From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Mon Dec 04 2006 - 18:56:25 EST
> Hi Rakesh > > I have responded to Ajit because it is normally more productive to discuss ideas with someone who disagrees with you. Yes I have enjoyed reading your exchanges with others, including Ajit, though one wonders whether on all sides there has been any change in initial positions? I still think that we should not dismiss Marx's idea that as unit values fall there will be contradictions and crises caused by a falling profit rate. Capitalism will not race to a near automated economy, leaving behind only a social control problem of the mass unemployed. But putting that aside and putting aside the difficult questions about joint production, choice of technique and the transformation, I was trying to speak to the charge that the labor theory of value is metaphysical in comparison to a given "technical conditions" approach. But technical conditions are themselves the objectification of labor, and if they are changing interperiodically there is in fact nothing material there with which to determine prices and profits. For this reason, In any analysis of the dynamics of accumulation, the technical conditions approach is less materialist, more based on an ideal construct than the theory of value I am not saying that we cannot fix the technical conditions of production for an analysis of interdepartmental exchange in the cases of simple and expanded production. But this is an analysis of the conditions of exchange (and realization of surplus value)in any actually reproducing economy (also will the elements of production continue to be available). Marx's Capital II models are not about the determination of prices and profits in a dynamic setting. In terms of that problem there are no fixed technical conditions of production except through an ideal construct; there is no empirical data about fixed technical conditions because they don't actually exist. There are no fixed technical conditions in terms of which one can provide a materialist grounding for a theory of prices and profits But the expenditure of social labor time is real and material. The labor theory of value provides a more solid materialist grounding. It's not meta-physical. It's in fact more physical and materialist than the appeal to fixed technical conditions of production which is in fact nothing more than a mental abstraction. It's not labor value that is a mental abstraction as Sombart charged in another context. So I am challenging the Sraffian image of being less metaphysical, more materialist than the Marxian value theory. That was my point; do you agree? Is the labor theory of value metaphysical while the technical conditions of production approach is hard headed and materialist? This is the charge that Steedman tried to imprint on the mind. Is it true? If you don't accept my retort to the charge that LTV is metaphysical at least in comparison to the technical conditions approach, how would you meet the criticism? Rakesh Hence less messages > on your posts. > >>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. > > I think it's important to abstract and even freeze in order to analyse special-cases. So I have no problem in principle with formal models. On the contrary, I think they are essential. But always incomplete. Introducing change I think is essential to understand the theory of value. > > Best, > -Ian. >
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