From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Jan 12 2008 - 08:16:15 EST
In number theory, I should mention, there is a "sense" in which a subtraction can be an addition, namely in the case of subtracting a negative number. Two "-" can equal one "+", a double negative can be a positive. The dificulty however is, that U and S are positive numbers, and therefore the transmutation of deduction into addition still doesn't work. You people see no inconsistency in the fact that U is described simultaneously as an addition to, and a deduction from, surplus value, sort of like "now you see it, now you don't". In that case, I think it is reasonable to ask for a mathematically and conceptually rigorous, convincing explanation for how this can be the case, making all the assumptions fully explicit. You also fail to respond to the economic and political effects of this strategem which I noted. As I have said, I don't think the monetary "value added" can be simply the sum of wages and generic profit, because that leaves out taxes, levies, subsidies, and monetary benefits funded by or contributed to gross production income (in national accounts, land rents, subsoil rents and various property rents and leases are excluded from value added, although Marx mentions rent as a component of surplus value). My own approach to this problem (like all other problems) is different from Marxism, I think the starting questions are: - what is it about the nature of the division of labour and the nature of exchange, that warrants the productive/unproductive distinction? - how should production be defined? - how do we distinguish between net additions to wealth, and transfers of wealth? - how should the value of production and the value product be estimated and valued? - how should national income be estimated and valued? In Marxist theory, the PUPL distinction is fixed and eternal, bequeathed by the holy books, and output-defined classification schemes are drawn up for general application. In my theory, it changes, not in the least because the division of labour and the nature of exchange itself changes. I do not know what Paul Cockshott means by "actual money capital", and how this differs from money-of-account. According to the Marxist "lump of surplus value" theory, productive workers produce a lump of surplus value which is shared out between capitalists and unproductive workers. I do not find that approach credible. The claim that the accounting procedure according to which U is a "deduction from surplus value" implies no social or economic causality simply will not wash. It is a bit like the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's book saying "words mean what I want them to mean". Jurriaan
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