From: Pen-L Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Sat Mar 31 2007 - 15:38:34 EDT
Quoting Diego Guerrero <diego.guerrero@CPS.UCM.ES>: > Hi, Ajit: > You wrote commenting on Fred: > > "If this is crucial, then you should know that you have > been making a crucial mistake all along. How does a > firm gets its revenue? By selling the goods it has > produced. When it sells a good, it sells it at a > price. Only AFTER selling its goods it receives a sum > of money that is its revenue. So revenue by definition > is quantity sold multiplied by its price. There is > only one way arrow of determination in the equation > PxQ = M. You cannot know M unless you know both P and > Q. In other words, if P is unknown, then M is unknown. > In your equation P = M/Q (assuming Q is known), you > have one equation in two unknowns, P and M, and so it > determines nothing." > > > 1. This debate reminds me of the forest/tree question. You think we must > study the tree before looking at the forest. By contrast, I think Fred, > others and also I follow Marx in thinking that the correct procedure is > studying the forest before analysing the tree. In my opinion, it is not > mainly a question of sequential versus simultaneous. It goes beyond: it is > the question of the necessary rejection of methodological individualism. > Those who believe necessary to start from the individual behaviour in order > to understand the system seem to forget that the individuals are socially or > globally determined. Micro-agents must be understood in their macroeconomic > circumstance. This is for instance why for Marx classes come before > individuals. Hi Diego, I don’t think “methodological individualism” is a good description for Ajit’s insistence that M must be determined by PQ. “Methodological individualism” has to do with individual choices; Ajit’s theory does not have to do with individual choices, but with the relation between individual quantities and total quantities. I don’t know what we should call Ajit’s insistence that total quantities must be derived from individual quantities (which is based on Sraffa’s theory - objective individualism? – but to call it methodological individualism is misleading, since that term already has a specific meaning. Comradely, Fred ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
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