From: Philip Dunn (hyl0morph@YAHOO.CO.UK)
Date: Thu Feb 22 2007 - 14:05:14 EST
Hi Ian, I do recall suggesting, some time ago, that you stay away from all this stuff. Let us not make life difficult for ourselves. I want to take the value accounting perspective to its ultimate extreme. Consider Marx's notion of relative value. The relative value of a produced commodity is expressed by the equivalent value of the money it sells for. The relative value of money is expressed by the equivalent value of labour. If 1 million hours are worked then the value of "money value added" is 1 million hours. End of Story. On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 09:25 -0800, Ian Wright wrote: > Hi Ajit > > Welcome back. Thanks for your comments on the history of this concept. > > > In any case Marx accused Adam > > Smith for maintaining the proposition that at some > > stage labor alone produces somethig--i.e. there was no > > commodity residual. According to Marx this had to be > > the case for his additive theory of value to be > > meaningful. I'm not sympathetic to Marx's reading of > > Smith on this point, but I think Sraffa is more > > sympathetic. > > Considering the simpler case of simple commodity production, Sraffa's > `reduction to dated quantities of labour' formula (with r=0) does > entirely eliminate the commodity residual. This is nonsense if > interpreted as describing an actual historical process. But useful, > however, when viewed as a hypothetical interpretation of an > instantaneous property of technology field (just like the definition > of the potential energy of a point in an electric field). > > As an alternative, Morishima interprets labour-values as employment > multipliers, i.e. how much direct and indirect employment is generated > by a unit increase in output of a given commodity. But the concept of > employment multipliers is similarly counterfactual in its own way, but > I'd be interested to know if anyone has thought much about this > interpretation, or worked with it. > > > Keep in mind that if there is no > > commodity residual, that is if commodity could be > > produced solely by labor, then the maximum rate of > > profits would become infinite. You must have a > > commodity residual to have an upper bound on the > > maximum rate of profits. Now I think I have confused > > Ian more than he was before--but I have tried to > > clarify a point in my own humdrum manner. > > I think we discussed this issue before. You could try again if you > feel that I missed your point. > > Best wishes, > -Ian. ___________________________________________________________ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" – The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
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