From: ajit sinha (sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Tue Dec 05 2006 - 06:07:05 EST
--- ajit sinha <sinha_a99@YAHOO.COM> wrote: > ___________________________ > Paul, I don't understand why you are introducing > irrelevent stuff into a simple argument. for > simplicity sake let's take a one commodity corn > economy: > 1 ton of corn + 8 hrs. of labor --> 8002 tons of > corn > wages = 1 ton of corn for a day, i.e. 8 hrs. of > labor. > > What is the rate of profit in the system? > Rare of Profit = 8000/2 = 4000% > > What is the value of 1 ton of corn? > Value of 1 ton of corn = 8/8001 hrs. of labor > Surplus value = 8 - 8/8001 hrs. of labor > Rate of surplus value = (64008 - 8)8001/(8001x8) __________________________ I think this is not a very good example of my argument--one should not develop examples late at night. In any case, it would be better to have the production system depicted as: 4000 tons of corn + 8 hrs. of labor --> 8002 tons of corn. In this case the rate of profits would be 100%. Now if you keep adding zeros on both sides of the arrow for corn, the rate of profit will remain around 100% but your labor value of corn will be disappearing and the rate of surplus value would be sky rocketing. In other words, the argument that the sourse of profit is in surplus labor will break down. You see, the problem is this. Before Marx no political economist had a good theory of profit (except for taking surplus as gift of nature). It is Marx's great originality that he tries to develop a proper theory of profit determination (an originality for which Marx is not given proper credit because of Marx influenced reading of Ricardo). Now to do so, Marx first develops a so-called theory of value where commodities are supposed to exchange according to their labor content. From this proposition he derives a particular exchange relation of real wages with labor-power and discovers the source of surplus production in surplus labor. Then this surplus labor so derived from the equal value exchange proposition is used to develop the rate of profit. But once the rate of profit is introduced in the argument, he had to acknowledge that equal value exchange proposition must be discarded. But once you discard that the logical foundation for the theory of profit collapses. Cheers, ajit sinha ____________________________________________________________________________________ Have a burning question? Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know.
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