[OPE] Reply to Paul Cockshott on Ochoa indirect labour methodology (correction)

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2008 - 18:06:31 EDT


I wrote in my haste:

C receives $600 input and labour content=35 hours of indirect labour added to the labour content of sector C's output

that should of course be:

C receives $600 input and labour content=30 hours of indirect labour added to the labour content of sector C's output

...so that the labour hours add up to 100. The idea is that although the labor content of the fractions of output sold by one sector to other sectors may proportionally differ from the average established for the selling sector, the total indirect labour hours transferred to other sectors in all transactions will be the same as that established for the selling sector, in this example 100. 

I have never had any response to this type of counter-argument. It is obvious that many output-defined or activity-defined sectors engage in joint production of some kind, and consequently sell different types of products simultaneously to different other sectors. These products are unlikely to have the same labour-content, precisely because they are different products. For some sectors this is relatively easy to estimate, because detailed data are available (e.g. farming or mining). But for many other sectors (e.g. services) it is much more difficult, and thus the problem is that we cannot identify what the quantitative deviation from the average labour-output ratio established for a sector will be. 

Jurriaan





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