From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Nov 06 2007 - 14:40:42 EST
Ian, I don't think I have ever argued that the totality of output prices exactly equals, or must necessarily exactly equal, the totality of output values. My own inquiries into the formation of prices and values suggest that this cannot be so, and indeed Marx & Engels both explicitly recognised that discrepancies between the two can and will occur in reality, whatever the theoretical models. The labour involved in wholesale, transport and retail activities can add value to products, as various Marxist authors also acknowledge, insofar as they involve the work of the physical preservation, transport or modification of use-values. I am also well aware that operating the price system requires a very large quantity of labour effort, and data I previously provided on the US occupational division of labour also prove this. Alan Greenspan may think that price equilibration happens "effortlessly" through a metaphysical Smithian "hidden hand", but the working class and the peasantry knows jolly well this is not so, because they actually have to make the work effort with their hands, without which all the financial claims staked on it are usually worth nothing. I said deliberately that "it could be argued" that if values regulate prices, there must be a proportional amount of goods sold below value for an amount of goods sold above their value. I do not think myself that this is in reality the case, and therefore, if values regulate prices, this determinism should be construed in a different way. The inverse transformation problem, as I have previously noted (like some Japanese Marxists, like Morishima), is how you get from prices to values. In national accounts, price data is aggregated according to a theory which results in, for example, "total VALUE ADDED". A question is, what entitles us to think that summing a whole lot of prices (real, imputed and estimated) will result in a quantity which represents the total VALUE added? Once you think more deeply about this inverse problem, you really get to the core of the matter, I believe. Somehow, in doing any price accounting, relating of different prices, and price aggregation, a value theory is necessarily implicated, namely, one necessarily needs concepts of: a.. comparable value (value equivalence) a.. value used up (or wasted) a.. conserved value a.. transferred value a.. newly created value One can of course cite plenty practical and legal "conventions" that will operate this, but this does not solve the theoretical and scientific problem of the origin/cause of these conventions and their assumptions. I could say, value added is simply total sales less intermediate goods and services used up, but I haven't PROVED thereby, that this price equals value added. I have just called it that, i.e. I have stated "what I think it means", a tautology. In his great little book "Man makes himself", the path-breaking Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe discusses the issue of "human progress", and notes, somewhat in jest: "The essence of the scientific attitude is, indeed, the abandonment of personal prejudices and the subordination of private likes and dislikes. (....) "The results of measurement," professor Levy remarks, "will be entirely independent of any religious, ethical, or social bias. Whether you like or dislike the words on this page, you will agree that the number is 322." (1951 edition, p. 10). Further inquiry however results in the insight that, whereas admittedly 322 =322, the way in which we arrive at this number, may not be free from "any religious, ethical or social bias". Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 30 2007 - 00:00:03 EST