduces* that *cause*; he does not directly prove it or assert it! If value regulates price, then the difference in the monetary expression of C' and C in the circuit of capital (M-C-P-C'-M') must have resulted the appropriation of unpaid labor time. One can certainly argue that Marx's arguments for the labor theory of value are at best unpersuasive. The deduction of the third thing, the conclusion that it must be abstract labor, the bullying that abstract labor must exist as a material or real abstraction, etc. Bohm Bawerk had his reasons for skepticism. I still think these hoary criticisms remain more important than the von Bortkiewicz-Steedman line of attack. Schumpeter surely had no interest in being detained by the transformation problem or the straightjacket of linear production theory. If I were a bourgeois, I would be concerned that my hired prize fighters had lost sight of the most important philosophical objections to Marx's theory! >Marx has a problem with his falling rate of >profit thesis. He simply cannot allow the rise in the >rate of surplus value to outstrip his rise in organic >composition of capital due to technical change because >that will bring the metaphysical nature of his basic >proposition about labor and value to sharp relief. I don't see how this follows at all. One can certainly hold to the labor theory of value and not allow for that outstripping. The countertendencies just would have proven stronger than the tendency. Any superficial survey of the literature will show that many Marxists have reached just that conclusion without abandoning the labor theory of value. In fact I have suggested that even if one accepts TSS it's still possible that the consequence of a rising surplus of use values will have the indirect effect of staving off precipitous falls in profitability. That is, one can be in the TSS school and be very skeptical of FROP. Rakesh >Now >to your horse analogy: You don't have a theory of >horses. You just have an observation that they don't >talk. If you had said that horses cannot talk because >of this or that reason and somebody showed you that >logically horses could talk because they have the >capacity of whatever talk entails, then of course your >theory of horses will be as good as grass. Cheers, >ajit sinha > > > >____________________________________________________________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. >http://new.mail.yahoo.com
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